New Homebuilt Advice Needed….

spell99

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Feb 3, 2006
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Hey guys,
I have previously built 3 or 4 machines with little to no problems. The last was a couple of years ago. Since then a lot has changed and it seems the more I read these boards the more confusing it gets…. I will list the things I definitely would like to have and some things I could use some suggestions on.

Things that I definitely want to have:

Lian Li PC-V1000B Plus w/Window
AMD ATHLON 64 X2 4800+
2 Gigs of Memory (CORSAIR TwinX2048-400PT???)
2 SATA HDs



My questions are:

I don’t need 2 video cards, I am not a big time gamer but I want a real powerful PC. I do play some flight simulator type games once in a while but nothing crazy. I could use some suggestions on Video Cards, I have useed ATI in the past but I find their software to be clunky. I have nVidia in the past and it seemed more consistant. I do some digital video with my cam corder through firewire nothing crazy. I will be running MS Virtual PC for some SharePoint testing that I do for my job but that really is more of a memory and HD issue.....

As for motherboards one of the mother boards I am looking at is the ABIT AN8 32X. In the past I’ve used ASUS and GIGABYTE but this one is getting some pretty good reviews. This would mean I would need a PCIx Video Card, any suggestions for a robust card? Any other MBs I should be looking at?

What about Power Supplies? How much wattage and what brand? In the past I’ve uses Antec for my P4 machines but I have never built an AMD machine. What should I be looking at here?

Not so concerned about budget without going totally nuts...

Thanks in advance for any suggestion or help...

Ed
 
A 7800GT is at a very nice price/performance point, usually on sale for around $280.....

If you are not planning on considering SLI in the future, or planning on overclocking to 300 MHz FSB/250 MHz mem, you could certainly get a normal (non-Ultra, non-SLI) NF4 board for around $89 or less...

(The MSI K8N Neo4 I use is completely issue free and stable at stock clocks, and with modest OCs that do not exceed 215 MHz FSB; there are numerous other vanilla boards at this price point, I hear a lot of recommendations on Epox and Jetway Nf4 variants..)
 

handym3000

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Dec 7, 2005
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well all good questions.

power supplies. anatec is good, ocz. just read reviews about the products.

i personally like the ultra x connect series ones because of the cables.


as to the harddrives. i would look at western digital or segate. do not use maxtor they were bought by seagate.

as to the mother board. I would look at asus or dfi infinity series or even the lanparty series boards.

i personally like dfidue to easy bios updates and relatively low problems with setup. plus they make a great board.

as for ram i would look at corsair, kingston and ocz. but make sure it is not ddr2, this will not work with amd.
I would look at ddr400 pc3200 series ram 1 gb modules not 512.

and make sure you really want a dual core chip. single cores still are great and plus they cost less. but dual core is awesome too
 

RichPLS

Champion
First off, and Opteron 170 would be best as it reportedly overclocks up to over 3GHz making it faster than any AMD chips.
I have a Opty 175 and my overclock limit is 2.7GHz.

Secondly, an X1900 AIW might be of interest to you, great gaming potential and excellent video features.
ATI has some of the best coded s/w regarding grafix cards now. the market is fluid, as is frame rates in high res gaming.

alternatively, if ya do not need TV intergrated in grafix card, you can get a faster 512MB X1900XT for some of the ultimate gaming and encoding available today for just under $500.

A good board for that would be the Asus A8R-MVP or the soon to be released A8R32-MVP, the difference being the latter will support 2x16xPCIe verses 2x8xPCIe and dual gigabit lans verses one, the rest is essentially identical.

My rig.
Lian Li PC-60plus Black Aluminum Case (w/TR-3B Black Thermometer/Fan Controller 3.5” bay)
Opteron 175 (2x 2.2 GHz, 2MB cache, Socket 939, .09 micron, E6 stepping, OSA175DAA6CD)
ThermalTake BigWaterSE 12cm liquid cooling system complete kit
Asus A8R-MVP Motherboard (ATI Radeon Xpress 200 CrossFire, socket 939, SATA2)
HiS X1800XT Graphics Card (625 MHz/700 MHz OC core/1500 Mhz/1600 MHz OC mem, Dual DL-DVI VIVO 512 MB PCIe)
ATI TV Theater 550 PRO Tuner (PCI TV and FM Tuner)
2x 512MB Corsair Micro Xpert DDR RAM (2-2-2-6-2T (spd 2-2-2-5-1T) TwinXP 1024-3200XL)
2x 74gig Western Digital Raptor Hard Drives RAID-0 (WD740GD RAID0 150gig Boot Drive)
2x 250gig Western Digital Caviar SE16 Hard Drives (WD2500KS storage and data)
Plextor 716AL Black 16x DVD/CD Burner (IDE slot loading type)
Antec TP-II 550 Power Supply (550 Watt ATX12V v2.0 PSU)
Dell 2405FPW 24-inch LCD Monitor (UltraSharp Wide Aspect Flat Panel Display)
Logitech G-15 Gaming Keyboard
Logitech Cordless Optical TrackMan
Case Fans (SilenX 120mm intake, Adda 120mm exhaust blower, SilenX 92mm exhaust and SilenX 80mm Fan)

It gets 4,578 marks in 3DMark06 and 9,652 marks in 3DMark05.
 

spell99

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Feb 3, 2006
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Thanks for the advice....

The 7800 looks cool but whose make of it is the best? MWAVE has like 10 versions of it.... I currently have cable TV hooked up through my ATI All in Wonder but that has been rendered obsolete by TIVO.... So I don't need the TV in out....

On Hard Drives I have had great sucess with Seagate so I agree with that recomendatiion and will go that route.....

i saw some of those Ultra Power Supplies and they look real nice but I had never really heard of them before so I was sceptical. I am going to read up on them tonight. Is there anything special with a Power Supply I need to know with the AMD 2X? Like back a few years ago you had to make sure the PS had the P4 plug, that sort of thing.....

For memory I like Corsair and thanks for pointing out the DDR 2 issue.

Another really dumb question, I have an MSDN subscription so I get a license for Windows XP 64 bit, will I run into any issues using this with other sw that is not 64 bit? I know that is a lame question but I really never thought about it.... Any HW concerns running thi sversion of Windows?


I am going to do some more research on boards and power supplies and keep the suggestions coming

You guys rock...

Thanks
Ed
 
"First off, and Opteron 170 would be best as it reportedly overclocks up to over 3GHz making it faster than any AMD chips.
"

There may be a few Optys making 3 GHz or 3.1GHz (although some do it just long enough for screen shots/caps, and refuse to test the cpus at this freq running Prime95, etc), but 2.7GHz is probably a much more realistic hope/expectation, and still a very nice performance point...

(The problem is if 2 or 3 or even 10 people on the internet get 3.0 GHz out of them, and then 10,000 would-be OCers think it's childsplay...)
 
"Is there anything special with a Power Supply I need to know with the AMD 2X? Like back a few years ago you had to make sure the PS had the P4 plug, that sort of thing.....
"

All the modern ATX power supplies should meet the ATX12v spec, and the little 'p4" plug is indeed required by the Athlon 64 mainboards as well...

(Can't be too much of a future as a modern ATX PS maker, and have it not successfully power P4 or Athlon64 processors!)
 
"Another really dumb question, I have an MSDN subscription so I get a license for Windows XP 64 bit, will I run into any issues using this with other sw that is not 64 bit? I know that is a lame question but I really never thought about it.... Any HW concerns running thi sversion of Windows? "

XP64 will run 32 bit applications just fine, the only real hardware concerns are the oddball printer or Audigy soundcard with no manufacturer -supplied XP64 drivers yet; but most if not all NF4 board mnfctrs have chipset drivers for XP64 avail...
 

spell99

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Feb 3, 2006
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(Can't be too much of a future as a modern ATX PS maker, and have it not successfully power P4 or Athlon64 processors!)[/quote]


Good point :) I am just not real AMD knowledgable so I wanted to make sure...Plus I am brain dead from reading about HW for the last 24 hours....

Thanks
Ed
 

RichPLS

Champion
http://wiki.extremeoverclocking.com/wiki/Opteron_Steppings#Stepping_Info


Models:
165 (1.8 GHz)
170 (2.0 GHz)
175 (2.2 GHz)
180 (2.4 GHz)



Stepping Info

165 CCBWE 0546 MPMW varying results. 2.3 - 2.7GHz. (need more info on cold bugs)

170 CCBWE 0530 TPMW great clockers. 2.9 - 3.1GHz dual core. Less prone to cold bugs

175 CCBWE 0544 XMPW good/great on air up to 2.7 - 2.8GHz. Cold bug @ -10c

180 CCBWE 0541 RMPW good clocker on air. 2.7GHz with 1.45v. Does not scale well with voltage
 

spell99

Distinguished
Feb 3, 2006
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"Another really dumb question, I have an MSDN subscription so I get a license for Windows XP 64 bit, will I run into any issues using this with other sw that is not 64 bit? I know that is a lame question but I really never thought about it.... Any HW concerns running thi sversion of Windows? "

XP64 will run 32 bit applications just fine, the only real hardware concerns are the oddball printer or Audigy soundcard with no manufacturer -supplied XP64 drivers yet; but most if not all NF4 board mnfctrs have chipset drivers for XP64 avail...

Cool thank you
 

RichPLS

Champion
A64_avg_freq_vs_voltage.JPG