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Building a PC

post #1 of 34
4/8/06 at 2:51am
Thread Starter 
Hi everyone. Im planning to build a PC during this upcoming summer. The problem is that I've never built one before, and I need suggestions for my project.

Here are the items I'm planning to get so far for my build.

ASUS A8N-SLI Premium ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail $162.99
G.SKILL Extreme Series 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM Dual Channel Kit System Memory - Retail $157.00
Western Digital Caviar 80GB 3.5" IDE Ultra ATA100 Hard Drive - OEM $47.00
COOLER MASTER Centurion 5 CAC-T05-UW Black Computer Case - Retail $43.99
Antec TRUEPOWERII TPII-550 550W Power Supply - Retail $89.99
NEC 16X DVD±R DVD Burner Black IDE/ATAPI Model ND-3550A - OEM $38.88
Windows XP $90
AMD Opteron 165 1GHz HT Socket 939 Dual Core Processor - Retail $325.00
eVGA Geforce 7900GT 256-P2-N563-AX Video Card - Retail $319.00

(All prices and items are from Newegg.com as of April 7, 2006)

Total w/o shipping : $1,274

My budget is $1400.
I want to make a gaming PC that can run SLI in the future, incase i decide to buy another video card. For the harddrive, I dont really know much about RAID and stuff, so maybe I'm gonna go research that
I'm also planning to overclock the opteron . Like I said before, im a n00b when it comes to building a computer and that also applies to overclocking


Do you guys have any suggestions on which items to get/avoid? Any help/comments will be appreciated
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post #2 of 34
4/8/06 at 3:02am
i'd suggest to make that hard drive an SATA and if you really want a real good mobo for the future get the Asus A8N32-Deluxe SLI and that's pretty much it on the fix ups. but if i'd were you i'd save up a little bit more on that GPU to make it a GTX.
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post #3 of 34
4/8/06 at 3:07am
Thread Starter 
Thanks for the reply!!

I have a question though.. what's the difference between ATA and SATA? other than the obvious S of course

And does the 7900 GTX have that much of a gap over the 7900 GT? is it worth the money? the GTX is $200 more than the regular GT
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post #4 of 34
4/8/06 at 3:10am
SATA is Newer and traveles memory and stuff faster like lets say you wanted to put some songs on your ipod or something, ATA would take about lets say 3 mins. and SATA would take about 30 seconds....yes it's that much faster. it allows memory to travel about 3GB faster
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post #5 of 34
4/8/06 at 3:16am
Thread Starter 
Ahh holy moly! Thanks for these great suggestions. I will make those changes

So the rest of my set-up is fine? If i do overclock, do you think I would need an extra fan or something?

Thanks again for the responses!
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post #6 of 34
4/8/06 at 3:27am
Quote:
Originally Posted by H2DJmaster2005
SATA is Newer and traveles memory and stuff faster like lets say you wanted to put some songs on your ipod or something, ATA would take about lets say 3 mins. and SATA would take about 30 seconds....yes it's that much faster. it allows memory to travel about 3GB faster
not really, lol. The data transfer to an ipod is limited by USB. And yeah, some satas will go up to 3 gb/s, but is bottleknecked by the mobo. Anyways, yes, sata is better, might as well get a sata drive since they're neretr, just dont expext the difference to be as big as he describes.
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post #7 of 34
4/8/06 at 3:28am
Quote:
Originally Posted by pehter
Ahh holy moly! Thanks for these great suggestions. I will make those changes

So the rest of my set-up is fine? If i do overclock, do you think I would need an extra fan or something?

Thanks again for the responses!
and yes, deffinatley going to want an aftermarket heatsink.
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post #8 of 34
4/8/06 at 3:30am
ok, one more thing. If you plan on doing SLI, you're deffinatley going to want a better psu.
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post #9 of 34
4/8/06 at 4:32am
You might want to wait until June and get an AM2-based motherboard instead.
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post #10 of 34
4/8/06 at 10:17am
SATA 3GB/S does not transfer data at 3gb... the controller memory or something is at that frequency. The max transfer rate is 300MB/s.
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post #11 of 34
4/8/06 at 1:17pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by mr. roboto
not really, lol. The data transfer to an ipod is limited by USB. And yeah, some satas will go up to 3 gb/s, but is bottleknecked by the mobo. Anyways, yes, sata is better, might as well get a sata drive since they're neretr, just dont expext the difference to be as big as he describes.
I dont know much about hardware, but there was a thread here recently that proved that the USB (2.0 of course) is not the bottleneck, its definitely the HD
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post #12 of 34
4/9/06 at 2:34am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Karma
You might want to wait until June and get an AM2-based motherboard instead.
I have a question again. What is an AM2-based motherboard? Whats the difference?

Also I've just read some information about RAID. If I'm building this PC for games, is RAID 0 or RAID 1 the better choice? can someone please enlighten me on this one. Thanks!
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post #13 of 34
4/9/06 at 6:18am
Quote:
Originally Posted by pehter
I have a question again. What is an AM2-based motherboard? Whats the difference?

Also I've just read some information about RAID. If I'm building this PC for games, is RAID 0 or RAID 1 the better choice? can someone please enlighten me on this one. Thanks!
Currently, AMD has their high end motherboards & CPU's using a socket-939 interface (939 pins on the CPU plug into 939 holes in the motherboard). It's been that way for the last 2 years (about). In June, they're switching their high end boards and CPU's to socket AM2, which has 940 pins and runs with DDR2 RAM instead of DDR RAM. Socket 939 CPU's are not usable in Socket AM2 motherboards.

Their launch date is June 6th. Anyone who's building an AMD desktop should wait for a month and a half.

BTW, if you're not sure what RAID is, then you shouldn't use it.
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post #14 of 34
4/9/06 at 3:33pm
if building amd, wait till AM2 is out, then u can get more lifetime out of your ddr2 (opposed to ddr1)

and if building intel, wait a few months for conroe, then buy. might as well
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post #15 of 34
4/9/06 at 4:44pm
AM2 and DDR2 +
Sata +
Aftermarket Thermalright HS +
Conroe (optionally)
Asus mobo on the AM2 socket +
Enermax Liberty 500W PS as opposed to the Antec
Give the HD a bit more breathing room and go for a 120gb +
Keep the 7900 GT if you plan on SLI, get the GTX if you can live without it
Don't build a system based on DDR1 memory at this point - either AM2 and DDR2 or Conroe and DDR2. Don't overbuy the DDR2 - Gskill 2gb is fine

$.02
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post #16 of 34
4/9/06 at 6:21pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by chevyrulz099

and if building intel, wait a few months for conroe, then buy. might as well
As I was just about to post yes, you should wait for Intel Conroe. Preliminary specs show that Conroe will destroy existing AMD S939 stuff when it comes to the market so I would wait. Also, the majority of people seem to think that Conroe will also beat AM2 when it is released in terms of performance, because they think that the move to DDR2 will not give any large performance increases. And, as my sig says, I am also waiting for Conroe. Oh yeah, and even thought Conroe is socket 775, it will not work with existing S775 mobos. Just my 2 cents. Good luck.

PS-All Conroes are Dual Core!
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post #17 of 34
4/9/06 at 8:42pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by falcon6286
As I was just about to post yes, you should wait for Intel Conroe. Preliminary specs show that Conroe will destroy existing AMD S939 stuff when it comes to the market so I would wait. Also, the majority of people seem to think that Conroe will also beat AM2 when it is released in terms of performance, because they think that the move to DDR2 will not give any large performance increases. And, as my sig says, I am also waiting for Conroe. Oh yeah, and even thought Conroe is socket 775, it will not work with existing S775 mobos. Just my 2 cents. Good luck.

PS-All Conroes are Dual Core!

WOW. after reading all that, I guess i will just wait for Conroe to come out then make a totally new rig around that CPU. Thanks a lot for all the help guys! All this information really helped.

Hold on though, does anyone have any clue what the price range for the Conroe will be?
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post #18 of 34
4/9/06 at 11:23pm
i would get raid 0 because raid 0 combines all the hard drives for the computer to read as 1 hard drive and use up all the memory togethor and raid 1 is for instance lets say you buy 2 250GB HDs and you're afraid of breaking a hard drive then if you break the first hard drive the second one takes over and whatever you put on the first hard drive it automatically goes into the second one.
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post #19 of 34
4/10/06 at 11:38am
Quote:
Originally Posted by pehter
WOW. after reading all that, I guess i will just wait for Conroe to come out then make a totally new rig around that CPU. Thanks a lot for all the help guys! All this information really helped.

Hold on though, does anyone have any clue what the price range for the Conroe will be?
Not cheap. I dont know their full lineup but im guessing the lowest end ones will probably be in the 3-400$ range.
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post #20 of 34
4/10/06 at 10:13pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by pehter

Hold on though, does anyone have any clue what the price range for the Conroe will be?
Its all here, nothing officially, but here are some estimated prices curtosy of SSE4 from [H] OCP forums.

Quote:
Originally Posted by SSE4
Intel Conroe
E4200 2MB 1.60GHz 800MHz FSB Q4 $169. us

E6200 2MB 1.60GHz 1066MHz FSB Q4 $179. us
E6300 2MB 1.86GHz 1066MHz FSB Q3 $209. us
E6400 2MB 2.13GHz 1066MHz FSB Q3 $239. us
E6500 2MB 2.40GHz 1066MHz FSB Q4 $269. us

E6600 4MB 2.40GHz 1066MHz FSB Q3 $309. us (65 Watts)
E6700 4MB 2.67GHz 1066MHz FSB Q3 $529. us
E6800 4MB 2.93GHz 1066MHz FSB Q4 $749. us
E6900 4MB 3.20GHz 1066MHz FSB Q4 $969. us
If anyone has anything official, please post it.
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