** Computer Build - What do you think of these specs?

Hi guys, wasnt able to get a PC a few weeks ago when planned. Going for it now before Christmas though. Im very limited to the choices of equipment i can get from this dealer, but prices are excellent.

Ok, if you can give me any comments on the individual components, with strengths and/or weaknesses and your comments on the overall system.

Firstly, a bit of info. Im no gamer, so the graphics card doesnt need to be amazing. Im not interested in SLI dual cards, but my choice was either the one you see below or the similarly priced Point of View 6800GT 256MB DVI out with a slower clock speed.

Here it is:
AMD Athlon 64 PCI Express System:

- AMD Athlon 64 Bit X2 4400+ 2.2GHz Socket 939
- Asus A8N-E, nForce4 Ultra, Socket-939
- Corsair TWINX2048-3200C2 DDR-DIMM 2048MB
- Cooler Master Wave Master Black
- Cooler Master Real Power 550W
- Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 250GB SATA
- Asus Radeon X850PRO 256MB GDDR3
- NEC DVD±RW burner, ND-3550A, 16x
- Sony Floppy Drive, 3,5" 1,44MB Black
- Logitech Cordless Desktop MX3000
- Samsung 19" LCD Syncmaster 930BF TCO-99

What do you think?
Thanks
Chris

 

f**k me thats the best system i could eva dream of building.

That looks like the best pc i could imagine cing, the only bit is the graphics card altho good now, a x1800 could be just that bit extra...

 

f**k me thats the best system i could eva dream of building.

That looks like the best pc i could imagine cing, the only bit is the graphics card altho good now, a x1800 could be just that bit extra...

 

thats a gaming rig if i ever saw one.....nice dont like the video card but im a nvidia fanboy...lol....get one more hard drive and put it in raid 0.that will give you better proformance about 20-30 percent more, plus a 500gb drive.lots of space or get to smaller ones....just an idea....mine boots up in 5 seconds or less plus in gaming forget about it.other then that the rig looks sweet....peace


have fun building it,its a great hobby,alot of fun,let us know how it came together....peace

 

HI, thanks for the replies. Which graphics card would you recommend to get then? The Point of View 6800GT or the X850Pro from Asus, both with DVI, PCI-E and 256MB?

Also, which of the two are better:

- Western Digital Cavier SE16 250GB (or 400GB) SATA2 (SATA on 400GB) 16MB 7,200 RPM 8.9ms
- Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 259GB SATA2 16MB NCQ

Also, whats the difference with SATA and SATA2?

Which of these two are better?

- Point of View GeForce 350 MHz core 6800GT 256MB PCI-E DVI VIVO GDR3
- Asus X850Pro 520 MHz Core 256MB PCI-E DVI VIVO GDR3

To me, the Asus with the same 256MB GDR3 RAM and the 520 MHz core looks better, but is this the same case as the Athlon 2.2GHz processors being as fast as Intel 3.4GHz (or something similar), except in graphics card processors?

Whats the opinions on the NEC 3550A DVD writer - i choose it because of its ability to write DVD+R DL at 8x and DVD-R DL at 6x which seems to be a good bit better than most.

Finally, what do you think of the memory? Should i go for something like the Crucial PC4000 BallistiX DDR 2048MB CL3 Kit w/2 matched,2.8V,128Meg x 64?

Thanks
Chris

 

Basically, this is what im looking at now:

- AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ 2.2GHz Socket
- Cooler Master Centurion 5 Black/Silver
- AKASA Powersupply ATX/EPS 12V 550W
- Asus A8N-SLI, nForce4 SLI, Socket-939
- Crucial PC4000 BallistiX DDR 2GB CL3 Kit w/2 matched 2.8v
- Asus Radeon X850PRO 256MB GDDR3,
- Western Digital Caviar SE16 250GB SATA2
- Samsung 19" LCD Syncmaster 930BF TCO-99
- Sony Floppy Drive, 3,5" 1,44MB Black
- NEC DVD±RW burner, ND-3550A, 16x,
- Logitech Cordless Desktop MX3000


I'll also have a TwinMOS PC3200 DDR-DIMM 512MB Dual Pack. Is there any point in putting this into the system in the two spare slots?

Thanks
Chris

 

crucial ram is suppose to be real good.... i like nvidia better for color control.which ati has none.what i mean is you cant saturate the color with ati. with all nvidia cards you can. ati are set on default and cannot be changed.so what ever ati sets there cards at, you are stuck with it.i have a that western digital hard drive its fine.very quit asnd stays real cool,very fast.also wd dosnt use ncq[native command queing] which the barracuda does.i have a sony dru810a but i got a good deal on them.alot of people like lite-on cause its the same parts as sony inside but without the name.sata one is 150 mb a second of transfer speed and sata 2 is 300 mb a second of transfer speed so sata 2 is better then sata 1....hope i helped you.heres some reviews:


http://www.3dgameman.com/vr/crucial/ballistix_tracer_pc4000/video_review_03.html
http://accelenation.com/?ac.id.217.1
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/


heres a bunch of stuff take a look...peace

btw if your not going to take this rig to lan parties look at the case i have.its a sweet case...thermaltake tsunami dream aluminum w side window

 

What I don't like:

0.294 mm for the LCD when there are now .264 mm in 19" LCD's with fast response times or go to a 20.1 with a 0.255 mm for the best clarity in a LCD

Prefer BenQ 1640d as the writer

Just MHO

 

If you are spending that kind of money on a system and are getting PC4000 RAM then I assume that you intend to overclock a bit. Therefore if you want an ASUS board, I would NOT get the A8N, but instead get the A8N32

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2589

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131568

The A8N32 is the first good overclocking AMD64 board from ASUS and for the kind of bucks you're talking about $50 is minute and you'd have a much more capable system.

Also you may want to consider one of the new dual core socket 939 opterons, these chips have gained a huge reputation since there release a month or so ago as the real oc' bad boys. AMD applied some really stringent quality control since these are supposed to be "server" chips.

http://www.monarchcomputer.com/Merc...ode=M&Product_Code=120342&Category_Code=amddc

For very little difference in final cost, you'd have a system that can be pushed much farther than what you've listed, imho.

Also in checking out hard drives on tomshardware.com and anandtech.com and other sites, the Hitachi drives are the current "best" as getting to the sweet spot of price/performance and reliability. The nF4 raid controller on the motherboard is HUGELY scalable, meaning that three disks in a striped array have nearly three times the throughput. Two or three SATA II Hitachis in a Raid 0 will give you an extremely fast video disk for low bucks.

 

Thanks for the replies again guys, really appreciate it. Just addressing some of the comments made:

- The Monitor for me is fine. 0.294 is pretty standard across the range and to be honest, 1/3rd of a millimeter is not something that many people would notice. So, ill most likely stick with that Monitor since there have been great reviews on it.

- Rugripper (interesting name by the way), Im not going to be doing any overclocking at all with this system, atleast for a good long time anyway. Im happy enough with the SATA II WD Cavier 250GB 16MB Cache. I havent a clue about RAID, but one hard drive is enough for me at the minute, I can add a second similar spec one at a later date if required. Thanks for explaing SATA v SATA2

As for the memory, i choose it because i assume that PC4000 with is higher MHz clock speed would be a better performing memory chip? Is this not the case. If not, i can easily go back to the PC3200 in 2GB Dual form?

- The Writer is a bit of a sticky point with me as well. I now have the option of getting the Plextor PX-750A instead. Is this the better Writer to go for?

- DemonDog, I am limited to the Athlon only. Im pretty happy with that processor. However, i havent a clue about which is the best Mainboard to go for. I am now edging towards the Abit KN8-SLI,nForce4 SLI, Socket-939 with SATA II because it seems to be good value while offering all the same sort of performance. Whats your opinions on this? The EPoX EP-9NPA+ Ultra, nForce4 Ultra,ATX is a choice as well.

SO, to recap, my system now looks like this:

- AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ 2.2GHz Socket
- Cooler Master Centurion 5 Black/Silver
- AKASA Powersupply ATX/EPS 12V 550W
- Abit KN8-SLI,nForce4 SLI, Socket-939
- Crucial PC4000 BallistiX DDR 2048MB CL3 Kit w/2 matched
- POINT OF VIEW GeForce 6800GT 256MB GDDR3
- Western Digital Caviar SE16 250GB SATA2
- Samsung 19" LCD Syncmaster 930BF TCO-99
- Sony Floppy Drive, 3,5" 1,44MB Black
- Plextor DVD±RW burner, PX-750A, 16x
- Logitech Cordless Desktop MX3000

Also have this memory brand new and left over. Its two times 256MB PC3200. Any point in putting it into the system as well?

- TwinMOS PC3200 DDR-DIMM 512MB Dual Pack

Thanks
Chris

 

my name has two meanings:i install flooring for a living and next i will leave that to your imagination...lmao...just kidding


heres an earlier theard taking about that very thing:

http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/2/156113

hope this helps you ....peace

btw this asus a8n32sli-deluxe is one of the fastest stock boards out to date

 

If you are not overclocking then PC4000 DRAM is not necessary, PC4000 is the same as DDR500, which means that you can run it at 250MHz bus speed. Which is nice if you ever want to overclock since the Athlon64 overclocks by the bus speed. So if your cpu can handle it you could get a 25% OC without worrying about the memory failing. This memory will not benefit you at stock (200MHz bus) speeds and indeed you can find plenty of PC3200 RAM with a lower latency which would make it slighlty faster.

Mismatched memory is not the best thing on socket 939 boards, the slower memory controls and if you're not running matched pairs you might have to work to get the board stable by manually changing the memory settings in the bios to get them to work together. Also two sticks of memory will run at 1T timings, but except on a handfull of "hot rod" boards (a couple of DFI's, that I know of) FOUR memory modules always run at 2T timings (that's the AMD spec.) and even the few boards that run 1T on four sticks of RAM won't do so if you overclock, then you're back to 2T timings.

I don't know anything about the ABIT board, google it and check the review sites. But imho the motherboard is the most critical part of a system and I would get the best, as it determines how well you can overclock a chip (which is easy with the right gear) and how stable everything is, the motherboard is the second largest determining factor in your performance (cpu is first) and a good mobo will usually get a moderate price cpu to run much faster than a more expensive cpu on a poor mobo. I'd rather cut back somewhere else than save $50 to $100 max on the mobo. I'm not saying the ABIT is bad, just don't skimp in this area.

And the Opteron socket 939 chips are exactly the same specs. as the Athlon64 chips, AMD just markets the Opterons for the server crowd and thus they use better QC which means more overclocking ability (usually).

http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q2/athlon64-x2/index.x?pg=1

So same chip, different name tag, but likely better OC candidate (if desired) if you purchase the Opteron.

 

hey dog thx for the link for my mobo....with the stats that anandtech.com did, i have a better oc now mate....thx mate 310 fsb is sweet...peace

btw overclocking is fun.when you get that rig setup,you will overclock it.i just know it...lmao...peace

 

Cheers DemonDog and RugRipper, your replies are again appreciated. Bearing this in mind, I have changed the Memory and reverted back to the Asus, but this time the more expensive Motherboard. The motherboard i have chosen seems to get very good reviews across the board. Here is my new set-up. I have kept the DVD writer after reading reviews. I know there is a 760 out now with 10x DL writing, but 8x and 6x DL+/- will do me for now.

My System:

- AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ 2.2GHz Socket
- Cooler Master Centurion 5 Black/Silver
- AKASA Powersupply ATX/EPS 12V 550W
- Asus A8N-SLI Premium, nForce4 SLI,Socket
- Corsair TWINX2048 3200 CL2 DDR-DIMM 2048MB Kit w/two matched DIMM's
- POINT OF VIEW GeForce 6800GT 256MB GDDR3
- Western Digital Caviar SE16 250GB SATA2
- Samsung 19" LCD Syncmaster 930BF TCO-99
- Sony Floppy Drive, 3,5" 1,44MB Black
- Plextor DVD±RW burner, PX-750A, 16x
- Logitech Cordless Desktop MX3000

Hope this is now a top system. No overclocking or mods being done for atleast 6 months. Generally, my first mode will be to add in another set of 2GB identical memory to bring me to 4GB in about 6 months, followed by an overclock to 2.4GHz/2.5GHz. I'd possible add an identical graphics card at that time and SLI them. SHould be nice and cheap and have the benefit of increasing performance a good but.

Thanks Again
Chris