PC build opinions please
Discussion
Some people don't like download .xls files:
X-PRO 400W Silent Power Supply
Antec P160 Anodized Aluminum Super Midi Tower case
Sony OEM 3.5 Floppy Drive
NEC ND-3500 Double Layer Dua
included
AMD (Newcastle) Athlon 64 3500+/2.2ghz
Abit AV8-3RD Eye Skt 939 K8t800pro
HIS Excalibur ATI Radeon 9600 256MB
Ebuyer 512 DDR400 PC3200
Antec 120mm Case fan
Western Digital WD1200JD 120GB Serial ATA150
CPU : The Winchester, 90nm cores are out and for £20 more you are getting a superiour chip. The downside is that at the moment no motherboard supports the chip out of the box. The Abit certainly doesn't but the MSI Neo Platinum & the Asus A8V will do with a little fiddling.
Cooler : the stock cooler is ok, but apparently is noisy. There are better alternatives such as the HUGE Asus Ice Star cooler, which cool to the same extent as the stock cooler but are much quieter.
Mobo : All reviews point towards to the Asus A8V as the ultimate performer and apparently the layout of the Abit leaves somewhat to be desired.
Case : Check out Cheiftec cases, they are the same as Antec but cheaper (i.e. they are identical). nForce 4 is also out which is bringing PCIe boards onto the market in the next month or so - the downside is these boards don't necessarily support AGP cards.
HDD : Segate Baracuda are where's it at - they are much quieter than the WD, but WD is by no means a bad choice.
Ram : For £10 more you can get 1Gig of GeIL RAM, which gets rave reviews, from overclockers.co.uk this week as a specail, indeed it's not that much more either way.
Exhaust fan : 120mm is huge, and they make a fair racket, get yourself a fanbus to put on the front of your box to control it's flow. And make sure you can fit that monster into your case.
Gcard : I know nothing about gcards at the mo, sorry but a mate says "hmm, not heard a lot about it. it isn't bad, though not a top performing 9600, plenty of memory though". He also said that it might have dual DVI output but probably comes with convertors.
>> Edited by docevi1 on Saturday 23 October 19:04
X-PRO 400W Silent Power Supply
Antec P160 Anodized Aluminum Super Midi Tower case
Sony OEM 3.5 Floppy Drive
NEC ND-3500 Double Layer Dua
included
AMD (Newcastle) Athlon 64 3500+/2.2ghz
Abit AV8-3RD Eye Skt 939 K8t800pro
HIS Excalibur ATI Radeon 9600 256MB
Ebuyer 512 DDR400 PC3200
Antec 120mm Case fan
Western Digital WD1200JD 120GB Serial ATA150
CPU : The Winchester, 90nm cores are out and for £20 more you are getting a superiour chip. The downside is that at the moment no motherboard supports the chip out of the box. The Abit certainly doesn't but the MSI Neo Platinum & the Asus A8V will do with a little fiddling.
Cooler : the stock cooler is ok, but apparently is noisy. There are better alternatives such as the HUGE Asus Ice Star cooler, which cool to the same extent as the stock cooler but are much quieter.
Mobo : All reviews point towards to the Asus A8V as the ultimate performer and apparently the layout of the Abit leaves somewhat to be desired.
Case : Check out Cheiftec cases, they are the same as Antec but cheaper (i.e. they are identical). nForce 4 is also out which is bringing PCIe boards onto the market in the next month or so - the downside is these boards don't necessarily support AGP cards.
HDD : Segate Baracuda are where's it at - they are much quieter than the WD, but WD is by no means a bad choice.
Ram : For £10 more you can get 1Gig of GeIL RAM, which gets rave reviews, from overclockers.co.uk this week as a specail, indeed it's not that much more either way.
Exhaust fan : 120mm is huge, and they make a fair racket, get yourself a fanbus to put on the front of your box to control it's flow. And make sure you can fit that monster into your case.
Gcard : I know nothing about gcards at the mo, sorry but a mate says "hmm, not heard a lot about it. it isn't bad, though not a top performing 9600, plenty of memory though". He also said that it might have dual DVI output but probably comes with convertors.
>> Edited by docevi1 on Saturday 23 October 19:04
Hi,
If you are going to game, then drop the 9600, as an absolute min you need a 9700pro. if going ATI. Or 5950 for Nvidia, if you wnat to seriously game then a 6800 from Nvidia or a X800 from ATI. there are various flavours of both out there, but you are looking at £250+
HD, try the WD raptors if you want speed, only available in 36G and &5G flavours, but they go like hell...
120mm fans are ok, but as said before keep them slow......
kevin
If you are going to game, then drop the 9600, as an absolute min you need a 9700pro. if going ATI. Or 5950 for Nvidia, if you wnat to seriously game then a 6800 from Nvidia or a X800 from ATI. there are various flavours of both out there, but you are looking at £250+
HD, try the WD raptors if you want speed, only available in 36G and &5G flavours, but they go like hell...
120mm fans are ok, but as said before keep them slow......
kevin
docevi1 said:Talking of which, i have just had a Coolermaster "Hyper 6" delivered.
Cooler : the stock cooler is ok, but apparently is noisy. There are better alternatives such as the HUGE Asus Ice Star cooler, which cool to the same extent as the stock cooler but are much quieter.
When I ordered it I didn't realise it's so BIG
www.extrememhz.com/hyper6-p1.shtml
(It's supposed to be marvelous and I was hoping to apply a moderate overclocking to a Pentium 3.2 on an Asus Mobo)
Anyway - it's going to be a tight squeeze in a standard case! There's the option to add a fan - or two even! - but I think I'd have to "modify" the case with a little bonnet bulge to get anywhere near fitting it in!
I'll second most of what docevi1 said.
The winchester chips are better, but not 'out' just yet and motherboards are having problems with them (mostly just need bios flashes).
The right 120mm case fan will be good, larger fans move more aire with less velocity (noise) but some can be quite noisly (performance vs noise) a quiet one will be better than a 80mm fan.
Get 1gb ram.
Oh and new PCIe motherboards will be out soon which will outdate the AGP versions, but theres not a lot of performance difference (apart from SLI) and you'd need a PCIe video card.
The winchester chips are better, but not 'out' just yet and motherboards are having problems with them (mostly just need bios flashes).
The right 120mm case fan will be good, larger fans move more aire with less velocity (noise) but some can be quite noisly (performance vs noise) a quiet one will be better than a 80mm fan.
Get 1gb ram.
Oh and new PCIe motherboards will be out soon which will outdate the AGP versions, but theres not a lot of performance difference (apart from SLI) and you'd need a PCIe video card.
robdickinson said:Out already, if you're that way inclined. The Asus I've just got (P5GDC-V for skt 775) has a PCIe slot.
Oh and new PCIe motherboards will be out soon which will outdate the AGP versions, but theres not a lot of performance difference (apart from SLI) and you'd need a PCIe video card.
Apologies for minor thread hijack, seems appropriate-ish...
I have recently bought a new computer (Dell Dimension 8400) and it came with an ATI Radeon X300 PCI-Express. Now, it's a while since I bothered with the nerdy side of tech specs of these things (just play games on PS2 nowadays) but out of interest, is the card I have any good...? Bear in mind, last time I bought a gfx card it was a GeForce2 GTS for my PII-400 and that card was state of the art back then...!
TIA,
Roop
I have recently bought a new computer (Dell Dimension 8400) and it came with an ATI Radeon X300 PCI-Express. Now, it's a while since I bothered with the nerdy side of tech specs of these things (just play games on PS2 nowadays) but out of interest, is the card I have any good...? Bear in mind, last time I bought a gfx card it was a GeForce2 GTS for my PII-400 and that card was state of the art back then...!
TIA,
Roop
Dakkon said:
If your getting an AMD chip then get an NVidia card, drivers are configured better, if you go Intel than an ATI card.
Be careful waht Ram you get, had trouble with mine Athlon 64 and games crashing due to the wrong Ram.
I've got Intel P4 2.6, ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, 2 x 256MB Corsair XMS3500 433Mhz RAM, Epox 4PDA m/b, 450W p/s, Audigy 2 ZS, WXP SP2
All my games crash and lock the Pc after running for about 15/20 minutes, using the Pc for anything else and it will happily run ok all day. It's driving me crazy but I can't find anything wrong, using all latest drivers etc. I use Norton Internet Security 2005 and find the games run smoothest with it & virous protection left on. I also had a recent problem with the virous 'MyDoom' (this was only detected since I upgraded from Norton IS 2003 to 2005, which it claims to have now fixed, but the Pc locking up problem was there before this anyway)
From reading your post do you think the problem could be with the RAM I'm using, and if so what would you recommend.
Any positive suggestions will be most welcome (I mainly use the Pc for driving games, for which it currently fails) as I'm seriously thinking of junking the inerds and starting afresh.
Ballistic said:
I've got Intel P4 2.6, ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, 2 x 256MB Corsair XMS3500 433Mhz RAM, Epox 4PDA m/b, 450W p/s, Audigy 2 ZS, WXP SP2
All my games crash and lock the Pc after running for about 15/20 minutes, using the Pc for anything else and it will happily run ok all day.
Heat?
Gaming is the most processor and GFX-card intensive use you can put your PC to. A LOT of heat can be generated as a result.
Did you get a monitoring utility with your PC / motherboard that will let you look at the temperatures in your CPU core and case? If so, have a look & post up the results when idling, running general office apps and immediately after running a 3D game for 10 minutes or so.
pdV6 said:
Heat?
Gaming is the most processor and GFX-card intensive use you can put your PC to. A LOT of heat can be generated as a result.
Did you get a monitoring utility with your PC / motherboard that will let you look at the temperatures in your CPU core and case? If so, have a look & post up the results when idling, running general office apps and immediately after running a 3D game for 10 minutes or so.
Thanks, I hadn't considered this aspect. I'll check it out and post the results.
Ballistic said:
Heat?
Gaming is the most processor and GFX-card intensive use you can put your PC to. A LOT of heat can be generated as a result.
Did you get a monitoring utility with your PC / motherboard that will let you look at the temperatures in your CPU core and case? If so, have a look & post up the results when idling, running general office apps and immediately after running a 3D game for 10 minutes or so.
Thanks, I hadn't considered this aspect. I'll check it out and post the results.
Try running a game with the case off, should provide much moor cooling than on, is the PC in a restricted airflow position?
From what you posted it should be ok for power, does the case have a chassy fan?
Make sure all the drivers are up to date too.
As for ATi for intel/nvidia for AMD no idea where that came from, not heard that before, seems to me like the bulk of gamers run AMD and are evenly split ati/nvidia. Drivers shouldnt be affected by the CPU, prehaps the chipset tho.
(BTW I was talking about PCIe for AMD, has been out a few months for intel chips, but there prety much pants :P).
Ballistic said:
If your getting an AMD chip then get an NVidia card, drivers are configured better, if you go Intel than an ATI card.
Be careful waht Ram you get, had trouble with mine Athlon 64 and games crashing due to the wrong Ram.
I've got Intel P4 2.6, ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, 2 x 256MB Corsair XMS3500 433Mhz RAM, Epox 4PDA m/b, 450W p/s, Audigy 2 ZS, WXP SP2
All my games crash and lock the Pc after running for about 15/20 minutes, using the Pc for anything else and it will happily run ok all day. It's driving me crazy but I can't find anything wrong, using all latest drivers etc. I use Norton Internet Security 2005 and find the games run smoothest with it & virous protection left on. I also had a recent problem with the virous 'MyDoom' (this was only detected since I upgraded from Norton IS 2003 to 2005, which it claims to have now fixed, but the Pc locking up problem was there before this anyway)
From reading your post do you think the problem could be with the RAM I'm using, and if so what would you recommend.
Any positive suggestions will be most welcome (I mainly use the Pc for driving games, for which it currently fails) as I'm seriously thinking of junking the inerds and starting afresh.
I am by no means an expert, I merely posted from personal experience, I ran mine with the case off/on made no difference at all, took it round a friends house, swapped out the ram and it was very stable, just waiting for a free bit of cash and I shall replace all my ram.
Ok here's my findings;
My Pc case is a Thermaltake Xaser 111 which has plenty of fan power but I am using it in a confined space underneath my desk so I guess the air flow can be improved somewhat. I have a temp. probe stuck onto the processor heatsink.
Idle: 29°C
Running an application: 33°C
Playing a game: in the space of 10 minutes rose to 41.5°C when the Pc locked up.
After a re-boot took about 5-10 minutes to settle back down 29°C
What's a good paste to get decent thermal transfer between the processor/heatsink and will I benefit from putting heatsinks on the ATI RAM chips?
And what's a good RAM test to eliminate whether the problem's associated with the memory or not?
My Pc case is a Thermaltake Xaser 111 which has plenty of fan power but I am using it in a confined space underneath my desk so I guess the air flow can be improved somewhat. I have a temp. probe stuck onto the processor heatsink.
Idle: 29°C
Running an application: 33°C
Playing a game: in the space of 10 minutes rose to 41.5°C when the Pc locked up.
After a re-boot took about 5-10 minutes to settle back down 29°C
What's a good paste to get decent thermal transfer between the processor/heatsink and will I benefit from putting heatsinks on the ATI RAM chips?
And what's a good RAM test to eliminate whether the problem's associated with the memory or not?
41.5°C measured on the heatsink is probably quite a lot hotter in the CPU core. The fact that you got to 41.5 and then it crashed seems to suggest that the temperature is the key.
There does need to be airspace around the case in order to suck fresh cool air in and exhaust hot air rather than draw the hot exhaust straight back in, and I assume that none of the case vents are blocked?
Maybe a beefier heatsink & fan combo on the CPU (or heatpipe rig) would be better.
In answer to your other question, Arctic Silver is good for the CPU/cooler interface. Don't go with the thermal gum that usually comes as standard and if its pre-applied, ensure you clean it off thoroughly.
{edited to add} Its suprising what a difference cleaning up the inside of the case can make, i.e. getting rid of dust from the vents and routing cables neatly rather than having them dangle into the airflow.
>> Edited by pdV6 on Wednesday 27th October 17:03
There does need to be airspace around the case in order to suck fresh cool air in and exhaust hot air rather than draw the hot exhaust straight back in, and I assume that none of the case vents are blocked?
Maybe a beefier heatsink & fan combo on the CPU (or heatpipe rig) would be better.
In answer to your other question, Arctic Silver is good for the CPU/cooler interface. Don't go with the thermal gum that usually comes as standard and if its pre-applied, ensure you clean it off thoroughly.
{edited to add} Its suprising what a difference cleaning up the inside of the case can make, i.e. getting rid of dust from the vents and routing cables neatly rather than having them dangle into the airflow.
>> Edited by pdV6 on Wednesday 27th October 17:03
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