my science project

stoanee

New Member
After years of having computers that are just barely good enough I want to build a kick ass system. Money, as always, is a major consideration but I want a good system. I am interested in a a good bang for the buck but also in longevity.I realize that I'm going overboard in certain items but for once I am going to it! So far I have in mind;

Asus A8N SLI Premium mobo
Amd Athlon 64x2 4600
Evga-E-Geoforce 7800 GTX 512 SLI ready
(add another if mobo room and budget permit)
OCZ Platinum 2x1gb PC3200 DDR400 ram
600 watt power supply

I need advice in the areas of case, cooling fans, my choice of ram.
 
stoanee said:
Asus A8N SLI Premium mobo
Amd Athlon 64x2 4600
Evga-E-Geoforce 7800 GTX 512 SLI ready
(add another if mobo room and budget permit)
OCZ Platinum 2x1gb PC3200 DDR400 ram
600 watt power supply

I need advice in the areas of case, cooling fans, my choice of ram.


Dam that system will run like a biatch. Im no computer expert, but I know that will be a good system. I would stick with the single 7800, it will do the job,and keep your budget down. For 2gb ram, it doesnt matter what brand, it will be good enough. No idea about the case, or fan. But get a fancy case with led lights, they look cool. As for a fan, get a better one opposed to a cheap one, you will need a good one for that system and the extra cash will be worth it, so there won't be any problems. Once again nice system, I know how you feel about having enouhg with basic systems. Read my specs :D
 
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Looks like a nice syste, expensive too. As for a case, you want to looke for one that has enough rooms for all your components and drive bays, and one with plenty of ventilation for good airflow with places to mount several fans.. And in terms of cooling, I have a feeling most of that sutff may run pretty hot, you may want to consider water cooling (which is also kinda pricey). Other options would be a good heatsink, i recommend Thermalright.

Your ram looks good, 400mhz, 1gb.
 
Looks like a really nice system. I would go with water cooling if your budget permits it. For RAM, agian if budget permits it I would go with Corsair XMS or OCZ. As said by sbeast64 I would stick with one 7800 gtx if money is a factor, if not go for two. I would also recommend looking at a DFI board and see what you think about them (I have one and love it!).
 
sbeast64 said:
For 2gb ram, it doesnt matter what brand, it will be good enough.

who said it won't matter? I bet he'd see a difference if he get 2 gigs of generic ram as compared to some of the pricy XMS or hyperx stuff
 
stoanee said:
Asus A8N SLI Premium mobo
Amd Athlon 64x2 4600
Evga-E-Geoforce 7800 GTX 512 SLI ready
(add another if mobo room and budget permit)
OCZ Platinum 2x1gb PC3200 DDR400 ram
600 watt power supply
.


LOL
money is a consideration?
whats your budget? $2400usd?

go for ocz proformance ram "what you have" get a good brand name psu
but, wow...
amazing setup right there
 
Thanks for any and all comments,

I actually do have a fairly good budget, but what I meant is that I don"t want to spend lots of moola on stuff that will only give small increments of performance increase. I am going to get the big stuff right away instead of "wish I would of got that instead of this" (cheap man pays twice?). This is probably the only time I will shell out bucks like this so I'm going to make it worth it. So whats the deal on hard drive specs in relation to performance? Is it worth it to try to wring out more performance with high RPM drives or is it good enough to have a large reliable one? I have a new 7200 rpm 200gb drive I just slipped into my desktop and intend to use it in my new setup.My focus will be on gaming and music editing.

Thanks again for all your comments:D
 
Maybe get a raid configuration? Will double your loading speeds, biasicly you need two of the same hard drive, the computer will use them as one so you load 2x as fast, but that means it will have the space of a single hard drive, exe: You get 2 7200 rpm 500GB hard drives, you will have 500GB of space, not 1TB (1000GB). Wow, i havent said TB in a while, or at all! lol
 
matt12685848 said:
Maybe get a raid configuration? Will double your loading speeds, biasicly you need two of the same hard drive, the computer will use them as one so you load 2x as fast, but that means it will have the space of a single hard drive, exe: You get 2 7200 rpm 500GB hard drives, you will have 500GB of space, not 1TB (1000GB). Wow, i havent said TB in a while, or at all! lol

WTF? It's not 2 times as fast, and there are various levels of RAID configurations to choose from, not all of them use 2 drives, and not all of them mirror.

http://www.accs.com/p_and_p/RAID/BasicRAID.html
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/raid/levels/singleLevel1-c.html
 
i realize that i'm going overboard in certain items but for once i am going to it! so far i have in mind;
you should also realize two more things
1. games wont ever be developed soley for the sli crowd. game developers target the low-midrange bracket in order to get the most sales... sure sli will give you more performance but it's doubtful the performance delta will be worth it
2. high-end next-generation gpus will most likely be able to perform current-gen multi-gpu configurations

ASUS a8n sli premium mobo
although that's a good board, unless you're planning on shelling out for the a8nsli32 board, there are better boards to be had for your money. [with the exception of the a8nsli32], DFI/MSI boards will almost always ouutperform and outvalue current generation ASUS AMD boards

600 watt power supply
which one? see PSU 101 for why i'm asking.

for 2gb ram, it doesnt matter what brand, it will be good enough
1. good enough for gaming and general useage perhaps, but to say absolutely good enough would be pushing it :)
2. i would also suggest that brand does somewhat matter (in the context that specific 'models' of memory would be significantly better than others and thus, involving brands by-proxy). granted OCZ platinum is very good stuff, even OCZ's vx lineup or Mushkin's redline, Corsair's XMS4400c25 or Crucial's ballistix will often outperform
3. see RAM 101

i would go with water cooling if your budget permits it
good suggestion although i wouldnt think there would be a need for this (since the chips run pretty damn cool)

for ram, agian if budget permits it i would go with Corsair XMS or OCZ
agreed however it would be important to note that OCZ doesnt just make premium RAM and that they do have value memory as well :)

who said it won't matter? i bet he'd see a difference if he get 2 gigs of generic RAM as compared to some of the pricy XMS or hyperx stuff
i bet he wouldnt. 99% of human beings on this planet cant tell between caS3 pc2700 and cas2 pc3200 short of running benchmarks.

so whats the deal on hard drive specs in relation to performance? is it worth it to try to wring out more performance with high rpm drives or is it good enough to have a large reliable one? i have a new 7200 rpm 200gb drive i just slipped into my desktop and intend to use it in my new setup.my focus will be on gaming and music editing.
have a look at HDD 101.

maybe get a RAID configuration? will double your loading speeds
thats a load of misconceptoon (no offence intended at all :)). i'm going to assume you're referring to RAID0 (please correct if you're referring to a different config), but gaming and "most of what most people do" is based on random access to the harDDRive which is an area where RAID0 will not offer anything near the theoretical performance jump it will say with a workstation class machine which does significant amounts of sequential access. even in ideal situtations, RAID0 configs dont have "double the performance". have a look at RAID 101.
 
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