The Official PC building thread!

poopsquaw ,about that Zalman 9500 cooler for your cpu, make sure you mount it on the cpu carefully (air blowing to the back) using "Aritic Silver" thermal paste ,connect it dirctly to the mobo and dont use the speed control fan that comes with it

 

wild77 ,looks like we have almost the same build . did you have any over heating problems with that case? i did and had to redo the fans being the back fan was pulling the air in and the Zalman 9500 blowing the air towards the back of the case it just didnt work so i flipped the rear fan around to blow the air out along with the Zalman blowing the air out seem to solve my problems.and i did add a video card cooler also. hows yours setup? heres my pc specs.

[bold]Lian-Li V1000 Full Tower/Antec-TruePower550-Watt/ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe MB Socket 939/ Seagate160GB Barracuda/ Westeren Digital Raptor 150 GB Sata/NVIDIA Geforce-7800 GTX KO ACS-3 Edition/ CORSAIR XMS 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR SDRAM Unbuffered DDR 433(PC 3500)/AMD Opteron 175 Demark Dual Core/Zalman CNPS-9500 LED Cooler/2-Plextor PX-716A Drives/Lite-On SHW-160P6S/View Sonic-VP2030b 20.1"LCD 1600x1200 res.8ms Respone Time[/bold]

 

an X2 4600+? Seems a bit of a weird choice, but oh well, suppose I'm in the same league there! Nice powerful and smooth, but probably quite hot. How cool does it run?

 

but neph, the 4600 has 1mb cache, instead of the 512 of the 4200. but that still is an amazingly fast cpu and i hope i can do the same with my next build.

 

nope, u are right on the money Neph...only the 4400+ & the 4800+ of the x2 series have the 2x1mb L2 cache; and naturally the high end FX series (ie. fx-60 & fx-62) being dual core also have the 2x1mb L2 cache as well~

ALL the remaining x2 series have the 2x512kb L2 cache~

it's all about keeping the information ACCURATE~

docTY

 

Ken add the AMD Opteron 175 in your list too lol!! (which i have) and BTW i have my system running much cooler to the tune of about 12 to 15 degrees cooler with a different fan setup and a videocard cooler

 

yes i did Nephilim , it did the trick ,thanks for the tip

 

yep the 4600 has 2x512K like the 4200, totalling 1MB. the 4400 and 4800 have 2x1MB.

 

sorry.. .i guess i was mistaken. i thought that all hte processors from 4400+ on had 1mb cache. my mistake

 

nope.
As far as I was aware
3800, 4200, 4600, 5000: 2x512K (1MB)
4000, 4400, 4800, FX-60, FX-62: 2x1MB (2MB)

 

@aabbccdd

good to hear you got ur temps down now let's start OC'in hehehe

anyways, yeah, i wasn't referring to the opterons, i was speaking only on the X2 series and the L2 caches~ sammorris got it down with his chart in the post right above mine (this post) here...

have a good one

docTY

 

Yeah, and now I have another chart to memorise with Conroe, fun fun fun!

 

I need a little guidance.

I am trying to build a new machine. (I currently have AMD Athelon 1800).

So far I have decided on:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Windsor 2000MHz HT 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM2 Dual Core Processor

ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe Socket AM2 NVIDIA nForce 570 SLI MCP ATX AMD Motherboard

CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM Unbuffered DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit System Memory

Right move so far???

Questions:
1) What power supply do I need?
2) What video card do I go with? I play some games on my PC, but the majority of the time the PC is not used for games. My old PC had an ATI All-In-Wonder Card and I got used to having a TV on my PC so I would like that feature as well.
3) Will I be able to internally hook up 4 HD's, 1 CD burner and 1 DVD burner to this PC?
4) I want to run the new Vista O/S next year. Should I be covered with the current specs of this machine?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

 

I was going to go all dvd drives in till I ran into [granted the drives I have now are low end]a CD [FarCry] that would not pay on my sony single layer burner or my sony dual layer burner... is there any suggestions on why I need a CD reader/burner... could I not use all DVD burners, granted that they are good one, which Ill soon have/

 

PvtJoker: Yeah, XMS2 RAM, an Asus board and an X2 is pretty much the choice for power PCs at the moment,until we see some availability from Intel's Conroe.
1. Depending what video you have, but I'd recommend http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817128002
These things are fantastic.
2.Depends what those "some games" are, if they happen to be strenous games (FEAR, Eleder Scrolls Oblivion, Age of Empires 3, Black& White 2), then you'd need a good graphics card, but if you only casually play older/simpler titles, then you won't need much. If you want good TV features, All-In-Wonder is THE way to go, so I'd recommend an X1800 All-In-Wonder for theheavy-games scenario and an X800 All-In-Wonder for the lighter scenario.

X1900: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102685R

X800 (2006): http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102661

herrick: no CDs should not play on a DVD drive, it's a bad CD or you just don't have good luck with your drives, I don't use Sonydrives anyway because they are just slower Lite-on clones.

 

I was going to use Sony Drives in my new build. What drives would you reccomend then?

 

LG, NEC, Plextor and Samsung are all very good. Of late people have raved about very high burn quality benchmark results of BenQ/Acer drives, but after having two that both failed within a month they're no longer a company I use!