The Official PC building thread!

Forumcrew,

I like the A8N-SLI mobo. Great oc'ing features. The value select is perfectly fine with me for now. It might be the reason why I can't get the processor over 2.25 gig, but I haven't really spent the time with it. Plus it's fast enough for now. The 3200 would have been a better choice for me cause it has a multiplier of 10 where mine is 9. My psu is holding up to the stress of the oc and it came with the case. If you want to be sure, get another to be safe. For the dvd drive, the NEC 3520a is a great burner. You just have to go to cdfreaks and get the hacked firmware for faster read speeds. It was only $50. I got most everything from Newegg.com. No fan or heatsink upgrades here, and the 3000+ stays around 40ish while gaming or video processing. My case has 6 fans. Get some Arctic Silver paste and scrape the existing stuff off the processor before you put it together. That's one thing I wish I would've done. Don't know anything about the video card you listed, but mine works great and I got it at Circuit City for $170.

Good luck,
Joe

 

Hi Im looking to build a pc by the end of the summer and I have did some research and have to decide to go athlon 64 dont know which one though
if someone could give me some help on what to buy for my new pc it would be greatly appreciated. My budget is somewhere around 1700$ usd. will be mostly used for gaming. also where to buy online and ships to canada

 

kelowna bc

 

If your RAM question didn't get answered... Put a matching pair in DIMM slot 1 and DIMM slot 3. The if you have more put the next matching pair in DIMM slot 2 and DIMM slot 4. Rather than mess with colors just go by the slot names and manual.

 

thanx ddp
I was also wondering if i should get a 6800 gt or ultra is the gt better if i oc it or what. also what type of ram as in brand and type. i know pc3200 but thats about it

 

Asus A8N-SLI premium.... PC3200? Sigh... I need DDR2 800 ECC support before my Athlon 64 4800+ X2 Dual core and twin 7800 GTX OC cards touch down.

Oh yeah, I forgot, Koolance liquid cooling, then OC the hell out of everything. But still we needs DDR2 800 on a board like this.

 

You're going to town with that aren't you?

 

I would if AMD had DDR2 support. See, Intel has it's memory controllers on the chipset, but AMD has memory controllers right in the processor.

So literally, the AMD Athlon 64 4800+ X2 CPU itself is not compatible. And the same goes for every other AMD CPU.

For AMD to make the switch to DDR2, it has to launch an entirely different line of CPUs, or completely revamt the current ones, and inform people the new ones aren't DDR compatible.

AMD says that because of it's design, the CPUs don't need to support DDR2 to be competitive with intels speeds. And yes this is very true, but I am not stupid enough to invest on a $1000 CPU when it doesn't support at least 667MHz memory if not DDR2-800.

I feel sorry for those who spend that much only to run PC3200, lol, their stupid mistake. In a year you'll have an even faster dual core CPU with DDR2-800.

But yes, that is my plan. Dual core AMD, with SLI config of nVidia's latest and greatest, which might not be the 7800 in a year. Plus DDR2-800. You have to have every piece of the puzzle to build a truely powerful computer that even Alienware can't touch.

DDR2 is a big one if you want to keep up for a number of years without selling it off and buying a new one that will have DDR2 just to be competitive.

 

My ideal system as thing stand at the moment would be:

FX-57
2GB PC3200DC (2gb is max for xp x64 isn't it? If not 4GB)
as ridiculously many disk drives raided as possible
512MB ATi Crossfire Array
the monitor i already have
the case i already have
LG Supermulti drive
(which i should be acquiring soon)

 

The 512MB cards actually perform less than a good nVidia 6800.

http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,121414,00.asp

A 6800 or 7800 is your best bet, because GDDR3 memory is so fast either way, 512MB, at this point is half-baked and unnecessary.

64-bit operateing systems can address (theoretically) 128GB, that is a little bit extreme, but displays the point that 32-bit was limited to 4GB addressing and now 64-bit systems can address many many more times that.

2GB is probally a minimum for a good system, and PC3200 is as fast as AMD can work with. (Wait for a dual core CPU with DDR2 support)

Windows x64 is half-baked as well. driver support is low and it is a very good OS to stay away from unless you have a business purpose for it. Wait for Windows Longhorn (Windows Vista officially) in 2006.

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,120913,00.asp

If you are building a dream system you might as well go for liquid cooling.

Just my suggestions

 

by 512 i meant 256+256, an X850XT and an X850CE. None of this 512MB X800XL rubbish, and i hear the XL outperforms the standard on many occasions (256 anyway), dunno who's sources are right...

 

FPS specs from a reputable PC magazine are more trusted by me than backwaters game testers and enthusiats that have their own website they manage in between shifts at Mcdonalds, lol...

nVidia has thus far bested ATI in overall card and SLi performance, but it's your choice to go with them.

 

maybe so, i don't disagree, but Crossfire has yet to really get going, SLi has been out and been refined to get the best, Crossfire is still whatever the hardware equivalent of 'beta' is...

 

????????? 6800's and 7800's use SLi... SLi is proven. That's more support for nVidia. Crossfire is ATi's knockoff.

I must not have got what you were getting at, because it sounded like you thought Crossfire was nVidia's, because its ATI's. I just must have misunderstood...

 

no no no, i know Crossfire is ATi and SLI nvidia, wow i get that much!!

What im saying is crossfire is coming out later than sli, and since sli has been out for a while all the kinks have gone to get it running top, Crossfire is a bit late and this we don't know what it can really do just yet...

 

The thing with Sli is you need 2 Sli cards but with crossfire you only need 1 crossfire enabled card, so if you have say a 850xt already then all you need to buy is an appropriate mobo and the crosfire enabled 850xt hook them up via the DVi pass through cable and off you go ..... so in the long run it could work out to be more cost effective

 

Precisely, and that's why i think it's the better deal, well one of the reasons...