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New gaming rig! Opinions needed!

post #1 of 46
2/12/06 at 9:49pm
Thread Starter 
Update: Changed AMD 3800 x2 to AMD Opteron 165 for overclocking
Update 2: Added the Thermaltake Beetle heatsink and changed the Modstream to the Powerstream 520 ATX. Still considering water cooling though

Case: COOLERMASTER TAC-T01 WAVE MASTER YELLOW
Processor AMD Opteron 165
Motherboard ASUS A8R-MVP ATX S939 RX200 Crossfire
Heatsink: Thermaltake Beetle
Memory OCZ Platinum EB PC4000 2GB 2X1GB DDR500 CL3-3-2-8
Hard Drives Seagate Barracuda 250GB 7200.9 8MB 11MS SATA2 NCQ RoHS
Video Card ASUS Extreme Radeon X1900XT
Power Supply OCZ Powerstream 520
DVD Writer BenQ DW1655 Lightscribe

TOTAL: $2294 CAD

My reasonings: I need a gaming rig that I can use for work/school without breaking the bank. The case is old but I like the styling (I'm going to install a window on it). The processor, motherboard and the memory come from seperate recommendations from anandtech/tomshardware that they can overclock very, very well in their own rights. I chose the x1900xt because just as anandtech posted, the x1900xtx has the exact same architecture as the xt but just factory overclocked by a bit (it will take me 5 minutes to overclock this to xtx speeds. Finally the Benq dvd drive was chosen because I want to do some lightscribing .

I already have about 600 gigs of external storage and a DL writer so I dont need to go overboard with the HDD and the CD drive.

All in all this rig is costing me $2294 CANADIAN from NCIX.com

Pros: Relatively cheap, highly overclockable, good styling (I will put a window), video card is basicly xtx but just not oced yet, room for upgrades (cpu/memory/gpu).

Cons: M2 socket is coming out second half of 2006, no crossfire yet, drivers might be unstable for the xt, no sound card

Opinions? This is my first desktop rig I'm building and I'd like some advice. Also this is my first desktop in about 5 years .
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post #2 of 46
2/12/06 at 10:08pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by JFvergara
Case: COOLERMASTER TAC-T01 WAVE MASTER YELLOW
Processor AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+
Motherboard ASUS A8R-MVP ATX S939 RX200 Crossfire
Memory OCZ Platinum EB PC4000 2GB 2X1GB DDR500 CL3-3-2-8
Hard Drives Seagate Barracuda 250GB 7200.9 8MB 11MS SATA2 NCQ RoHS
Video Card ASUS Extreme Radeon X1900XT
Power Supply OCZ OCZ52012U-520W Modstream
DVD Writer BenQ DW1655 Lightscribe

My reasonings: I need a gaming rig that I can use for work/school without breaking the bank. The case is old but I like the styling (I'm going to install a window on it). The processor, motherboard and the memory come from seperate recommendations from anandtech/tomshardware that they they overclock very very well in their own rights. I chose the x1900xt because just as anandtech posted, the x1900xtx ihas the exact same architecture as the xt but just factory overclocked by a bit (it will take me 5 minutes to overclock this to xtx speeds. Finally the Benq dvd drive was chosen because I want to do some lightscribing .

I already have about 600 gigs of external storage and a DL writer so I dont need to go overboard with the HDD and the CD drive.

All in all this rig is costing me $2,190.91 CANADIAN from NCIX.com

Pros: Relatively cheap, highly overclockable, good styling (I will put a window), video card is basicly xtx but just not oced yet, room for upgrades (cpu/memory/gpu).

Cons: M2 socket is coming out second half of 2006, no crossfire yet, drivers might be unstable for the xt, no sound card

Opinions? This is my first desktop rig I'm building and I'd like some advice. Also this is my first desktop in about 5 years .

I've got the Benq Lightscribe drive, and it's very picky about the type of lightscribe discs you use, so don't buy a bunch of discs until you're sure you can burn with them.

The rest of your specs look good, the x1900 is an awesome card. I believe the stable drivers are out for the x1900, and the motherboard sound on the Asus (azalia) will be fine until you're ready to upgrade.
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post #3 of 46
2/12/06 at 10:11pm
Thread Starter 
Godspeed response! Thanks, I'll take that into consideration when I try light scribing. I suppose I will just try a test disc before buying a whole bunch. In Japan what I did before was just use my printer to print on discs and stuff.
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post #4 of 46
2/12/06 at 10:39pm
Looks good. Might want to pick a dvd-rom drive to be able to copy something directly from a dvd-rw or something though?
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post #5 of 46
2/12/06 at 11:04pm
Ditch the x2 3800 and go with an opteron 165 instead, those will easily oc to 2.4-2.6 ghz under 1.5 volts most of the time. If you get a good one, you can get it to run at 2.8 on air . At stock voltages you could easily hit the 2.0 ghz that the x3800 runs at. It also has 2x1mb L2 cache opposed to the 2x512 on the x3800. As for the OCZ PS, I would rather go with a Seasonic 500W. I read that on Tom's hardware, the OCZ did not pass the power supply torture test.

The Cooler Master case is definitely one of my favorites though, and the BenQ DW1655 is probably the best burner on the market right now.
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post #6 of 46
2/12/06 at 11:06pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Looks good. Might want to pick a dvd-rom drive to be able to copy something directly from a dvd-rw or something though?
Thanks for the response. I do I have a DVD-rom drive (but it's external). It would be connected on firewire though, however I dont think the performance would be different.

Oh by the way, I have been reading about the Opteron 165. I have read from various posts that although the clockspeed is lower, and it is cheaper, The Opteron will be able to overclock to about 2.4 ghz easily.

Do you guys think it would be a wiser decision to switch the X2 3800 with the Opteron 165?

Quote:
Ditch the x2 3800 and go with an opteron 165 instead, those will easily oc to 2.4-2.6 ghz under 1.5 volts most of the time. If you get a good one, you can get it to run at 2.8 on air . At stock voltages you could easily hit the 2.0 ghz that the x3800 runs at. It also has 2x1mb L2 cache opposed to the 2x512 on the x3800. As for the OCZ PS, I would rather go with a Seasonic 500W. I read that on Tom's hardware, the OCZ did not pass the power supply torture test.

The Cooler Master case is definitely one of my favorites though, and the BenQ DW1655 is probably the best burner on the market right now.
That's funny! We posted that at the same time, I think I'll be doing that instead then. I'll check the review for the powersupply right now.
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post #7 of 46
2/12/06 at 11:14pm
ha, I almost told you to look at the opteron in my post up there too.

my vote goes to the opteron as well.
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post #8 of 46
2/12/06 at 11:17pm
Thread Starter 
I cant find the toms hardware test that had the OCZ 520W Modstream fail though, from what I read at the review linked above, it's an EXCELLENT power supply.
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post #9 of 46
2/12/06 at 11:21pm
YOu could get this for about the same price:
AMD FX 60
2 Gigs Muskin RedLine Ram
Dual Geforce 7800 GTX 512s
2 Terrabytes HD space
Everything OC'd and liquidcooled including GPUs,CPU,RAM,Chipset,HDDs
PC Power and Cooling 810 Watt PSU <<second best PSU on the market. The best is the 1000 watt version
Dell 30" 3007WFP Monitor (should be great with Vista's scaling abilities)



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post #10 of 46
2/12/06 at 11:23pm
the same price^2, maybe...
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post #11 of 46
2/13/06 at 12:03am
Thread Starter 
Hey Darth, while I appreciate your antics in the Alienware forum, I'd like to politely ask that you dont try to hijack my thread by showing off your own rig.

Thanks.
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post #12 of 46
2/13/06 at 12:12am
so i see you decided on the opteron, nice choice. What are you doing to cool it?
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post #13 of 46
2/13/06 at 12:16am
Thread Starter 
That's what I'm looking at right now, I want to overclock it to atleast 2.6 ghz, about 2.8ghz (I know, I know that's pushing it) but I might as well try to play with the new toy right?

Anything you recommend?
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post #14 of 46
2/13/06 at 12:21am
are you going to do water or air?
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post #15 of 46
2/13/06 at 12:28am
Thread Starter 
Liquid Cooling might be too l33t for me . But I'm considering it since I want it to overclock pretty high. Note that I haven't done liquid yet as well. I suppose with a good 2-3 hours of studying up on it, it wont be too difficult.

Air cooling however seems like the easiest right now though...so I'm mostly searching for air.

Update:

I'm considering this one for air right now, however I'm afraid it might not fit in my Asus board - and there's no references for me to follow since it's a relatively new board.
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post #16 of 46
2/13/06 at 12:35am
your site is loading reallllly slow, so i dont know what you picked.

Heres mine:
http://www.sidewindercomputers.com/thsiforinp4a.html

keeps my 2.8 p4 oced to 3.6 under 47C atfull load.
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post #17 of 46
2/13/06 at 12:44am
Quote:
Originally Posted by JFvergara
I cant find the toms hardware test that had the OCZ 520W Modstream fail though, from what I read at the review linked above, it's an EXCELLENT power supply.
I finally found it. It took a freaking long ass time, google found it right away while Tom's hardware search didn't come up with anything.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/07/...st/page21.html
It's not the 520, but the 600W version instead, but take a look at that article, and you'll see what supplies are recommended.

I knew I wasn't hallucinating when I had seen the OCZ fail some kind of stress test, although when I couldn't find it after 10 minutes I began to think I was

EDIT: D'oh it is reviewing the powerstream, not the modstream. My bad
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post #18 of 46
2/13/06 at 12:51am
Thread Starter 
Haha, thanks for the effort though! Yeah I was starting to get really worried about the PSU. What's your opinion about the CPU cooling? I think water cooling might be too much for me, so I'm considering air cooling.

However I'm looking at this thing from thermaltake. I think it looks fairly easy.
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post #19 of 46
2/13/06 at 12:54am
Quote:
Originally Posted by JFvergara
Haha, thanks for the effort though! Yeah I was starting to get really worried about the PSU. What's your opinion about the CPU cooling? I think water cooling might be too much for me, so I'm considering air cooling.

However I'm looking at this thing from thermaltake. I think it looks fairly easy.
I haven't really been following heatsinks lately, but a couple of years ago when I actually knew something about then, Thermalright (not the same as thermaltake) made some pretty nice heatsinks. I've also heard that the zalman copper flower design's are pretty good, but I would try to find a review on the internet or read through the anandtech or hardocp forums for good OCing heatsinks.
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post #20 of 46
2/13/06 at 1:13am
did you look at the thermalright i posted?
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