lusst
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Post by lusst on Sept 3, 2005 15:08:35 GMT -5
Total: $1546
Thanks everyone for your advice, lets just hope this is all in stock when I order.
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Post by molukai on Sept 3, 2005 17:48:57 GMT -5
Well, there's no reason the CD-ROM drive wouldn't work  |
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lusst
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Post by lusst on Sept 3, 2005 22:01:41 GMT -5
Aight, cool. Wasnt sure with this new motherboard being PCI-Express and all.
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Post by thwap on Sept 7, 2005 1:18:03 GMT -5
The old cd-rom will work, but you can pick up a brand new one for less than $40 at wal-mart.
You will not be able to copy your old HDD to your new one and have it work. You will have to start from scratch with an XP disk. You SHOULD be able to install your old HDD in your new computer, you just wont be able to boot from it. You should be able to run the things on your old HDD (it will be like g:\, or whatever you set it as, instead of c:\).
Also, when you are installing XP on your new HDD, it is a good idea to partition the disk. One partition for XP and the other for everything else. That way if you have XP problems and have to reinstall/reformat you can just work with the partition that has XP.
Two things I would suggest, that you probably already thought of, but didnt list are a heatsink/fan and Arctic Silver termal paste. The stock heatsink will probably work ok, but for the cash you are putting out for this, $30-$40 for a decent heatsink/fan is cheap insurance. Also the thermal paste is just as important as the heatsink. Arctic Silver 5 is the best around and is only a few dollars.
Also, where are you getting all this ? I checked Newegg and their prices are a couple dollars higher. I'm always looking for a bargain. ;-)
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Post by christohperkee on Sept 7, 2005 13:58:53 GMT -5
Hey, nice build. I'm gonna drop some advice for you from someone who has two of those (SLI with 6800GT's though) under my desk running 4 19" VS Flat panel screens. In the end this is just advice and you should do what make you feel good, I'm just giving you what I have learned from my experience. ... so here it is ...
I would:
Drop the raptor and just pickup a 7,200 sATA drive. I have 2 Raptors in RAID-0 and the performance benchmarks (for gaming) is no different than my single 300GB 7,200 sATA drive. All they do is generate a crap load of heat while spinning idle.
If this is a gaming rig, and you are playing DX9/OpenGL games mostly, I would ditch 1GB of ram in favor of a better video card, at least a 6800GT or x800XT. You will see better gains from this vs then additional memory.
Why that board? Is it for speed? For SLI? (SLI is a joke PERIOD, my single x800XT in my Dell box runs better) You could save $70 by picking up a retail box Intel branded board. Almost all major vendor 925X boards perform the same. If it's for the integrated audio well, just pay $40 for Audigy2. Offloading sound to a dedicated card vs using a codec based integrated solutions is a better idea.
(SLI is a JOKE). Why pay $129x2 + $50 premium for board and vid when you can just pay $299 for a real card? Things to think about before just tyring to get speed out of video.. What resolution are you playing at?? 1024x768?? Well, SLI will be slower than a single $299 card. 1280x1024? SLI is about the same, even dropping 16x AA doesn't make it look better. If you think you lag in DAoC a lot, well thats mostly physics calcs and ISP killing your performance. Get a faster CPU to reslove that.
When building a new system, always start from scratch. After you setup XP Home go though and shut down all the services you don't need. This will free up available "physical" memory.
The partitioning thing is up to you. If you drop the Raptor and pickup a nice 200GB drive I would split it down the middle. That would leave you room to install apps that will need to be reinstalled if your sys crashes on the main partition (registry intensive apps... office etc).
OR -
If you are not into building troubleshooting your own stuff, you can just buy a Dell. I owned 2 computer stores for many years till I sold them and went into government contracting (pays more less hours). And I can say after the 1,000's of PC's I have built and including the PC's I use now. Dell rocks. You only have to deal with 1 person vs antec, asus, wd, corsair, intel and the original vendor if you have probs. BTW, my main gaming machine is a Dell built 3.6GHz with 1GB ram and 800XT PE. I payed around $800 for it 5 months ago using a coupon off the internet.
Pentium® 4 Processor 630 with HT Technology (3GHz, 800FSB)
Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition
1GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz- 2DIMMs
256MB PCI Express™ x16 (DVI/VGA/TV-out) nVidia GeForce 6800
80GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache™
Integrated 10/100 Ethernet
56K PCI Data Fax Modem
Dual Drives: 16x DVD-ROM Drive + 48x CD-RW Drive
Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio
TOTAL:$1,039.0
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lusst
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Post by lusst on Sept 12, 2005 7:23:13 GMT -5
How upgradable is Dell? I would hate to drop $1k and be stuck with what I got.
Checking out their gaming pcs now, and they look pretty good. Thanks for the advice man. ;D
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Post by christohperkee on Sept 12, 2005 11:07:11 GMT -5
Here is the thing with making your PC upgrade friendly. As of now, every new build I have done I was required to A. Buy a new motherboard (socket change) B. Buy new memory (bus speed change)
Now, My current "home built" pc actually uses the drive.cdrom.dvdrom.soundcard from my older Dell box. The ony thin in addition I purchased was a new case.board.cpu.memory.video. And all those things are usually what you would purchase anyway.
When you build a new PC you are really shooting for 1.5 years of use. That is why I always spend the most money on my monitor. Monitors last 3-5 years.
With "ANY" system (Dell or Home build) that has these specs you should get 1.5 years out of them before you need a almost full upgrade.
3-3.6GHz Proccessor
6800GT/800TX Series video (7800/1800XT if you can afford)
100+ GB sATA 7,200 RPM Drive
1GB system memory
Audigy2 Sound
Those components should hold you for 1.5 years from now. Most people play at 1024x768. And that setup will hold till then.
Down the road DirectX 10 will be out, multi core procs will be the norm etc. So don't worry about being able to upgrade your PC. What ever you get in 1.5 years will be a full refresh.
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lusst
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Post by lusst on Sept 12, 2005 13:16:45 GMT -5
Yar, thanks for the advice man. Unfortunately, Dell is just too d**ned expensive ($2500), even with the $500 off, for what I want to put in it. Thanks for the advice though, my mom will most likely buy her next one there. The site I used before was www.zipzoomfly.com. They are pretty good with their prices and such, plus they offer free 2nd day shipping on almost all of their products. |
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Post by vashiel on Sept 29, 2005 11:00:19 GMT -5
sweet system,. im running
p4 2.8ghz
x700 pro PCI-x with omega drivers
1gb pc 320 ram
160gb 4200 hd *not sata*
dvd burner DL
I run daoc 1024x768 with max everything. Graphics names shadows water effects. everything.
and i dont have almost any lag unless theres over 150ppl in which case i lage a very little bit.
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Post by Farmeress on Sept 29, 2005 13:02:57 GMT -5
i got a 6800gt 256mb amd fx 3500+ 2.2ghz 1 gig of ddr ram 2x512 and i forgot what mb i got but i spent about 1 grand for it and can run any game i tried so far on max settings (ex. eq2 counter-strike source) and ended with around 60fps and this was at 1800x1400 or 1600x1200 windowed
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