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Starfishy

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Jun 3, 2004
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Those of you that have seen enough of my posts in here know that I am always very concerned with the "bottom line" and I am always suggesting what I think is the better price/performance alternative. That said, I have just been asked by my uncles rich buddy to build a "killer" (his word) system for him. I told him that he should do it, and that it was easy... and to go with AMD. He told me he would give me $500 bucks to make it, and I couldn't refuse :)

He has given me an $8,000.00 budget but said he wouldn't be upset if it went up to $10,000.00... but no higher.

Because I have never built anything close to this price range, I don't really know where to start. Perhaps with this much money I should think about going intel?? I don't really know. Looking for your opinions on what you would build.

I will also go ahead and put together a list of what I'm thinking... I will post it tomorrow. But maybe you guys will give me a good starting point until then.
 
Overclocking?

Definitely DFI Lanparty SLI, 2gig (2x1gig) RAM, 2x6800U's, Nice lan-li case, Pair of raptors in Raid 0, 300gig or pair in Raid 0 for storage, etc.

Since it's May, tell him to wait a month or 2, and get him a dual-core 4800+.

Might have trouble spending half of it even then...

Mike.
 
The first question would be what is he going to use the system to do? When does he want the system to be complete?

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<font color=red>You're a boil on the arse of progress - don't make me squeeze you!</font color=red>
 
Does he want any special lighting/mods or a more conservative outward appearance. For this money he should at least want to be able to look inside at his rig.

Could always go for RAID5 with Raptors... What about RAM drives? What's their current capacity? I KNOW they're expensive!

Gonna need a top-end set of 5.1 Klipsch, maybe even a 7.1 setup.

Go with a wide-screen plasma display instead of LCD.

When are the FX-57s hitting the streets? Should be soon...

There are some heavy hitting 800W PSUs out there to handle the 6800U SLI. Speaking of SLI, I remember reading about an insane pair of 6800U for SLI that already had watercooling blocks installed.

Look into acoustic lining for the case to keep the rig ultra-quiet.

Definitely go with a good water-cooling setup.

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<font color=red>You're a boil on the arse of progress - don't make me squeeze you!</font color=red>
 
Yep, and probably a couple of Raptors in RAID 0... but I was looking at some mobos and I have no clue about that. Has to be s939 of course, unless I wanna go with the s940 but unless someone gives me a really good reason to switch I will probably just keep with the s939 it has more options available with mobos.
 
He didn't give me a time limit... although I'm sure waiting two months would not be optimal. I think I should get going on it pretty soon.

He is just a gamer, it won't do any kind of business or video editing... nothing... just games.
 
yeah... the acoustic lining is a good idea. And I will definitely need the high end PSUs to handle it. I don't think I realized how much you could actually spend on a system. I have never done water cooling... and don't hear of it alot on AMD systems, but I would be willing to give it a shot. It might help me to keep temp and noise down. If you remember where you saw that watercooling 6800U SLI that would be worth a look, let me know.

I will likely do some little mods, but I'm not gonna break my back painting fan blades and crap, I don't want to spend too much effort in this area... but it still has to look pretty cool. I don't want to give him some junky looking box that he paid 10k for.
 
I would expect Raid 5 on the chipset likely to be slower than raid 0 - get 4 drives and do a 0+1 for performance and redundancy. Raid 5 isn't supposed to be as fast as raid 0 anyways (have to calculate and write a parity bit for the 3rd drive).

FX-57's I think were 3q, so July.

2 displays for even better viewing?

And don't forget the slide-out cupholder! :smile:

Mike.
 
I don't think I should bother waiting for anything... there will always be something better coming out just around the corner.

Here are some of the specs I am looking at, just off Newegg right now...

<A HREF="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103496" target="_new"> CPU </A>

<A HREF="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813136151" target="_new"> Mobo </A>

<A HREF="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814143028" target="_new"> GPU </A> x2

<A HREF="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820227011" target="_new"> RAM </A>
 
You beat me to the punch on that one!

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<font color=red>You're a boil on the arse of progress - don't make me squeeze you!</font color=red>
 
With that budget he should get a separate controller card. If you have the money, then why not make it safe as well as fast...

He should also get an Audigy 2 ZS for sound.
And don't forget the slide-out cupholder!
Click to expand...
He could have two of those installed. :wink:



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<font color=red>You're a boil on the arse of progress - don't make me squeeze you!</font color=red>
 
Should have thought of using a SCSI RAID - now that would scream! Have they gotten any of those RAM drives on the market yet?

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<font color=red>You're a boil on the arse of progress - don't make me squeeze you!</font color=red>
 
Oh yah... forgot about scsi...

Need the Tyan K8SE - the SRE is for 1U racks and doesn't do SLI. But... isn't registered ECC memory slower for gaming?

Still need slide out cupholders though... And a case tall enough to use 2 of them for 2 cups-a-joe at once.

Mike.
 
Dude, just buy him a top of the line Alien. Make your own
custom case and transfer the guts over. Pocket $4,000.00 and he'll never know the difference. People with money to burn like that just like bigger fires.

Abit IS7 - 3.0C @ 3.6ghz - Mushkin PC4000 (2 X 512) - Sapphire 9800Pro - TT 420 watt Pure Power
Samsung 120gb ATA-100 - Maxtor 40gb ATA - 100
Sony DRU-510A - Yellowtail Merlot
 
Ummm... If he's just gaming, then top of line FX with some SLI action and 2GB of RAM. Then get those Raptors going (or SCSI) and some mass amounts of HDD space. Also, get some Dell 24" widescreens and then top it off with some sick speakers. Won't reach your $8000 budget so tell him to give you more in build costs or something, :tongue:

Lucky guy you are to get to play with all this stuff. 😉

<A HREF="http://nfiniti.blogspot.com" target="_new">nfiniti plus one - my blog</A>
 
I know of some recievers that can carry a $2k pricetag, and how about speakers, Look towards Klipsch for that if you want to blow some money on nice speakers! How about a projector! WOOT! I could be such a big spender!

"If youre paddling upstream in a canoe and a
wheel falls off, how many pancakes fit in a doghouse? None! Icecream doesn't have bones!!!"

"Battling Gimps and Dimbulbs HERE at THGC"
 
Hell, you could do a RAID50 for that matter, using a RAID card and two RAID5 arrays striped to each other. And you could even throw it in Zalmans passively cooled case.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>
 
I have an old 3-channel U80 card that does RAID 50.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>
 
Those Tyan mobos are ripped. I had no idea they even existed. They look pretty sweet, and I'm probably going to get one... if I can find one here in Canada, or I might have to get it all shipped to my parents house in 2 weeks in Arizona they can bring the parts back with them. If someone knows where to buy stuff like this in Canada though, that would be great.
 
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