Building a new computer (x2)

[Eaglestrike]

Alright, I'll just create a partition for whenever I get some cash to buy it and set my HD up like levish said he does (as that's basically how I have this computer setup)

[mootsfox]

32bit OSes will only show 3.7GB of RAM due to the address limitation.

Like said before Zalman heatsinks are decent. I wouldn't suggest ever buying them new though.

For air cooling on the CPU, you'll want to look into the Thermalright Ultra Extreme 120, Tuniq Tower, Thermaltake Big Typhoon, or the Zalman CNPS9700LED if you can pony up the $80 price tag.

For air on the GPU, your choices are less, between the Vf-900 from zalman or the HR-03, or HR-03GT from Thermalright. I've also heard good things about the Thermaltake duo orb.

I'm suggesting the 4GB kit so much, because it's so cheap. Once you go to 4GB, you'll never want to go back to anything less. One day you ARE going to want 4GB, so why not get it now, and not have to worry about 4x1GB sticks, which overclock like crap.

As for Vista... I'm using Vista 64bit now. It's nice in a few ways, and steam games run a bit faster. However, support for older games is crap, it's a memory hog (I don't care about that). Vista is easier to pirate too. I'd dual boot. I would dual boot myself if I wasn't in RAID.

[Shuemue]

Vista is easier to pirate too.

What's hard about typing in the correct XP key?

[mootsfox]

Vista is easier to pirate too.

What's hard about typing in the correct XP key?

Updates and such don't always work.

Vista has a built in OEM coding system that can easily be fooled into thinking it's 100% genuine, with all service packs and updates working out of the box, or zip file.

[Shuemue]

XP you just need the right code, everything will work. The resourceful will find an XP Pro academic code, will never be blacklisted.

[izembo]

2 gigs of ram is more than enough, 4 is a huge waste.

[Cjskater]

The resourceful will find an XP Pro academic code, will never be blacklisted.

:DDD long live academic codes!

[mootsfox]

XP you just need the right code, everything will work. The resourceful will find an XP Pro academic code, will never be blacklisted.

I'm sure it's not hard. I just said that Vista is easier to pirate, and both are too easy to.

[levish]

haven't tried steam games on vista64 :X going to have to give it a whirl

do they have to be re-downloaded?

also definately not vista exclusive for gaming atm Eaglestrike >_<!

in fact only way i'd consider vista for gaming is if it's got dx10 specific effects, if you do vista, might as well do vista64 since you'll have 4gb of ram and Crysis at least does some pretty stuff with it.

[Eaglestrike]

As of now I'm going to ignore Vista and stick with only 2GB of RAM for the computers. I think I might go for a 250GB HD and give my brother an 80 or 120 (my brother currently has a 40GB HD and 20GB is still free so lol)

Can't wait until I get to see the full computers. My brother and I went out and bought these 22" widescreen LCD monitors and they're so damn big, can't wait to get a computer that can take better advantage of it. The e2180 processor looks good, not sure where a step up is since on pricewatch the 2180 only comes in combo deals. What is everyones preference on motherboards? Is there a big difference? Just want to weigh in everything so I don't get a poor motherboard if I get a mobo/cpu combo deal somewhere.

[Hitoshura]

Personally I like Zalman heatsink/fans.

Couldn't agree more, decent products.

YES. Zalman are without a doubt the best IMO.

[mootsfox]

Personally I like Zalman heatsink/fans.

Couldn't agree more, decent products.

YES. Zalman are without a doubt the best IMO.

IMHO, you're misinformed and well, wrong.

They aren't bad. Just, overpriced... The word "novelty" comes to mind. You can use them, and probably get decent to good results, but there are better, cheaper alternatives to Zalman heatsinks, and I listed a few choices in one of my posts.



But yes, Steam will download the 64bit versions of your games if you have a 64 bit OS. I dunno if there is a performance increase or not though.

For motherboards, you have two options. The P35 and the X38. Anything else is crap in comparison. Both are from Intel and support Crossfire (irony huh?). The main differences are that X38 has a full 32 pci-e lines for x16, x16 crossfire, and the P35 only has x4 lines for the second card. In theory the X38 is supposed to have better latencies for the northbridge, but as far as benchmarks point out, that didn't really pan out. Most X38 boards also only support DDR3, which launched in a similar fashion to DDR2, meaning the early stuff is way overpriced, and on par or slightly better than good DDR2. Unless you are dying for a dual card Crossfire setup, or a dual card SLI setup (where you'd need the 680i chipset), the P35 is your best bet. Motherboards with the P35 chipset range from about $80 to $220. My favorites for the P35 are DFI's "Blood Iron" which can do 500+ on the FSB, is a smaller ATX board, and has a featured filled BIOS. The two other boards I'd recommend are Gigabyte's GA-P35-DS3R and the ASUS P5K-e WIFI/AP. I bolded the "R" in the Gigabyte board because the board without that R lacks RAID support, which if you don't want now, you may want in the future. RAID is awesome. The ASUS P5K series all use the P35, and are feature filled. I've got the mid-range of the line, the P5K-e WIFI/AP, which has onboard wifi, great cooling for the northbridge, and a good choice in slot arrangement. I've had no troubles running my quad core at 510FSB on stock northbridge voltage, and with a bump I'm sure it could do 540-560, maybe more.

Hope that answered any questions

[Eaglestrike]

Alright, paycheck is still pending but I went and looked for new parts already. Going to post up specs here for anyone who wants to critique:

MSI P6NGM-FD Core 2 Quad Socket 775 nVidia MCP73PV Chipset 1333FSB DDR2-800 PCI.e Motherboard
Intel Core 2 Duo E2180
MicroX LA-CSBW3284HLW-BK MidTower W/450 W P.S. Case (Black)
Sapphire Radeon HD2900PRO
Cheap generic 2GB stick of DDR2-800 RAM (let me know if name really makes a difference)
WD Raptor 10kRPM 150GB HD

My total cost is $600-620 since I got a 2 year warranty and some thermal paste and such with the motherboard/case/cpu combo which is also coming pre-assembled and tested (I hate screwing motherboards into cases). I figure getting a name brand RAM is the only real upgrade I need, but not sure how much that really means, let me know and if anything else needs to be changed. I'd prefer to not spend more but will if it's important.

[levish]

you want this mobo 99$
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814102715

and imo you want 2 sticks of memory to take advantage of dual channel bandwidth

the WD raptor is a very nice drive but I personally would get a cheap hard disk drive like this
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822148144

and put the extra 100$ towards a better video card since at the 600$ range you are basically building a bang for the buck system and the raptor really is a very minor upgrade for any games compared to a better video card.

[Shuemue]

I agree on dropping the raptor for a 7200rpm drive and throwing more cash at the video card.

[mootsfox]

Alright, paycheck is still pending but I went and looked for new parts already. Going to post up specs here for anyone who wants to critique:

MSI P6NGM-FD Core 2 Quad Socket 775 nVidia MCP73PV Chipset 1333FSB DDR2-800 PCI.e Motherboard
Intel Core 2 Duo E2180
MicroX LA-CSBW3284HLW-BK MidTower W/450 W P.S. Case (Black)
Sapphire Radeon HD2900PRO
Cheap generic 2GB stick of DDR2-800 RAM (let me know if name really makes a difference)
WD Raptor 10kRPM 150GB HD

My total cost is $600-620 since I got a 2 year warranty and some thermal paste and such with the motherboard/case/cpu combo which is also coming pre-assembled and tested (I hate screwing motherboards into cases). I figure getting a name brand RAM is the only real upgrade I need, but not sure how much that really means, let me know and if anything else needs to be changed. I'd prefer to not spend more but will if it's important.

This motherboard is much better: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813136038
Go with this graphics card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814102706
Grab this RAM kit: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820231122

You'll need a different case too, since I don't think it supports a ATX sized board, although the Blood Iron is smaller than regular ATX.

Raptors are fast, but not cheap. I'd go for a 250GB to 500GB WD (ending in AAKS) or a seagate 7200.10 or 7200.11.

[Eaglestrike]

Alright, took those suggestions into account and here's what I finished with:

Case
Blood Iron motherboard
Radeon 2900PRO
Intel E2180 processor
4GB of ram from above post
Seagate 250GB 7200RPM HD

Along with an extra fan and a power supply to total just over $600. Let me know if I should look for other stuff (currently leaving sound card/speakers/keyboard/mouse/optical drive for other paychecks cause we can reuse our current ones) anywhere from here since my computer will be ordered in two weeks. Thanks for all the help guys.

[mootsfox]

That looks great, I like the case too.

For a PSU, I'd pick up this Rosewill: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817182067

Otherwise, here are some other good choices:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817341010
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817256027

[Eaglestrike]

I might get a stronger power supply for my computer. I play in my basement so I've got some natural cooling here (I don't think room temperature ever goes above 65 degrees, maybe not even 60 degrees...seriously) so I have a higher ability to overclock. It'd be nice if I could get a system that plays better than the one I just purchased because I can overclock for the same price.

Also I didn't get to asking it before, but is a 10k rpm HD really that unimpressive? That's been the same rpm since I built my current computer 5-6 years ago, seems a bit odd that the same speed is still fine.

[mootsfox]

I might get a stronger power supply for my computer. I play in my basement so I've got some natural cooling here (I don't think room temperature ever goes above 65 degrees, maybe not even 60 degrees...seriously) so I have a higher ability to overclock. It'd be nice if I could get a system that plays better than the one I just purchased because I can overclock for the same price.

Also I didn't get to asking it before, but is a 10k rpm HD really that unimpressive? That's been the same rpm since I built my current computer 5-6 years ago, seems a bit odd that the same speed is still fine.

That 7,200 RPM drive will do about 70MB/s read/write contantly. Raptors do around 80-90 I believe. It's the same RPM rating, but the interface has improved, the number of platter and density is increased, and the read/write heads are improved. For the price, and your budget, spending $150 for 150GB of 15% faster transfer speed really isn't worth it. Two of your drives in a RAID 0 setup would be faster anyways.

I'd pick the Rosewill. At 60A for the 12v, you've got more than enough power for TWO 8800GTX's or HD2900XT's.