PC rig

[evulboo]

My friend is looking to build a pc with a budget of around £1200 he has come up with this so far, any comments on it please

Coolermaster Wave Master (Silver) Case
Tagan 480W Silent PSU
Asus P4C800 Deluxe
Intel Pentium 4 3GHZ Prescott 800fsb 1MB cache
Coolermaster Hyper6 w/ extra Vantec Stealth 80mm fan
1GB DDR PC3200 Dual Channel (TWINMOS) RAM
Sapphire Radeon X800 Pro 256MB
2x Seagate Barracuda 120GB 8MB cache 7200rpm SATA HDD in RAID0
IBM Deskstar 120GB 7200rpm (aleady have this)
Audigy Player w/ Creative Inspire 5300 5.1
LG 12x DVD Dual R/RW Drive
LG DVD ROM Drive (already have this)
Iiyama Vision Master 1415 19"

total: £1296.83

he wants to stick with intel and is not a keen overclocker

 

[scottchen]

I guess you liked the Hyper6, i'd recommend the P4C800-E deluxe over the non e version. Is this guy into Ocing?

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[evulboo]

nah he not really into O/C but might dabble in it to see about performance, as for the hyper6 i still owe u a pint lol


is the -E version alot better?
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by evulboo on 06/13/04 07:17 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[scottchen]

I've heard of horror stories with the P4C800 and P4C800-E fixed some of it, but i still hear horror stories about them. You may want to consider MSI boards, which are much cheaper, and if he's into OC then the Abit board's worth it.

Here's just my opinion, the I875P chipset isn't worth its money over the I865PE, so if he's into Asus then go for the P4P800 dlx or something, or the Abit IS7.

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[evulboo]

ok will look into the mobo issue, what bout rest of system or is that ok?

 

[P4Man]

Few comments, aside from what the other have said already:

Is 360 GB of total diskspace not a bit overkill :/ ?
Also, don't expect miracles from the RAID setup, unless you use a 64 bit PCI-X controller (which you can't on a desktop motherboard), there is precious little, if any performance to be gained from RAID, contrary to popular believe.

Also, I have to say this, but considering he is getting an X800, I assume he is an avid gamer.. he should really reconsider his "stick with intel" philosophy. An Athlon64 would serve him considerable better.

If for no reason other than his intel stocks, he still hangs on to his intel-only policy, after slapping him in the face, tell him to get a northwood instead of the prescott. Its considerably less hot (noisy), and offers better performance at the same clock. Its often even cheaper as well, so don't think twice. The 1 MB cache doesn't offset the performance penalty associated with the extremely long pipeline of prescott for most apps.

Finally, Illyama monitors are top notch, good choice there, but for such a budget, I'd consider a 21" if deskspace is not an issue. You should/might be able to squeeze a good 21" into that budget, they are not much more expensive as quality 19" monitors these days, and its an big difference IMHO. Also consider the monitor is probably the part that he will hang on to the longest, so its warranted to spend a bit more there, even if its at the expense of something else (like one disk less, or maybe even a 9800 Pro instead of the x800, and upgrade to a X880 or whatever when the 9800 doesnt cut it anymore, which could take a while)

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =

 

[phial]

An Athlon64 would serve him considerable better.

i 2nd this.


why is he getting a Prescott? just because they are "new"? a Northwood would be better, but seriously consider a 3200+ A64, itll be mucho faster for gaming (and better for general windows stuff too)

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[evulboo]

well 360gb he says u can never have to much ive seen on so many posts that a raid0 will give btr loading times etc as for the intel policy he staying with it but he is concidering the northwood, as for the temps with prescott thats not a problem i only get 39c full load with hyper6 + extra fan, would the prescott not be btr later on when they make use of the extra 13 instructions sse3?

 

[P4Man]

>well 360gb he says u can never have to much

True, but you can never have enough screen estate either, nor money in your pocket

>I've seen on so many posts that a raid0 will give btr
>loading times etc

And how many benchmarks have you seen ? I've seen 2 exhaustive reviews lately (im too lazy to dig up the link), though granted, they used faster Raptor disks, but the net benefit in loading times and boot times was within margin of error, ie <1%.

The WD drives you selected are a bit slower, so a single drive might not max out the IDE controller or southbridge bandwith the way a raptor does, but I don't expect the difference to be noticeable. If someone has a review/test to prove me wrong, by all means, share it. I think most people just blindly assume that a raided setup *has* to be faster, since it has twice the theoretical bandwith.. but they forget the overhead involved and the PCI bottleneck, as well as >2x higher cpu load. Raid 0 is definately faster on SCSI using a PCI-X 64 bit and or 133 MHz controller, or a PCI-E controller in the near future, but with an integrated IDE controller on a desktop motherboard, don't count on it. It might even perform worse under certain circumstances.

> as for the intel policy he staying with it

What his argumentation ? always interesting to hear..

> as for the temps with prescott thats not a problem i only
>get 39c full load with hyper6 + extra fan

I don't know the hyper6, but if it achieves 39C full load with a prescott while not making a deafening noise, it should be one HELL of a HSF ! Still, you'd be burning watts for nothing, which inevitably leads to more noise, higher electricity bills and more warming of the room in the summer (if he doesnt have A/C). Granted, the 21" I suggested will burn considerably more, but at least you get something for it, unlike prescott versus NW.

>would the prescott not be btr later on when they make use
>of the extra 13 instructions sse3?

It won't do much for games. Expect a couple of percent at most, probably not enough to make up for the overall slower gaming performance today versus northwood (let alone A64). It may help for encoding and encryption or other specific stuff though, but if that is a concern, he should be worried more about lacking AMD64/EM64T as that will likely make a far bigger difference (if for no other reason that more GPR registers, and twice as many SSE2 registers).

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =

 

[evulboo]

ok he has now conciderd going amd and has come up with this set up

Coolermaster Wave Master (Silver) Case
Tagan 480W Silent PSU
MSI K8N Platinum nForce3 250 (Socket 754) Motherboard (MB-022-MS)
MD (Newcastle) Athlon 64bit 3000+ 754pin/512 L2cache
Coolermaster Hyper6 w/ extra Vantec Stealth 80mm fan
1GB DDR PC3200 Dual Channel (TWINMOS) RAM
Sapphire Radeon X800 Pro 256MB
2x Seagate Barracuda 80GB 8MB cache 7200rpm SATA HDD in RAID0
IBM Deskstar 120GB 7200rpm
Audigy Player w/ Creative Inspire 5300 5.1
LG 12x DVD Dual R/RW Drive
LG DVD ROM Drive
Iiyama Vision Master 1415 19"

+ £10 for cables

£1256.01


what will the perfomance be like between the 2 systems or what should be changed on either system, 1 other thing does the amd mobo support dual ram?

 

[P4Man]

Looks good to me. Is that one 1 GB module, or 2x512 ? Remember, the S754 A64 is a single channel solution, so there is no need to buy modules in pairs, you could just as well plug in a single 1 GB DIMM, and have two slots over for future expansion.

Either way, the K8N seems to take 2 double sided modules and run them at 400 MHz (which is beyond AMD's official spec) according to Toms latest memory/motherboard article, so you should be golden.

That aside, I still don't know a thing about the Hyper6 (does it work on A64 boards ?), and how noisy it is, but with this setup, don't bother getting a noisy HSF, you won't need it if you're not going to overclock. Stock cooler with the boxed cpu is actually pretty nice for stock speeds, or so I've heard.

On the DVD R/RW drive; I'm not sure if the 12x is much more expensive than a 4 or 8x speed, but keep in mind currenly DVD+/-R media s are only available in 4x speed. 8x speed is nowhere to be found still (at least here), let alone 12x, so i wouldnt pay a big premium for a 8x drive. OTOH, I would definately make sure its dual standard, DVD+R and DVD-R.

For the rest, it looks a lot like my next purchase, so I don't think its terribly wrong

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =

 

[evulboo]

cool ta m8, as for the hsf its quite i have to disconnect my case fan to hear it <A HREF="http://www.coolermaster.com/index.php?LT=english&Language_s=2&url_place=product&p_serial=KHC-V81&other_title=+KHC-V81+Hyper 6&PHPSESSID=3740febfc789f790727bf5d0629bfa70" target="_new">http://www.coolermaster.com/index.php?LT=english&Language_s=2&url_place=product&p_serial=KHC-V81&other_title=+KHC-V81+Hyper 6&PHPSESSID=3740febfc789f790727bf5d0629bfa70</A>

will look into the memory what brand would u recomend and the dvd-rw there was hardly any price difference and at least its abit futrue proofed

 

[Zeekfu]

From what I have seen 1gb sticks of ram are far more expensive and have lower timings than two x 512 sticks. For example, compare 1024 (2x512)corsair xms 3200 c2 to a single 1gb stick of the same quality.

 

[rmoore999]

What do u think about this RAM?

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?rb=536546583&action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X3Jldmlld3M=&product_uid=49296

 

[Zeekfu]

One of the reviews says that is a 2x 512 kit not one stick as the picture shows. I don't know how the price stacks up against what I have been looking at as I am not sure of the conversion factor to U.S. $ or how the prices are there. As far as I have found a 2x512 kit will be much cheaper and also give you better timings than a single 1gb stick regardless of which platform you choose. Unless there is some reason that more memory will benifit your specific usage 2x512 is the way to go. I am certainly not an expert on the subject, but from what I have gathered from posters who I consider reliable putting 2gigs of ram in may actually hurt performance in windows xp. This article was my first introduction to what all those memory timing numbers mean: <A HREF="http://www6.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20040119/index.html" target="_new">tom's memory timings</A> You might also find this helpful for compatibility questions.<A HREF="http://www6.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20040602/index.html" target="_new">tom's recent memory compatibility review</A>

I am building a new system to replace my current system that is several years old. Others have referred me to www.anandtech.com for memory reviews. I was looking at corsair <A HREF="http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=80097-17" target="_new">corsair twinx1024-3200c2pt</A>
but I am now also considering this now although it is very expensive <A HREF="http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=20-146-983&depa=1" target="_new">ocz 3500eb</A>


Memory (at least the corsair memory I was looking at and at the place I was tracking prices) went up sharply over the first few months of the year but then started to ease up a bit in mid May (although it is still much higher than when I first started tracking it). I hope it will continue to come down in price. I am not sure if the price hike was all around or only with corsair memory. I have heard Chinese new year effects memory prices. That may be nothing but a sort of urban myth for all I know, but the explanation I was given was that alot of workers take off a significant ammout of time after Chinese new year. Also winbond, who made a very low latency memory chip, apparently withdrew from the memory market. Perhaps having one less supplier caused a wobble in supply and demand? At any rate memory made a sharp jump earlier in the year and then came down a bit in May. It is still about 25% higher than when I first started tracking it.

 

[rmoore999]

Cheers People, Looks like my new rig is set.

Coolermaster Wave Master (Silver) Case
Tagan 480W Silent PSU
MSI K8N Platinum nForce3 250 (Socket 754) Motherboard (MB-022-MS)
MD (Newcastle) Athlon 64bit 3000+ 754pin/512 L2cache
Coolermaster Hyper6 w/ extra Vantec Stealth 80mm fan
Kingston 1gb 400MHz DDR Non-ECC CL3 (3-3-3) DIMM (Kit 2)
Sapphire Radeon X800 Pro 256MB
2x Seagate Barracuda 80GB 8MB cache 7200rpm SATA HDD in RAID0
IBM Deskstar 120GB 7200rpm (already got this)
Audigy Player w/ Creative Inspire 5300 5.1 (already got it)
LG 12x DVD Dual R/RW Drive
LG DVD ROM Drive (already got it)
Iiyama Vision Master 1415 19"

+ £10 for cables

£1224.67


Any comments are still welcome

Thanks

P.s I'm Boo's friend who hes been talking about

 

[P4Man]

>Coolermaster Hyper6 w/ extra Vantec Stealth 80mm fan

Looks like a damn nice HSF, but totally overkill for a 3000+ if you're not going to overclock. Why don't you try the stock cooler first, which is fairly silent already, and if you don't like it, you can always order a better one later.

>Sapphire Radeon X800 Pro 256MB

Is it available allready ? Or are you just going to wait for it ?

>Kingston 1gb 400MHz DDR Non-ECC CL3 (3-3-3) DIMM (Kit 2)

Why CL3 ? is it that much cheaper than CL2.5 ?

That aside, nice setup. Let us know how it works out for ya.

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =

 

[rmoore999]

Yeah i was thinking about leaving the fan, see how the stock gets on. I've decided to get a 3200+ now though with a X800 XT. yeah gonna wait for it. You know when the XT is out? As far as i know the Pro is already out though mate, on e-buyer neway.

I'm dunno about the ram, it just seemed good lol. Is CL2.5 better than CL3?

Yeah should be about a month or 2 before its fully built. i'll post various benchmarks when its done.

 

[trooper11]

yeah the pro is out. the xt is also out, but in very limited quantities. you should see a bigger release in a couple weeks.

 

[rmoore999]

nice one mate, cheers