The Official PC building thread!

oh yeah a floppy drive well anyoen can get one for under 20 so. no biggie.

 

merlin112
Thanks for the help and the info, I didn't know that about AMD. If you see my sig- the present sys I threw together, is an AMD and I have noticed that Preator is a fan of AMD as well. I'll look at the AMD again. What mobo do you like for the AMD64? I see you have the ASUS A8N-SLI NVIDIA NFORCE4 MOBO

 

What size powersupply is needed with a new high end system, especially with a top video card? i was looking at like an Antec True Blue 480 is that a bit more then i need?

 

ah pretty cool site

 

Actually I had another question how usefull is a memory cooling kit?

Im gonna go ahead and just post what im looking at getting.. im fairly budget concerned:

MOBO:
ASUS A8N-E Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra ATX AMD Motherboard $125
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131530

CPU:
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Winchester Integrated into Chip FSB 512KB L2 Cache Socket 939 Processor $190 (i thought about the 3500 but figured the 3200 could work plenty good and save some cash it is $273)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103502

Memory:
Corsair VS1GB400C3 1GB DDR400 PC3200 CAS3 $88
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=80098-34&ps=ho1

Power Supply:
Antec TruePower TrueBlue480 True480 $95
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=270018

Video Card:
Im a little unsure here, I want to go PCI-Xpress and i think im leaning towards geforce over ati.. I also want a 256mb card.. I figure im gonna be spending around $400 here... any specific suggestions?

I already have a Seagate 160gb HD and i might add a 36gb 10k rpm drive or just another big 7,400 Ive heard its best to go with SATA and stay away from IDE now?

I have a older Sound Blaster card that I will keep as well.

Should I bother getting a different Heat Sink? Ive heard thermaltake is the way to go.

I think thats about it for now.. ill prolly get a flat pannel monitor at some point.

So what do you think?

 

Hey guys,

Sorry for the delayed response, I'm working days now instead of nights and I have far less freedom to go online and do this sort of stuff.

Datageek and Forumcrew,
So far I like the A8N-SLI. I am not using the dual video option but it seems pretty cool to have for upgrade ability. The bios is user friendly and has a wide variety of oc features. The fsb is adjustable at 1 MHz increments, the htt is down scaleable in order to not go over 1000 MHz (I heard that is bad), and the memory can be divided so you increase cpu speed till maxed and then work on the memory. It also has a couple of auto oc features that go up to 10% increase. I don't really know much about the other boards out there. This is my first build in about 5 years, so I had to basically start over learning what is good. If I had to do it again, I'd probably go with a 3200 or 3500 cause the multiplier is bigger. The only way to speed up an AMD 64 is to increase the fsb, thus speeding up the whole system. With a multiplier of 10, the cpu gets faster than a multiplier of 9. I looked at the chip summary on one of ASUS's utilities and it said that my cpu's max speed is 3700 MHz! I'll never hit that though cause the rest of the system won't handle it. Supposedly they come out with one core, downscale the multiplier, and sell the slower chips to us cheap people who think it is perfectly adequate. Then in a month, they open up the multiplier, come out with the new faster chip, and put a huge price tag on it. So my 3000+ is the same as a 3500+ with a different multiplier and price tag. That is where overclocking comes in. Depends on what you can live with and what you need.
Watch out with the cheap memory ($88 for 1 gig). I did the same thing with Corsair's Value Select and from what I am told, that is my main issue holding back how much I can oc. Memory cooling kit? Sounds like you want to oc. Get different memory if you want to get extreme. Otherwise the cooling kit won't do you much good. I have two thermostats in my case, one taped to the processor and one to the memory. Oc'd to 2.25 and no memory heat increase at all. This is without any dividers so the memory speed increased also. As far as a different heat sink, how far do you want to go? Mine is with stock cooling and only 5 degree increase. Case fans seem to help a lot. I've boosted my computer's speed by 25% with stock cooling...

Chase mc,
Looks pretty good. You are around $900, and mine was $1000. You got better memory, and a 3500+. Not to shabby. Hooked mine up to a 57 inch widescreen hdtv. Looks great as far as graphics and gaming goes, but surfing the web and normal stuff, not so good. Then you start playing with font size and such...

Hope I answered some of your questions. And if I said something totally wrong, someone please let me know. I don't want to give any bad info...

Later,
Joe

 

Always forget something...
My video card was only $170 on sale at Circuit City. Shop around. $400 for a video card seems somewhat excessive to me. But that's just me...

Later

 

That ASUS A8N-SLI sounds like a great mobo - I've been over to the OC forum and some of the things that you can do is just amazing. I have picked three video cards and need some instruction as to how to pick one or rather what am I looking for in a video card. The powercolor memory clock is 592mhz and the core clock is 325mhz - I would think that this bd would be faster than the other two. But being the least expensive what features is it missing? TIA

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...82E16814130227,N82E16814123144&SubCategory=48

 

is the SLI board really any better then the one i mentione other then the SLI technology?

 

merlin112
What is a kvm switch? And im going to put in a bigger hard drive for more room i've seen some fairly good priced ones.
Internal hard drives(external cost heaps).

Maxtor Diamondmax 10 200GB PATA $149 AU OR
Maxtor Diamondmax 10 160GB SATA $139 AU

What do u think?

 

Merlin or anyone with monitor/tv knowledge. I spend about 300 bucks on a panisonic 27" flatscreen. i hook it up to my laptop(current pc)and games look good but text sucks the ass i cant do nothing on it. is there a way to make it look better?. or does anyone know if i bought a 19-24 lcd monitor would that monitor look good for tv. i only have room for one of them. i cant help but think i screwed myself over by not thinking of this problem earlier. pls some one help me. TY in advance.

 

Check out this link for the SLI board vs. a cheaper non-SLI:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...mpareItemList=N82E16813131530,N82E16813131524
Some differences and only a few bucks to have the ability to run dual video cards in the future if you want.

A kvm switch is a keyboard, video, mouse switch that sits on the desktop usually and allows you to control two computers with one monitor, keyboard, and mouse.

Here is the 80 gig hard drive that I got from Newegg, and I'm happy with it...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822135106

For the tv question, I hooked mine up to a 57 inch wide screen and the video is awesome. The normal windows and internet suck. I played with fonts and stuff and got it to look a little better, ex: I can read it. My buddy told me that's the way it is. The only thing I've seen to contradict that point is someone who had their pc hooked up to a 42 inch plazma, which can get kind of pricey.

Later,
Joe

 

thanks for tha info.

 

No problem.

 

the thing with SLI is that id need to rebuild again before i would need 512mb of video

 

Probably true, but I figure that if AMD stays with socket 939, a cpu upgrade down the road won't be out of the question. I heard that s939 is gonna be here for a while. In computer talk, that may be only a few months, though. We'll have to wait and see.

 

Hey when i get the money is this all i need to buy: Ne extras?

MOBO
CPU
Case
PSU
Graphics Card
Sound Card
Memory
HDD