The (new) Official PC building thread!

pcusergod, if your definatly gonna be stuck with what you have beleive me these guys will help you with what you can do, where to find it and how much to spend etc. etc., one way or another you will get the help you need, let some guys get back home from work and settle in.

 

You can, but it'll be tedious and costly and ultimately probably won't result in a system quite as good as a proper one.
Firstly, lose windows vista and put xp on, that'll double your performance. Then add RAM, potentially swap the CPU too and the mobo if necessary. Upgrade the PSU and then you can fit a proper graphics card, assuming the case is well ventilated enough. The only parts probably worth keeping are the hard disk and DVD drive.

 

You guys realize that he has a Conroe core Celeron? It's like a Pentium Dual Core just with a single core. You don't have a NEED to upgrade that right now. Right now you should probably get a better powersupply, and a 3850. Also change back to XP.

 

Nice sam!

I was pushing 11220 on stock!

I got my keyboard, mouse and fan today so i can set up my room today and play Crysis.

Speak to you on MSN mate. Im at school.

 

Fred,
I was looking at your setup and it seems that I would replace the RAM in your Gateway or at least add a matched pair of sticks to give you that 2GB total. If you add the 2GB to the 512 sticks you already have you'll have 3GB which is nice. I'm sure you won't be "OC'ing" so you'll be just fine.

Link to RAM NOW remember if you leave the "old" RAM in there it will "down grade" the NEW RAM to it. That means it'll be PC-4200 speed NOT PC-5300. hth.....

ON THE HP:
link to PC-3200 RAM (2 x 512) Make sure of the "compatibility" on this RAM. Sometimes Mushkin doesn't play nice with certain mobo's.

Link to PC-3200 RAM (2 x 1GB) SAme recommendations as 512 RAM...

I hope that answers some questions Fred. Like always don't hesitate to ask any more.

....gm

RUSSELL ..... L@@KY >>>>> link to PC-8500 RAM NOW quit hem-hawing around and buy some decent RAM. hehehe.

 

Well, I'm having a play around with the cards at the moment (which includes trying to get my server running crossfire), so I'll speak to you when I can.
As it happens, neither of the cards are what I ordered.
The Powercolor SCS version is just the stock reference dual-slot design, and the stock dual-slot Sapphire I ordered uses the single-slot cooler, which I've just discovered is terrible. Not necessarily for cooling, but it runs at nearly maximum speed when idle...

 

hey sam, nice score! So now you can play all the games you want at 2560x1600!

But hey, that score seems a bit low. I get 12k with 1 3870, but maybe it's the quad.

Anyways, can you turn a core off, does it work like CF?

 

Kinda random, but I am going to bestbuy sometime this week to pick up a new monitor (got a few gift certificates to there) so I was thinking of this guy:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8553326&type=product&id=1188561324689

What do you guys think? Not a bad price for a near 30" LCD.

 

Quad cores boost your 3dmark by 2000 points, so my score seems reasonable.
As for the monitor, Hanns-G stuff is pretty naff usually, and given the resolution I'd say that price is about what I'd expect for that monitor.

Crossfire was a big failure, the PSU in my server made lots of sparkly noises when it tried to boot with two cards in. Evidently 300W is a bit too much for a 580W Hiper Type-R....
I really thought Hipers were better than that!

 

Sam you better hope that Lp misses that post. hehehe. I know a few people that have the Hyper sam and they are less than "impressed" with it. Ask Mort81, he's one of them.

You gonna have to get another P/S?? That would stink if you do. ;P I'll give you some recommendations if you like. hehehe.

....gm

j/k m8, don't take offense.

 

Nah, it was only an experiment, I never intended to keep both cards (and given the ridiculous amount of noise the Sapphire makes I certainly won't). The PSU in the server still works, it just can't handle those two cards. The power draw of the system under that circumstance was under 300W, so I'm going with the Hiper being naff, I stand by my previous arguments.
I may eventually replace it with a Corsair unit, but the Hiper's not loud at idle, so it can stay for a while...

 

@greensman
nice link to that PC2-8500. i was wondering were you got it at??lol heck it is cheaper there than at the egg even with out the rebate. think its $110 at the egg.

you bout done with the wifes puter and ready to OC yours some?


edit to add:
ive just been looking at the mobo and the 1066 mem. i dont think the crucial is compatable with the GA-P35-DS3R

 

OK, detailed thoughts on my 3870s. Overall, the performance of the cards is stunning, being able to play all the games I like at 2560x1600 in most cases with AA, sometimes up to 8x is awesome. The image quality of the cards is as superb as advertised, and for the money I'm impressed/
For the specifics:
Powercolor (reference cooler):
Overclockability: Core mediocre, memory excellent
Fan/cooling: Only 4 speeds, default controller is retarded for overclocking, but perfectly adequate (30mins gaming, load temps plateau at c. 80C). Typically the controller varies between speeds 1 & 2, 1 for idle and 2 in game. Speed 1 is pretty much dead silent, even by my standards, very impressive. Speed 2 is certainly acceptable, very similar to the xbox 360 in character (plastic-y whine) but much quieter, I'd guess around 27dB. Speed 3 is what you'd have to use if overclocking, it's certainly loud by my ears, but if you had high speed case fans it'd still be relatively insignificant, I'd say around 35-36dB. Speed 4 is astonishing. It's about as loud as the old X1900 series stock cooler was at max, but less annoying, and pushes huge volumes of air, the temperatures you can achieve with this setting are also mindboggling.
Overall, unless you're overclocking and like silence, the stock cooler on the 3870 really is excellent.

The Sapphire card however is awful. It doesn't overclock at all without producing artifacts, and the fan speed, whilst having 20 settings, only varies from 60% to 100% of the rpm the fan can run at. When you consider that 5% is 75% of the rpm, and the card switches between these two settings even at idle, it's very obtrusive and very annoying. I'm thoroughly disappointed with Sapphire on this one.

Looks like I'm keeping the Powercolor card, that's definitely a turn up for the books.

 

Rob I think you'll be ok with the PC2-8500 RAM but I would get what's on the list for complete COMPATIBILITY!!

Give this list a L@@K see. It's PC2-6400 RAM but it'll do what you want it to.

The only reason to get the PC2-8500 RAM is to push the OC to the next level. lol. I could have spent about $300 less on my system and had about the same thing. lol. I just wanted to go all out once in my life on something for me.

...gm

 

oh if i go with the PC2-6400 i will get the corsair(i think) i do like the looks of the balistic tracers...lol eyecandy...

like you said. i wanna go all out, i am gonna have the extra to spend (to an exstint)spend a little on myself for once..lol

 

greensman,
The memory you linked to is the "Black" memory with the flashy lights. The good ones are the "Gold" ones. The black ones are the Ballistix Tracers, the gold ones are just plain Ballistix and are the preferred ones. The failure rate on the black Tracers is just too high and they run very hot! It doesn't say very much for the memory when someone orders 24 pairs and then winds up with 19 of them failing, all in non overclocked business machines!

These are the good ones! LOL!!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148069

These are what I used to hit 4.0GHz with mine!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

I have a friend wanting to buy my Video card. This is what he will be running.

AMD Athlon X2 4200+
3850 256MB
3 Stick of RAM DDR2
250GB HDD SATA
Crappy HP Motherboard
DVD Writer


What's the cheapest PSU he could get away with?

 

Well that's great!!!! NOW I have inferior RAM!!

Rob you wanna buy my RAM?? $75 and it's yours AND I'll pay for shipping. lol.

RUSS that guy must do this for a business or something 60+ sets in the last year or so. (guessing on time frame) I guess I'll just stress the HECK out of them and see what they can do. If they fail them the EGG or Crucial gets a NICE email from me on how to replace them. UNLESS Rob buys them from me.

...gm

 

abuzar there are a couple of options but these are what I would look at for starters.

451-500

501-600

A couple of these I don't have real feed back on but according to a website that sam linked us to a while back most of these should be pretty good. If all he is gonna run is the parts you listed then it should be ok.

....gm

 

He might go with the 30 dollar one then. I mean it's not exactly a power hungry system so he should be fine.