Please pick apart my system

sinkoman

sinkoman

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Ok, i'm planning my next/first ground up build so that once i'm ready to purchase, I don't have to look. I just buy. I've been at this for a few months already and this is steadily getting more expensive.


Essentials---------------
Aspire X Dreamer II: $59 (http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=11-144-026&catalog=23&manufactory=BROWSE

Athlon64 3500+: $261 (http://www.smksuperstore.com/catalog/viewitem.asp?ID=13101)

Ultra X-Connect 500watt PSU: $99(http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=874746&sku=ULT31556)

Gigabyte ga-k8nf-9: $150 (http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=13-128-268&catalog=23&manufactory=BROWSE)

eVga 6800gt pci-e: $445 (http://www.monarchcomputer.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=M&Product_Code=190659)

74 gig Raptor: $181 (http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=22-144-160&catalog=23&manufactory=BROWSE)



Addons---------------

Hardcano 13: $65 (http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=11-999-140&depa=1)

XP-90: $50 (http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=35-109-119&depa=1)

Logisys Streamlined Keyboard: $30 (http://www.xoxide.com/logisys-streamline-illuminated-keyboard-black.html)

Razor Diamondback Mouse 1600dpi: $60 (http://www.xoxide.com/razer-diamondback-1600dpi-mouse.html)

Penguine decal: $5 (http://www.xoxide.com/penguin.html)

TOTAL: 1455

Total minus extras: 1360


So I know I didn't pick any ram because i'm still looking. Can't really decide. I'll be moving over my current 80gig as a secondary to use for storage (raptor is gonna be for games and the likes, 80 for files and such) so I could always go down to a 34gig raptor. I'm also gonna move over bomth my dvd burner and cd reader because I like the dvd burning and two drives seems best. Can't boot up from a dvd drive so i'll need um both anyway. I'm not sure if the psu is man enough to power the system and the cabling for it seems tough to fold (i've been reading some folding tuts that show you how to make your case looking wirefree so i'll give that a go) if the psu is overkill, i'd need some recommendations to go down to.

So on to the extras!
The Hardcano and the Xp-90 will be payed for by my mom so those aren't an issue. The keyboard is because the only other one i've currently got is my HP keyboard, and i'm always having trouble seeing the keys at night. I've already got an old memorex mouse but that's been dodgy lately, and my HP mouse is pretty... Ugh. They make a 1000 dpi diamondback so I could go down to that.

I need help chosing what to go down from/change to minimize cost. I don't have a set budget but i'm shooting for just over 1000 usd.
 
The mouse is cool, but I'm not sure how much of a difference you are going to notice with a 60 dollar mouse compared to a say, 30 dollar one. You probably want to go for the 34 GB Raptor if you are only going to use it for the games (unless you really have 35 + GBs of games....). I didn't check the components individually, but unless you need that big of a psu, I'm not sure that is necessary.

Just my two cents.
 
Kid A said:
The mouse is cool, but I'm not sure how much of a difference you are going to notice with a 60 dollar mouse compared to a say, 30 dollar one. You probably want to go for the 34 GB Raptor if you are only going to use it for the games (unless you really have 35 + GBs of games....). I didn't check the components individually, but unless you need that big of a psu, I'm not sure that is necessary.

Just my two cents.
Click to expand...

Thanks! That's all the advice I needed to fall back on those. Been thinking about it for awhile!

Please continue to help!

Edit: the 36 gig raptor. My mistake. Thought it was 34 gigs. http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=22-144-200&depa=1
 
dont go xconnect biiig mistake sir, shiity outage and cooling, terrible quality and durability get an OCZ psu
 
Sh4mp00 said:
dont go xconnect biiig mistake sir, shiity outage and cooling, terrible quality and durability get an OCZ psu
Click to expand...
There you go.
 
I could cut maybe a 100-150 usd going agp instead of pci-e but I really want a pci-e card and mobo, to better future proof my system. next to that, I like the features on the nForce 4. If I go the agp8x passage, I could bring this bad boy nearly back to 1000 usd. I can't decide! :flame: :flame: :flame:
 
Antec are one of the best brand PSU makers on the market so you cant go wrong with that purchase. Anyhow onto my comments.

Is that CPU a 130nm newcastle or 90nm winchester core? The 90nm winchesters are far better at overclocking and also run much cooler. With a decent motherboard and ram behind the winchester they can usually hit 2.7GHz to 2.8GHz with ease. Newcastle cores tend to top out at around 2.5GHz to 2.6GHz however.

Do you have any thermal compound?? You're going to need some if not as that CPU doesn't ship with any unless you ask for it and i recommend Arctic silver 5 for that purpose. Its the best thermal compound on the market! As the CPU is OEM it doesnt come with a cooler at all which is why its so cheap. The XP-90 is a top choice for a CPU cooler but thermalright dont ship their coolers with a fan. You're going to need a 92mm 3 pin fan to go with it.

As for the case its a cheap one that I personally ouldn't buy. I tend to invest in more expensive cases that will last me half a decade at least and i cant see that case lasting too long. There's nothing wrong with that case though. I note that it comes with a fan fixed to the side window and a fan fixed to the top of the case. This is pretty good for CPU cooling but dire for cooling the rest of the case. I not that there's both a rear and front expansion slot on that case for what looks like 80mm fans. It would be a good idea to add a front 80mm intake and a rear 80mm exhaust to that as it would drastically improve your case cooling.

You dont seem to have a floppy drive also or do you already have one? You will be needing one of you have a SATA drive for windows and games as to install windows on it you will need to load SATA drivers from a floppy drive during the installation of windows or it wont work. Windows XP without any service packs installed doesnt have any SATA drivers.

Also to be blunt i dont see the point in the hardcano 13... its not going to add any performance to your PC so why bother?
 
All suggestions so far seem to take care of everything. Just wanted to let you know that I own that same case and Im quite pleased with it. Id buy 2 more 80mm fans, and 1 120mm for it, to fill up all the fan slots though, just for good cooling purposes like I did. Its pretty cheap. Also, since your spending that kind of money I would be inclined to go for a better case, like [Matt] said. Maybe some like an Antec Sonata, they are really nice. Hope this helps.
 
With the amount of money you're willing to spend on that mouse, you could get a better one. You could get the logitech mx-1000, wireless with lasers
 
[Matt] said:
Antec are one of the best brand PSU makers on the market so you cant go wrong with that purchase. Anyhow onto my comments.

Is that CPU a 130nm newcastle or 90nm winchester core? The 90nm winchesters are far better at overclocking and also run much cooler. With a decent motherboard and ram behind the winchester they can usually hit 2.7GHz to 2.8GHz with ease. Newcastle cores tend to top out at around 2.5GHz to 2.6GHz however.
Click to expand...

It's a newcastle. I'm trying to cut out all things pricey and un-needed. Can't seem to find any Winchester's in my price range, all in the 325-350 usd range. And I don't plan to overclock much if at all so...

Matt said:
Do you have any thermal compound?? You're going to need some if not as that CPU doesn't ship with any unless you ask for it and i recommend Arctic silver 5 for that purpose. Its the best thermal compound on the market! As the CPU is OEM it doesnt come with a cooler at all which is why its so cheap.
Click to expand...

Yes I have thermal compound. Not currently but i'm gonna grab some AS 5 the week before I order from CompUSA. Whatcha think I am... CRAZY!?!?! Just stupid :E

Matt said:
The XP-90 is a top choice for a CPU cooler but thermalright dont ship their coolers with a fan. You're going to need a 92mm 3 pin fan to go with it.
Click to expand...

Yesss I know this! Hence the 90 in the heatsinks name!

Matt said:
As for the case its a cheap one that I personally ouldn't buy. I tend to invest in more expensive cases that will last me half a decade at least and i cant see that case lasting too long. There's nothing wrong with that case though. I note that it comes with a fan fixed to the side window and a fan fixed to the top of the case. This is pretty good for CPU cooling but dire for cooling the rest of the case. I not that there's both a rear and front expansion slot on that case for what looks like 80mm fans. It would be a good idea to add a front 80mm intake and a rear 80mm exhaust to that as it would drastically improve your case cooling.
Click to expand...

I've already got 80 mill's I plan to add to the back and front! CMon Matt! :E

Matt said:
You dont seem to have a floppy drive also or do you already have one? You will be needing one of you have a SATA drive for windows and games as to install windows on it you will need to load SATA drivers from a floppy drive during the installation of windows or it wont work. Windows XP without any service packs installed doesnt have any SATA drivers.

Also to be blunt i dont see the point in the hardcano 13... its not going to add any performance to your PC so why bother?
Click to expand...

Moving the floppy drive over and the hardcano 13 is there because 1 id like to measure my temps without having to use a third party program and 2 i'm not even paying for it.

But Matt.. CMON! HAVE SOME FAITH HERE! I know what i'm doing! "do you have therma.." WTF! I know I need
thermal compound! You've asked me all noob questions! I know what i'm doing. Relax! :thumbs:
 
The vast majority of people who come here are not tech heads. Thats the reason they post here asking for help. Therefor i have to assume that anyone who posts here doesn't know that much about hardware and i have to fill in the gaps so please lay off with those noob comments.

And as for the newcastle its still a decent overclocker. I run my MSI K8N neo2 at 250FSB x10mp for a CPU speed of 2.5GHz which is still 300MHz over stock. I can run 237FSB x11mp if i want for a stable speed of 2.6GHz but i would rather have the memory bandwidth. I just know i could do 250x11 with a winchester...

And ignore what roguefox has said about the raptor. Yes it doesnt give extra FPS in games but damn my raptor 74Gb loads maps like lightning. When the map changes in HL2DM to dm_overwatch im usually on the roof with the Rocket launcher by the time anyone else loads and joins.
 
So basically your saying he should spend an exorbinate amount of money so he gets a few seconds when the map changes instead of getting a better interaction device that might give him an edge in actually playing the game?

I like your advice most of the time but this time I think he should worry about his budget more. He is limited and I think the raptor should be low on the priority list.
 
I have that case and the 6800 can barley fit in it. I would definatly get a better case. I know I want to, but I don't have the money for it right now. Not very roomy at all.
 
if u wanna save money - go for the 3000+ AMD64 and max out the other stuff - you can alway OC the CPU and they're always teh things that crash most in price!
 
and if you REALLY want things to fly: get 2 x 30Gb raptors, instead of the one 70Gb!

only regret I have about mine is that at the time I got mine, the 70's were very scarce and nearly twice the price of the 30's!!
 
TheSecondOne said:
No, no and no. Zalman CNPS7000b-alcu (http://www.zalmanusa.com/usa/product/view.asp?idx=142&code=005) is the best cpu cooler in price/silence/efficiency class. take it! :)
Click to expand...

The thermalright coolers are the best air coolers on the market... However if you want a cheaper one then you cant go wrong with that one you picked. I would stick with the XP-90 however as its better...

And as for the raptor I stand by my statements. Its more than just a few seconds speed boost per load. Loads tend to take nearly half the time for me at least!
 
I have an xp-90 with the loud as hell but fast as hell vantec tornado :) cant go wrong cpu stays cool as ice
 
I know the case isn't the best or roomyest, but I don't want to shell out all my money on a good looking case just to have all my parts go down in quality. I also like the way it looks. But if I could scrape together the extra money, I would go with this case in a heartbeat.

I could drop the mouse and use the HP mouse i've got to save maybe 50 usd, but the keyboard stays.

And what do you guys think about staying agp? Should I go agp and upgrade my mobo on my next video card upgrade, or get a pci-e mobo now. nForce 4's will probably a lot higher quality and a lot cheaper in a couple of months so there's a plus for agp, but i've never installed a cpu/heatsink before and I don't know if i'd be too confident in removing a heatsink from a proccy :( can you say $260 comb? Also, i'd like to not have to upgrade my mobo at all.

Thoughts? Oh and please, keep the suggestions coming! :)
 
I don't know much about mobos but can't you stick a pci-e card in a nforce3 ultra or can they only take agp? Also what's the advantage of a pci-e card over an agp card? I just bought a neo 2 plat. , it doesn't have a nforce 4, i hope i didn't make a big mistake... i dont mean to be asking a bunch of questions in your thread sinkoman but to give you an opinion i'm also thinking about getting a 36gb raptor i think it will indeed speed up my load times and am looking forward to the timesaver. your almost buying alot of the same settup as i am, wierd ;), the case that i bought came with a 430w true power from antec and is really roomy and well ventillated if you can gather up the extra 50 bucks or so i would highly recommend it. Good Luck.

Oh yea i forgot to tell you that i found a athlon 64 3500+ 90nm for $302.00 at ecost, pretty good deal if you ask me, it was 292.00 a week or so ago, but it's still a really good deal, here's the link:Athlon 64 3500+ winchester
 
Foxhound888 said:
I don't know much about mobos but can't you stick a pci-e card in a nforce3 ultra or can they only take agp? Also what's the advantage of a pci-e card over an agp card? I just bought a neo 2 plat. , it doesn't have a nforce 4, i hope i didn't make a big mistake... i dont mean to be asking a bunch of questions in your thread sinkoman but to give you an opinion i'm also thinking about getting a 36gb raptor i think it will indeed speed up my load times and am looking forward to the timesaver. your almost buying alot of the same settup as i am, wierd ;), the case that i bought came with a 430w true power from antec and is really roomy and well ventillated if you can gather up the extra 50 bucks or so i would highly recommend it. Good Luck.

Oh yea i forgot to tell you that i found a athlon 64 3500+ 90nm for $302.00 at ecost, pretty good deal if you ask me, it was 292.00 a week or so ago, but it's still a really good deal, here's the link:Athlon 64 3500+ winchester
Click to expand...

Therer are no NF3's at all that support pci-e. It's ok that you thrash my thread, but please, do it somewhere else nextime. I've really been waiting for this thread to make replies so. But it's ok this time.

I'm not too much of a fan of the chieftech case designs so I think i'll pass on that. Thanks for the linky for the winchester though! I think i'll put that 50 usd towards the lianli case though.
 
The Terminator said:
I would really think about changing the case. Id go with this. http://compuplus.com/insidepage.php3?sid=im54qd68ux3gm2w&id=463&comboid=774
Click to expand...

Sorry bud but if you had read the entire thread you would have known that I have switched to this case: http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=11-112-024&depa=1
Better luck next time :bounce:

Unless you though I was still going with the other case because the other one was too much mula. I've decided that it would be worth the extra money to go for this case. Much better look IMO. Too bad the black one is 120 usd.
 
sinkoman said:
Therer are no NF3's at all that support pci-e. It's ok that you thrash my thread, but please, do it somewhere else nextime. I've really been waiting for this thread to make replies so. But it's ok this time.

I'm not too much of a fan of the chieftech case designs so I think i'll pass on that. Thanks for the linky for the winchester though! I think i'll put that 50 usd towards the lianli case though.
Click to expand...
also about your mouse, if i were you i would get the mx1000 like someone else said on this thread, i hear it is really precise being a laser mouse rather than normal optical, it's also wireless which is also a great feature that lead me to believe that it is better deal for your money, i would highly recomend this mouse to you. I think your selection of keyboard is great though, i have the same need for seeing the keys in the dark sometimes, the lightup keyboard is a great idea.
And agian sorry for trashing your thread, mine usually die pretty fast so i get a little irritated. It wont happen agian. :cheers:
 
Foxhound888 said:
also about your mouse, if i were you i would get the mx1000 like someone else said on this thread, i hear it is really precise being a laser mouse rather than normal optical, it's also wireless which is also a great feature that lead me to believe that it is better deal for your money, i would highly recomend this mouse to you. I think your selection of keyboard is great though, i have the same need for seeing the keys in the dark sometimes, the lightup keyboard is a great idea.
And agian sorry for trashing your thread, mine usually die pretty fast so i get a little irritated. It wont happen agian. :cheers:
Click to expand...

No probs :thumbs:

I think i've decided i'll stick with my optical HP mouse for the time being. It's gonna be crappy but hey, if it runs HL2 and gets me that LianLi case, then i'm all for it!

Oh and to keep your threads alive longer, try to pick an intersting name. I picked "Pick apart my system" because I knew the second somebody saw that, they'd be all like "Lets see what this noob has that he thinks he can show off!"

Back on track, can anybody else recomend that mouse? I was looking at it earlier (month or two actually) and noticed they were a bit pricey but getting cheaper. What do you think?
 
Ok. I'm seriously thinking of paying the extra $10 for a black LianLi pc-65 over the silver one I picked earlier.

And with the new case, i'm not gonna use that hardcano 13. I'd much rather have a fan controller running in one of the 3in slots. I can't seem to find a decent one that will match the case I picked out, has support for at least 3 fans, allows you to change fan speeds yourself, and has a tempurature monitor. I've found a Case Arts one that's only 29 usd, but I haven't been able to find any reviews for it which pretty much rules that out. I'm thinking of screwing tempurature monitoring and just getting a Vantec Nexus NXP-305. Anybody have any recomendations for 3.5inch baybuses?

And thanks for all the help! This is getting cheaper and better looking ny the post!
 
dude did you realise that currently there are no 6800GT's on PCIe and that the store your buying that from has made an estimate as to when its coming in, its just an estimate.

btw eVGA is an excellent brand and the heatspreader is damn sexay :p
 
monty69 said:
dude did you realise that currently there are no 6800GT's on PCIe and that the store your buying that from has made an estimate as to when its coming in, its just an estimate.

btw eVGA is an excellent brand and the heatspreader is damn sexay :p
Click to expand...

I know the're not in stock yet. I'm just trying to get everything set up so that when i'm ready to buy, i'm not all like, "I still can't decide if I should get this or this." and so I know where the cheapest products are now. Since it's not in stock yet and it's just a price estimate, I may be in luck! Who knows, maybe the pci-e 6800gt's will be cheaper!

Oh and I think i've decided that I wont be getting a fan controller. I'll see how noisy my case is and if it's too loud, i'll go with a nexus.
 
Well, I was doing the dishes and thinking about GTA:San Andreas (i'll be getting the game later on today) I was thinking about how in previous gta games, I would always make a secondary save file loaded with codes that I would use when I decided to break away from the story and play sandbox style. I was noting how annoying it used to be to have to run to the computer, print out the codes, run back to the ps2, think of a new code, run to the computer, try to find the new code, print out the new code, run back.... Just recently, I got a tv in my room and now I play in my room. I don't like hearing my computer when i'm playing my ps2 games so I usualy shut it off. Then I thought of the gta scenario. Turning on the computer, finding the codes, printing them out, turning off the computer, thinking of a new code... And though if I have a fan controller, I could just turn the fans low when i'm playing my ps2.

So i've come back to getting a fan controller but this time i'm set on a nexus 205.

What I want to really know now is, i've been reading some mx-1000 reviews and it seems like a really good mouse for gaming since my hand always gets sore using my generic compaq mouse, and I hate it when the mouse starts to slide the cursor around when i'm not doing anything. So I want to know if anybody with an mx-1000 can tell me if it's worth the money in my dillema.

Thanks!
 
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