1.4k build please review

[jbp898]

I thought it would be a good idea to come in and get some help before i blow my money.Right now im on a semi-tight budget but getting ready to place the order saturday.For the time being im gonna stick with the antec case i currently have and toss my p4 1.7 "danm you RDRAM!" and replace everything.Heres what im going with please be brutaley honest specialy on the the graphics card,ram,psu

ASUS A8N-SLI Premium Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail $179.00

XFX PVT70FUNF7 Geforce 7800GTX 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card with 450MHz Core and 1250MHz Memory - Retail $499.00
-is this realy a decent card?in the past all ive known of xfx is "the cheapo cards from the tigerdirect catalog".im willing to hold off and save more money if the card realy isnt worth it.

OCZ 1GB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered System Memory Model OCZ4001024PF - Retail $110.00
-seems like pretty solid memory to me.if its good stuff i think ill be adding another gig asap

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ Toledo 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Dual Core Processor Model ADA4400CDBOX - Retail $565.00
-ok big question here.is the retail box fan worth a dam?if it can keep the machine OC,ed at 2.4 then its good enough for me till i work up the balls to try water cooling.

COOLMAX CX-550B ATX 550W Power Supply - Retail $71.00
-this is the thing that pretty much makes or breaks my budget plan for buying this week or next week .the reiews on newegg say its good for the money,71 bucks.Then again i look at prices from more popular name brands and gotta think they must be charging twice the price for some reason.I realy need something thats gonna support SLI well for when i can afford to blow more money on another 7800.

last thing ill ask is will this setup be rock solid for quake 4?Well ill deffintly get another gig of ram for q4.After watching some of the quakecon coverage on G4 thats bean bugging me.

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by jbp898 on 08/19/05 11:50 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[shawnlizzle =]]

one question, how the hell are you getting all that for 1.4k? ... oh i see... semi barebone build

<font color=red>gforce mx100/200 @ 230/440 =]</font color=red>

 

[Starfishy]

Can you price some of this stuff out. It would be alot easier to know what you are paying for that card to recomend a change or not.

<b><font color=red>Go date P4man or something, bye!</font color=red><b>

 

[Starfishy]

If you are a gamer the X2 is a bad way to go. And if you have the kind of money to spend that you seem to, you might wanna get an FX. Or at least a 3700+.

The 7800GTX is a great card... no question, but don't know if its worth all that bling bling.

The previous suggestion of ditching the Asus mobo and going with the DFI LP NF4 is absolutely 100% the way to go... no questions.

The RAM is good, although upgrading to the 2Gb isn't necessary in the short term, but may be good to have in a few months or so when your bank account recovers from this.

<b><font color=red>Go date P4man or something, bye!</font color=red><b>

 

[shawnlizzle =]]

dfi isn't a solution for all of us, it does a bit of knowledge to set it up, while on the other hand, the asus mobo is easy to setup and runs very stable, while it can't really reach any high OCs. that doesn't mean its a bad mobo and nobody should look at it. its really up to what his prefrences are

<font color=red>gforce mx100/200 @ 230/440 =]</font color=red>

 

[shawnlizzle =]]

but then again, i should also actually read through everything the dude wrote... =]

yeah, dfi is his way to go if he wants to OC

<font color=red>gforce mx100/200 @ 230/440 =]</font color=red>

 

[jbp898]

Thanks for the tips.The DFI board is the choice for overclocking everything but i think ill stick the asus.Im only looking for minor over clocking on the prcessor not all the other bells and whistles.After reading some reviews on the DFI LP i deffinatley dont feel like screwing with it that much.My question on the graphics card was more about XFX as a brand.i know its just stock refrence 7800.

on the processor thow i relise that the 4000 is faster for current games but id like to think ahead a little with muti-threading since im going to have this for at least another 3 years barring it exploding on me.wouldnt OC a 4400 to 2.4 make it the same speed as a 4000?or with a decent hit sink and if the asus premium is capable overclocking to 2.6 speed of a fx-55.ive looked over dozens of benchmarks and the 4400 and the fx-55 seems pretty close to me.then again i dont feel like ploping down antother 250 bucks.

thanks for the help

 

[endyen]

No matter how you cut it, the chip will have more than enough power, for some time.
Right now, all the 7800 cards are made by Nvidia, and just rebadged by the "manufacturer" so that card will be as good as they come.
Looks like a great setup, enjoy.

 

[mozzartusm]

You better do some serious thinking on your PSU. I dont know anything about the one you listed, but for $71.00 i HAVE SERIOUS doubts. The system will never run correctly without a quality PSU. Toms recently did a PSU stress test and you should take a look at it and choose one of the PSU's that passed. Many PSUs that are considered to be good ones failed in the stress test. Ive been very sceptical for over a year now about the PSU industry and this test has led me to think that many companies need to go back to the drawing board.

ASUS P5WD2 Premium
Intel 3.73 EE @ 5.6Ghz
XMS2 DDR2 @ 1180Mhz

<A HREF="http://valid.x86-secret.com/records.php?PHPSESSID=792e8f49d5d9b8a4d1ad6f40ca029756" target="_new">#2 CPUZ</A>
SuperPI 25secs

 

[slvr_phoenix]

recently did a PSU stress test and you should take a look at it and choose one of the PSU's that passed. Many PSUs that are considered to be good ones failed in the stress test.

And it's no wonder that so many PSUs failed that test, since Tom's did such a bad job of it.

For example, they stated "<font color=green>We load the rails never higher as stated on the max combined wattage sticker on the unit.</font color=green>". Yet by their own admission, they didn't adhere to this. They also stated, "<font color=red>The -12V and +5VSB rails are always loaded with constant 18W (based on ATX-12V-spec).</font color=red>" So they weren't in spec after all.

For example, the Antec True Control 550 2.0 has a -12V rating of 1.0A. If you do the math, 18W at 12V is 1.5A. So they were overdrawing the -12V line by 0.5A. Likewise, the +5Vsb line is rated at a max load of 2.0A. Yet 18W at 5V is 3.6A. So they were also overdrawing the 5Vsb line by 1.6A. That's a combined overdraw of 14W. Now these numbers might not seem like much, but in a 24 hour torture test at absolute maximum load even a tiny additional load like that could make a difference.

But more to the point, that additional load is also bringing the power draw out of spec, meaning that the test is meaningless at this point.

But if we really want to get into things, we also have to question where THG even got this 18W idea from. The ATX12V 2.01 spec makes no such requirements for the -12V line. In fact, the ATX12V 2.01 spec repeatedly lists a <i>suggested</i> rating of only 0.3A (which is 3.6W at 12V) for the -12V line. And even if you count THG's meaning as a <i>combined</i> 18W load instead of individual 18W loads, the ATX12V 2.01's suggestion for the +5Vsb line is 2.5A (12.5W), so combined with the suggestion of 0.3A (3.6W) for the -12V line, that's still only 16.1W, not THG's 18W. So THG is <i>still</i> overdrawing either way you try to decipher their words.

So yeah. It's no f'ing wonder that a considerable number of power supplies that were taken <i>beyond</i> their specs for 24 hours straight ended up failing. To that one can only say, "<i>DUH!</i>" Honestly, what did THG expect? Maybe next time they should pay a little more attention to that ATX spec that they claim is the latest.

(In case you also don't know, the <i>latest</i> ATX12V spec is actually version 2.2 - <i>not</i> 2.01 - which was released in March this year. Not that PSU vendors have caught up to this yet as they're still speccing to 2.01, but the point is that 2.01 <i>isn't</i> the latest. THG couldn't even get <i>that</i> right.)

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<font color=red><i>The Devil made me do it, but I <b>liked</b> it.</i></font color=red>
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