Suggestions requested for building multi-purpose system

A

AshleyG

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 5, 2007
Messages
272
Hello everyone,

My old system is slowly grinding itself into oblivion and I am looking to put together a new system to survive at least 2 more years of grad school. Unfortunately, seeing as how I am on a budget (thanks to grad school... meh), I am having to be judicious with my money. I am looking for a system that will meet my needs now and be upgradeable for at least a year or three.

Currently, I have the following:
CMStacker 830 case
PCP&C 510 Dlx, SLI edition PSU (no 8-pin mb connector)
DFI LanParty SLI-DR mb
Athlon64 3200+, Venice core
Mushkin PC4400, 1GB (2x512)
Sapphire X1900XT 256mb vidcard
Maxtor MAXLine III SATA hdd, 250GB
Plextor SATA DVDR (dead, LiteOn replacement on the way)

I plan on keeping the case and video card for now. My parents are getting me a Corsair HX620 PSU for Christmas, and my wife is getting her side of the family to go in on either cash or a NewEgg gift certificate.

My degree program is in music, so I will be dealing with MIDI and composition programs such as Finale and Sibelius that fill system memory at the drop of a hat. Part of my thesis involves a large video project, so I need to have the power to handle some prosumer-level video editing. I also do some gaming to take the edge off the stress, mainly Guild Wars, HL2, and whatever other bargain-bin selection passes my way. I am running Vista Home Premium for my OS, and I am planning on doing some dual-boot OS stuff just for the heck of it.

I am not a technological fundamentalist and will not go bonkers should anyone recommend a specific brand. At this point viability and upgradability are far ahead of brand loyalty on my list of priorities. I will also take recommendations to wait a couple months into consideration, especially if it means future-proofing myself a little bit more.

Thanks graciously for the help!
 
Few questions before making any recommendations:

1) You are on a budget but never state exactly how much the budget is. Even a rough estimate would help a lot.
2) What size monitor do you have? It isn't THAT important since you aren't apparently a hardcore gamer, but it can be at least useful to know.
3) Do you plan on overclocking or receptive to the idea of trying? That would put in considerations for things like aftermarket heatsinks.

I'd have to do some research on whether the programs you mention would take advantage of quad cores or not, but since you are planning to keep/upgrade for a year or more, getting a quad core seems advantageous.

If you can wait until Q1 08 there will be newer quad cores out that will perform better and overclock better than current ones, but the current crop is pretty good as well. Given you are on a budget there probably isn't a graphics card in the future that will help you much, since most of the mainstream cards costing ~200-300 of this new generation are already out, and it's only high end parts that are still awaiting. Although the demand is so high for those cards right now that their price is somewhat inflated. I'd say now isn't a bad time to just go ahead and build though. Although that X1900XT could very well serve you well for the games you are playing, so I'd probably not upgrade that til the prices on the 8800GT/HD3870 settle to their MSRP.
 
I always tell people to wait as long as they can, and buy when they can't wait any more. New things are always around the corner, and rarely are they revolutionary enough to wait for if you're in dire need of new stuff.

An ideal upgrade for you would be:

$272 - Q6600 (or Q9450 ~$335 guestimation, released Q1'08)
$120 - 4GB 2x2GB G.Skill PQ DDR2-800 ($40MIR)

Along with some P35 motherboard. If you don't need anything fancy, the Abit IP35-E and Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L are good basic boards. If you need RAID, the DS3R is good. If you need Firewire, the Asus P5K is good. If you need both, the Abit IP35 Vanilla is only $120 - $25MIR at mwave.com. Other good options would be the DS3P, DS4, P5K-E, or the crowd favorite, IP35 Pro.

Also, add one or two 500GB HDDs, which are u sually around $100 each.

Its hard to make suggestions without a budget. Answer Anchen's questions and we can help you more.
 
Thanks for the info so far. I apologize for leaving out things like how much I actually get to spend!

All in all, I am going to have around $750 - $800 for the project, max. I need to keep it under that amount if possible.

I have a 19" CRT monitor (Iiyama Vision Master Pro 454) that will do 1900x1400 (whatever the spec around that is) at 86hz. I tend to game at 1280x1024, but would go higher if I had better hardware.

I have no qualms with light overclocking. I have my A64 3200+ at 2.5ghz right now with a little bit of extra voltage. I'm not comfortable messing with watercooling or a TEC given my mechanical stupidity and general clumsiness.
 
While I'm thinking about this... What are the advantages of going with a quad core CPU with a slower FSB than a dual-core with a faster FSB? Will I benefit from more cores over time than from a faster FSB for what I am needing to do?
 
Since you're doing video, music and other media editing, your best choice is a quad-core CPU. It's been shown that media editing apps benefit a lot from having four cores.

Oh and what parts do you need exactly for $800? And does that $800 include tax and shipping?
 
Since you don't mind OC'ing, and also since these Core2 chips are EASY to OC, don't worry about stock speeds. :p You can easily get a Q6600 to 9x333 = 3.0Ghz, 1333FSB QDR, with some DDR2-667 or DDR2-800 RAM. Here's a good deal on RAM right now:

$115 - G.SKILL 4GB(2x2GB) DDR2-800 F2-6400CL5D-4GBPQ ($40MIR)

Answer Danny's questions for more suggestions.
 
Despite this being a mainly gift-based system, my wife just got really bitchy about the budget when I talked with her about it. Goodbye, $800. Grr.

Here's what we settled on, and how I convinced her:

Asus P5E (basic) - $229
It's newer and possibly a little more future-proofed than a P35 system. We've had good success with ASUS in the past.

Q6600 - $269
You guys did the convincing for me, thanks.

GSkill 2x2GB )$115 post-rebate
More memory = less bitching by me; this is also far cheaper than buying the same for my current system, which won't even fit thanks to my cooler.

Combine that with the Corsair HX620 I'm getting and my vidcard and hdds, and I should have a fairly decent system. Decent buys?
 
The only real "future proof" item on any X38 mobo is the PCI-E 2.0 suppot. By the time that video cards come out that'll actually saturate the bandwidth of PCI-E 1.1, it'll be time to upgrade your entire PC anyway. Considering that X38 mobos perform roughly the same as cheaper P35 mobos, there's not point in going with that P5E board.

Read Enginurd's first reply to you for mobo recommendations:
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L Intel P35 Motherboard - $86
Abit IP35-E Intel P35 Motherboard - $90
Abit IP35 Intel P35 Motherboard - $120
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R Intel P35 Motherboard - $130
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3P Intel P35 Motherboard - $145
Abit IP35 Pro Intel P35 Motherboard - $168
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4 Intel P35 Motherboard - $178
 
Thanks again for the advice. I've decided on the Abit ip35 Pro for the mb.

So far, I'm looking at $552 ($269 CPU, $168 mb, $115 RAM) total for these three.

I've also scored a 250GB Hitachi drive (thanks lil bro) to go along with my MaxLine III drive for storage. So here's a rough estimate of what my system should look like after Christmas. An asterisk denotes old/reused equipment:

*CMStacker 830
Q6600 CPU
Abit IP35 Pro mb
4GB GSkill DDR2-800
*Sapphire X1900XT 256
*Maxline III 250GB
*Hitachi 7K250 250GB (thanks, lil bro)
LiteOn SATA DVD-RW (en route now, boo dead Plextor)
Corsair HX620 PSU (thanks, mom and dad)
*Iiyama Vision Master Pro 454 CRT

As money comes in, I'll upgrade the video card and processor when I am caught up on my tuition payments. Continued comments and suggestions are still appreciated. Thanks for guiding this old n00b in the right direction.
 
Heh, my argument for not spending $230 on a board is that you can buy one board now, for $115, that fits your needs, then another board later on, for another $115, but with updated chipsets/etc. Pricing isn't exact, but you get the idea. The only thing X38 boards are good for is Crossfire, but you don't need crossfire.

You shouldn't need a CPU upgrade for quite a while. Before you OC, you should pickup a good cooler. Any of these would do:
$35 - Scythe SCNJ-1100P Ninja Plus Rev.B CPU HSF (optional $7 Thermalright LGA775 Bolt-Thru-Kit; recommended esp. for quadcore usage)
$45 - Tuniq Tower 120 CPU HSF
$46 - Thermalright Ultima 90 CPU HS + Panaflo Hydrowave Fan, FBA09A12M - Z ($3)
$55 - Thermalright Ultra 120 eXtreme CPU HS + Scythe S-Flex Fan SFF21E ($15)
 
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