Rate my new system!

[Akkori]

I'm about to start gathering the pieces to upgrade my system, and I wanted to get some opinons, as this is my first AMD system.

ABIT KN8 Ultra ($120) (supports X2 cpu also)
Corsair 2GB PC3200 DDR2-400 ($170, 2x 1gb)
AMD Athlon 64 4000+ Socket 939 Processor ($330)
GigaByte Geforce 7800 GT ($350, PCIe?)
WD SATA2 Caviar 250GB Hard Drive  ($115)

Asetek WaterChill ($244) 03-L-1241
Antec TruePower 2.0 550W Power Supply ($130)

I chose not to go dual core, but I can go X2 later if I want. I also chose not to go with dual video, as I just dont play games *that* much. 2Gb ram is double what I have been using, but its pretty cheap, so why not? I'll have an 80gb standard IDE drive in there too, for backup.

If this is the wrong, forum, please move to the right one. Thanks!

[Trippy]

Yup wrong board.

If you even think you might want to go SLI in the future you'll wanna get an nForce4 SLI motherboard instead. You are getting a water cooling kit but you seemed to have spec'd some standard RAM. Are you not planning on overclocking? If not, why are you going the water cooling route? There are other ways of building "quiet" PCs if that's what you are looking for without dealing with the hassle of water cooling. Where you getting your prices from? That Antec power supply price seems awfully high. If you are willing to spend that much a power supply there are better ones out there.

[HaemishM]

Moved and subject changed.

Nice system, BTW.

[Ralence]

  I definitely think your prices are a little high, I'm actually expecting delivery of the parts to build my newest box, and my order looks like this;

Track   1       eVGA 256-P2-N516 Geforce 7800GT 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - RetailItem #: N82E16814130256    $299.00
Track    1    ASUS A8N-SLI Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX AMD Motherboard - RetailItem #: N82E16813131524    $122.00
Track    1    AMD Athlon 64 3800+ Venice 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Processor Model ADA3800BPBOX - RetailItem #: N82E16819103531    $282.00

  I picked up an Antec Superlanboy case and Antec TP 450 last week from CompUSA for something like $80 combined after rebates.  Trippy is right on the money about going SLI now, I've had about 10 different ASUS boards, so my preference is always with them, but the ability to toss in another card in a year to keep me running at the high end of the performance scale is a huge deal for me, especially since it's not much more money anyways ($2 more than the price you listed for the non-SLI board) , and of course the anticipated price drops with the new Nvidia cards coming out in the fall means I can upgrade cheap next year.

  I'd also agree with the fact that there's no need whatsoever for watercooling unless you plan to overclock as much as you can.  You can easily do a 5% without needing it, and I'm not sure you're going to have the options you'll need with that ABIT board anyways.

  Those prices are current as of this week from Newegg, I ended up buying everything from them just to keep shipping down, so I probably could have squeaked out a few more dollars, but would have ended up paying for it in shipping.

[Yegolev]

There are several places where you could have upgraded, but looks like a solid system.  I have avoided watercooling so far, but I don't OC and have an open case.  If I actually were going to spend real money on cooling above the usual HSF, I'd look into a heatpipe solution.

Also: you need more hard drives, and at least one optical, and a tape drive won't hurt.  My 14GB Travan lets me sleep at night.

[Sky]

Good heatsink with large low rpm fan is pretty quiet for the living room. I've found it's not so much the db as it is the pitch. The whining fans drill a hole in my skull, but the low whirr isn't bad at all. I've got a 90mm on my cpu hs.

[Yegolev]

My main issue with fans is the white-noise effect, which prevents me from hearing things elsewhere in the house.  That would be a good thing if I weren't some sort of responsible father and husband.

[Sky]

Mmm...white noise...

Did you say something?

[Yegolev]

What?

[Akkori]

Yeah, upon reflection, I think you are right. I might as well get a duall-graphics board. Arent the nForce4 chipsets set so that you do NOT have to use identical graphics cards? I seem to recall ATI required identical cards....

As to water cooling, no, I dont OC, and its mainly for noise. This was my splurge item. I will likely swap it out for a big Zalman fan. I also have an open case... mainly because I am too lazy to button it up.

I have used Abit, Asus, and MSI boards. I dont really have a preference... its the chipsets that I care about. I like the nFOrce4 chipset, so thats good.

I do have other parts in my current system I will be moving over. A DvD/CD Combo burner and a couple 80 gig IDE drives. I added the sata2 drive mainly because I think the throughput will help my framerate.

I will look around for a better price on the power supply. I learned the hard way that this is one place you never want to be a cheapskate. I'd like a heatpipe as the cooler on the northbridge... I'll have to go back over the boards and see what comes up. I know an SLI board had some like that.

Thanks for the input!

[Trippy]

Yeah, upon reflection, I think you are right. I might as well get a duall-graphics board. Arent the nForce4 chipsets set so that you do NOT have to use identical graphics cards? I seem to recall ATI required identical cards....

It's the other way around though NVIDIA has improved the driver situation so you no longer need identical cards just identical GPUs.

As to water cooling, no, I dont OC, and its mainly for noise. This was my splurge item. I will likely swap it out for a big Zalman fan. I also have an open case... mainly because I am too lazy to button it up.

The Zalman CNPS9500 LED is, as they say, love (that's what I have in my machine), though if you really want quiet you can go for something like the Scythe Ninja (the Zalman uses a 92mm fan while the Ninja can fit a 120mm). I went with the Zalman even though the Ninja is potentially quieter because the reviews of the Ninja I had read made the installation sound fiddly and difficult while the Zalman screws in easy peasy. The biggest noise maker these days, though, is usually the video card fan and that can be more difficult to quiet down.

I do have other parts in my current system I will be moving over. A DvD/CD Combo burner and a couple 80 gig IDE drives. I added the sata2 drive mainly because I think the throughput will help my framerate.

It won't.

I will look around for a better price on the power supply. I learned the hard way that this is one place you never want to be a cheapskate. I'd like a heatpipe as the cooler on the northbridge... I'll have to go back over the boards and see what comes up. I know an SLI board had some like that.

Both the Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe and the Asus A8N-SLI Premium (the motherboard I have) use a heatpipe to cool the NFORCE 4 chip (there's no Northbridge/Southbridge with the Athlon 64 since the CPU has the memory controller built into it).

[eldaec]

GTX would be nice, and in most cases is worth the extra. Asus seem to be flagging lately and there have been reports of instability; though I suspect mostly from Asus anti-fanbois.

The option to go SLI is worth considering for 18 months down the road when the graphics card is cheaper, this will likely be a better upgrade path than X2, CPU is unlikely to be the bottleneck in your system, espeicially for gaming. (dual core is only a big deal for multiple process intensive applications - say you want to process an mpeg *and* run a game, alt-tabbing out of your MMOG of choice to run firefox or restart your mp3 player requires only trivial resources and there are better ways to spend money).

But this is all nit-picking. Nice system.

[MrHat]

Question about ATI crossfire:

Can you buy one of the cards (x1800xt) and then later on down the road buy a master card and use both?

[Trippy]

Question about ATI crossfire:

Can you buy one of the cards (x1800xt) and then later on down the road buy a master card and use both?

Yes as long as the first card is "Crossfire Ready" and the master card ("Crossfire Edition") is from the same family (but not necessarily the identical GPU). On a somewhat related note the X1900 series has been released and the X1800 are going to be phased out.

[Viin]

A friend of mine is selling his computer, which is pretty well setup if anyone wants a custom built gaming computer already made for cheap $$$:

http://denver.craigslist.org/sys/130022630.html

 :-D