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New Rig Specs

B

Benny Blanco

2[H]4U
Joined
May 4, 2003
Messages
2,609
Just thought I'd post it for fun because I'm excited and I think it's gonna be a kick ass machine. A good friend asked me to build him a machine and this is what I came up with for him.

DFI Infinity - $102
XP2400-M - $78
Buffalo 1gb PC3200 - $210
Gigabyte 9600Pro - $136
Hitachi 80GB S-ATA - $76
Samsung DVD-ROM - $30
NEC 8X DVD+-RW - $87
Speeze Falconrock HS - $12
Sony FDD - $12
Maxtop case - $43
Fortron Aurora 400w - $64

$850 is the total. His main thing will be gaming and copying DVD'S :p

I have a red and a blue CCFL, will see which one looks better in there, and also intend to tint the window with black limo tint so it's kind of stealth when the CCFL is off, and nice soft glow when on. Another friend of mine has this case already, in a different color, and it's actually really nice, but I don't trust the included power supply.

I plan on OCing him to about 2.2 or 2.4ghz if it'll do it on stock voltage. If not, no biggie. The system must stay relatively quiet, which the speeze is good for, and not bad for minor/moderate OCing (I'm using it as well).
 
i just think its funny how the ram is the most expensive thing on that system but its good ram anyways.
 
That's not a bad comp, though if it's for gaming, why not spend extra for a 9800 Pro from Newegg?
 
That's a good question...

To give you guys an idea, I initially sent him a $450 configuration, a $600 config, and the config in my first post. I expected him to choose the $600, but I guess his budget is bigger than I thought :cool:

I changed the case to the supercase/allied, which comes with a 400w power supply that I would actually trust (unlike the one in the maxtop)... this will save $50. No window here, but he's not even interested in that stuff anyway.

I also changed to Asus for the DVD-ROM as the samsung reviews were actually pretty bad.

DFI nForce2 ultra400 motherboard - $102
AMD Athlon XP2400m CPU - $78
Buffalo 1GB 400MHz memory - $210
Gigabyte 9600 Pro - $136
Hitachi 80GB S-ATA hard drive - $76
Asus DVD-ROM - $28
NEC DVD+-RW/CD-RW - $87
Speeze Heatsink - $12
Sony Floppy drive - $12
Case w/400w power - $55

Total: $796, plus $21 for shipping, $817

Now... Substituting a Sapphire 9800 Pro brings the shipped price to $899, which is nice :)

Keeping the 9600 Pro, and substituting the Athlon 64 3000 retail & Aopen AK86L K8T800 mobo, price comes to $943 shipped.

Then putting the best with the best, the 9800 pro and A64 3000, price comes to $1,025 shipped.

I'll let you guys know what he decides.... Later :)
 
Get rid of the Buffalo memory. Its usually nothing but trouble and nothing near the quality of Mushkin or Corsair. I would get Mushkin Blue Line or LVL1. And good luck getting Buffalo memory to work in an A64 board lol.

Next i would get a different video card. The nVidia 5900XT is about the best buy out right now. Really good performance at stock and blows past nearly anything overclocked since it will do faster then 5950 core speeds on alot of them.

I've got the Gigabyte 5900XT and its great. Even has a sexy blue LED fan built into its huge copper sink.
 
A friend of mine just bought some buffalo 256mb PC3200 on my recommendation recently. He received two sticks with winbond CH5 memory. No trouble, works great :rolleyes:

The gigabyte 9600 pro has blue leds in the fans also :rolleyes:

I'll look into the 5900XT... I see newegg has a Aopen 5900XT for $175 + $5 shipping, which is a nice price for a direct competitor to the 9800 Pro. Is the 5900XT as good or better than the 9800 Pro?
 
Originally posted by Benny Blanco
A friend of mine just bought some buffalo 256mb PC3200 on my recommendation recently. He received two sticks with winbond CH5 memory. No trouble, works great :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Installs and works great compared to thoroughly stress tested and having good compatibility with alot of motherboards are two completely different things. If your DIMM causes one error it could spell the destruction of a PC if its caused in the wrong area. Thats why it doesn't pay to buy brands other then Mushkin, Corsair, and Kingston unless the brand has passed with flying colors through rigourous tests and thats not just memtest86+ because thats just a DOS program. You have to use external hardware tests useing something like Ultra-X RAM tester that plugs into a PCI slot. Stuff like that is expensive to buy though and time consuming so its best just to go by whats already been tested and proven its worth. Nothing competes with Mushkin. And there have been a whole lot of people on Hard have problems with Buffalo memory. But buy whatever you think will work :p.

The gigabyte 9600 pro has blue leds in the fans also :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

I bet it isn't as cool as my LED fan though! lol

This copper sink on the Gigabyte 5900XT is huge, it covers the RAM on the back too.

I'll look into the 5900XT... I see newegg has a Aopen 5900XT for $175 + $5 shipping, which is a nice price for a direct competitor to the 9800 Pro. Is the 5900XT as good or better than the 9800 Pro?
Click to expand...

Overclocked high enough i'd say it would outperform a stock 9800 pro easily. A 9800 pro will overclock pretty high though so it just depends on how well they would compete. 9800 pro would probably have slightly better image quality and the 5900XT slightly better frame rates. I've used new nVidia and ATi cards both and i really dont see any image quality differences with the new drivers on both cards.
 
I set the buffalo in my friend's machine to run at 2-2-2 at 166mhz and ran memtest86, no errors. Pretty good for $90 (at the time). If that's not good enough, well, to each his own.

I like Mushkin. I have it in my machine. But if you believe Mushkin is the only choice, that's your choice... and I say you're crazy :p
 
Originally posted by Benny Blanco
I set the buffalo in my friend's machine to run at 2-2-2 at 166mhz and ran memtest86, no errors. Pretty good for $90 (at the time). If that's not good enough, well, to each his own.

I like Mushkin. I have it in my machine. But if you believe Mushkin is the only choice, that's your choice... and I say you're crazy :p
Click to expand...

I take it the buffalo has BH-5 chips? Cause CH-5 isn't compatible to run 2-2-2 for the most part without causing errors. CH-5 isn't suppost to run the tRCD lower then 3.

And if you want the BEST then Mushkin is your only choice :p. THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE hehe. Mushkin manufactures the best PCB's and has the highest customer support rating out of most any of the other hardware vendors for anything except maybe Intel or Microsoft or something.

Usually memtest wont diagnose errors for several hours sometimes. Sometimes it can take up to several days. It just really depends. Thats why you can't rely on memtest86+ to tell you if your completely error free or not. If you make it through 8+ hours of memtest86+ though then usually the RAM is doing its job and not causing any errors because if one of the DIMMs are bad they will usually start cuasing errors within the first 20 minutes to a few hours later. But its best to just stick with the top brands just in case. Mushkin, Corsair, and Kingston all three have value RAM so theres no excuse!!! lol
 
They are CH5 chips rated for 200mhz, but running at 166mhz.

Whats this about "good luck gettting buffalo to work with A64"?
 
Originally posted by Benny Blanco
They are CH5 chips rated for 200mhz, but running at 166mhz.

Whats this about "good luck gettting buffalo to work with A64"?
Click to expand...

I've read quite a few A64 mobo reviews and most of the boards dont have very good memory compatibility. Some wouldn't even work with the top brands like Corsair. Buffalo isn't a real super popular brand so i'm just saying you would want to be sure and double check with someone thats using that RAM and board or you'll most likely get to RMA.

And about the CH-5 running 2-2-2. It's most likely alot of CH-5 will run at that speed but its not suppost to. Just like the tRAS will run at 5 but its not suppost to run at 5 if your timmings are like 3-3-3 or something. tRAS = CAS + tRAC + 2 for DDR. Data corruption occurs on the hard drive when the timings are set too tight for the wrong chips and the tRAS should always be double checked because the tRAS regulates the time scale for the other three timings and if its too small then problems most likely will occur down the road.
 
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