Q: What MB, CPU recommended?

[Celerator]

My home workstation (Asus A7N8X; AMD 2600+; SATA Raid, ATi 9600) got fried during a wind storm power outage. Techs say MB, memory, and one hard drive are gone, and the CPU is suspect. They are suggesting a new machine rather than replacing parts.

I'm looking for suggestions on what to get. Intel, AMD64? The video card is probably still good, and it's AGP, I think (in the shop). Any MB, processor, memory, and hard drive suggestions would be appreciated. It's been a couple of years since I last shopped for hardware, and two years is a long time.

By the way, I had the system plugged into a UPS that did not retain power, nor protect the system. PC died instantly with the power. Has anyone ever tried to collect on their promise of financial protection? The UPS is a CyberPower 700AVR that's a couple of years old.

 

[MN Scout]

Wow that's to bad about the comp. Luckily I've never had anything fried in my life from any storms or power surges. I still but everything on surges and ups's.

What is your price range? Are you needing this for gaming or just for general use? Do you want upgradability in the future? AGP or PCI-E? Ram amount?

-MN Scout

 

[wraieghaeien]

Im not sure about mobo, but you cant go wrong with dual core AMD.

they are schweet!

 

[Imitation]

Any price range? What will be its primary use besides folding?

 

[Celerator]

Thanks for the followup questions.
My ATi video card is AGP (I think) -- it's a couple years old.
I could go for 1 or 2 G memory
RAID SATA drives
Reliability is important (especially after my experience).

My typical computing tasks are:

• Programming (VB.NET)
• Writing, calculating, database (MS Office)
• Virtual Machine (NT 4.0 for programming with older languages)
• Folding, of course
• Browsing with IE
• Email (Eudora)
• Digital Pictures editing
• Ripping CD's to MP3s
• Possibly getting into video creation/editing this year?
• FTP
• pcAnywhere
• 3D Gaming (if I every find the time)

I see the AMD64 X2. What are people's experience? Does it fold better than a single-core 64?

Price is not as important as reliability and power.

 

[unhappy_mage]

By the way, I had the system plugged into a UPS that did not retain power, nor protect the system. PC died instantly with the power. Has anyone ever tried to collect on their promise of financial protection? The UPS is a CyberPower 700AVR that's a couple of years old.

I tried with APC - a few of my folding machines died while plugged into an UPS. They sent me paperwork, I filled it out and sent it back, they sent me a new UPS in a box. I packed the broken one up and sent it to them - postage was paid both ways! - and waited. They tested it and sent me a report on it saying it was still working, it stopped surges when they tested it, all that kind of thing. So essentially I got an UPS that worked, but that was it. There was about $400 worth of equipment on it ... I'm not bitter, but it'd've been nice to get the money for it. I did call and ask them how my equipment managed to die if the UPS worked, and they said that it was probably just a little overvoltage, for a millisecond or so, and that did it. Hey, they were cheap power supplies, could be true. Not doing that again

 

[r00k]

yes, it folds twice as [Hard] as a single core. literally, you can dedicate full power to two proteins at the same time, and no slowdown on either.

 

[Celerator]

r00k said:
yes, it folds twice as [Hard] as a single core. literally, you can dedicate full power to two proteins at the same time, and no slowdown on either.

Wow! Sounds nice. Are the 64 X2's power pigs and space heaters as compared to the single core ones?

 

[IronBits]

An X2-3800 runs a tad over $300, rated at about 89 watts, 512mb cache each cpu and overclocks to 2.4GHz on air.
An Opteron 165 dual Core costs about the same, rated at about 110 watts, overclocks to 2.5GHz on air, but has 1meg cache per cpu and tends to run hotter than the X2s.
Asus mobos work well, A8N-E or the ones I like are the Asus A8N-SLI Premium boards with the passive chipset heatsinks.
I've had good luck with all 6 refurbs I got from NewEgg.com ~$115 each.

 

[r00k]

if by space heater you mean the 42 degrees C that my 170 at 2.45ghz with 1.39 actual volts folding all day on both cores on STOCK cooling, and 32C idle.

 

[Bill Clo]

Wow! Sounds nice. Are the 64 X2's power pigs and space heaters as compared to the single core ones?

Actually, no, you save power with a dual core. Not only are the CPUs using less power (up to a X24400 they use 89w max) you need one less motherboard(20-25watts), one less hard drive (7-10w), and one less videocard (5-30w). So they're alot more efficient power-wise.

I'd just get a new rig entirely; that 2-year old video card in AGP will be holding you back when it's time to upgrade again. Get a PCI-Express motherboard and PCI-E video card.

The X2 dual core processors do overclock pretty well.

 

[Imitation]

Yeah the X2's and opteron's are definitely sweet. Here's the rig my roommate is building next week. It's probly more video card than you need, but the dual core and 2gigs of ram will really shine if you get into alot of video editing down the road.

Althon X2 3800+
Asus A8N5X
Mushkin Green 2x1gig
HIS X850XT
WD 250G Caviar 16m cache
Antec Sonata II with 450w psu

This rig totals out to about 1100 bucks after you add some optical drives and a few other odds and ends.

 

[Celerator]

Thanks to all for the suggestions. If anyone else has something to add, please do.

 

[broberts]

I love my rig, see the sig, and while I don't fold my usage is otherwise similar to your outline. If your budget allows the x2 4400 would be even nicer.

 

[Mattman]

If you're on more of a budget, I can recommend the Biostar TForce 6100/A64 3200+ combo. Without any tweaking to speak of I run 2.45 GHz (with cheap memory) and it has OK video included. It's cheap, stable and has a lot of tweaking options if you want them. It's not AGP, but the build in video might do OK for you.