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Planning a new rig...

M

Morlos

n00b
Joined
Jan 27, 2004
Messages
15
Hey guys, I've been "lurking" on this forum for a couple weeks now. It's thanks to information I have found here(and elsewhere) that I have been able to plan my latest system to build, so if you don't mind take a look and tell me what you think:

Abit NF7-S Rev 2.0
AMD Athlon XP 2500+
Kingston HyperX Dual channel pair 512mb(2x256)
Sapphire Radeon 9600 AGP 8X 256MB DDR
Western Digital Caviar SE 120GB SATA
Logitech Cordless Elite Duo
Custom-built water cooling
MAXTOP Case
Antec True 430
CTX VL700 17" CRT Monitor
Liteon CDRW
Liteon DVDRom
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz
Logitech z640 5.1 channel speaker system
Lexmark P1150 Multifunction printer

This started out as a project for this summer that would be sub $800, but it turned into more of a ~$1200. I think this setup will have more staying power(won't be completely outdated in 6 months) than the $800 system would have. So, what do you think?

Peace, Morlos

PS. Within a few months after building the system I plan to add another stick of the Kingston RAM this one at 512mb for a total of 1Gb and another Western Digital drive in a raid 0 configuration.
 
looks good, the only things i would change are, dont get the 9600 256mb card, get ether a pro or a xt, the extra 128 on that card is going to do nothing but make you pay more for less, check the reviews of those cards. secondly its just my personal prefernce but i perfer plextor cdrw drives as i think they have much better quality than others but liteon is still a good brand so i would say only upgrade to that if you have the cash. lastly if you plan on upgrading to 1gig of ram dont get two sticks of 256 right now, get one stick of 512 so when you get the other stick you can run 1gig in dual mode as you cant do that with three sticks of ram. other than that, nice system, have fun building your new pc!
 
I almost made a big mistake because I thought dual channel just meant that the CPU could access two RAM slots simultaneously.
Thanks for the heads up Cigolon!

Peace, Morlos
 
Originally posted by Cigolon
secondly its just my personal prefernce but i perfer plextor cdrw drives as i think they have much better quality than others but liteon is still a good brand so i would say only upgrade to that if you have the cash.
Click to expand...

My first CD-RW drive was a Plextor 12x10x32A, and it was a fine drive. Many of the drives I've used since then -- both in my personal systems and those that I've built for friends and family -- have been Lite-On. The Lite-On's have been rock solid, and I can't really see how one can justify forking over the extra cash for a Plextor.
 
Many times you get what you pay for, but almost as often it comes down to a matter of personal preference. I've had a plextor drive before and it was an admirable performer, however, I hear alot of good things about Liteon. Since this was meant to be a budget PC originally I tried to hit a price/performance level that would fit my limited budget(I'm a college student not an heir to a fortune :)) and still meet my gaming/general computing needs. Anyhoo, I say all this to illustrate why I decided on liteon versus another brand of optical drives.

Peace, Morlos
 
sounds like you are a first timer.
i would recommend not getting watercooling. alotta stuff can go wrong if your not CERTAIN what you are doing. if running your processor at 200mhz fsb is your goal, you can do that easy enough on air. just get a nice thermalright heatsink with a decent fan attached and i can almost guarentee that it will hit 2.2ghz. and those watercooling systems are HELLA expinsive.

also, i use the elite duo and its great. but for a couple extra bucks you can get the MX700 duo, that mouse is so much better.

get 9600pro w/ 128 mb.

just a suggestion, but for an extra $150 (money that you would save not gettin a watercooled system anyways) you can get a athlon64 3000+ on a good motherboard. it will be much better than the overclocked 2500+, and its more future proof.
 
take off the watercooling for now, and add that extra 512mb of ram and it'll be great. plus you could probably even get that amd 64 with the money you saved from watercooling...
 
Jamestime, I'm actually planning on building my own watercooling system. I'm not a mechanical wiz but I'm not too bad either so I think I'll be ok with that. Also, I'm going to start working on that now in preparation for building the rig this summer, so there will be time to work out any bugs or change my mind before then.

I chose the elite duo because the mouse appears to be a bit more "standard" as far as controls. My wife will also be using this system so I don't want to introduce any devices that have a steep learning curve. Don't get me wrong, my wife is very smart, just set in her ways, hehe. If anyone can tell me that the MX700 is as easy to use as a regular mouse, then I would definitely go for the MX700 Duo.

That's a good call on the graphics card, change of plans there :).

Thanks for all the good advice guys keep it coming!

Peace, Morlos
 
emorphien, The RAM I'm looking at right now is PC2700(333Mhz), But, Since I no longer plan to buy the matched pair maybe I can afford to bump up the ram speed a little :).

Peace, Morlos
 
misfitsfiend, I wouldn't actually save very much by taking off the water cooling since I plan to build it myself. If I did I would probably go with a Thermalright pure copper model(not sure which model # right off the top off my head), and that wouldn't give me quite as much room for OCing(according to what I have read). Not that it isn't a good way to go, but I appreciate the challenge that building the watercooler is going to give me so why not try?
Having said that, I'd love to go with a 64bit AMD but I just don't think it's feasible on my budget right now :(. Maybe next year...

Peace, Morlos
 
The machine is nice. you dont need the 256mb of the video card, unless you are going really wanting it, to show off and be better then your friends.

and what do you plan to be doing with your machine for the most part, gaming, video editing, data programming, just surfing, collecting dust. hahhaa. just kidding.
 
the mx700 is just as easy to use as a normal mouse. it may actually be easier for some people because it is more shaped like a normal mouse than the cordless mouseman optical which comes with the elite duo.
the only difficulty someone would run into using the mx700 or mx900 is that it has a couple small buttons on it that other mice dont. just tell your wife not to use the buttons unless she wants to learn what they do. the buttons arent in the way and it would be difficult for someone of even minimal intellegence to accidently hit them.
 
You want RAM that syncs with the FSB, since async on AMD doesn't usually do too well.

It's fine on P4 though.

edit: typo
 
emorpien, That's a good point about the FSB vs. RAM speed. I wonder which will OC higher the FSB or the RAM? or will they both OC about the same? Maybe I would be better off just sticking to the PC2700 since then my speeds will sync up. Thanks for the tip.

Peace, Morlos
 
Tyrant, I think I will go with less RAM with a higher on my video card, maybe a 9600pro? Thanks for the info.

Peace, Morlos

Edit: I will be using the system for Gaming, Surfing, and perhaps occasional programming/photo editing. At times it may act as a non-public webserver. That's about it.
 
Jamestime, In that case I will go with the MX700 duo, I like that set better anyway. Great information guys!

Peace, Morlos
 
Skip the watercooling, even if it's custom it will be expensive once you buy waterblocks and a pump (any pump). It's not worth the money. I have a similar system with a Barton 2500+ and it would hit 2.2GHz if I hadn't skipped on my mobo. This is what I would change.
2x256MB RAM (I don't think a GIG is neccesary)
Combo Drive (not LiteOn mines giving me some DVD read problems)
I would go for a cheaper audio solution than Santa Cruz maybe a Fortissimo II.
and one more that I personally wouldn't blow money on is the Logitech Cordless Elite Duo.

You will save a bit of money on those changes then you can use the saved money for either and/or:
Radeon 9800 NP (or whatever they call it now)
Athlon64 3000+

I think you will see a huge performance increase, put money into area that are important for speed.
Just my opinion!
 
RAM overclocking depends on the RAM, basically. Muskin is well liked. I don't know how well the AMDs overclock (and in relation to RAM). I have a p4 system i just built in my sig, but async in P4s isn't such a big deal.
 
Well, I would say just lose the watercooling and just use the money from that to upgrade your graphics to a 9700 pro and also upgrade your ram to 1gb of pc3200 or atleast to the pc3200 level.
 
Okay... seems everyone is pretty well set against me using watercooling in this budget system, hehe. I'll work on updating the setup over the next few days, may take a bit, I just got three computer systems at a state sale for the local community college where I'm enrolled(three complete systems for $100...sweet!!!). I'll be refurbishing them to resale at a markup :). So I'll get back to planning my new system when I get done with them.

Peace, Morlos
 
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