f13.net

This is what I'm looking at right now.  First build (although added peripherals and things like RAM in the past).  I actually don't play much in the way of "games" any more so this box will mainly be used for playing poker with all sorts of database apps running at the smae time (and need it to be able to dual/multi-monitor when I get up to that).

Anyways, here it is. Any comments appreciated:


KINGWIN MTX425SW Silver/Gray Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 420W Power Supply - Retail
Model #:  MTX425SW

SOLTEK SL-K890Pro-939 Socket 939 VIA K8T890 ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail
Model #:  SL-K890Pro-939

PNY VCG6600GXPB Geforce 6600GT 128MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail
Model #:  VCG6600GXPB

AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Winchester Integrated into Chip FSB Socket 939 Processor Model ADA3200BIBOX - Retail
Model #:  ADA3200BIBOX

CORSAIR ValueSelect 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered Dual Channel Kit System Memory Model VS1GBKIT400 - Retail
Model #:  VS1GBKIT400

SAMSUNG Black 1.44MB 3.5" Internal Floppy Drive Windows 98SE/ ME/ 2000/ XP - OEM
Model #:  SFD321B/LBL1

Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 SATA NCQ ST3160827AS 160GB 7200 RPM Serial ATA150 Hard Drive - OEM
Model #:  ST3160827AS

NEC Black IDE DVD Burner Model ND-3540A - OEM
Model #:  ND-3540A Black

Microsoft Windows XP HOME Edition With Service Pack 2 - OEM
Model #:  N09-01152

Cost before shipping, etc.:  845.92

Dell has their 19inch LCDs for $211 (http://www.techbargains.com/dellcoupons.cfm) right now.

I'm a bit out of date on my hardware these lately, but nothing there looks too odd to me.  I prefer XP Pro to XP Home, myself.  What do you have for a UPS to protect that new box?

That looks like a solid system.  All I can suggest is maybe spend an extra ten bucks on one of these (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16821104104) for all the flash memory connections.  And I don't typically trust the no name power supplies that come with some cases,  I would buy a seperate psu from a good brand.

Oh, and before installing the hard drives and Windows I would update your bios with the latest version.

XP Pro.

That is all.

  If you're not completely set on building one yourself, almost the exact same CPU you're building is on sale at Best Buy for $449, with a monitor included; http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=7292921&type=product&id=1118840994749

  The differences seem to be, 512meg less ram, and the ATI card instead of GeForce.  I'd imagine you can upgrade both and be under your cost before shipping in your example, and get a free monitor/kb/mouse in the deal, with none of the "fuck i fried the mb" issues you're potentially facing.

  I know eMachines is the AMD branch of Gateway, so the company is reliable.

  It is back-to-school season after all, you can probably snag a pretty sweet deal if you don't have your heart set on building it all yourself.  The catch seems to be they're just not going to let you order it online, and you'll have to visit a local BB to grab one.

  Normally I build my comps myself, but I never upgrade as much as you're doing at one shot, so for me it saves money.  Using same dvd-rom, dvd-burner, video cards, soundcards, network cards, hard drives, case/ps etc, though the switch to PCIe did force me to spend a lot more this year than I normally do.

  Just something to think about

Hmmm.  I usually don't like buying comps from national companies (last few have been a local company and I like their machines but can build one at 2/3 the price that they will).  I usually want the option to upgrade and I know they have a lot of integrated stuff.

Anyone have any history with eMachines? 

I don't need the monitor (just got a Dell 2001fp 20.1" which is  :heart:. I wonder if they would up the RAM to a gig or 1.5 gigs if I dropped the monitor.

eMachines used to be trash. Now it's not.

You're absolutely fine buying the eMachine. They probably won't upgrade if you drop the monitor, it's a package deal, but if you bitch and moan enough they might drop the price $50 or something.

Don't make the same mistake I did. I ordered 3 sticks of 512MB with my new computer I ordered from ABS a while back. I didn't know anything about RAM and the sales guy I talked to apparently didnt either or didnt care. After running some tests I found out my PC ran faster with 2 sticks of 512MB than with the 3 sticks. Something to do with "dual-channel" memory. I don't know too much about it but something you might want to look into.

I did recently upgrade to 2 1GB sticks and its definitely worth it.

Why?  I thought that the advantages XP Pro had over home were things that you would only use in a big office corporate environment - fancy networking tools and user profiles and stuff like that.  Why would you choose Pro for a Home machine?

(and I'm not being sarky - I'm honestly curious about why youd pick Pro for a home machine).

Well, I don't know Exactly how Ab is goin to be using his machine, but in short:

Pro is better for networking, especially for browsing other drives on the network.

Pro is more stable.

Pro is more customizable.

Pro is more secure.

Pro is more stable, more stable, more stable.

I fucking hate using machines with Home, but that's just me.

Wrong, wrong, true theortically but not in practice, and wrong/wrong/wrong. :-D

The kernel and core of XP Home is identical to XP Pro -- there is no difference in stability between identical XP Home and XP Pro setups. Here's a summary of differences between XP Home and XP Pro:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/home/howtobuy/choosing2.mspx

If you have more than one PC at home I would recommend getting XP Pro just for the Remote Desktop feature unless you already have a similar program like pcAnywhere. If it's going to be your only PC then it's sort of a tossup unless you are planning on getting a dual core CPU in the future in which case you'll need XP Pro.

Lies I tell you, LIES!

I use to get crashes here and there with Home, but have never had a system crash with Pro.

Not a single one*.




*Programs can crash sometimes, due to bugs. I'm not counting those.

Do not argue with Trippy. I didn't know until now, but he is an Ent.

He's right though. XP Pro merely adds surface features. Same OS otherwise.

Well, I sure as hell know that I am not imagining that I couldn't do LAN games using Home, or that my system runs better overall with Pro.

That case uses 80 mm fans which are noiser than 120 mm ones so if noise is an issue that may be a problem. Also most of the power supplies in lower end cases aren't that good. It should be good enough to power what you've selected but you may have problems in the future if you want to add other stuff (another HD, more RAM, a more powerful video card, etc.).

The chipset on that motherboard is one of the older ones for the Athlon 64. You can read a comparison of the various chipsets here:

http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q2/a64-chipsets/index.x?pg=1

If the database applications you are running are doing a lot of transactions per second you may want to consider getting a motherboard that supports NCQ to go along with your NCQ-enabled hard drive:

http://techreport.com/reviews/2004q4/seagate-7200.7ncq/index.x?pg=1

You should try to get the Venice version of this chip, model# ADA3200BPBOX, if it's roughly the same price. You won't get any performance improvement but its the latest revision (rev E) which is (usually) a good thing.

If you can afford it I would recommend getting 2 GB of RAM since among other things you will be running database applications.

Part of growing up should be stopping to argue against facts with personal experience.

(considering the number of closeminded old people I know, this isn't true... but there's still hope for you)

I'm old but not *that* old.

Oh, I don't mean you're "old" old  :-). You're wise man, just wise.

Id go for a different MB, any of the DFIs in your price range ? Dont get a Winchester, get a Venice or San Diego with SSE3 etc.

Whats the make of the PSU in the case? No point in building a nice pc with a cheap power supply, they are more important than you would think.

What does 850 get you at dell ?

I use XP Pro on my home rig and on my corp laptop.  Something went flaky with my corp laptop and I kept getting discoed from the LAN.  Three different locations, one in a different building across the street, invalidating cables or switches as suspects.  I did not get a disco at home, though, tunnelling through a VLAN.  The thing that finally fixed it was a new disk with a new OS image.  I would guess that I made a bad registry change somewhere, but I'm an AIX specialist, not DOS.

There you have a personal anecdote which counters other personal anecdotes that Pro is more stable.  There are too many things that can go wrong in a modern OS, so while we know something is wrong in both these cases, we can't say what it is.  Not without hardcore forensics, but who does that?

Looks good, but I highly recommend the following changes:

- ASUS "deluxe" socket 939 motherboard.  There are a couple to choose from and neither is much more expensive.  You'll appreciate the reliability and extra features down the road.

- Get yourself a Zalman "flower" style CPU cooler.  These things are super duper quiet and well worth the $30 or so.

- Make sure the power supply is a good quality one.  I prefer Seasonic myself but there are many good ones out there.  Don't settle for a cheapy that comes with a case.

Overall though, this will be a kick ass system that I'm sure you'll be very happy with for years to come.

I too am a tech noob who just did a similar system build.

I'll also jump on the 'go for 2Gb memory' bandwagon - lots of small speed improvements that make life easier.  If you don't feel the need, I'd go 1x1gb stick instead of 2x512Mb just for the flexibility in future upgrades.  The ASUS m'board I went with could do 1 stick, 2 matched sticks, or 4 matched sticks (my not knowing this is more than likely my noobishness but I'm glad I went 2 sticks).

Looking to build a new box, soon.  I've heard a few good comments on the ASUS board you mentioned.  Care to expand on anything you've personally experienced?

As part of my job, I get to play network admin for a large development group.  I know we should have lots of evidence sheets, but all I know is everytime someone brings me a XP Home build to configure for X development environment I run into many many conflicts, especially on anything to do with stack interaction.  Personally, I'd alway blow the extra $40 on XP Pro for less headaches.

Again, personal experience, but neither I, nor anyone I know, have ever had problems with an Asus board.

I've heard nothing but good things about ASUS boards.
My next will be an ASUS - I used to go for MSI and has always had great experiences... untill I stumbled over a $150 Zalman watercooling system, that I can't install on my current system, because my MSI (AMD Athlon) board doesn't have the four holes for CPU coolers that every other fucking manufacturer use. Bastards.

I've just tested the NEC 3540 and it's the fastest around, but it did have trouble with burning some 8x Verbatim dvd's at more than half speed. I used to have the NEC 2500 and that had trouble reading disk I'd burned with the same drive, so besides the high speeds (that only expensive media supports anyway), I'm wary of NEC.
Plextor has a new drive, that's almost as fast and very reliable - the NEC 2500 was exchanged for the earlier Plextor 712A which has none of the toubles experienced with the NEC... and it's quiter too.

Plextor's are great. I use a SONY DRU-500A that works well and I have it connected to two computers at once (has 2 firewire and one USB2.0), it's good stuff.

I use a Pioneer slot-load DVD drive, and a Samsung burner.

Have had problems with neither drive.

You'll won't get the dual channel performance improvement if you start with a single stick.

ASUS Deluxe suck.
That comes from my very own experience.
It have loads of extra bling,  but core functionality suck. BSOD, mysterious hdd detection problems and PC restarts, etc...

Unfortunately for you I deleted all links about this board when I got rid of it, so you'll have to google for it yourself.
You'll be amazed by results...

About 6 or so years ago I wasn't brand loyal with motherboards and experimented with a variety of brands ranging from ABIT and Shuttle to really cheap ones that I can't even remember at the moment.  During this period I spent much time on hardware message boards trying to get to the bottom of oddball problems.  AGP voltage issues, random reboots, crappy BIOSs, you name it.  It was during this time that I noticed many folks recommending ASUS boards so I tried one and have never looked back.  I build a new machine for home about once every year and a half and average about 5 builds a year at work.  Since I've switched to ASUS I've not had to return a single board or replace a bad one down the road.  That is my experience so I'm sticking with what works for me.

Concerning chipsets, you'll find the hardware community rather split on which is better, VIA or nVidia's nForce.  Right now my main home machine is using the VIA based A8V Deluxe (http://www.newegg.com/OldVersion/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-131-510&depa=0).  Last month I build a Windows 2003 Server 64bit Edition box at work using the non-deluxe version of this same board.  I could not be happier with either machine.  I've had both nForce and VIA over the years and occasionally one or the other will have a better set of drivers or be a tad more stable under certain conditions but at the present, I would not turn around for the difference.

You'll be hard pressed to find better features on a motherboard than the ASUS Deluxe.  The onboard surround sound has suited me well for gaming and music (I'm running the 3 piece Klipsh speaker set), at least one gigabit ethernet port (sometimes two depending on the model), dual channel memory slots, fully overclockable bios (although I never use that), and more recently Cool and Quiet technology.  Cool and Quiet, when activiated, will run your 2000 mhz processor at around 700mhz when idle and instantly ramp it up to full power in less than a second when it needs to.  This has a noticable effect on cpu and motherboard temps and saves energy.

So for a little over $100 at newegg, I can't find a better board for the money and based on my personal experience and the reviews I've read, I'll be sticking with ASUS until they give me a reason not to.

I have always liked XP Pro much more than XP Home. Might just be me, but I have found Pro to be MUCH MUCH more stable. Althought that could have been fixed. Its been a long time since I used Home edition.

Why are you putting together your own computer?  You're a lawyer, no?  Can't you just bill someone for a couple extra hours and buy one of those fancy shmancy alienware kits for like 5K? 

Or whatnot?

Heat.  Asus boards are really really sickened by the heat.  Mine was going very strange until I stuck more fans on and now it's a dream.  Unfortunately, it's a noisy jet engine motherfucker of a dream.

Using 120mm fans and a Zalmon flower cooler you can make them virtually silent.  See http://silentpcreview.com/ (http://silentpcreview.com/) for more silent tips.

Anandtech as their top choice recommends the DFI LANPARTY UT nF4 SLI-DR (http://www.anandtech.com/guides/showdoc.aspx?i=2426&p=2).  They cite a list of around $177; mwave's current price is $176 (http://www.mwave.com/mwave/viewspec.hmx?scriteria=BA21277).  This board gives you a clear upgrade path of both cpu and video for years to come.

I recently picked this up with the San Diego AMD 64 4000.

I have a Asus A8N deluxe NForce 4 SLI

A good board, but a couple of problems. The northbridge cooler fan runs at 8500 RPM. Its a harrier jump jet in disguise. The new model of my board uses some form of water/liquid metal cooling heatpipe thing instead.

BIOS updates arent brilliant. Updates can bring more issues. It doesnt like my memory, i can get the odd error. It took a while to find the right timings, voltage etc. The very latest mem modules can be problematic, mine wont reboot occasionally. My m8 had the same probs with his DFI, he couldnt get the 1gb of CAS 2 dual channel mem to run until installing 512, doing update of BIOS, some fiddling, then installing 1gb, then more fiddling.

This is why I am usually not an early adopter of top-end hardware.

You guys inspired me.  After about two years with the same components I've started swapping things out.  Finally getting a DVD RW, a UPS, wireless keyboard & mouse, and most importantly 2 gigs of ram and a Zalman flower cooler.  The Zalman is crucial because lately my CPU has been overheating at irregular times so I think the fan I have isn't blowing as much air as it should.

About the RAM, for some reason I always seem to buy ram at the ~200 price point.  I remember back to early 90's and picking up 4 megs for my 486SX for 180ish and as far as I can recall it always seems that when the next gen requirements hit $200 is when I'm looking at picking some up.  Either thats really clever on the part of the RAM manufacturers or there is a natural market there that should be exploited.

One good thing about my piece-meal approach to system building (My 1.44 floppy is more than 12 years old) is that it never costs a huge amount to get back into the upper edges of gaming goodness and at the same time I'm never too far behind the curve.

Next month?  new socket 939 MB, new processor and probably an Ati X800

I'm stalling right now.  Maybe I can hold off until 64-bit is a good idea.

I'm still having driver issues with x64 over the NVidia board/video.  I've stripped down to just the basics but the system still locks up when it has been running for awhile (say 14+ hours).  I can't start WoW more than once in a row without locking up either.  I started having problems after installing the NEForce drivers for x64 but that was the only way to get the onboard audio going.

I ran NTune but that was a bad idea so I reset the bios cmos to "optimized defaults".  System ran way too hot for my tastes.

So yeah while there may be user stupidity on my part I'd say x64 is not entirely stable yet.

The current Maximum PC has a pretty nifty system. Dual dual-core procs, each dual proc gets it's own bank of dual-channel RAM, plus SLI? I think I wet myself, and it's rare for me to drool over tech stuff these days.

Of course, the dual gpus alone cost $1200...

On ASUS - I used to be an Abit man, but after two boards died in a row on me, I was in the market for something new. There still aren't many good alternatives to my ASUS A7N8X-Deluxe. Hardware onboard DD5.1 ftw, in a big way. I'm a big fan of ASUS...going by that one product, anyway.

I have that exact same board.

It's a winner.

Same here. No problems for me. I'll probably stick with Asus from now on.

What's the best way to get a Maximum PC, and PC Gamer subscription?

Maybe soon the winds will shift.

But go with the DFI board.

Note for the uninitiated - Zalmann 90 mm Flower Cooler will not fit in the highly popular Abit NF7 V2 board.  There happens to be a capacitor right under where the end of a bolt down retaining clip goes.

Taking my MB apart though let me see how clogged my previous fan/heatsink was with dirt and after a good cleaning it seems to be working fine again.  I guess I'll hang onto the Zalmann untill I get a new MB, which will be fairly soon.

Edit:  I have a question, what would be the preferable setup?

2 gigs of DDR ram (400 mhz but the processor is 333) matched one gig sticks OR

2 gigs DDR 400 plus 512MB PC2700 (333mhz)?  Is the extra 512MB of addresses worth the loss of the bidirectional data flow?

As pertains to gaming of course.  I'm sure a few tests with a benchmark will net me the answer but I don't want to spend half a day benchmarking and swapping crap.

Actually I guess the answer depends mostly on how much the VMM is swapping crap out to disk during any particular session.  Basically if there is any writing to the swap file you would want to increase the RAM size.  Otherwise speed of transfer would be the critical point.

Go to their websites?

I have a sub to both, but I donated it to the library because I read them so fast. Might as well benefit the entire community, and I still get to read them on break. Win/win.

The new MaxPC also has a nice cpu hs/fan roundup, I like the new design they are going to, with the fan blowing out the rear outflow direction, rather than against the side of the case.
I wouldn't do it. You've already got 2GB, fer crissake ;) Remember, you'll also be slowing that PC3200 down to 333 to match the PC2700 speeds, in addition to losing the dual-channel setup (you don't lose bidirection, they're both DDR).

With 2GB RAM, couldn't you turn off VM entirely?

I'm still thinking about the two banks of 4GB in that MaxPC rig. Hoo boy.

Bidirectional data flow? It would be bad if data to or from your RAM only went in one direction. :-D

For Athlon XPs dual channel memory makes a big difference in performance. I would not recommend giving that up unless you really really need that extra 512 MB RAM. On Athlon 64s dual channel memory only gives a small improvement in performance so it's not as crucial.

Edit: fixed typo

Bidriectional = 2 channels = can send and recieve on one clock rise or fall.  I have actually designed DRAM at the MOSFET level (for a college course) not Dual Channel but still, I'm not clueless.

Yeesh, you youngins and your newfangled technologies. Back in my day "bidirectional" referred to the directionality of the data bus and we put diodes in our RAM to make sure you couldn't read and write at the same time. And we liked it that way!

I'm going to try it and find out :)

Win 98 (2k also?) had a problem of not freeing memory after a program terminated.  I think I recall they fixed that though.  If not I will find out fairly soon...

Win 9x has a different architecture from 2k/XP.  Memory management is vastly superior in the 2k architecture than it ever was in 9x.  In 9x, you pretty much had to reboot if an app had a memory leak.  Not really the case in 2k, but it can still occur.  There is a multi-process (200+ processes) enterprise app that I maintain (2k), and I've yet to see noticable memory issues at the OS level.  On occation one of the processes on the app will go off the deep end, but I just kill it without problems, and it hums right along.  I know the OS isn't bullet proof, but it's pretty damn resilient.  My laptop (XP) has crashed maybe twice, and hasn't had memory issues either, in years of using it.  Same thing - I can trash misbehaving processes without incident, and have yet to see memory leaks that persist outside the app. 

My favorite OS for memory management:  Mac OS9 (and probably the earlier versions, but I started on OS9 here)

In other words, NO memory management.

I still liked Classic Mac OS though. Hell, I've still got a machine running ProTools with it (and ProTools is all it runs, so the memory issues aren't as bad as they could be).

Yeah, it's actually pretty nice for some things, and runs good on the old hardware.

I was hired with zero experience on macs, and at the time I think there was 3 pcs in the entire place :) Crash course in Mac OS9, which was pretty easy to maintain...but I was shocked when I learned about how it (doesn't) manage memory, and the funky way you allocate how much memory each program reserves...odd stuff.

I like OSX just fine these days.

My favorite thing about Mac Classics was how when you networked them, you could freeze every machine on the network by holding down your mouse button.

The Asus board mentioned is very nice (and no, it's not that hot, the fan is just overzealous, but you can tone that down in the BIOS as long as you run two 120mm fans in the case).  BUT, and I say this emphatically, BUT, don't try to run it out of the box with a Plextor 716A DVD RW.  It has known compatability issues.

There's a patch on the ASUS site for their BIOS which fixes it, so just be sure if you want to do that, start with another drive, update BIOS, THEN install the Plextor...I ran around in circles for a couple hours when I built my current machine (which ROCKS now btw, definitely go with dual channel if you can, even with the 64-bit processor, it's a boost in performance).

Update 2 gigs is :heart:

If you have the means I highly recommend it.

Save Ferris!