April Computer Build Thread

[Furiously]

G.Skill is decent, I've stuck with cosair just for their awesome warranty service.

Make sure you register your EVGA card, then 60 days from now, look at your wallet and upgrade to the top of the line card. Through their step-up program.

Ok - here's my question of the day, 8800GT's vs. 8800GTS/X's.   They look pretty similar to me stat wise, but the 8800GT's look like they vent inside the case where the 8800GT?'s vent to the outside. There are also 2 versions of the 8800GTS/X chip?

[Mrbloodworth]

G.Skill is decent, I've stuck with cosair just for their awesome warranty service.

Make sure you register your EVGA card, then 60 days from now, look at your wallet and upgrade to the top of the line card. Through their step-up program.

Yeah, thanks for the heads up, this weekend is when i do all the paperwork (rebates and what not), thanks for the heads up on that program, ill look into it.

Some parts are definitely slated for an upgrade in the near feature (Power supply, came with the case, Im using my old Hard drive, ETC..).

After all that and you buy a 19 inch widescreen? Why not a bit more for a 22 or some such? Seems a waste after building such a nice rig.

Otherwise, seems like a good economic buy. Not sure about the memory, tho. Not heard of the brand and I tend to shy away from any but the 'big three', crucial, corsair and kingston.

Simple, my old (21 inch)CRT is going fuzzy, and i needed something now, that fit in my target budget. I really tried to put the money where it mattered.

[Trippy]

Ok - here's my question of the day, 8800GT's vs. 8800GTS/X's.   They look pretty similar to me stat wise, but the 8800GT's look like they vent inside the case where the 8800GT?'s vent to the outside. There are also 2 versions of the 8800GTS/X chip?

For the 8800 GTS you want the 512 MB version (the G92 version) *NOT* the 640 MB version. There are 8800 GTs that have the cooler that vents to the outside (and fills up an extra slot space).

[Mrbloodworth]

I do have a question, maybe someone can recommend a low cost, Fast, decent sized hard drive. Really looking for fast (i am Not sure how to tell how fast a hard drive is) to decrease load times. I am guessing some where in the 250gb or more storage range. I normally try to put my OS on a separate physical drive..so i may need 2, the OS one can be smaller.

[Engels]

hard drives, like everything else, can be two of three. good & fast, or decent & cheap, but normally not cheap & fast. Most hard drives rated at 7200 rpm are pretty much similar, unless you're being supah anal. The next step up is 10k rpm drives, which are pricy.

Brand wise, I'd stay with WD or Seagate. WD has improved quality of late, and they seem to be more silent than seagates, but it varies a lot. So read reviews on new egg.

[Trippy]

I do have a question, maybe someone can recommend a low cost, Fast, decent sized hard drive. Really looking for fast (i am Not sure how to tell how fast a hard drive is) to decrease load times. I am guessing some where in the 250gb or more storage range. I normally try to put my OS on a separate physical drive..so i may need 2, the OS one can be smaller.

It's not going to make that much of a difference unless you go for the new WD VelociRaptor (which doesn't meet your low cost criteria):

http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/14583/6

[Engels]

It might be worth it for some of us, once the Velociraptor is out, to get some regular raptors, since they're bound to drop in price after a spell. They are still pretty danged fast.

[Lantyssa]

I've found that I have little clue as to what would be a good motherboard these days.  I've had Abit, ECS, and FDS (current) in the past.  Other than the Abits being from the VP6 series with the leaky capacitors, they've all served my needs well enough.  (And ECS boards are awesomely purple.)

1) I have no interest in overclocking.
2) I'm looking at a Q9300 or Q6600 processor.  I'm favoring the Q9300 myself.  My roommate might go with a combo deal for a Q6600.  So a Socket 775 board.
3) I don't care about SLI.  Any graphics card will be an NVIDIA in the $150-$200 range most likely.
4) What's the difference between PCIe and PCIe16?
5) I'm happy in the sub-$100 range.  I'm okay with more with a very good reason.
6) DDR2-667 (or DDR2-533) memory seems to have a decent price point, so compatability with these would be good.
7) Should I bother with RAID?  I don't have a huge amount of data and I'm thinking I'll just get a spare disk and rsynch it once a week.
8) Anything I should be aware of that I don't have listed here?

So what boards should I consider?

[Engels]

Well, unfortunately, if you want the latest hawtness in motherboard chipsets, which are the x48 boards, then your price has to go up. If you're happy with the P35 chipset, which I think is a decent gaming chipset, this list I made may be of some help. It fits a few of your criteria:

Under 100
PCIExpress16 (the vid card slot, basically)
DDR2 memory standard

I would only look at three brands from that list; Intel, Asus and Gigabyte. Intel has the best documentation, since its an american company and has english speakers writing the manual, but once its up and running, all three are comparable in quality.

None of those have raid capability, btw. I don't really think you should bother unless you're into supah fast load times and/or redudancy, which from the sounds of it, you're not. Since you can, as you say, back up your data on a separate drive, there's no real need.

To address the issue between regular PCI Express and PCI Express 16, there was, when PCI Express first came out, two types, the ones that really did 16 bit and the ones that didn't, although they still supported 16 bit cards, just throttled down to 8 bit. Nobody but some anal freaks in a lab somewhere would have noticed the difference, however, since at the time there wasn't a way of taking advantage of the 16 bit bandwidth. Now, its a factor, to some degree, but I think most new motherboards are coming with PCIExpress 16 bit slots. There's a whole other issue about regular PCI slots being 16 bit or not, but I will let someone else talk about that, since from what I know, its not really important to most consumers if the PCI slots are 16 or 8 bit.

[Lantyssa]

Thanks.  I'll look over the list.

Well, unfortunately, if you want the latest hawtness in motherboard chipsets, which are the x48 boards, then your price has to go up. If you're happy with the P35 chipset, which I think is a decent gaming chipset, this list I made may be of some help. It fits a few of your criteria:

I don't know any of the chipsets, which is part of the problem.  There are a bazillion Intels, and a good number of SIS, VIA, and nVIDIA ones.  Variety is good until you haven't paid attention to motherboards in three years.

[Engels]

Well, basically, I stay away from VIA and SIS, simply because I've only found them on budget boards. I admit my ignorance as to specifically why they aren't good technically, and in fact I may be wrong in such speculation, but that's just been my experience. The two options you have are Nvidia and Intel chipsets, and Nvidia chipsets are notoriously unreliable, so I stay away from them, especially since, like you, I don't have much use for SLI. That pretty much leaves Intel chipsets, of which the P35 up till about, what, 3  months ago was the only game on the block for Intel gaming boxes.

[Lantyssa]

I'll probably lose geek cred, but I'm seriously thinking about this ECS P35T-A board.  NewEgg has its memory at 800 although it's really 800/667.

Now I know Trippy said memory speed doesn't need to match nowadays, but given prices are nearly identical for the two speeds, is it worth choosing 667MHz memory with a 1333MHz FSB given everything else is equal?  (And if it really doesn't matter, then I can keep my clock speed multiple superstitions.)

Not much has grabbed me in the under $100 price range.  I like heatpipes, but I'm not sure it's worth the large jump in cost for boards with them which I probably won't take full advantage of.  I'll keep looking at other options though.

[Engels]

If the price point isn't great, go for 800 rather than 667, but more importantly, don't cheap out on the brand. Crucial, Kingston, Corsair. Say it after me! Crucial. Kingston. Corsair. And then sometimes even Kingston can crap out.

[Lantyssa]

Yeah.  I always go with one of those three for memory.

[Trippy]

Ignore what Engels said about PCIe.

For the budget range the P35 chipset is an excellent choice (not so long ago it was actually Intel's "enthusiast" chipset). ECS is not a good brand, though. Something like this ASUS board would work:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131189

though people don't like the layout (the FDD connector is where the IDE connector should be).

You want DDR2-800 memory. Don't be misled by the fact that 667 MHz memory is evenly divisible into a 1333 MHz FSB.

Ignore RAID.

Getting back to your PCIe question, the "x" number (e.g. "x16") represents the number of data lanes that slot supports which determines that max bandwidth for that slot. The standard for video cards is x16 but other cards like a sound card or video capture card may only need an "x1" slot or an "x4" slot, etc. One confusing thing is that the physical size of the slot doesn't have to correspond to the number of data lanes it supports. E.g. you can have an x8 slot which supports a PCIe video card, and in fact many SLI/Crossfire boards have such a configuration -- one "true" x16 slot and one x8 slot for the second video card.

[Engels]

Lanes, Pins, Bits. Boils down to the same stuff :P

From the wiki:

The PCIe link is built around dedicated unidirectional couples of serial (1-bit), point-to-point connections known as "lanes".

[Kageru]

I've got the money for a complete system overhaul (since everything is now at least two generations obsolete) but I think I'm going to wait another month or two. There's a new motherboard chipset (P45,G45), new Nvidia card (9900GTX) and the price of the e8500 is still higher than its launch price due to limited stock. I believe all three are meant to hit in the next 2-3 months. I've already bought the case (SG-03) and fan (NT06-lite) since I had a friend at a computer store who would special order them in. No luck on the silverstone PP03 short cable kit. As far as I can see it simply isn't sold in Australia.

In the meantime I'm hunting for a box that can accept two drives (ideally easily swappable), manage RAID 0 over the two of them and present an eSATA interface to it. This way I could use hard drive pairs for cheap storage, power them down when I don't need the data and keep my actual desktop small form factor. Once again I'm pretty sure such devices exist (Such as the AMS DS-2340SES Venus) and will become more available now that eSATA is becoming common and hard-drives are so incredibly cheap... but they're still specialized and mixed in with all the 1-9K NAS drive boxes.

[Lantyssa]

For the budget range the P35 chipset is an excellent choice (not so long ago it was actually Intel's "enthusiast" chipset). ECS is not a good brand, though. Something like this ASUS board would work:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131189

though people don't like the layout (the FDD connector is where the IDE connector should be).

Time for a new mouse if I go with that [Note to self: you're upgrading, don't be so cheap.].  It mentions being able to take DDR2-1066 memory with some memory management program.  Is it safer to stick with DDR2-800 in that board?

[Trippy]

Time for a new mouse if I go with that [Note to self: you're upgrading, don't be so cheap.].  It mentions being able to take DDR2-1066 memory with some memory management program.  Is it safer to stick with DDR2-800 in that board?

Probably. I would have to look up what ASUS is doing to support DDR2-1066 but I would assume they aren't doing anything too funky if you wanted to try it. Though the speed up going to DDR2-1066 is pretty small (like 1% - 5% at best) assuming you are comparing identical timings between the DDR2-800 and 1066 RAM.

[Murgos]

The following is being delivered today (from Newegg):

Item  List

MOUSE LOGITECH|MX 518 USB RETAIL - Retail (Qty=1, Price=$39.99)   

MEM 2GX2|A-DATA ADQVE1B16K R - Retail (Qty=1, Price=$76.99)   <-- 4 gigs of DDR2 800 ram for 77 bucks???!!!

MOUSE PAD X-TRAC| RIPPER XLSILKY R - Retail (Qty=1, Price=$16.99)   

CPU INTEL|C2D E8400 3G 775 45N R - Retail (Qty=1, Price=$189.99)   

HD 500G|WD 7K 16M SATA2 WD5000AAKS - OEM (Qty=1, Price=$89.99)   

DVD BURN LITE-ON|LH-20A1L-06 LS RT - Retail (Qty=1, Price=$32.99)   

CASE ANTEC|SONATA III 500 BK RT - Retail (Qty=1, Price=$129.95)   

MB ABIT  IP35 Pro 775 - Retail (Qty=1, Price=$169.99)   

VGA EVGA 512-P3-N845-AR 8800GTS RT - Retail (Qty=1, Price=$239.99)   

Subtotal: 986.87

There are also 90 dollars in rebates not mentioned here.  So, the whole shebang for less than 900 bones.

No, it's not top of the line but it will get the job done.

[Sky]

MEM 2GX2|A-DATA ADQVE1B16K R - Retail (Qty=1, Price=$76.99)   <-- 4 gigs of DDR2 800 ram for 77 bucks???!!!

Good luck!

[Murgos]

MEM 2GX2|A-DATA ADQVE1B16K R - Retail (Qty=1, Price=$76.99)   <-- 4 gigs of DDR2 800 ram for 77 bucks???!!!

Good luck!

*Shrug* 273 reviews on newegg.  Only 1% panned it, sounds like reasonable odds.

[Lantyssa]

If I can get this to show for everyone, here's my "best" spec from the components I've been pouring over.  The total list is much, much larger, so instead of asking everyone to look through all of that and piece it back together I'll just check there is nothing wrong with the components I like best.

This doesn't account for case, power supply, CPU cooler or a couple of case fans to get some airflow going.

Let the mocking (and serious commentary) begin while I go search for unicorn themed cases.

Edit to add: Refined and Updated Spec.

Still trying different things.  Motherboard is the most in-doubt.  The power supply is a placeholder until I can get to a store and look at them in person, but gives me a reasonable price.  A case is the only thing lacking from the list, which will take some time to decide on.  The one thing I know is that if I go with the CPU fan and graphics card there, I need to make sure the case has lots of clearance.

[Engels]

Looks good, but why the Abit ICHR9 raid board?

[Lantyssa]

I found three boards at New Egg I liked.  That's the top of the three which had solid reviews.  It's also got the heat pipe and copper heatsinks for the bridges.  I want a quiet and cool system for once.

There was a cheaper Abit, and the ECS which no one here but me loves.  I will likely pick between the cheaper two, but if I go fancy that one will do nicely.  The ASUS boards all either had specs I didn't like or horror stories that made me think I'd leave them alone.  The Gigabits just didn't have the specs I wanted.  There were several decent boards using 1066 memory, however I didn't feel like spending the extra for it since none of those boards stood out.

[Trippy]

If I can get this to show for everyone, here's my "best" spec from the components I've been pouring over.  The total list is much, much larger, so instead of asking everyone to look through all of that and piece it back together I'll just check there is nothing wrong with the components I like best.

This doesn't account for case, power supply, CPU cooler or a couple of case fans to get some airflow going.

Let the mocking (and serious commentary) begin while I go search for unicorn themed cases.

If you are trying to build a "quiet" computer I would suggest reading http://silentpcreview.com.

That Abit board is very nice except it has a gimpy Ethernet controller. If you have a Gigabit Ethernet LAN and need to transfer very large files back and forth you might want to find another board. The Firewire performance is kind of sucky too.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/12747/15

I haven't tried the Zalman hard drive cooler but I would bet getting a case with good frontal air flow and just sticking a quiet 120 mm fan up front would work just as well. You'll also need to make sure that video card isn't going to interfer with other cards you might want to install in that MB.

I prefer to buy memory that's meant to be used with a dual channel setup in a "kit" with 2 matching pairs. It's not as necessary as when dual channel memory technology was first introduced but I still do it anyways for the piece of mind. So this is the one from Kingston that's the same as yours but in a matching kit:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820104001

[schild]

That 9300 is $284. Honestly, I would just splurge for the 9450 at that cost. Newegg doesn't have it on their site, which is weird. But it's 2.66 base and has a 12MB Cache instead of a 6MB. It's a fucking animal. It is about $60 more though.

Also, this mobo has been great. Thus far, only about a week old in my new box.

If you're trying to be silent, stop it with all that heat pipe crap. Just get a Zalman home theater case and paint a unicorn on it. My machine is fucking silent and it's all stock cooling and fans. I can barely hear anything when I put my face next to it.

Finally, I'm never touching Abit again after my last 2 mobos.

[Lantyssa]

I've done the fans in front of hard drives before.  They get incredibly gunky really fast around here.  I don't know why they're worse than normal fans, but I had lots of problems with them.  I'd rather space my drives out, give them a nominal amount of cooling, then just not worry about them.

I saw the memory kit and thought I'd just spare myself a few dollars.  Since you think it's worth the check, I'll splurge on the three dollars extra if I go with the Kingston.

Home LAN is 100, I have no use for firewire.  As I said, I'll likely go with a cheaper board here.  That'll get me south of $1000, too.

Since I'm likely to get one of the cheaper motherboards, heat pipes won't be all that abundant in the system.  Just the around disks and one of my video card options.

I know the Q9450 has double the cache, but other than better results due to the higher processor speed, there didn't seem to be any real difference in all the review tests I've seen.  I doubt I'd notice a difference for anything I'll be using this system for.

I appreciate all the help.  I don't feel completely ignorant of current trends anymore.  Only mostly.

[Hoax]

Thoughts, putting them here even though I'm not going to build until June-July..

Power Supply:
-I have no idea, I used to use SeaSonic drives, and I appreciate their noise levels but who is the current king of the mountain?  Also how worried do I have to be about a PSU not having a 24v rail for the 8800?  I have never truly understood the whole fucking PSU rail thing well.  My understanding is that a quality 550 PSU will have the power configured the way you need it?

CPU:  Dual-core before bleeding edge price jump.
-I figure that Quad is a total fscking waste at this point so better to put the money into more a speedy dual.

MOBO: 
-I have no idea.  I used to love Abit/Asus but I just dont trust them anymore.  I've had bad experiences.  They just dont see any good.  I've heard decent first hard reviews on MSI products, just what the fuck brands make decent mobo's these days???

RAM:  the max I can put in of top shelf shit.
-Fuck 64bit OS's and fuck Vista so I guess I can't run beyond 4GB?  How does this work exactly I've got 2gb in my current rig on 32bit XP so this is a new thing for me to deal with.  Do people recommend 2x2GB sticks or 4x1GB sticks or whats the deal here?  I already have 2x1GB sticks of quality stuff from Corsair so I'd rather just pick up another 2 for free thanks to the current ram prices but honestly its all so cheap that whatever is considered the best path...

HDs:  A small 10k rpm drive for game installs.  A pair of 7200rpm drives from old machine(s) for OS and general storage.
-Games like Conan and general epeen desires demand the 10k drive.  Western Digital is still considered primo t/f?

GPU:  One of the souped up Geforce 8800's, the pimped out ones with 6xx or 7xx onboard mem.
-I'll do some research when I get closer to the buy date and price everything out.

Sound:  none
-Onboard sound has gotten good enough that I can't think of a reason to use a sound card unless it had a faceplate, remote & good interface allowing me to control my computer like a stereo from across the room.

Case:  Lian-Li
-Fuck Antec, I had a very bad experience with their janky plastic bullshit last year and I'm done with those clowns.  This seems to be the only brand that is a step up from them.

Optical drive:
-Does anyone make decent drives anymore?  The last few I've had have been cheap, noisy, and half of them didn't work for shit.  Wtf.  Ever since every drive became a combo of 45 features they have sucked balls.

So yeah that sounds like a plan right?

[schild]

Get a Zalman case if you're spending the money!

Also, you want a sound card. Just get a cheap Creative.

Finally, don't get the 8800s with more than 512 RAM, they're pretty much shit.

[Engels]

RAM:    Do people recommend 2x2GB sticks or 4x1GB sticks or whats the deal here?  I already have 2x1GB sticks of quality stuff from Corsair so I'd rather just pick up another 2 for free thanks to the current ram prices but honestly its all so cheap that whatever is considered the best path...

This is a good question for me too. I've noticed that sticks with higher capacity don't have the same CAS latency and other timings as smaller capacity sticks. I'm venturing a guess that 4x1 is better than 2x2, in terms of speed, but I will let someone with more knowhow answer, since I'm curious too.

[Lantyssa]

I've always understood it to be better to have more sticks, however if you believe you minght ever want to upgrade I am not sure the performance increase is large enough to justify buying 4x1 over 2x2.

[Trippy]

Thoughts, putting them here even though I'm not going to build until June-July..

Power Supply:
-I have no idea, I used to use SeaSonic drives, and I appreciate their noise levels but who is the current king of the mountain?  Also how worried do I have to be about a PSU not having a 24v rail for the 8800?

I think you mean 12V rail. The high end PS market has gotten very crowded in the last few years. It's also confusing cause some power supplies are basically rebranded. E.g. Corsair's are made by Seasonic and OCZ's used to be made by FSP (OCZ acquired PC Power & Cooling last year so that's changed I believe).

I have never truly understood the whole fucking PSU rail thing well.  My understanding is that a quality 550 PSU will have the power configured the way you need it?

Depends on which card you want to get and what other stuff you will have in your computer. In other words, maybe.

MOBO: 
-I have no idea.  I used to love Abit/Asus but I just dont trust them anymore.  I've had bad experiences.  They just dont see any good.  I've heard decent first hard reviews on MSI products, just what the fuck brands make decent mobo's these days???

If you aren't going to go with ASUS you could try Gigabyte or DFI if you want an "enthusiast" board. If you want to know which are the most "reliable" boards check out some of the overclocking forums.

RAM:  the max I can put in of top shelf shit.
-Fuck 64bit OS's and fuck Vista so I guess I can't run beyond 4GB?  How does this work exactly I've got 2gb in my current rig on 32bit XP so this is a new thing for me to deal with.  Do people recommend 2x2GB sticks or 4x1GB sticks or whats the deal here?  I already have 2x1GB sticks of quality stuff from Corsair so I'd rather just pick up another 2 for free thanks to the current ram prices but honestly its all so cheap that whatever is considered the best path...

It's a tradeoff between timings and upgradability. Like Engels said the 1 GB sticks often have faster timings but if you go 4x1 that means if you do move to a 64-bit OS on that same machine and want to go beyond 4 GB you'll have to toss some sticks.

HDs:  A small 10k rpm drive for game installs.  A pair of 7200rpm drives from old machine(s) for OS and general storage.
-Games like Conan and general epeen desires demand the 10k drive.  Western Digital is still considered primo t/f?

Yes WD is still considered primo. Check out their new VelociRaptor too.

[rattran]

As for motherboard brands, there's a lot of different opinions. I like DFI (good rma experience with one I had go bad) Gigabyte, BFG, EVGA are okay, Asus and Abit I've had issues with some boards, some have been fine. I've only dealt with a few MSI, and been underwhelmed.
Foxconn, ECS, and others have been sources of problems.

Much like with hard drives though, other people's lists may vary wildly

[Logik]

Quick update: all parts are finally here, and construction started last night.

Initial impressions:
- This Silverstone case is fucking gigantic, and the motherboard tray is pretty much win.
- IO shields can eat me.  Of course I forgot to put it in before I assembled everything on the motherboard, so I was able to experience the joy of taking (most) everything out and putting it back in again.
- The PSU looks very nice, but I'm a little worried about it drawing air up from below the case after it's been set on the carpet.  In the near future, I expect to cannibalize a box for some cardboard to set it on.
- The Tuniq Tower is a bitch and a half to install and the instruction guide is lackluster.  I pity the poor son of a bitch who has to work inside his case.
- Silverstone manuals are fail.  The manual for my old Antec TX1050B case was infinitely more lucid and useful.  It's a good thing Silverstone's design is inspiring and construction is top-notch--otherwise I'd be more than a little pissed.
- The 9800GTX is impossibly huge.  I mourn the loss of 4 (four!) SATA ports, but feel they served a cause larger--and I mean that both literally and figuratively--than themselves.

I've taken loads of pictures along the way, so if anyone here is interested, I can post them as a sort of photo-log of the build process.  More thoughts are likely to follow after I finish the cabling.