bumpin buick
5,000+ posts
Science is everything
Thats why you gotta save up for both, I split my money in half for the pc and car audio
Decent gaming CPU
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bumpin buick
bumpin buick
5,000+ posts
Science is everything
and the other thousand toys i want
Memory speeds make a difference only if the processor will match up as well. Basically... memory speeds are only as fast as their weakest link. If the motherboard will handle a better speed, but the processor you utilize doens't support that threading, then it's useless to spend the extra money on a better speed of memory. If you like tho I'd be happy to discuss what I feel would be a great build for a system for you. Feel free to pm me or email me.
On second thought... I think I will post a few suggestions here along with my reasoning behind each component.
#1 Power supply. Always the most critical component in any system. If this is unstable or weak in any area your performance may lack, or worse yet, you can spend a lot of time in RMA on various parts of your computer. Of course an inexpensive and lesser quality or namebrand one may simply just die after a few months to a year. The corsair I've tested run incredibly solid. Much more so even than somme of the much nicer and more expensive power supplies on the market. They are also more affordable especially if you are looking at running two video cards.
#2 Video cards. I agree 100% witht he above post on the ATI video cards. The PCI-X 2.0 ATI 3800HD cards are so much more powerful and nicer than the nVidia cards and play much more friendly with motherboard selections for an AMD platform. The price... can't beat the price of ATI's highest end graphics card for under $300 when it runs better than the $500+ nVidia cards. (Keep in mind if you go with an INtel platform nVidia then has more perks)
#3 Motherboard. Spend the extra $ and go w/ an AM2+ motherboard. Always when you are building a system look at new and upcomming technologies and ensure that you are able to expand a good deal in the future. Even if you do not take full advantage of the higher HT counts and slightly more expensive processors, you will be able to do so later on down the road instead of having to replace a motherboard, processor and possibly memory.
#4 Memory. Reinstating what I said before about the price not outweighing the reward of the higher speeds. This is only true if you do not foresee an upgrade within a year or so. If, however, you are planning on doing a processor upgrade as more come available within the next year or so. Go ahead and spend the extra few bucks for the higher speed. If, though, you are not thinking that's very likely and want to stick to a tighter budget then stick w/ the 800mhz and you will be fine.
#5 Case. Always check out information for the cases thoroughly. Some look like they are pretty nice and good airflow, but in reality just do not perform like they should. Good brand names to stick with are Thermaltake, Coolermaster, Lian-Li. Features to look for in a case are "toolless" design. Aluminum cases as opposed to steel (steel cases tend to be a bit more heavy, resonate noise more and have some sharp edges that may be a pain to work around. Internal layout is important as well. Having plenty of room for proper wire routing is always nice (less wires hanging around in the case means better airflow and better system performance) Cases like the Thermaltake Armor are excellent for airflow, solid, and offer plenty of spare room for good wire routing. Coolermaster and Lian-li are also very well known for those features as well. Having the system a "toolless" design helps out greatly for any future swaps of drives and other parts.
Cases like the Antec you are looking at will have good airflow, but sacrifice noise levels for that airflow. The fans are not of very high quality and do make quite a racket running at capacity.
#6 Again if you are going to futureproof the system (and unless you are running autocad from a cpl yrs ago) I would recommend utilizing Windows Vista. yes lots of people complain about it, but... most have little real working experience in it and those that do, have either not run it on a new system, or simply were biased due to other sources complaints about it. Utilizing windows vista ultimate will allow you to expand your memory as you grow and won't cost you later on to get a legit copy of it. I run it on all of my systems personally and it's been fantastic. Windows XP Pro does have a few advantages, but it also has one major disadvantage. Windows Vista is the focus for most updates and such right now and being updated much more frequently than XP has been or will be. Support is also much more solid for the Vista platform as well right now. Your pick on the OS that's not a major ordeal just dropping my two cents there
As for your picks on your system. i'm not going to give any specific parts and prices, as that is your desicion, but I hope this helps a bit in giving the logic behidn the general recommendations I've made for you. Maybe even it will help some other enthusiasts here.
If, he's on a budget, why add a few $ more by gettng the lite-on dvd burner? //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827151155
Why the seagate 320gb HD instead of the WD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136098
If you are going to go w/ 4gb of memory (which windows XP won't recognize fully, why not use 4 1gb sticks?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227252
Why go with an ATI video card on an nVidia friendly motherboard ? (he can't do crossfire ever w/ that board.)
Nice choice on the case though. Only other thing I'd add or change to this would be upgrade the PSU to the 620watt.
Always had good experience w/ Lite-On (fast, reliable, no disc issues, bitsetting support). Only complaint is they're loud, but I don't really mind that. Samsung doesn't support bitsetting and I've found they're not nearly as fast as Lite-On, although they're a lot quieter. For the average person, it probably won't matter, but I go w/ what I have good experience w/. Either way, it's a $7 difference, no biggie.
The WD only has 8 MB of cache (vs. 16) and doesn't utilize perpendicular recording (denser data storage, better performance). I've also been using the Seagate 320 GB in the majority of my builds because of its price per GB and performance and I've yet to have a single failure (at least not that I've heard of). The hard drive is generally one of the weaker links in computer performance and, given that he said he was going to be using it for video rendering and photoshop, I'm sure he'll appreciate the superior read/write speeds and seek times of the Seagate drive.
I don't see the point in using 1 GB sticks except for the slightly lower latency. It limits his options should he decide to upgrade to a 64-bit OS in the near future, it doubles his chances of one of the sticks failing, and some motherboards don't play nice when all 4 slots are utilized.
The 8800 GT 512 MB is priced $30+ more than the HD 3870 on Newegg and the motherboard does support Crossfire (although the 2nd slot is PCI-E x4, making it completely pointless). While some may argue that the 8800 GT is faster (and it is in most apps), it would've put my build over the $1100 mark and the fan is really annoying, in my experience (they should've went w/ a dual slot cooler, IMO).
The 620HX is a nice PSU and I would have chosen that had the budget been higher, but it's $70 more than the 550VX. Yes, it would be nice to have modular and the extra 70 watts on tap, but the 550VX is still quiet and rock solid.
Multiple rails don't necessarily add up the way most would hope they would, which is why many manufacturers are turning back to single rail designs.
Ignatowski
5,000+ posts
CarAudio.com Veteran
except they charge us tax so I buy from Mwave instead,still takes only 2 days...
Alot of great products posted some good some overkill..........
I am playing COD4,TF2 and pretty much any game I want with
1 8800GTS EVGA vid card and it runs smooth as silk .....
I run 2 gigs of OCZ ram and a OCZ 700W powersupply
Intel e6850 cpu
Gigabyte MOBO GIGABYTE GA-N650SLI
250Gig HD
Vista 64 bit
Antec Case
I got about 1100 bucks invested and I love it
bumpin buick
5,000+ posts
Science is everything
so when i have 1500 to drop this summer on a new comp for college, u guys are gonna help me out on it
New computer flys woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooosh...................
bumpin buick
5,000+ posts
Science is everything
thanks for the sound effect, i hope mine goes woooosh too
I agree on a lot of this, but the reason I mentioned those few things was mostly for price and futureproofing. Running the memory on a quad kit tho has a few advantages when utilizing it for gaming and graphics editing and work which is why I would recommend the 4 1gb sticks. I've yet to have a corsair stick be doa or die on me which is why I generally stick w/ them as well. For the PSU I was actually thinking more along the lines of the 520HX. I love the corsair PSU's since they have been released and utilize them for a large percentage of my builds.
The HD itself... yeah I agree again can be a bit of a difference there, but I am preferencial to WD drives..of course I normally run the 10k rpm SATA drives by them in my personal systems and only utilize a normal drive for storage. Just voer a TB of space in the current build I'm working on now.
-Alax
I agree with everything jmac says..... although i would stay the hell away from and amd procs right now as the core2duos kick their ***** in every way and are priced better for performance.....
also stay the hell away from the 8600 nvidia vid card.... you'll be depressed within a week..... they are probably one of the worst midrange to budget vid cards out right now...... the best rated card for the money right now is the amd/ati 3870..... can't beat that price for the performance....
also stay the hell away from the 8600 nvidia vid card.... you'll be depressed within a week..... they are probably one of the worst midrange to budget vid cards out right now...... the best rated card for the money right now is the amd/ati 3870..... can't beat that price for the performance....
.::DuD3::.
10+ year member
EE in training
I think people take the whole amd and intel comparison WAY out of context. Sure intel wins in almost all bench marks, but if you really look at comparison's between 6000 and the e6600, the e6600 only really wins by margins that I would never notice. Plus AMD is so much cheaper. But those Q6600 look dam sexy.
Whynot go w/ the AMD quad core instead for the price? Oh.... not aware of that are ya? Yeah... AMD and Intel have their percs each, but overall if you are going to try to go with an ATI video card on an Intel platform you will be disappointed in the future when you cannot add a second card on to take advantage of the crossfire. AMD has held the gaming side of the Intel vs AMD war for quite a while and has not rolled over and disappeared with the Intel Core 2 chips out. Their quad core systems are a dramatic improvement over Intel's attempts and wow.... only $239 for the high end one right now. Come on... get a clue and do some real research on yoru own before you just jump to follow the bandwagon. Scalability is a key role in today's computers and mixing up Intel and ATI products is a very poor decision.
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