My planned RIG, waddah yah think?

[EVIL]

Well, after shifting my planned date for buying a new PC for around 1.5/2 years I finally decided to get serious, so I started making a list with components and prices.
Now I used some of the pro advices on this, but if anyone see's a component that could be replaced by something better for the same amount of money, or see's a mayour flaw in my plan, reply!

The rig will cost me over 4000 euro's, but it will keep me happy for atleast a couple of years 3/4

anyway, here is the list

-LIST-

edit, the deadline will be april the 5th, there is an action going on with the dell 24" LCD widescreen monitor, wich is that if you buy 2, you get the second one for half the price (atleast in my country, dunno if its the same everywhere) and the action ends 11th of april. So I want my list to be final before the 5th so I can start ordering and not need to worry about missing the action.

Where can you get 2 mighty fine 24" widescreen monitors for 1850 euro's? only at dell I suppose, cuz I havent found any that can match this pricing thing.

anyway, lemme hear from yah guys

 

[Shamrock]

Is there a point to get the SLI motherboard without an SLI compatible card?

 

[EVIL]

I might want to add another one in the future, (quick boost for less money - expecting the same card will cost alot less in 1 year time)

edit: hmm get your point, is this card not comp with SLI? dont tell me only the *puke* nvidea's are

 

[Maxi]

My penis is bigger than your penis.

 

[EVIL]

My penis is bigger than your penis.

I just want to be on the higher regions of the rigg foodscale for once lol, been using this sluggish monster forever (1ghz machine)

But as I now see there was a faliure in my plan. did some quick research, ati will get a sort of SLI thing, but only for their own chipset and it will take a couple of monsth's before those things get relesed, so .. I might switch to nvidia, sure I am biased, but what the hell, I can shove away my pride if the card isnt to expencive

Edit, would the "XFX GeForce 6800 Ultra 256MB DDR3 (PCI-e, 2xDVI), PVT45FUD" be a worthy replace?

 

[Razor]

If you want to go sli, you have to go Nvidia, and why do you not like Nvidia seeing that their cards are just as good as Atis?

My choice for cards would be 2 x 6800 Ultras, one now and one later when prices fall.

 

[EVIL]

XFX GeForce 6800 Ultra 256MB DDR3 (PCI-e, 2xDVI), PVT45FUD

would the above card be a worthy replacement? its only 20 euro's more expencive, so I don't mind. I also hear its a tad faster then the "Sapphire Radeon X850 XT PE 256MB DDR3"

and razor: its just a minor thing that I can easely shove away after proof, and some reviews of this nvidia card told me that the image quality has inreased drastically these days, so no worries

 

[Razor]

Yes it would be a very worthy replacement, then when prices fall, you can buy another one and get a 90% performance boost

 

[EVIL]

Yes it would be a very worthy replacement, then when prices fall, you can buy another one and get a 90% performance boost

aight then, a nvidia card it is , thnx to shamrock and you, razor, for keeping me from buying something that would have wasted 500 euro's! kudos my friends.

Now any other stuff? (glad to have asked for some help here)

 

[duffers20]

that is a fair beast of a system! btw if you plan on adding a 2nd 6800ultra, a PSU upgrade may be needed.

 

[ray_MAN]

Do you really need XP Pro? Get Home, and save $100. I would also like to suggest two Nvidia 6800 GTs. If you build a computer now, think towards the future (UE3.0). A PSU upgrade is a must if you do that.

 

[Shamrock]

Upgrade to a 550 Watt PSU. I am sure they have cheap, yet reliable 550 Watt PSUs for less than 90 Euros. Like ray_MAN suggested, 2 6800GTs or Ultras, depending on how much price and if you want the slightest boost in performance, will be great for the future. I would suggest the 6800GT since the cost is less than an Ultra and the performance is slightly noticeable.

I haven't heard of your ram. Could you quite possibly link me to the specifications of the ram?

 

[Griz]

Not bad, but why TWO 24" widescreen monitors?

Personally, i'd sooner go for a Sharp LC-26G4AE LCD TV. It's High Definition ready (HDCP compliant) with a DVI input so it can be used as a PC monitor, it has a 16ms response time (not sure what the response time is on Dell LCD's but i know their 26" LCD TV / monitor is a lowly 25ms).

Mine cost me £870, it works great as a PC monitor and as a TV (just waiting for Sky to start their HDTV broadcast next year).

 

[westie]

I hate thread's like this it makes my PC look like shit, but thats a pretty cool setup.

 

[PickledGecko]

Western Digital Raptor WD740GD 73GB

Why not get 2 36GB raptors for the same price and put them in a RAID 0 configuration. There's debate as to whether its much faster and it does double your chance of losing everything (if one disc fails the info on the other is useless). But since its a system disc, you can always reinstall without losing anything important. (Well, as long as you dont use WinXPs encription on anything on the other 2 HDs, as I learned to my horror.)

 

[EVIL]

Do you really need XP Pro? Get Home, and save $100. I would also like to suggest two Nvidia 6800 GTs. If you build a computer now, think towards the future (UE3.0). A PSU upgrade is a must if you do that.

K, I'l up the PSU to a 550W, and I already got a cd from WINXP home, so I can scrap that from the list or add a nice 0 to it.

the responce on the 2 monitors are around 16ms, the optimal res and I am a graphics artist, So 2 monitors can allow me to open refrence images, documents and what not on the other monitor. And hell, you get 2 tft's for the price you would normally pay for a good 23" tft, and I already found a nice dutch review of the monitor telling it was a really good one (tweakers.net)

 

[EVIL]

Why not get 2 36GB raptors for the same price and put them in a RAID 0 configuration. There's debate as to whether its much faster and it does double your chance of losing everything (if one disc fails the info on the other is useless). But since its a system disc, you can always reinstall without losing anything important. (Well, as long as you dont use WinXPs encription on anything on the other 2 HDs, as I learned to my horror.)

thnx, that really puts confidence in not picking 2 36 raptors in RAID 0

anyway, upped my pricelist, 4060 euro's now., Still have to add a keyboard with it, so I think it'l hoover around 4100 euro in the end.

But as I said, I hardly ever upgrade or replace my old pc's so I want to treat myself

btw, Q-tec makes pretty darn cheap PSU's, even 650W ones for 30+ euro's wich is pretty damn low, So I wanted to know if they are any good, (I might keep the end price in the 4050 if they are.)

 

[NeoNight]

I just want to be on the higher regions of the rigg foodscale for once lol, been using this sluggish monster forever (1ghz machine)

I hear ya brother! viva la upgrade! :thumbs: :farmer: lol

Like you I held out for quite sometime before I decided to upgrade (about 4 years and change to be exact, actually am still waiting for like 1 more piece so am still using my old comp)

btw link doesn't seem to work for some reason :|

 

[Asus]

Four sticks of memory will decrease the speed from PC3200 to PC2700/PC2100 on an Athlon 64.

1GB sticks x2 would be better in that case. They would remain PC3200 speed. Or just settle for 2x512MB.

 

[Hazar]

Don't buy Dell. Ever. I hate the propriatary bastards.

 

[EVIL]

Four sticks of memory will decrease the speed from PC3200 to PC2700/PC2100 on an Athlon 64.

1GB sticks x2 would be better in that case. They would remain PC3200 speed. Or just settle for 2x512MB.

aight! I took 4 x 512 mb ones because I heard it would be faster, guess I was lied to.

 

[Asus]

aight! I took 4 x 512 mb ones because I heard it would be faster, guess I was lied to.

512mb sticks have lower timings of course. It's just a limitation with how desktop systems handle memory.

 

[EVIL]

I hear ya brother! viva la upgrade! :thumbs: :farmer: lol

Like you I held out for quite sometime before I decided to upgrade (about 4 years and change to be exact, actually am still waiting for like 1 more piece so am still using my old comp)

btw link doesn't seem to work for some reason :|

works for me, maybe the server is a bit slow today, wait a little, itl pop up

and this http://www.asus.nl/products/mb/qvl/A8N-SLI-DDR400.pdf is the memory list the motherboard supports, any good 1024 ones in here that you can reccomend?

plus I never really understood tis PC3200 thing, why are there memory banks with PC5400? and I assume they would be faster.

EDIT: I think i'l get a [1GB x 2 (2GB) PC3200 DDR, CL2 (Corsair TWINX2048-3200C2)]

They cost me 330 euro's but thats allright.

 

[duffers20]

your pc is getting better and better as the thread gets longer! Only one thing i would say, it may be better buying a slightly more expensive PSU as cheap ones might be less reliable and stable when you are really using them to there max, like you will be with all those HD's and gfx cards.

 

[Fletch]

Yeah, you dont want to be buying all this expensive gear and running it off a cheap PSU that'll let you down. There are quite a few things to consider about a PSU other than its wattage. good luck

edit: antec and enermax are the ones to look out for

 

[duffers20]

Tagen PSU's are good too

 

[EVIL]

You guys are right, and anyway, antec aint that expancive so I decided on a 117 euro antec 550 W PSU

I updated the list with everything and I am coming to an end total of €4.128,-

so whaddah yah guys think?

 

[firemachine69]

Keep in mind, games are NOT made to play on 24" LCDs. And dual 24" LCDs are ultra-demanding on vid cards. Not to mention, it has an oddball resolution, so your games are more or less going to be squished.

In short:

Don't bother. Pick up a pair of decent 21" monitors instead. Get a pair of SLI-compatible 6800GTs/Ultras.

 

[EVIL]

I am not buying the monitors for games dude, I hardly play em these days.
I spend more time on multimedia projects, digital art and Webdesign thesedays then anything else. Sometime I play a game of Quake 3 to get some frustation out of me, plus the only thing the 24" will be doing is putting a pair of black sides to it to keep it into proportion, doesn't bother me.

plus a pair of 21" dude it'l be alot more expencive then the dual 24" cuz they are €1200 or more each. And CRT's of that seize don't fit my desktop in depth so thats not an option

 

[ComradeBadger]

Don't use XP Home

May be more expensive to go pro, but I wouldn't recommend Home at all

 

[DrDevin]

Actually you might want to get XP Pro 64 bit edition for a performance increase (at least eventually) I would not reccomend home as pro works great for me with its extra services and networking features. If you are spending 4000 dont skimp on the software that makes it all work!

* forgot to mention XP pro is the only supposed OS to be upgradable to 64 bit.

 

[EVIL]

since its getting available the first half of 2005, (could be juli) I'l be using home untill then.

Plus I dont want to up the price even higher, I already sacreficed one harddrive that I thought I didn't really need yet.

anyway? anything else to comment? is it ok now?

 

[Asus]

Windows XP 64bit will be a free. Not sure if Pro is needed or if home would qualify though.

 

[NeoNight]

oh wait winxp64 is going to be a free upgrade to xp home/pro?!?!?!?

 

[PickledGecko]

I think he means the Beta of WinXP64 is free.

 

[Asus]

It's pro only I belive and it's a license exchange program to get WinXP 64bit free. Not talking beta.
FYI Release

 

[johnmedz]

i see no need to get pro over home unless u are gonna use some of the rarely used advanced features. I think home has pretty much everything you would need and is probably a little bit lighter on system load.

 

[The Terminator]

Looks good, I was worried about teh ram but after reading through teh thread you changed to some good stuff. Great looking comp u get there. Might wanna look at a water cooling system if your going this far, make that beast silent and violent.

 

[Shamrock]

Like he said, he is not into the whole gaming thing. He is into more graphical work and what not. He won't need to overclock that beast.

 

[EVIL]

indeed, overcloaking the motha to get more life out of this system is something for the future atm. And huge THNKX for the feedback and suggestions dude's! you guys really helped me big time.

well, I guess this will be the stuff I have to order, I'l post up pics once I got everything installed and up and running

CYA!