Please rate this potential setup

[themailman34]

Keep in mind I am a first time builder so if there are any problems, please let me know

Antec Sonata Piano Black Quiet Super Mini Tower
ASUS!A8V Deluxe
Athlon 64+ 3500
Corsair Value Select 1GB!(2x512MB) DDR400!Kit
XFX GeForce 6800GT Dual DVI 256MB!DDR
NEC ND-3500A 16x4x / 16x4x DVD+/-RW Dual Layer
Maxtor 250GB S-ATA w/ 16MB!cache OEM
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS
BenQ FP757SB 17" LCD, 16ms
Logitech MX Duo Cordless

Thanks in advance.

 

[burningrave101]

If you plan to overclock you will need better RAM and do yourself a favor and stay away from Maxtor hard drives. Their failure rate is pretty high in comparison to other brands. Western Digital, Seagate, Hitachi and Samsung are better choices.

 

[InorganicMatter]

Antec Sonata Piano Black Quiet Super Mini Tower
ASUS!A8V Deluxe
Athlon 64+ 3500
Corsair Value Select 1GB!(2x512MB) DDR400!Kit

Good, good.

XFX GeForce 6800GT Dual DVI 256MB!DDR

BFG over XFX

NEC ND-3500A 16x4x / 16x4x DVD+/-RW Dual Layer

I would go Pioneer, but that's just personal preferrence.

Maxtor 250GB S-ATA w/ 16MB!cache OEM

Good.

Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS

Overpriced bigtime, even the "gamers" edition is overpriced at $130. I would get a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz.

BenQ FP757SB 17" LCD, 16ms

CRT over LCD for gaming. LCD can still pull it off, but CRTs still can't be beaten.

Logitech MX Duo Cordless

Cordless + Gaming = Lag. Get a Logitech MX510 and any cheapo Mircosoft keyboard of your choice.

 

[themailman34]

Thanks for the help. Now let me reiterate I am a noob when it comes to building. Will I have to buy another fan and heatsink for the CPU or do they come with them when you buy them? Is the powersupply that comes with that case enough for all the parts I listed?

I do not plan to overclock anything

Thanks

 

[Mr.OppressoLiber]

A 16ms LCD is just fine for gaming, and unless you really look for it I doubt you'll notice any ghosting. However a CRT is always a better choice for a gamer with plenty of desk space.

Personally I prefer an LCD over CRT, with my old CRT I could feel my eyes really start to strain themselves. a DVI LCD is just superb for sharp clear text, just amazing.

 

[jabronidan]

Thanks for the help. Now let me reiterate I am a noob when it comes to building. Will I have to buy another fan and heatsink for the CPU or do they come with them when you buy them? Is the powersupply that comes with that case enough for all the parts I listed?

I do not plan to overclock anything

Thanks

What PSU comes with the case? If it's an Antec True Power 430, perfect. If its a Smart Power, I suggest finding a case without a PSU and just getting a Tru430. Also, if you get a retail processor, then it comes with the fan and heatsink, and since you're not overclocking, I think it will be fine.

 

[burningrave101]

BFG over XFX

XFX is just as good as BFG and the new BFG cooler sucks last time i checked. XFX also has a pretty good game bundle with DOOM 3.

Overpriced bigtime, even the "gamers" edition is overpriced at $130. I would get a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz

The Audigy 2 ZS is under $100 and its the best gaming sound card.

You can get one from Best Buy right now for $50 AR.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage...duct&productCategoryId=cat01053&skuId=5846891

Thanks for the help. Now let me reiterate I am a noob when it comes to building. Will I have to buy another fan and heatsink for the CPU or do they come with them when you buy them? Is the powersupply that comes with that case enough for all the parts I listed?

I do not plan to overclock anything

Thanks

As long as you buy a retail CPU instead of OEM then it will come with a good stock heatsink/fan and i think the PSU that comes with that case is a 350w Antec so it should be enough for that setup.

 

[Mr.OppressoLiber]

Thanks for the help. Now let me reiterate I am a noob when it comes to building. Will I have to buy another fan and heatsink for the CPU or do they come with them when you buy them? Is the powersupply that comes with that case enough for all the parts I listed?

I do not plan to overclock anything

Thanks

You should replace the PSU if it's less then 300 watts. Only retail box CPU's come with a HSF, OEM chips do not.

A 500+ watt PSU would do you justice since you're putting in such a power hungry vidcard, you can never have enough power.

 

[burningrave101]

A 500+ watt PSU would do you justice since you're putting in such a power hungry vidcard, you can never have enough power.

He doesn't need a 500w PSU for that setup. A 6800GT's PSU requirement is a 300w PSU.

 

[Mr.OppressoLiber]

He doesn't need a 500w PSU for that setup. A 6800GT's PSU requirement is a 300w PSU.

Did you even read what I wrote? I said it would do him justice, I never said it was a must.

 

[InorganicMatter]

XFX is just as good as BFG and the new BFG cooler sucks last time i checked. XFX also has a pretty good game bundle with DOOM 3.



The Audigy 2 ZS is under $100 and its the best gaming sound card.

You can get one from Best Buy right now for $50 AR.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id=1059048992720&type=product&productCategoryId=cat01053&skuId=5846891

I don't need you to nitpick me. We are here to help HIM, not for you to help me. Thank you.

 

[burningrave101]

Did you even read what I wrote? I said it would do him justice, I never said it was a must.

I know you didn't but there would be no point in him buying a 500w PSU to do the job that the PSU that comes with his case should handle just fine.

I don't need you to nitpick me. We are here to help HIM, not for you to help me. Thank you.

I wasn't trying to help you. I was commenting on your suggestions to him.

 

[themailman34]

Thanks for all the help. I just have a couple more questions.

Is there a major difference between the 6600GT and 6800GT meaning if I bought spent a bit more to get the 6800GT would it still be a good card a few years down the road.

Also, would it be worth it to just go with the top of the line AMD processor (FX55) if I want this computer to last me for many years without having to buy newer parts?

By the way, the case comes with a TruePower 380Watt ATX12V power supply.

Thanks again.

 

[arock1_3]

...do yourself a favor and stay away from Maxtor hard drives. Their failure rate is pretty high in comparison to other brands. Western Digital, Seagate, Hitachi and Samsung are better choices.

I second that, I bought two of them and one took a crap so I end up buying a Seagate Barracuda.

 

[ilkhan]

the major HDD brands are pretty close in failure rate. How the drive is handled in transit is more important then brand.

6600GT != 6800GT. 6800 good. 6600 bad.

LCD is fine for gaming

MX Duo is fine for gaming (use it myself)

"top of the line" is almost never worth the price jump

That PSU should be plenty

 

[EnderW]

XFX GeForce 6800GT Dual DVI 256MB!DDR

Just wondering where you are getting this from as it's OOS most places.

 

[=lks= ka druma]

I have yet to get my nec 3500A burn anything faster than 6x. I've used both sony and fuji dvd's. Of course i am an idiot.


LKS

 

[themailman34]

Just wondering where you are getting this from as it's OOS most places.

Well, I was just looking at Canadacomputers website. Don't know for sure if its in stock. Since I'm in Canada I can't order from newegg

 

[themailman34]

Just wondering how hard it is to install and set up this whole system. I have installed hard drives, pci cards, dvd drives, etc. but never motherboards or processors. Are the instructions easy enough to follow?

Would I need to solder anything if I decided to put the system together my self??

Thanks again.

 

[EnderW]

Just wondering how hard it is to install and set up this whole system. I have installed hard drives, pci cards, dvd drives, etc. but never motherboards or processors. Are the instructions easy enough to follow?

Would I need to solder anything if I decided to put the system together my self??

Thanks again.

No soldering. Motherboard and cpu is easy. Motherboard just screws into the standfoff things on your case and processor can only go in one way.

 

[GeForceX]

Personally I prefer an LCD over CRT, with my old CRT I could feel my eyes really start to strain themselves. a DVI LCD is just superb for sharp clear text, just amazing.

Eyestrain? If only you weren't too stupid to realize your refresh rates were set too low. I have no eyestrain from my monitor.

Sharp Clear Text? A good CRT like mine can do just as well.

LCD's are only good for one thing, saving space. I need none of that.

the major HDD brands are pretty close in failure rate. How the drive is handled in transit is more important then brand.

6600GT != 6800GT. 6800 good. 6600 bad.

LCD is fine for gaming

MX Duo is fine for gaming (use it myself)

"top of the line" is almost never worth the price jump

That PSU should be plenty

1) False. Seagate's reliability is higher than any others. Close contender is Hitachi. Maxtor and WD have their sometimes unlucky drives built out of manufacturing. It has nothing to do with "transit".

2) 6600 bad? It's just a lower performanced card. How exactly is that "bad". The architecture is the same.

3) LCD is fine indeed, but not for those with higher vision sensitivity like mine. A game example would be Quake 3, where strafing is actually dependent on lower ms.

4) An MX Duo's experience is subjective, again. It can be fine for your average kiddy games that you play but not for serious games.

5) I might agree.

6) That PSU is fine as well.

-J.

 

[themailman34]

Just for reference sake, what would be the equivalent Intel chip to the Althlon 64+ 3500??

My main uses will be for gaming, word processing, and burning a lot of DVD's.

Thanks again for all the help everyone has provided.

 

[EnderW]

Just for reference sake, what would be the equivalent Intel chip to the Althlon 64+ 3500??

My main uses will be for gaming, word processing, and burning a lot of DVD's.

Thanks again for all the help everyone has provided.

well AMD has a big advantage in gaming so the only non EE Intel chip that would get you closest to 3500+ performance would be the 570

 

[EnderW]

1) False. Seagate's reliability is higher than any others. Close contender is Hitachi. Maxtor and WD have their sometimes unlucky drives built out of manufacturing. It has nothing to do with "transit".

http://faq.storagereview.com/tiki-index.php?page=BrandMostReliable

 

[dwayne001]

If you plan to overclock you will need better RAM and do yourself a favor and stay away from Maxtor hard drives. Their failure rate is pretty high in comparison to other brands. Western Digital, Seagate, Hitachi and Samsung are better choices.

I disagree. Apparently enderW disagrees as well:

http://faq.storagereview.com/tiki-index.php?page=BrandMostReliable

My personal favourite drive is Maxtor. I have a couple 120gbs for a few years now, and some 40gbs as well from before that. I recently picked up a couple 250gb maxtor drives and to be honest i couldnt be happier. No matter which kind of drive you'er getting keep it cool. The only drives I've had fail on me were ones that I let rot in heat..and luckily enough all of them gave me fair warning before they died.

So it's just something to keep in mind.

Now about cordless gaming...

Cordless + Gaming = Lag. Get a Logitech MX510 and any cheapo Mircosoft keyboard of your choice.

I think that's non-sense. Google reviews on teh logitech MX 700 and listen to what people have to say. The batteries make it alittle heavier than most mouse cursors, but many adjust to and/or even rely on the weight. The 510's a nice piece of hardware, but like, don't give up your wireless dreams until you look at user-reviews.
As for wireless keyboards--not my style when it comes to games(I use a blue tooth di-novo, but it's not so much a gaming keyboard) but i've seen them be effective.

 

[burningrave101]

1) False. Seagate's reliability is higher than any others. Close contender is Hitachi. Maxtor and WD have their sometimes unlucky drives built out of manufacturing. It has nothing to do with "transit".

Western Digital is far better then Maxtor in terms of reliability and service. I use WD and Seagate in all my builds and havn't had an issue yet.

Just for reference sake, what would be the equivalent Intel chip to the Althlon 64+ 3500??

My main uses will be for gaming, word processing, and burning a lot of DVD's.

Thanks again for all the help everyone has provided.

If those are your main uses for the system then i would go with the Athlon 64 3500+. If you want better multitasking abilities though you might consider an Intel 3.4E.

http://faq.storagereview.com/tiki-index.php?page=BrandMostReliable

I've read storagereview's little consensus on the most reliable hard drives before but i can tell you from experience from being around alot of computers, especially servers, Maxtor drives fail more then Western Digital and Seagate drives and their RMA policy is horrid. They take twice as long as anyone else to get you a replacement drive.

The Seagate drives even carry a full 5 year warranty now.

 

[EnderW]

Western Digital is far better then Maxtor in terms of reliability and service. I use WD and Seagate in all my builds and havn't had an issue yet.

I've read storagereview's little consensus on the most reliable hard drives before but i can tell you from experience from being around alot of computers, especially servers, maxtor drives fail more then Western Digital and Seagate drives and their warranty and RMA policy is horrid.

The Seagate drives even carry a full 5 year warranty now.

Did you?

There is no point saying Maxtor is more reliable than WD or Seagate is more reliable than Maxtor unless you have used hundreds of hard drives and have a sufficient sample to draw from. Most people drawing on their experience with a dozen drives will come to a completely biased conclusion because their sample is not even remotely representative of the population.

The fact that everyone here seems to have a different opinion of which drives suck proves the point.

Warranty policy and RMA service are different topics. But once again for every person who has had a bad experience, another had a good experience. Thankfully I haven't had to RMA any drives, and I've owned Maxtor, Seagate, and WD so I can't comment on that, but I find it unlikely there is a big difference between them overall.

Seagate does have a longer warranty, especially on retail (5 vs 1) and on OEM (5 vs 3) then Maxtor or WD, so keep that in mind if you plan on keeping the drive longer then 3 years.

 

[GeForceX]

I love both WD and SG-- Just look at my sig. But I did have a WD to fail on me previously, but quickly got replaced. So it's all good. I'd have to say Hitachi and WD comes at second. Seagate still in the lead.

-J.

 

[burningrave101]

The fact that everyone here seems to have a different opinion of which drives suck proves the point.

I dont think it does. I'm not saying Maxtor drives suck because thats just my opinion, i'm saying it because its a fact. They are far more failure prone then Western Digital and Seagate hard drives.

There is alot of information out there on this if you just do a little searching.

I am writing this to warn everyone about quality control issues going on at Maxtor.

I use a lot of hard drives, between 20 and 30 a year. That gives me a good opportunity to sample the latest greatest as well as the good old reliable standby drives.

Earlier in the year I was impressed by the speed ratings for this particular product, i.e. DiamondMax Plus 9 hard drives. (SATA or PATA both use essentially the same mechanical drive and for the most part, the interface too so they will be referred to interchangeably in this review)

At first I was impressed with the speed of the drives. I installed 4 of the drives into a couple systems, (MSI 875P w P4 2.4-3.0 MHz). I was building my music server and wanted a lot of speed so I put 2 120's on the Promise controller running as individual drives and 2 on the old IDE bus.

For about 60 days, the drives ran fine. They were fairly quiet but very fast. I started loading CD after CD on the drives along with my massive 160 gigs of MP3's from years of collecting and transferring from my old CD's.

Then funny things started happening, errors would pop up in the OS, my jukebox would crash and the system couldn't find songs on my play lists.

Sure enough, the dreaded drive failure occurred on one of the drives. So I called up Maxtor and they gave me the usual grief about returning the drive, blah blah, finally I got an RMA and shipped it back to them.

To Maxtor's credit, they did turn it around in a reasonable time. I did the prepaid return and they sent me another one in about a week or two. While I was waiting for the drive, another one started failing, this time it was the one with all my new cd extractions on it. I was fuming, so I sent it back for replacement.

The failures started with lost unreadable files, then progressed to missing directories, then outright failure. On one of the drives, it finally failed to even spin up.

While I was waiting for that drive to come back, the first one got back and then the 3rd drive failed. I was done.

I am not going to get into all of the benefits or specs about their specific hard drives because spec sheets are easy to be had. I am relating my experience with Maxtor drives here.

I took all of the drives off line and sold them. This is not the first quality control issue I have had with Maxtor drives. 3 years ago, they had other quality control issues with the drives and I swore off of them. Stupid me, I was enticed by the specs in the magazines because that DiamondMax 9 Plus was just so damn fast!

I will never, ever, ever use another Maxtor drive as long as I live, and if someone gives me one, it will only be used as a test drive. This company for years has shipped shoddy failure prone drives. Can you really afford hit or miss with your valuable data? Have you had good luck with the drives, well fine, I wish you continued good luck, I just hope your drives don't fail running mission critical applications or eat your irreplaceable data.

I wanted to give them another chance and got burned. I have about 10 years experience with Maxtor drives, and in my seasoned opinion, they cannot be trusted. They tend to give up the ghost sooner than WD and are not worth the bother. I believe the problems with the drives derive from a systemic shortcoming in the company and its quality control methods.

Just the other day I was fixing an HP Pavilion computer for a friend. Funny thing, their hard drive started acting up after 6 months. It was getting read errors, boot errors, in general becoming flaky. Sometimes it would boot, sometimes it wouldn't. I took it home and opened it up, sure enough, it was a Maxtor 120 GB, hard drive (I don't remember what model it was). They were really up a creek because those consumer computers put the install disks on a hidden partition, which you are supposed to burn to CD's (which they didn't do).

I told them to go out and buy a good drive (WD 120 8mg Buffer) because I refuse to load an operating system on to a Maxtor drive (too many tech support calls when they fail). I was able to save some of their data (they had the foresight to back up critical stuff) and load an OEM copy of XP Home of mine on the system and use their existing license. They are back up and running now. Did I mention that this was the second time their hard drive failed? Comp USA had replaced the first drive for them and totally screwed up the OS (surprised?).

I told them that they will continue having hard drive problems until they go out and purchase a new one, or insist that HP replace the Maxtor with a WD.

A lot of manufacturers use the Maxtor drives on their build outs of boxes because they are cheaper. A friend of mine who works for a manufacturer confided in me that many companies actually save money by using the more expensive WD drives because they have been having huge numbers of returns on the Maxtor brand as a whole. The returns were really starting to cut into his company's bottom line, seriously enough to pay about 20% more for the OEM WD drives.

That is enough for this review. I don't want to seem like a hard drive snob. I do sample them all. Seagate is making a decent product these days and I am really pleased with Samsung so far. I am leery of Hitachi (remember they are really IBM in disguise) and they had quality control issues. I am going to pick up a couple of those 400 gig drives though to play with and do a review on them in the future.

Please, for your own peace of mind, do not use Maxtor drives in any of your computers. If you have a Branded box (i.e. Compaq, HP, etc) pry it open and check to see what brand of drive you have. If it is a Maxtor, go out and purchase a new drive (hopefully bigger and faster and not a Maxtor) and clone your system to it. Tell me you haven't created dynamic disks on your computer or you won't be able to clone the drive (there is never a valid reason to use dynamic disk in XP or 2000 in my opinion).

If you are thinking about buying a new computer, take heed. Insist that you get a Western Digital (WD), Samsung, Seagate or don't buy the system. All the manufacturers interchange brands of drives and they can, albeit grudgingly, exchange the drive for you prior to purchase. Again, if they won't, obviously they aren't all that concerned with the reliability of the system. Now do you want to purchase from a company like that in the first place?

In case you are wondering why you don't hear about this in computer magazines reviews and articles, take a look at who advertises in them. Maxtor is spending millions on advertising their cruddy drives. You won't see the magazines ripping on their good customers just because a few hundred thousand drives were bad, would you?

Do any of you remember all those bad drives IBM shipped? Nary a word was published while they were shipping those horrible drives. You had to find out on the newsgroups or tech sites about those drives. The major computer rags were silent until the lawsuit was filed and everyone was ganging up on IBM.

It was a 75 GB drive a few years back. They were crashing all over the place. I got a couple of those too. The resulting deluge lawsuits encouraged IBM to sell their drive unit back to Hitachi (they were for all intents and purposes Hitachi drives all along). Note, IBM ended up having to replace just about all of the drives in the settlement.

My advice is to take reviews in computer magazines with a very large teaspoon of salt. To measure the bias, check how much ad space the reviewed product or company is taking out in the magazine. I am not saying all the products are misrepresented; it's just that I find a lot of the reviews to be less than useful other than as long advertisements for the products themselves. I have to cringe when I see an extensive review for a Maxtor drive, especially when 3 out of 4 that I purchased of that particular model, from different plants, failed. Hmm

http://www.dealtime.com/xPR-Maxtor_DiamondMax_Plus_9_120_GB_6Y120L0~RD-140491656836

If you find some people that have used a large number of Maxtor drives then they are going to be able to give you alot better idea how reliable the drives are then just someone that has used a handful over the years.

You can get WD and Seagate drives relatively cheap with MIR's from B&M's so there is really no reason to go with Maxtor hard drives.

 

[EnderW]

I dont think it does. I'm not saying Maxtor drives suck because thats just my opinion, i'm saying it because its a fact.

You're making a statement without any evidence to back up your claim which makes it your opinion.

A fact is something that can be proven. You haven't done any tests, all you have is your experiences and what you've heard and that's not fact.

And I'm not a diehard Maxtor fan either, I've heard plenty bad about them. But have I seen any factual evidence? Nope, so I keep my mouth shut. Seagate has a better warranty and WD is usually a little faster and there seems to be better AR deals on them so I have no reason to buy a Maxtor.

 

[GlobalFear]

Quote:
Originally Posted by themailman34
Antec Sonata Piano Black Quiet Super Mini Tower
ASUS!A8V Deluxe
Athlon 64+ 3500

Good

Quote:
Corsair Value Select 1GB!(2x512MB) DDR400!Kit

Don't cheap out on ram, get some low latency corsair/muskin with tccd chips.


Quote:
Originally Posted by themailman34
XFX GeForce 6800GT Dual DVI 256MB!DDR


BFG, but anATI fan myself

Quote:
Originally Posted by themailman34
NEC ND-3500A 16x4x / 16x4x DVD+/-RW Dual Layer

good

Quote:
Originally Posted by themailman34
Maxtor 250GB S-ATA w/ 16MB!cache OEM

Hmm, stay away from maxtor,they have proven time and time again to be unreliable

Quote:

Originally Posted by themailman34
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS
no need for the zs, I would just get a good pair of headphones

Quote:
Originally Posted by themailman34
BenQ FP757SB 17" LCD, 16ms

Good but might want to look at the benq fp937s (12ms response, 19")

Quote:
Originally Posted by themailman34
Logitech MX Duo Cordless

Damn I see a flamewar coming.
/me puts on fire retardant suit and pours gasoline on the floor, runs outside and shoots flare at gasoline*
In my experience with the mx duo I have never experienced lag while gaming except when the battery is very low. (red light) And that doesn't happen often.

 

[Dan_D]

Keep in mind I am a first time builder so if there are any problems, please let me know

Antec Sonata Piano Black Quiet Super Mini Tower
ASUS!A8V Deluxe
Athlon 64+ 3500
Corsair Value Select 1GB!(2x512MB) DDR400!Kit
XFX GeForce 6800GT Dual DVI 256MB!DDR
NEC ND-3500A 16x4x / 16x4x DVD+/-RW Dual Layer
Maxtor 250GB S-ATA w/ 16MB!cache OEM
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS
BenQ FP757SB 17" LCD, 16ms
Logitech MX Duo Cordless

Thanks in advance.

Antec Sonata Piano Black Quiet Super Mini Tower <----Good
ASUS!A8V Deluxe <----Good
Athlon 64+ 3500 <----Good
Corsair Value Select 1GB!(2x512MB) DDR400!Kit <----I'd avoid the Value ram and go with XMS series ram.
XFX GeForce 6800GT Dual DVI 256MB!DDR <------I'd go with BFG instead. Or eVGA.
NEC ND-3500A 16x4x / 16x4x DVD+/-RW Dual Layer <-----Good choice
Maxtor 250GB S-ATA w/ 16MB!cache OEM <------Good choice here. This isn't one of those crappy slim form factor HDD's they put out. So it's fine.
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS <---Another solid choice.
BenQ FP757SB 17" LCD, 16ms <----I'd go CRT for games. 16ms is way slow. And 12ms isn't the greatest either and costs more.
Logitech MX Duo Cordless <-----I'd go with a corded keyboard and a MX1000 Lasermouse. There is no lag on that sucker.

On the drives I'd say that certain specific Maxtor models (the slim ones) blow. The Western Digital drives are definatley better than Seagate or Hitachi. Hitachi bought the IBM Deathstar line. Nuff said. I know they are better now, but those drives are plagued with compatibility issues with some BIOS's and I've had a few dead out of the box.

I work as a service tech and I install every make and model of drive out there. Seagates are ok, they are about as good as Maxtor. Seagate's got some models that suck ass. Basically anything that isn't SCSI or SATA is crap. Samsung I've had issues with. Western Digital occasionally has issues, but I've had no major problems to speak of with them.

And considering the amount of those I install vs. other drives and I still have no more problems than I do with other makers of drives, I'd say that's pretty good.