My Set up..... Any tips?

rd382 · Apr 13, 2001

Well this is what im looking at for my first computer that am building. I posted this here because it seems to me that people post and resond here the most. This is my first computer that im going to build and i could use some tips

CI-7004 w/ 350w ps and 2 26.2 case fans

A7M266 mobo

AMD 1.33 Athlon

Noise control silverado w/ artic silver 2

512mb DDR

IBM Deskstar 61gb HD

16x10x40 Plexwriter CDRW

16x DVDROM

Run of the mill Floppy

SB live! Plat 5.1

Asus v8200 geforce 3

Creative FPS2000 Fourpoint spkrs

MS Intellimouse Explorer

MS Internet Keyboard Professional

Windows ME

Viewsonic GS790 Monitor

I think thats about it, am i missing anything? Does anyone think i will have any compadibilty issues? Any pointers would be extremly helpful thanks all. oh and does anyone have any good preformance/price printers that they would suggest?

7-|3 ^^4|\ \\[7-| 7-|3 8[9 57[<< 4[\\4`/5 \\[|\5....

FUGGER · Apr 13, 2001

Guest · Apr 13, 2001

Wow, that's some expensive hardware ...
For all that money though, you're still stuck with the disk as a serious bottle neck. You might consider going scsi, or a hardware based ATA card (I'd recomend 3ware) with 2 IDE disks in RAID.

If you go IDE, there are some faster, quieter, cooler-running drives out there now relative to the IBM Deskstar. See Tom's latest IDE HD review. The 75GXP appears to have some reliability issues as well. See the HD forum.

And of course, be careful mounting the heatsink, and set up your bios monitoring for fan rpm & cpu temp.
Good luck

Oh yea, what's a 26.2 case fan? I thought most were 80mm or bigger.

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.

Raystonn · Apr 13, 2001

First off I'd like to recommend that you wait until the end of this month before buying anything. Big price drops from Intel. This might trigger price drops by AMD as well if they want to remain competitive.

"512mb DDR"
What speed DDR ram are you getting? How many separete sticks of RAM are you getting to add up to 512MB? One stick of "PC2100" DDR ram starts at $809 plus tax/shipping. I'd recommend two sticks of something lower. By the way, high speed DDR ram has some technical issues related to the memory protocol design. They get more memory bus collisions than proper accesses. You won't see much of a benefit with DDR.

"16x10x40 Plexwriter CDRW"

"16x DVDROM"

Why not just get a Ricoh 9126? It's a CD-RW/DVD-ROM in one. It's high quality as well.

Run of the mill Floppy

"Windows ME"
I recommend Windows 2000. OSes based on the 9x kernel are obsolete. Your choice though.

-Raystonn

-- The center of your digital world --

Guest · Apr 13, 2001

Dont let him get you paranoid. Im a complete newbie to computer building and I just put in a 1.33ghz t-bird and had the system perfectly working in 6 hours.

As for the DDR Ram..I recommend you head over to www.crucial.com and pick up yourself two sticks of 256mb pc2100 ddr ram. Thats what I did and you want the highest amount possible since space is so limited with only a few ram slots. Crucial is very good shizznit.

As for the cd-rw I recommend sticking with the plextor 16/10/40 and get a seperate drive a dvd/cd combo, specifically the pioneer 16xdvd/40x cd-rom drive. Reason for the seperate drive is cd-rws have alot slower access than other kinds of drives.

As for OS 2000 Professional is maturing into a good system now. I dont use it myself however.

Best of luck,
_RK_

System Specs:
Asus A7M266 rev 1003
AMD T-bird Axia 1.33ghz w/thermoengine pro HSF
512mb pc2100 crucial ddr ram
Geforce2 Ultra 64mb ddr
IBM 75gig HD
Plextor 16/10/40
Pioneer slot load 16xdvd/40xcdrom
Tornado 3002 Black server case w/300W PSU

rd382 · Apr 13, 2001

OK here i go first off i want to say that im getting the 2100 unbuffered ram 2 sticks for like 220 w/ shipping so i think who ever posted saying that its 800 sould check out www.crucial.com secound whats all this you say about IDE??? i have no idea what that is at all third the reason im going with winME is cause i can get either winME or win 98 SE for free so i thought i would go with me cause its newer and ive read that ME is more compadible with newer systems as for the DVDROM im not sure i need to do some more research i would like to use my cdrw as my main drive but i assumed they were just as fast cause they are labeled the same speed but maybie i was wroung. one of the main reasons for getting a dvd is that their not that expensive and i thought seence im getting a good sound system that i would get one i think the one i have marked down is umm a Toshiba ATA one i think that answers all the follow ups but plz repost

as for me being paranoid i think i will be but i dont have that much to worry about cause im going to be doing this under the supervision of my friends dad who builds computers for a living

7-|3 ^^4|\ \\[7-| 7-|3 8[9 57[<< 4[\\4`/5 \\[|\5....

Guest · Apr 14, 2001

IDE is the standard hard drive connection. Currently, it supports ATA33, ATA66, and ATA100 which are essentially speed standards for IDE hard drives. Considering you are building a very powerful system I assume you are getting ATA100 drives. Most CD-ROM drives and CD burners only support ATA33. For this reason you want to put them on a different IDE cable than your ATA100 hard drive(s) or you will slow them down. The IDE controller will run all drives on a cable at the speed of the slowest drive on the cable. (At least, that's my understanding.)

Another option is to use SCSI hard drives which are faster than any IDE hard drive but cost more and require a SCSI controller. Since very few motherboards have one builtin, you would most likely need a PCI card with a SCSI controller on it. SCSI performs very well but it is more expensive and usually used for servers.

I wouldn't go with ME just because it is newer, that doesn't make it better. Many people claim it is less stable than Win98SE and there are several computer building companies that won't even install it. Even a couple Microsoft employees I went to school with have told me WinME was a rushed release because they wanted to release a new OS for home users and Win2K wasn't quite ready for that task. Win2K was supposed to be Win98SE with the NT kernel but they ran into some setbacks and Win2K initially ended up as more of an NT5 (business and server oriented) than a merging of 98 and NT. WinXP will be what Win2K was supposed to be.

Guest · Apr 14, 2001

Another reason to get a seperate CD and CDRW.
You will likely use the CD more, therefore it will tend to wear out & fail sooner. But it only costs $30 to replace it. If you use the CDRW as your main drive & it fails, your out considerably more.

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.

Raystonn · Apr 14, 2001

"Another reason to get a seperate CD and CDRW.
You will likely use the CD more, therefore it will tend to wear out & fail sooner. But it only costs $30 to replace it. If you use the CDRW as your main drive & it fails, your out considerably more."

This might be true. However, by the time my drive wears out on me, other drives will be so much faster I'll be wanting to upgrade them all anyway. I saved a bit of money buying them as a 3 in 1. (CD-ROM/RW/DVD-ROM)

-- The center of your digital world --

Guest · Apr 14, 2001

In my opinion I wouldnt go for a combo reason being performance, the combo drives are quite expensive also but performance-wise you wont get as fast a reading, recording or rewriting speed off a cd/cd-rw/dvd drive as you would say a seperate cdr/rw drive and a seperate cd drive.

I can agree with ergeorge however that if you use the drive alot its gonna wear down its life expectancy.

_RK_

Negaverse23 · Apr 14, 2001

You might want to consider getting 5.1 speakers instead of 4.1 speakers to go with your sound blaster card.
<A HREF="http://csw.creative.com/products/pwdtt2500/" target="_new">http://csw.creative.com/products/pwdtt2500/</A>

=
<font color=green>Ran out of bullsh!t to feed to the flies.</font color=green>

rd382 · Apr 14, 2001

I have no entention of going with a 3 in one type of set up for some of the reasons you mentioned mainly speed but i have just now realised that the plexwriter only has a 2mb buffer.. :frown: anyone recomend a fast write/rewrite burner for less then 230? oh and anyone got anything against the Toshiba 16x40x DVD??? i checked on my mobo and it didnt say if it had SCSI all it said was it supported Ultra DMA/100 so assume DMA is the same as ATA i may be wrong......

Another question i have is that do all these components come with cables and mounting stuff? the reason i ask is cause if i wont everything to run fast then im going to need a seperate cable for each IDE drive so how many do i get???

One more thing... someone said the Deskstar sucks any alternatives w/ around 50 or 60gb????

thnx

7-|3 ^^4|\ \\[7-| 7-|3 8[9 57[<< 4[\\4`/5 \\[|\5....

Guest · Apr 14, 2001

You might try a TDK cd-rw ..theyre harder to find but I beleive theyre cheaper than a plextor. Actually they are re-bagged plextors too! A 2mb buffer is pretty good. Theres a 4mb buffer but I doubt youll have any burning errors a 2mb buffer cant handle.

Cant say Ive heard anything special bout the toshiba cd-rw..you might ask over in the cd-writers forum, dunno..look for reviews on it though..see what others have to say =)

And in answer to your last question...if you buy off somewhere online and the item is really cheap in price its most likely an OEM item. An OEM Item comes with NO cables, software, drivers or anything but the drive itself. A retail boxed item will come with all the cables, software, drivers and everything you need to make it run yet they cost a bit more (not much usually). So if you want all the cables and stuff make sure you check or ask the retailer if the item in question is a retail box and NOT an OEM. By the way OEM stands for Original Equiptment Manufacturer, these OEM type of things are usually bought by computer companies that build quite a few computers for people (i.e. gateway, micron, etc.) or computer people who "DONT NEED NO STEEENKIN CABLES!". Some of the parts in my computer were OEM so its not a huge huge downer if you do get an OEM part cuz you can always get the stuff for it, either from the manufacturer or local computer store.

Harddrives...I know IBM makes good drives in 45gig, 60gig and 75gig flavors w/udma100 and 7200rpm frosting. I've heard one or two people mention about them failing but I havent had any problems and know people whove been running them a while that havent had any either.

Good Luck,
_RK_

rd382 · Apr 14, 2001

i know all that stuff about the OEM i encountered that when i first started looking at products is there any way to make sure it comes with anything???? most of the stuff ive looked at said it came with divers and some of the stuff came with software but i was mainly worried about my mobo other then that i guess im ok (i hope)....... im going to go through toms review of cdrw he did a week or so ago and see if that sheds some light on what i should be looking at and i will post a question in the cdrw forum too but i guess im going with the toshiba dvdrom unless i can find a comprable product for around the same price

thnx for everyones input

7-|3 ^^4|\ \\[7-| 7-|3 8[9 57[<< 4[\\4`/5 \\[|\5....

mjdunn · Apr 15, 2001

Nice system but but one big bottle neck your drive. Buy a Raid Controller. I know promise has a FastTrakk100 it is about $70. It will allow you to do raid0 (Striping)or raid1 (mirroring)

Get a controller and 3 20 GB Drives much faster than a 60 and the same amount of space.

WinME doesn't do much with the 512MB RAM.

I would think about dual boot W2K W98SE. Some things just won't run on W2K and yes WME has some real problmes with stability.

Where the hell did you come up with the money to buy this sytem?

Guest · Apr 15, 2001

Ouch, heavy on the pockets.

Hows this look?

Componet Description Retailer Stock Price Shipping by Retailer
Case Wind Tunnel + ATX Case rev. 2 CoolerGuys Yes $154.95 $21.55
CPU Fan GlobalWIN FOP38 CPU Cooler Directron Yes $23.00 ~
Floppy Drive Mitsumi 3.5 inch 1.44MB Neutronet Yes $10.95 ~
Hard Drive Fujitsu MAJ 10k 18.2GB SCSI West Technology Yes $185.00 $16.68
Keyboard Microsoft Internet Keyboard PS2 Neutronet Yes $13.44 ~
Motherboard ABIT KT7A ATX USSA Yes $120.00 ~
Network Cable Belkin RJ45 50FT Neutronet Yes $12.81 ~
Network Card Linksys LNE100TX Neutronet Yes $14.45 $20.01
Processor AMD Thunderbird AXIA 1.5Ghz Cu KD Computers No $187.00 ~
RAM Crucial 256MB PC133 CAS2 Crucial Yes $107.99 free
SCSI Contoller Tekram DC-390U2B Ultra2 LVD Memory Media Yes $97.00 $14.43
Sound Card Creative Sound Blaster Live! Value USSA Yes $36.00 $25.40
Speakers Altec Lansing ACS54 Directron Yes $45.00 $16.00
Thermal Compound Arctic Silver II KD Computers Yes $8.00 $7.31
Video Card Starforce 815 Geforce2 GTS 32MB Newegg Yes $132.00 free
Total: "$1,147.59" $121.38
Subtotal: "$1,268.97"

I already got a microsoft intellimouse layin around and a 50 dollar cdrom drive I got for free from officemax after a mail-in-rebate.

Matisaro · Apr 15, 2001

Get a GeForce 1 video with 32 megs of DDR ram, it will out perform that pathetic MX POS, and probably cost less too.

~Matisaro~
"Friends don't let friends buy Pentiums"

FlareDust · Apr 15, 2001

i agree stick with the plextor, for the reason that it can copy ANY protected cd out there so far with the certain software is amazing. No other cd-rw comes close.

mjdunn · Apr 15, 2001

Do you have benchmarks to prove this? I have both GeForce2 MX and GeForce 256.

rd382 · Apr 15, 2001

Hey guys i want this system to last 3 years i dont want to get run of the mill parts i know this will cost about 2500 but my parents are gunna pay 2000 of it and i can pick up the rest, i dont want to go with multiple drives for me that is a hassile im not sure what this raid0 your talking about is but im sure one of you will be able to explane it to me just woundering if anyone has had buffer problems with the plexwriter cause thats my main concern with the cdrw im going to use i know i want a gf3 and im sticking with MOST of the other parts of choesn

<font color=blue>©2001 I'm a newbie...... thats the only excuse I need</font color=blue>

My Set up..... Any tips?

Distinguished

Distinguished

Guest

Guest

Distinguished

Guest

Guest

Distinguished

Guest

Guest

Guest

Guest

Distinguished

Guest

Guest

Distinguished

Distinguished

Guest

Guest

Distinguished

Distinguished

Guest

Guest

Splendid

Distinguished

Distinguished

Distinguished

Share this page