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silentsammy

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 4, 2006
Messages
342
Its been a few years since my last build so I would greatly appreciate any critiques you guys can make to my proposed system. I've been trying to see what you guys have been saying in the other threads so hopefully i did my homework ok. :)

I am a gamer and will be doing a lot of gaming on this system. I probably will not be overclocking it, if I do it will be a mild overclock at most.

I already have a new case with a 700w power supply, a copy of vista ultimate and for a monitor I'll be using the Westy 37".

Here's what I was thinking for the rest:

Motherboard: EvGA nforce 680i (NF68) $219
- I really don't know if this mobo is overkill for me or not...I won't be doing SLI right away but may buy another card in the near future.

CPU: Intel core2 quad Q6600 $289
- may overclock it later ... not more than 3 Ghz though. I'm just not that daring :)

RAM:
4 GB (2 x 2GB) Patriot Extreme: $254

Video Card:
EVGA 8800 GTX $534

Hard Drive:
500 GB Western Digital $109

Sound Card:
None??? I'm not sure what to do here. I was going to get an X-Fi extremegamer but I've been reading that this thing doesn't get along with vista. Should I bother with a sound card at this point? Wait a bit? Get something besides the x-fi's?


Other stuff: optical drive, speakers, etc... i'm not too worried about.


Thanks in advance for any input you guys can give me!
 
For most people onboard sound is plenty good. If you do have problems with it then buy a dedicated card, but don't do so right away unless the motherboard reviews you read tell you to do so.

Not knowing anything about that board, it is definately overkill if you are not planning on immediately using SLI or overclocking. The fact is that for non-overclocking usage any old motherboard is fine. You don't need a dual gigabit LAN adapter. You probably don't even need gigabit at all. You don't need 6 SATA ports, certainly not RAID, when you are running a single drive. You don't need fancy overclocking settings when you are planning at the most a mild overclock. And you don't need SLI, unless you are buying the second card pretty much now. In 6 months time you'll probably be better off buying a new graphics card altogether rather than setting up SLI. It's great for making 3dMark world records, but that's about it. As far as cost effectiveness goes it's shit.

Find the cheapest motherboard that is compatible with your cpu and you'll probably do great.
 
I agree..
I would scrap the SLI idea.. In the grand scheme of things by the time you get around to buying another card a newer one will be out that spanks two GTX's in SLI more than likely anyways.. For single card solutions there is no better way to go for the money than a P35 chipset board.. I favor the Gigabyte P35-DS3R.. 129.99 @ the egg and save yourself $90 and get as good if not better performance.. I was going through the same dilemma a month ago.. SLI or not.. It simply isnt worth an additional $500+ unless your rocking a 30" monitor.. And if you are.... You are lucky.. And.. I hate you.. ;)
 
iSteez said:
I agree..
I would scrap the SLI idea.. In the grand scheme of things by the time you get around to buying another card a newer one will be out that spanks two GTX's in SLI more than likely anyways.. For single card solutions there is no better way to go for the money than a P35 chipset board.. I favor the Gigabyte P35-DS3R.. 129.99 @ the egg and save yourself $90 and get as good if not better performance.. I was going through the same dilemma a month ago.. SLI or not.. It simply isnt worth an additional $500+ unless your rocking a 30" monitor.. And if you are.... You are lucky.. And.. I hate you.. ;)
Click to expand...
Well he is rocking a 37" Westy, whatever that means.
 
Then ya.. go for the gusto.. pick some off the tree in the back yard and go for the Ultra's in SLI w/ a 4000watt nuclear reactor PSU :eek:
 
iSteez said:
Then ya.. go for the gusto.. pick some off the tree in the back yard and go for the Ultra's in SLI w/ a 4000watt nuclear reactor PSU :eek:
Click to expand...

LOL!

Thanks for the input ilkka and isteez. The 37" Westinghouse is a 1080p LCD that works well as a monitor (if u like overkill :) ) At 1920x1080 res I figured a single 8800 gtx or ultra could run it pretty well.

I think you guys are right about the SLI. As much as I'd love to do it, I'm not sure that it'd be worth the hassle. It does seem like the single card version of the next generation is always better than an SLI of the last generation. Its just so damn tempting to at least leave the 'option of SLI' available by getting an SLI mobo. I have been hearing the P35 chipset is awesome and SLI was the only reason I wasn't going to get it.

Anyone know what the onboard sound is like on the Gigabyte P35-DS3R?
 
I have the same monitor, but I couldn't spend so much on the board, lol. I don't game enough to justify it. If I still gamed, I'd keep SLI as an option, since 1920x1080 is a ton of pixels to push.

Onboard HD audio on most new boards is fine for the avg listener.

I'd hold off from buying until the release date comes out for the G92 GPUs. Then, I'd get the Ultra 2 months before release and step up to the new card in 2.5 months.
 
I would wait a bit longer fog G92 but my home system is on the edge of failure now...and not really worth trying to fix. I think she's seen her day. I can't believe a radeon 9800 lasted this long! :cool:
 
I would suggest considering a raptor hard drive, at least one 36 gb drive to put windows on
and maybe the 500 gb drive for storage. I;m not a big Gamer but i know some games you can save an iso image of and play from the hard drive using Dameon tools virtual drive,and maybe saving the image to the raptor drive and then playing it from there would speed up load times between levels but as fast as processors are now days and GPU's and lot's of memory ( 4 GB) the hard drive is the weakest (slowest) link in the chain since it is mechanical and has moving parts, so the faster it moves 10,000 rpm's the better!
Just a thought to consider Good luck with the build
 
Penrow said:
I would suggest considering a raptor hard drive, at least one 36 gb drive to put windows on
Click to expand...

I thought about that, too... turns out, it wasn't worth the price premium.

78MB/s = Raptor 150GB, $160
65MB/s = Barracuda 320GB/300GB, $80/$60
52MB/s = Caviar SE16 250GB, $70

112MB/s = RAID0 'cuda's, 600GB total, $120

As you can see, the 'cuda is twice the size and half the cost, for nearly the same performance. Stick them in RAID0, and you've got an even more cost effective solution!
 
enginurd said:
Stick them in RAID0, and you've got an even more cost effective solution!
Click to expand...

I've thought about raid...but honestly since I don't know much about it I was a little antsy about trying to set up a raid system.

Quick question... do you guys still buy/install floppy drives? Is there any reason to put that thing in still? With vista am I ever going to need a bootable floppy again?
 
silentsammy said:
I've thought about raid...but honestly since I don't know much about it I was a little antsy about trying to set up a raid system.

Quick question... do you guys still buy/install floppy drives? Is there any reason to put that thing in still? With vista am I ever going to need a bootable floppy again?
Click to expand...

I have a few layin around. I don't install onto each system. I plug in one lyain around and use as needed.

With XP, you need the floppy drive to install the HDD Controller drivers, especially if you're using a raid array. I haven't installed vista, but I'm sure a quick google search will tell you if you need it for the same purpose.

Setting up RAID0 is easy. Go into your bios and set it to RAID. Go into the raid utility and setup RAID0. Boot to xp disc, hit F6, and stick the floppy drive in when it asks you to, so it can load the drivers.

Most people's gripe with RAID0 is the "double the chance of data loss" (with 2 drives), but I don't mind because I don't keep anything important on the raid array.
 
Nah, I haven't installed a floppy drive in years. It's truly dead technology. Drivers come on CD now, or you can download them on another computer and save them to USB flash drive. Even on my ancient IC7-G and IC7-MAX boards, I was able to set up and run a Raid-0 setup entirely sans-floppy.

Regarding HDD choices, I've never had any complaints about my dual-raptor raid array. Your hard drive is one of the slowest components in your system, and as such it will often be the bottleneck that slows you down. On a gaming system you don't need a ton of space, so beyond a certain minimum threshold, storage capacity is irrelevant. (unless you're also editing video or something) You should be looking at performance per dollar, in my opinion. I'd much rather have a high-performance 60GB drive than a slower 300GB drive, for example, even if I have to pay more for the smaller drive with faster access. I can't wait until solid-state drives mature a bit (and become more affordable).

I did have one drive fail and it had to be RMA'd, and naturally I had to reformat and start from scratch when that happened. But since this is a gaming computer, it isn't like I lost a lot of sensitive data - I just reinstalled windows and whatever game I was playing at the time, and I was back up and running. Heck, a lot of people claim that its a good idea to reformat and reinstall every so often anyway just to get rid of the junk that accumulates in the corners of your Windows installation.

All that said, non-raptor drives are very very fast now. Way back when the raptor first came out, there was clearly a performance difference between dual 10k-rpm drives and your typical PATA or first-gen SATA drives. Today I'd be tempted to go with a pair of barracudas, since the price differential is so significant and the performance is fantastic.
 
enginurd said:
78MB/s = Raptor 150GB, $160
65MB/s = Barracuda 320GB/300GB, $80/$60
52MB/s = Caviar SE16 250GB, $70

112MB/s = RAID0 'cuda's, 600GB total, $120
Click to expand...
That's a handy comparison, but don't forget that sustained transfer speed isn't everything (unless you're doing video editing or something). For gaming, seek/access speed is often more important.

Avg Seek 4.6ms, Avg Latency 2.99ms, Avg Write 5.2ms = Raptor 150GB
Avg Seek 8.5ms, Avg Latency 4.16ms, Avg Write 10ms = Barracuda 320GB

That's why I chose to go with the 10k-rpm raptor instead of the 7200-rpm alternatives.
 
Kaspre said:
That's a handy comparison, but don't forget that sustained transfer speed isn't everything (unless you're doing video editing or something). For gaming, seek/access speed is often more important.

Avg Seek 4.6ms, Avg Latency 2.99ms, Avg Write 5.2ms = Raptor 150GB
Avg Seek 8.5ms, Avg Latency 4.16ms, Avg Write 10ms = Barracuda 320GB

That's why I chose to go with the 10k-rpm raptor instead of the 7200-rpm alternatives.
Click to expand...

For half the price, I can live with the extra 2-10 seconds it takes to load levels in games. ;) BTW, I do mostly video encoding and photo editing.
 
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