Your Opinion Please

[DaveC]

Hi All,

I'm about to build my first PC and I could use some expert advice. My priorities are stability, reliability and performance, in that order. Price is important, of course, but not as important as those three. I also probably won't be doing much overclocking and I'm not a gamer.

Here's my proposed system. What do you think?

AMD Athlon 64 3400+ with 1MB L2 cache ($369)
ASUS K8V SE Deluxe motherboard ($117)
Crucial DDR PC3200 RAM (2x512MB) ($186)
Antec Sonata case with 380W PSU ($119)
ATI All-In Wonder 9800 Pro video card ($275)
Two WD 120GB 7200RPM SATA drives in RAID 0 ($188)
One WD 250GB 7200RPM PATA drive (already owned)
Sony DRU-510 DVD burner (already owned)
Additional optical drive (already owned)
Floppy drive (already owned)
Sound – on motherboard (not important to me)
Network (for DSL connection) – on motherboard
CPU Heatsink and Fan – included with CPU
Windows XP Pro ($200)

Any comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks.

 

[Rikaelus]

You might want to keep in mind the forthcoming PCIe (PCI Express) technology. AMD doesn't support it yet, but should in the coming months with the Athlon64 processor. From what I've read, the socket 939 A64's will be used with the new PCIe motherboards, so you might want to consider going that path now so you can upgrade and keep the CPU later on. Also note that PCIe will probably require a PCIe video card, though rumor has it that some boards might have a transitive AGP slot, too. But PCIe is the best way to go.

Anyway... the foundation of technology is changing so keep that in mind. And you might want to confirm the 939 thing before moving on it.

 

[El_Jefe_77]

The only really reliable thing is an Abit board and a either a standard hyperthreaded p4 or a AMD64. I would go 939 and use an ABit board.

You said you arent a gamer but you are building yourself an obvious gaming machine. yeah. shrugs.

The motherboard is everything, so abit is most stable hands down. Only issue is that 939 is a new chip and the new boards are undergoing a lot of revisions the past 3 months. I would buy retail boxed, no oem ever, not a drop. all retail boxed. this insures stable system.

I would suggest some odd points for stability:
120 mm fan exhaust
Arctic 5 silver compound instead of the sticky gunk junk they give.
Get a copy of the bios flash utility and the latest possible bios update before you make a system.
Crucial memory is the most tried and true memory, and, not expensive.
Get a name brand PSU with 400 watts or higher on it.
Put a cooling system from zalman on the cpu and the video chip, Zalman makes a great vga cooler with optional and needed fan on it.
Abit, amd64, crucial ram, zalman coolers, 120 mm exhaust fan, arctic5 thermal paste and a 400+ good reviewed psu will help all. Also, a higher wattage battery backup will serve to regulate voltage a bit and truly supress spikes and surges, keeping your computer parts alive for longer. I wrote all this on account of many people who buy junk at my store and never figure out what went wrong.

also, space out your hardrives and maybe place a slow speed fan blowing over them within the case. I use this simple method for building all my friends/family's/my own pc's since 486's debuted, and no one's system has ever failed.

 

[DaveC]

Great advice. Many, many thanks.

Something you said intrigues me. I'm not a gamer, but I do process a lot of digital images and work with some video. I figured this configuration would be very good for that. Is there an alternative route that would be better?