Help me build my next PC

[Azazel]

Thank you, Engels

Checking out the Asus site and the manual for that motherboard, it looked perfect till I noticed that it appears not to have any IEEE1394/firewire ports, which is odd. I thought everything would have them these days.

Looks like this one then, which is more expensive again. argh.
http://www.centrecom.com.au/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=36_62&products_id=20671&ccsid=94539d2169c37722943a337ea653a09f

Also, just rang CC and they tell me that they're happy to refund the difference on PSU out of whatever case I buy towards a PSU i need for the system. Which is good news. I may enter the Matrix, especially as it's got the extra 120mm fan included in the package.

I'm going to need to recalculate the moneys.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


WD 320Gb 7200 16Mb Cache SATA 2 Hard Disk:                                                                        $102.00
WD 320Gb 7200 16Mb Cache SATA 2 Hard Disk:                                                                        $102.00
Pioneer DVR-212D SATA DVD Re-Writer (18x/8x Dual Layer Black):                                               $ 51.70
Lite-On COMBO 52XCDR, 32XCRW, 16XDVD, BLACK:                                                                   $ 35.20
Corsair DDR2 2GB PC-6400 (2x XMS2 1GB) TWIN2X2048-6400 RAM:                                             $199.10
GIGABYTE NX88S320H-B-RH 8800GTS, 320MB, 320bit, GDDR3, 2xDualLinkDVI-I, TVOUT, HDTV:      $467.50 (listed as $435 on their instore price list I got today)
1.44Mb Floppy Disk Drive (Black):                                                                                              $ 15.00
Microsoft Basic Black Value Pack PS/2 (OEM):                                                                              $ 27.50
Windows XP Home OEM                                                                                                          $123.20
Build with warranty                                                                                                                 $ 55.00
Intel CORE 2 DUO E6600/ 2.40GHz/ 4MB CACHE/ 1066FSB/ LGA775:                                            $302.00
Asus P5B-E motherboard:                                                                                                        $189.00

$1668

Thermaltake Matrix Black Case with 430W, VD2430BNS (comes with 2x120mm fans):                      $106.70

$1775.4



Plus probably $40-50 for them to upgrade the PSU, and I'm just over the $1800 I wanted to cap at, which I can live with.


Are there any glaring omissions?

Overall thoughts? (yeah, I know, I wish prices here were better, but...)

[Nija]

I'd go with the DVD drive only and skip on the lite-on, unless there is a particular reason you need it.

[Murgos]

Yeah, the Pioneer will read and write CD's as well as DVD's, since you are so budget conscious I don't see needing both.

[Strazos]

You could also drop a HDD for the time being. 320GB should be plenty of storage to start with, I would think.



Also, XP Home? Really?

[Engels]

Aside from the networking limitations of XP Home (being unable to join a Home version to a domain, for example), what other limitations are there on Home edition, for the sake of the home user?

[Trippy]

Aside from the networking limitations of XP Home (being unable to join a Home version to a domain, for example), what other limitations are there on Home edition, for the sake of the home user?

There are a bunch of things the primary one in a home with multiple computers is that you can't have the Home machine act as a Remote Connection server. I.e. you can't connect to it from other machines using Remote Desktop. You can use it as a client to connect to XP Pro machines, however.

[Azazel]

I'd go with the DVD drive only and skip on the lite-on, unless there is a particular reason you need it.

I like having two drives. It's something I've always done, and it comes in handy, so the extra $30 for the Lite-On isn't a problem. If I were that concerned with budget it'd still be a $1200 machine. Sky-is-the-limit spending, though, is not for me.

You could also drop a HDD for the time being. 320GB should be plenty of storage to start with, I would think.
Also, XP Home? Really?

I've got 360gig on this machine, and it's perma-full. I've got a few very large games installed, a whole bunch of other games I haven't finished installed, most of which I'll be installing on the new box. Also have a large stack of new games I've bought but haven't yet installed because I'eve been waiting for the new box. About 1/3 of my CD collection in MP3 form (as it's in storage). Also, the internets need much space for downloadings. On top of all that, I'd like some editing space. Getting 640mb will allow me some.

There are a bunch of things the primary one in a home with multiple computers is that you can't have the Home machine act as a Remote Connection server. I.e. you can't connect to it from other machines using Remote Desktop. You can use it as a client to connect to XP Pro machines, however.

So.. I can't right-click a folder to share it on the network with the other computers, but I can connect to the others? /le sigh. XP Pro it is then.


The computer itself is a reasonably good gaming machine by now though?

Any other small tweaks worth doing, or other smallish components that it really lacks?

[Numtini]

You can share a folder with XP home. You just can't do it with domain security.

[Trippy]

There are a bunch of things the primary one in a home with multiple computers is that you can't have the Home machine act as a Remote Connection server. I.e. you can't connect to it from other machines using Remote Desktop. You can use it as a client to connect to XP Pro machines, however.

So.. I can't right-click a folder to share it on the network with the other computers, but I can connect to the others? /le sigh. XP Pro it is then.

Sharing is different than Remote Desktop Connection, as Numtini implied. You can share files and folders in either version.

RDC is like pcAnywhere, if you are familiar with that. It basically allows you to control another machine as if you were actually on that machine (can't do most DirectX stuff, though) if it's running Remote Desktop server.

In your soon to be new setup it's actually more useful if your oldest machine, the one you want to make a file server, is running XP Pro. That way your new machine and your older machine that your wife will be using can both connect to it to do administrative stuff without actually having to go over to that machine, and by extension have a monitor and keyboard/mouse hooked up to it. I.e. you can run the file server machine "headless" if its running Pro.

If your new machine is running XP Pro then your wife's machine or the file server machine can control it, which isn't necessarily as useful as the setup above where the file server machine is running Pro.

Edit: typos

[Azazel]

Ordered it today. A few slight last-minute tweaks were going for 4gb of Kingston DDR2 667mhz RAM (lifetime warranty), and a Pioneer IDE replacing the Lite-On. Ordered a Pioneer SATA as a second drive, which apparently will be in stock early next week so I'll probably pick it up and plug it in later myself.

Alsmost everything I got, (except for the HDDs) the guy was knocking a few bucks off of as we went along, and the same for the labor charge. Cost me $30 to upgrade to the Antec PSU. Decided to go for XP Home since I won't need to work remotely to this machine.

Total: $1715 from what looked like almost/just over $1900.

I'm happy. I'll be happier when I pick it up though.


Quick question - What's the practical difference between a SATA Optical drive and a IDE? I know they're both connection types, but is SATA faster or better in some way? I'm thinking of ringing them and just getting them to stick a second Pioneer IDE in it if it's basically exactly the same.

[Trippy]

Windows XP is not a happy camper with 4 GB of RAM:

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=9770.msg289432#msg289432

With your processor you want 800 MHz RAM.

As a said above for optical drives the main difference between SATA and IDE is the cabling. Plus you (usually) don't have to fiddle with jumpers with SATA. In theory SATA 1 and SATA 2 have higher max transfer rates compared to IDE 133 but even a 16X DVD-ROM drive only reaches a fraction of the max transfer rate on IDE 133. For SATA hard drives there are other benefits as well depending on which SATA features they and the SATA controller chipset support but they don't apply to optical drives, at least not yet.

Edit: If you want to go dual IDE optical drives that's fine too. If they were both SATA then you have the benefit of thinner cabling which makes it easier to get good airflow into the case. If one is SATA and one is IDE that doesn't really help the airflow situation since you still have the wide IDE cable potentially blocking airflow depending on whether or not they try to route the IDE cable so it's not in the airflow path.

[Azazel]

OK, after reading those links and corsair's website I understand the RAM limitation and differences (kind of). Thank you. I'll change the RAM back.

CC are totally out of SATA drives right now, and not expecting them until sometime next week (they hope). Based on this, I may as well go for two Pioneer IDEs and save myself a few bucks, and make sure they will have the stock.

[Jeff Kelly]

I don't want to open a new thread so I want to add it to this one.

I plan on buying a new system mostly for gaming and I was shopping around for best bang for the buck hardware.

At the moment all I play is World of Warcraft but it should be able to play all the new stuff coming the next year or so, preferably on a 1440*900 or 1280*1024 display (roughly the same amount of pixels)

Price point is around Eur 800 ($1100) and I don't want to go over that limit by a big amount because I also want to buy a new monitor with the system

I do not intend to overclock ever and I don't very much care for an SLI setup either, although I would reconsider if I could actually find a decent and cheap SLI mainboard

At the moment I have chosen the following

Core2 Duo E6600 boxed: It is the same price as the Athlon 64 5600+ but runs cooler with only 65W TDP, unfortunately you can't get the EE versions of the 5600 where I live but I lean to the E6600 anyway. Since I won't overclock I keep the boxed cooler, the one's that Intel and AMD use are usually quite decent.

2GB Corsair PC800 CL4 Memory: I won't gimp the E6600 with PC665 memory and even at CL4 it is not that much more expensive anyway.

Gigabyte 965P-DS3: It's got better reviews than the Asus P5B, is slightly cheaper and can handle quad cores so it seems to be a good choice, SLI mainboards are usually double the price or even more so I don't want to spent the extra money on something I might not ever use in the future.

Thermaltake Matrix: I took it because you guys recommended it. Quite frankly with the huge amount of cases available and lack of decent reviews I don't know what to take anyway. It should be good quality and shouldn't cost a fortune.

Enermax 500W Liberty ELT500AWT: 500 W should be enough for the components that I want to use and should even be able to handle an 8800GTS.

LG H30N S-ATA DVD-writer. I don't need two optical drives in my PC so a writer should be enough. If you know a better brand let me know I didn't want to research in depth for something that only costs Eur 30.

250GB Western Digital WD2500YS RE SII 16MB: I don't need that much storage space, since I already hava a 250 GB USB2 external drive the 16 MB cache is nice though.

7900GS ASUS EN7900GS/2DHT: The biggest trouble I have is choosing the right graphics card. I already have a XP Pro license and do not plan on upgrading to vista any time soon so DirectX10 is out of the question and when I upgrade to vista in a year's time or more (when the first directX10 only title I want to play comes out) I still can upgrade to a DX10 Ati/Nvidia, the system should have enough potential for that. I also don't want to pay more than Eur 200 (hard limit) on the card and would rather pay less than Eur 150 so I thought that the 7900GS might be the best compromise but I am a bit lost on all those numbers and GS/GTS/GX stuff.

All in all the system will cost Eur 780 which is slightly below my limit.

[cmlancas]

With the exception of the case, the motherboard, and the card manufacturer, that is the exact build I have.


:)

[Trippy]

GS < GT < GTS/GTX. In some of the NVIDIA series the GS is seriously gimped compared to the GT version. Fortunately the 7900 series is not one of those so the 7900 GS is a decent card for the price.

You may also want to consider the X1950 Pro if you don't mind ATI cards (and their drivers).

Edit: In not If

[cmlancas]

What kind of monitor are you playing on? You said you're below your limit, so possibly you'd like to invest in a nice monitor for your new rig?

[Strazos]

He's leaving separate funds for a monitor I believe.

[Jeff Kelly]

He's leaving separate funds for a monitor I believe.

Yes, I mentioned only the budget for the computer with a monitor I want to stay at 1000 Euro which is feasible as far as I know.

After reading an Interview with the Head of Nvidia that was held at GDC this year I changed my mind on the graphics card. He said that he is astonished by the speed with that DX10 has been adopted by the developers and that most of the christmas titles this year will already be DX10 or DX10 only titles. He said that most developers are very happy with DX10 because it makes shader programming a whole of a lot easier than before. So I'll bite and buy an 8600 GTS instead.

[Nija]

I got my system up and running last night. I am sending back the Thermalright BigFuckingHSF because it sucks - hit everything, didn't fit right, broken feet. I'm just using the stock cooling on the e6600.

Stock it's 9x266 for 2.4 ghz. I'm running at 8x400 for 3.2. Rock solid. 50C tops. Love it.

[cmlancas]

The stock HSF is a bitch to install, but after that it is pretty decent. How is your airflow through your case? Maybe my e6600 just runs a lot cooler than yours (Some reviews on Newegg said some run cooler than others) but 50c seems a little hot even under the OC.

[Nija]

50C under full load - it idles around 28C.

I installed the stock HSF in about 5 seconds, no lie, after fucking with that Thermalright thing for literally 2 hours. I nearly broke the thing in frustration.

Airflow is great, I got an aluminum lian-li case with 120mm fans in front and back.

[NowhereMan]

Didn't want to start a new thread with this but I recently bought a gig stick of RAM from Crucial to give me a performance boost. Problem is when I installed it alongside the two 512mb sticks I've got my computer won't boot. I'll get the power on but the processor light doesn't flicker and the monitor doesn't get any signal. The sticks I've already got are also from Crucial and their system scanner thing marked the new RAM as compatible. The new stick isn't broken, when it's in on its own everything works fine.

Info on my system, I've got an MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum motherboard and am running XP with a 400W PSU, do you guys think this RAM is just conflicting horribly and so I need to return it or does it sound like something that could be fixable on my end?

[Miasma]

You should check that the two 512 sticks are in the same colour slots.

Actually I just read your motherboard's page.

DO NOT install three memory modules on three DIMMs, or it may cause some failure

Sorry, guess they don't like that.  Maybe you can return it and get another 2 sticks of 512?

[Sky]

You need two 512MB sticks (meaning return the 1GB and get 2x512MB). http://www.msicomputer.com/product/p_spec.asp?model=K8N_Neo2_Platinum

Match the two sticks in the green slots and two sticks in the purple slots. There's a chart about 1/4 of the way down the page I linked.

Oh yeah, and google is your friend newbler :P

[NowhereMan]

Blah, was searching for problems with RAM but didn't think to just search for stuff on my motherboard. Pwned.

Thank you oh google-fu masters. One day I will learn.

[cmlancas]

Couldn't he also just scrap the 512x2 and pop in another 1GB? I read over the Motherboard's site and I think it would work...

[Trippy]

Couldn't he also just scrap the 512x2 and pop in another 1GB? I read over the Motherboard's site and I think it would work...

Yes but that would cost extra money.

[Azazel]

Got it yesterday. It's sex on a stick, despite the fact that I'll still be installing stuff on it for the next few days. I am slightly surprised that a number of games (FEAR, Company of Heroes) don't recommend running max settings which I thought I'd be able to do at 1680x1050, and even more surprised at the number of recent games (like 2005+) that don't support widescreen or even have patches to supprt WS.

Nonetheless, I thank all the people who posted here once again. Your pushing for the extra $ for the 6600 and 8800 will make a difference for the next few years.  :-D

[Sky]

even more surprised at the number of recent games (like 2005+) that don't support widescreen or even have patches to supprt WS.

Hi!  I've linked it here a lot, but widescreengamingforum.com is your friend.

Yeah, even with e6600 and 8800, the bells+whistles can get intense. I'm kinda happy with my 720p monitor for that reason.

Glad you're enjoying the new machine, it's a great time to build one imo.

[cmlancas]

Got it yesterday. It's sex on a stick, despite the fact that I'll still be installing stuff on it for the next few days. I am slightly surprised that a number of games (FEAR, Company of Heroes) don't recommend running max settings which I thought I'd be able to do at 1680x1050, and even more surprised at the number of recent games (like 2005+) that don't support widescreen or even have patches to supprt WS.

Nonetheless, I thank all the people who posted here once again. Your pushing for the extra $ for the 6600 and 8800 will make a difference for the next few years.  :-D

What are your 3dMark/PCMark scores, out of curiosity?

[NiX]

With the Canadian dollar hovering around .93-.94 I figured I might as well make good on this and get me a cheap computer built. Not really looking to be on the bleeding edge of technology cause I know there's not much coming out. I just need a computer built, no monitor, keyboard, mouse or speakers. And I don't need a DVD/RW drive.

Must haves:
300GB minimum
2GB
Decent video card - I'm running a 6600GT right now.
Black case
Silent cooling

I really don't know what's good right now (ATI or nVidia, AMD or Intel..etc) so that's why I've come to you guys. I don't need a copy of windows, soundcard or a floppy drive.

Budget: $1200 CDN (roughly $1100 US) If I can get more by throwing an extra $200 or so at it, let me know.

[Engels]

Are you willing to build it yourself out of components or do you want a dell-like premade one? Also, what are you going to use it for? If you're not a big gamer, then you can make due with a dell workstation with many bells and whistles that'll rival anything we can all cobble together. If on the other hand you want a decent gaming rig, you're going to have to go the component route, since that's where you save money by building it yourself. Prefab gaming rigs are insanely overpriced.

[NiX]

I can build it myself and I do want it to play games. I'm not worried about the DX10 or Vista compatibility crap seeing as it'll be awhile before I even bother with games that'll require it.

[Engels]

In that case, I would direct you to Azazel's recent purchase. Its a very decent gaming rig for the price constraints he had. You should have an easier time of it, since you don't need as much space and you can hopefully purchase from NewEgg:

WD 320Gb 7200 16Mb Cache SATA 2 Hard Disk:                                                                        $102.00
WD 320Gb 7200 16Mb Cache SATA 2 Hard Disk:                                                                        $102.00
Pioneer DVR-212D SATA DVD Re-Writer (18x/8x Dual Layer Black):                                               $ 51.70
Lite-On COMBO 52XCDR, 32XCRW, 16XDVD, BLACK:                                                                   $ 35.20
Corsair DDR2 2GB PC-6400 (2x XMS2 1GB) TWIN2X2048-6400 RAM:                                             $199.10
GIGABYTE NX88S320H-B-RH 8800GTS, 320MB, 320bit, GDDR3, 2xDualLinkDVI-I, TVOUT, HDTV:      $467.50 (listed as $435 on their instore price list I got today)
1.44Mb Floppy Disk Drive (Black):                                                                                              $ 15.00
Microsoft Basic Black Value Pack PS/2 (OEM):                                                                              $ 27.50
Windows XP Home OEM                                                                                                          $123.20
Build with warranty                                                                                                                 $ 55.00
Intel CORE 2 DUO E6600/ 2.40GHz/ 4MB CACHE/ 1066FSB/ LGA775:                                            $302.00
Asus P5B-E motherboard:                                                                                                        $189.00

$1668

Thermaltake Matrix Black Case with 430W, VD2430BNS (comes with 2x120mm fans):                      $106.70

$1775.4

Note that those are AU dollars, not US or Canadian. Subtract the components you don't need, and bobs your uncle.

[NiX]

Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD3200AAKS 320GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM - $76.99
   
GIGABYTE GV-NX88S320H-B-RH GeForce 8800GTS 320MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Video Card - Retail - $289.99
   
CORSAIR XMS2 DOMINATOR 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model TWIN2X2048-6400C4D - Retail - $179.00
   
ASUS P5B-E LGA 775 Intel P965 Express ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail - $144.99
   
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Conroe 2.4GHz LGA 775 Processor Model BX80557E6600 - Retail - $222.90

Total: $913.87

Couldn't find a decent case with a power supply and the one listed in Azazel's isn't on Newegg.