Oh the Hardware the hardware

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Hellsthief2.0

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 1, 2002
Messages
175
Hello all, Its been many years since i built my last comp. It was a 2.4c OC to 3.0 and it lasted me a long time. I am now looking to play AoC and am in need of a major upgrade. I searched the threads found a few comps ppl were thinking about building for AoC but they were a little dated. So i wanted to ask what your opinons were for a current build for a pure gaming machine in the 1000$ range not including monitor. My main concerns are it being as upgradeable as possible (i know thats a tuff thing in the hardware world) but i would like to start at 1000$ and work up form there with upgrades. I am reading up on SLI and i was wondering if you thought that would be a good choice for this gaming machine. If you could point me in the right direction for what i should be looking at or some current reviews for AoC worthy gaming comps that would be wonderful. Thank you all for your time

patrick
 
Before we can help you, we need you to answer all of our questions:
- What exact parts do you need for that $1000 budget? OS, RAM, PSU, etc.
- Will you be overclocking?
- What size monitor do you have?
- What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID, Firewire, etc

And my thoughts on SLI echoed perfectly:
Markyip1 said:
Just some info on SLI / Crossfire: It's absolutely not worth considering if a) you're gaming at a resolution under 1920x1200 (as you'll see no performance benefit over a single card,) and b) if you plan to buy one card now and another later. SLI / Crossfire as an upgrade path is usually a very poor idea, as by the time you're ready to get that second card, a new single card solution will likely be available that will outperform two of your older cards in tandem. Furthermore, there really is no cost benefit to the SLI Upgrade Route, as any additional cost in getting the new card can be easily mitigated in most situations by selling the original. By avoiding an SLI / Crossfire solution when it will not be of benefit, you gain a cooler running, simpler to maintain system and more importantly, access to a much better (and broader) selection of motherboards.
Click to expand...
 
for the 1000$ i am looking for:
MB
CPU
PSU
GFX
RAM
HD 200gig ish
Case(doesnt have to be fancy just functional, i may still have a lian li tower kickin around somewhere)
I have XP, do i need to upgrade to vista for directX10 gaming or can i keep my xp? (i really like my xp) lol

Far as motherboard features. I used to raid raptors but its a pain in the ass when they die so im just gunna get one big drive and back it up, so i dont need raid. Firewire would be really nice i love it for external drives for the speed, but its not a breaking point on a Mobo if it doesnt have it.
I have a 21inch viewable flat screen Mitsubishi CRT. Big as a horse but still runs like a pro. I never used to consider flat screens cuz they couldn't keep up with the refresh FPS back in the day. I would definetly consider one now if i could get a good gaming one to save on the desk space. The computer itself is my main concern though, i can build the computer to accomidate a nicer monitor that i buy later. thanks so much for your time
 
Is your XP license retail or OEM? And yes you do need Vista if you want DX10 gaming. However I wouldn't worry about that now since many DX10 games haven't show a huge enough improvement over current DX9.

Here's a quick prelim build:
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 CPU - $200
Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3P Intel P35 Motherboard - $150
G.SKILL F2-6400CL5D-4GBPQ 2 x 2GB DDR2 800 RAM - $85
MSI NX8800GTS 8800GTS 512MB PCI-E Video Card - $210
Western Digital WD6400AAKS 640GB 7200RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - $115
Samsung SH-203B 20X DVD±R SATA DVD Burner - $25
Corsair 750TX 750W PSU - $105
----
$890 plus tax and shipping.

Case is not included. The mobo does have RAID and firewire should you ever want them as well as an optional eSATA bracket that turns two of your SATA ports into eSATA. The WD 640GB drive is one of the fastest 7200RPM drives out there. It's almost as fast as a Raptor. And finally, the Corsair 750TX should provide plenty of headroom for future upgrade.
 
edit: started this post an hour ago so sorry if i missed something. and sorry for spelling, headache + couple drinks + sleep depravation.

I suggest you wait. The next gen graphics cards; GTX260, GTX280, HD4850, and HD4870 are on shelves on the 18th of June. All look to be twice as fast as their predicessors, and ATI plans to introduce their next gen at at a maximum of $300, which would be a refreshing blast for sore eyes. With such a huge die and transistor count on TSMCs 65nm SOI Nvidia yield will be in the dumpster and as such prices will be in the stratosphere. Also power consumption is estimated at 240W (you guessed it, hottest core ever, literally).

Now as for SLI, if you go with my wait+hold over suggestion or not this remains true: SLI depends on if your GPU upgrade cycle is shorter than 6 months. Thats the refresh time ATI and Nvidia would aim for. So, if you buy a GPU on June 18, and you plan to buy another one four of five months later, then I'd say a multi GPU capable board is for you. If your more like a 1 or 2 year person (like myself), you want a single GPU solution.

Besides simply saving yourself an extra $50 on not going SLI, you want to avoid SLI because every single one of Nvidias chipsets have had some very serious issues to this point. Our motherboard editor has gone through 12 or 13 680i boards, and (correct me if I'm wrong) 3 780i boards. They are basically the same design and both suck. 750i is rehashed 650i with an inflated price tag. Nvidias chipset line always makes me angry because I've got nothing but fond memories of the Nforce 2 board and DFI Expert I was able to work with...

Crossfire is much more flexible. You can use the superior and cheaper intel chipsets. Also the HD4850 is the only of the next-gen highend cards that fits the budget, so if your upgrade schedule is ever 5 months or so an X38 based motherboard (or 780/790 GX/X/FX if you wanna go the Phenom route). In a P35 based crossfire solution one card only gets 4X pci-e lans, and while I'd say thats what the average performance card consumes these days, It will choke an HD4850, to possibly a pretty significant degree).

A couple new chipset components are primed to be released in the next couple months but nothing worth waiting over. CPU and ram technologies arn't going anywhere significant withen the next month, so I suggest you build your system with a hold-over card in mind. We've also got a couple new a pretty sweet HDD technologies.

~$170 I'll let Danny pick the motherboard, but if you do want crossfire you want X38.
$200 - Core 2 Duo E8400 - Great performer, has been known to hit 4.0GHz with a little after market cooling
$80 - 4 gigs (2X2GB) of whatever DDR2 you want, just make sure its PC6400 (DDR2 800). If you want the serious OCs get the stuff with CAS 4 (ie 4-4-4-12. The first number is CAS latency).
$0-$130 - I talked about the graphics card. You could pull the one off your current gaming rig and use it for a while or you could get something like a 9600GSO[aka 8800GS, they're identical hardware] (~$80-$y100). edit: I under quoted myself. NCIX had the EVGA one going for $90 only a few weeks back and everythings cheaper in the states. Apparently now they're all upward of $120.
~$120 - Case - Your choice but an easy recomendation is the Antec 900. Doubles as an Air pump for inflatable tents if need be. Superb airflow while looking good at a decent price.
$40 - Silverstone ST400 (if your not a 5month upgrader). To anyone who argues with this, read the red caption on the newegg page :). If you do want to go with dual GPUs, a Corsair 750W is pretty easy to reccomend, but is more than double the price. the ST400W won't get you any e-peen but only quit dignaty knowing your 400W PSU can handle more than your friends Dynex 500W.
$100 - Western Digital 640GB - Dual platter so its quieter, dissapates less heat (thus consumes less power), and screemingly fast. Check out a review here.
$100 - Windows Vista Home Premium OEM 64bit.
$30 - DVD-DL-RW drive
($40) - Aftermarket CPU cooling? Freezer 7 pro has always been my old stand-by but it wont set any world records. The Thermalright's are all no-nonsense coolers and coupled with a decent fan will let you set some records for air cooling.
 
If you plan on overclocking the E8400, RAM speed will be more of a factor than CAS latency. Additionally, with DDR2, there's no noticeable difference performance-wise beween CL4 and CL5 RAM. Consider the G.Skill 4GB DDR2 1000 kit if you plan on overclocking, or the G.Skill 4GB DDR2 800 kit otherwise.

If you want a good CPU cooler under $40, there is the Xigmatek HDT-S1283. There are other (good) CPU coolers available, but they cost around $50-$60.

About your XP license: If you have a retail copy, then you can transfer it over to your new system. (Just make sure that you remove it from your other system first.) If it's an OEM license, then you need to get a new one. If you need a new Windows license, get an OEM copy of Vista Home Premium x64. It's cheaper than XP Pro x64, it has better hardware support, and the 64-bit version gives you full use of your RAM. (With a 32-bit OS, you would be limited to 3GB-3.5GB of "usable" RAM, based on the video card that you buy.)
 
i have a retail version of XP, i dont mind going to vista if they have patched it enough. i tried it when it came out and a few times since and it was so unstable i swore it off lol. but if its better now and since this is a computer that should actualy have the stats to run it properly i would give it a try.

I like Mrwiz's idea about waiting on the grafix card, this is what i mean about upgradeable. The next gen cards that are coming out, are they going to run properly on the current mobos? if so then i wanna get a cheaper yet decent card for now or maby two cheap ones and crossfire them. and wait to buy the bohemith one till after the next GFX card round up. As long as i can play the game without lag on med to low settings i dont mind waiting till a few weeks to get an ubar card to pull out the stops. I am probably a upgrade your card every hear or so kinda guy but i would like to get a mobo thats not gunna choke the next gen mobos if i drop 500bucks on one in the future.

If i was to buy a new monitor what do you guys suggest in the flat screen realm?

As far as overclocking goes, its fun, i did it on my last comp and if this Q6600 has a decent aircooled OC rate then i would be glad to do it, i do want to try and keep the noise down though, my last aircooled comp (which granted was overkill for the fun of it) had 6 80mm cylcones in it and a 90mm on the CPU lol even with them all dialed down you didnt wanna be in the same room with it ;p lol so i wanna avoid that.

Again, thank you guys so much for your time
 
Vista is pretty stable now as of SP1. It just needed time, just like XP did when it first came out.

The next gen cards will run properly on current mobos. The next gen cards use PCI-E 2.0 which is backwards compatible with PCI-E 1.1 that most mobos use today. I doubt that the next gen cards (well most of them anyway) will actually require a PCI-E 2.0 slot since that'll effectively limit them to the high-end sector of PC enthusiasts.

And no, you should not get two cheap cards and crossfire them. More than likely there will be a single card out that can perform on par or better than two cheap cards in Crossfire for the same price. Stick with a single card as much as possible. So wait till the 18th of June, see what ATI and Nvidia has out and then get the graphics card.

How much do you want to spend on and how big do you want the monitor to be?

The Xigmatek HDT-S1283 that Tiraides recommended is a relatively quiet HSF. It should be a noisy problem.
 
ok, so heres were im at. I wanna have a single GFX card, i dont have a desktop to salvage from atm so what card should i buy to hold me over till the 18th (ill sell it or put it in nother comp after) and which Mobo am i picking up if im not crossfireing and that will take the q6600?

monitor wise i would love a 22incher i wanna run 1600 np on it basicly
 
The (G92/512MB) 8800GTS would be a good "holdover" card. EVGA and BFG each has an "upgrade" program that would allow you to trade in your card and get one of the newer NVIDIA cards when they arrive (their scheduled arrival would be within the 90-100 day time window).

EVGA Step-Up Program (90 days)
BFG Trade Up Program (100 days)
 
I recommend EVGA over BFG; BFG will not warranty your card if you ever decide to change out the heatsink on it, whereas EVGA will. BFG's prices also tend to be higher. Do not buy any other brands at this point in time! I cannot stress this enough. Sure you can save $30-50 going with MSI, Gigabyte, or ASUS instead, but then when the new cards come out you will be stuck with the old one. Step Up is a very important "feature" at this stage in the tech update cycle.
 
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