Building a computer

edbert

Congrats man! Glad to hear everything worked well for you! I am going to have to run the 3DMark on mine when I get home. I have been meaning to do that just to see how it stacks up to others out there. Have fun with it. Just try to overwork that thing. My guess is you will have a hard time doing it.

Sami

edbert wrote: »

I am going to have to run the 3DMark on mine

3DMark06, if you want to get good results you need a good video card.

I've got E6400 on my system and with x1800xt it was around the same mark as AB is getting, now with 8800GTS it's a hair less than 9000.

AB, you on XFire? I haven't had a chance to play a lot but lets hook up on some BF2 sometimes.

audiobliss

Oh yeah, you have to run it! Post back what kind of numbers you see!

audiobliss

Yeah, I have Xfire. I'm game for playing BF2, but be warned...I'm mostly new to gaming...so I suck.

My gaming handle for everything is axle427.

edbert

Sami wrote: »

3DMark06, if you want to get good results you need a good video card.

I've got E6400 on my system and with x1800xt it was around the same mark as AB is getting, now with 8800GTS it's a hair less than 9000.

I have the 8800GTS. I'm running the AMD 6000+ with 2gb of memory, so hopefully I will get some good numbers.

jakelm

Are you getting that sweet "warm for the first time" electronics smell from the fan yet??

I'm still smelling it, a week later.

audiobliss

No, I'm not getting that smell. Now, I did smell my new monitor the first few hours it was on.

jakelm

audiobliss wrote: »

No, I'm not getting that smell. Now, I did smell my new monitor the first few hours it was on.

hmmmm.. I hope nothing is burning in my system. :eek:

No smoke ... no fire..:p

shadowofnight

Smart going with a heatpipe cooler....I have installed that one on 3 or 4 builds...I never had any difficulty with that cooler ? What was your issue ?

Some of the Thermalright ( http://www.thermalright.com/a_page/main_product_xp120.htm ) 120mm coolers were a real bear to get on when your hands can palm a basketball or larger. Here is said cooler on one of my servers.....

Can any of you guess the hard drives interface ?

Sami

Can't really see that well but the last picture looks like SCSI pins but something doesn't seem like SCSI to me.

EDIT: Closer look, yeah, seems like SCSI (ID selector right next to the pins)

shadowofnight

Nope I will go as far as to say some of those ARE ID selectors....just not SCSI....think REAL server interface.

edbert

I was gonna guess SATA, but that seems to be too easy.

Sami

SAS is a SCSI interface so that's not it either. FC?

shadowofnight

Yeah, 2GBSec Fibre channel.....technically a SCSI interface but totally different hardware. I use a QLogic gbSec HBA controller , custom built 2GBSec T-Cards to connect to the hard drives themselves. It's extremely fast , handles mutiple requests extremely well....and not everybody has a home 2GBSec FC setup at home

Systems

Sami wrote: »

SAS is a SCSI interface so that's not it either. FC?

Actualy SAS and SATA are pretty much the same now. Any SATA drive can connect up to a SAS card now. You just cant mix them up. For example on my last Del server I had the option of buying say 8 300 gig 15K RPM Sas drives or 8 750 gig 7200 RPM Sata drives.

If you have the card and can afford those 300 gig 15K RPM drives (which arnt that bad), Id say do it for sure.

Sami

shadowofnight wrote: »

and not everybody has a home 2GBSec FC setup at home

Let me guess, company is paying for those?

shadowofnight

Sami wrote: »

Let me guess, company is paying for those?

I did 2 custom builds and 2 networks for a guy who owned a managed hosting company...he knew nothing about what he owned...he just had cash Gave me a lot of freebies....I dont like to pay 2,000 for HBA's or 1,700 per hard drive either

shadowofnight

audiobliss wrote: »

No, I'm not getting that smell. Now, I did smell my new monitor the first few hours it was on.

How did you NOT get that smell ? Every new build has that sweet aroma...almost as good as that castor oil smell of 2 stroke motors at the racetrack...and the smell of burning rubber

audiobliss

Hahahahaha! Now I definitely know about that smell of burning rubber!

I smelled the parts while we were assembling, and who knows, maybe I did smell the computer the first few days, but it's been a week now and I was WAAY too excited to pay attention to any smells.

billbillw

Damn you guys. I haven't fooled around with my system for more than a year, but reading through these threads has restoked my interest and I decided to upgrade. My system was getting a little long in the tooth and I had to spend a week or so catching up my knowledge on the current hardware. This will be my 7th or 8th build if you count motherboard/cpu combos. I've done a lot of partial system upgrades through the years.

Current system:

Asus K8VSE Deluxe w/ Athlon64 3200+ (Newcastle) (this combo was the **** 3.5 years ago) w/ Zalman "flower" cooler.
2x512mb Mushkin PC3500
ATI X800XT AIW w/Zalman Flower cooler (plays all the games I have very respectably)
1-Seagate 250GB SATA drive (bought last year to install XP64 Pro)
1-WD 120GB IDE drive (has my XP32bit install on it)
1-Maxtor 120GB IDE drive (storage)
1-Seagate 80GB IDE drive (storage)
1-BenQ16x DVD burner
1-Asus 16x DVD ROM
Antec P-150 Case w/NeoHE 430 Power Supply.

The Asus board and CPU + the Maxtor 120GB are the oldest components in the system (The maxtor probably goes back almost 5 years)

The Asus was blessed with 3 IDE connectors, but all the new boards are lucky to have one IDE. So, I'm going to have to give up drives if I want to upgrade. I like the video card, but its AGP, so it will go for sale.
Here is what I decided.
I am going to get the following:
Gigabyte P35-DS3R board ($129)
Intel E2160 chip (this the $85 chip that TomsHardware overclocked from 1.8 to 3.2 on stock cooling) I plan to simply raise the FSB to 1333 and have a 3.0Ghz Core Duo2 (minus a little cache) I plan on using my current Zalman cooler, so I should have no problem getting 3.0 without any heat issues.
For video, I wanted quiet, so I went with a Powercolor X1950pro 512MB (with the A.C. cooler) ($129 after rebate) This is substantially better than what I have and it will more than keep me happy since I'm still mostly fooling around with 2-3 year old games.
I also grabbed 2x1GB of Corsair XMS PC6400 DDR2 memory ($48 after rebate)
And to replace both my burner and my ROM, I went with the Samsung 20x SATA burner. I can live with only one DVD drive.
I will also have to give up one of my IDE hardrive, probably the Maxtor 120 since it is the oldest and loudest. I may add another SATA hardrive If I think I need the storage. They are so cheap now, $60 for 250GB! I remember paying $200+ for 20GB when I built my first system.

Hopefully all goes well next week. I feel kinda bad turning my back on AMD since they have done me so well over the years, but the performance difference is too great with the CoreDuo2 architecture.

If I can sell the old parts for what I think I can, I will end up having this whole upgrade for less than $300. It should keep me for awhile. I can always pop out that cheap 2160 in a couple years with a newer processor as prices drop on Quad cores. I may need a bigger PSU before its all over, but I'll try the Antec first. The online power calculator says I only need a 370 watt supply, even with OC. Gotta remember that my old A64 was pretty power hungry, as well as the X800, and I'm already running stable with 4 hardrives and 2 ROM drives.

ben62670

audiobliss wrote: »

Ok, I need some advice. I'm seriously considering building a new desktop and passing mine on to Mom. Price is the theme here. As much under a grand as possible is awesome, though I'm willing to splurge here and there on a few things.

In the past year I've done ZERO gaming on my PC, so that's definitely not a priority, though if I had a computer that would do gaming well, I'd probably play more games. So, gaming capable, but not centered.

I know the Quad Core CPU is waaaay overkill, but it's only $70 more than the dual core E6420 that I was originally going for; I'm pretty sure the added bragging rights are worth the cost. Pretty sure.

So, here's the parts list:

GIGABYTE GA-965P-S3 LGA 775 Intel P965 Express ATX Intel Motherboard

EVGA 256-P2-N615-TX GeForce 7600GT 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 SLI Supported Video Card

Thermaltake Purepower W0100RU ATX 12V 2.0 500W Power Supply

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz 2 x 4MB L2 Cache LGA 775 Processor

Patriot 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3250410AS 250GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
(two of those)

ASUS Black 2MB Cache PATA DVD Burner with LightScribe

ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 7 Pro 92mm CPU Cooler

So that just leaves a case. What would you recommend for a case? And what would you change about the above system? I'm pretty much ignorant when it comes to this stuff, now, it's been so long since I've looked at any of it. A friend built the basic list for me, and I just tweaked it with the RAM, CPU, and HD's.

Any advice is greatly appreciated!!

my secondary computer has this basic config, and it play fear nearly maxxed out.

audiobliss

billbillw wrote: »

Damn you guys. I haven't fooled around with my system for more than a year, but reading through these threads has restoked my interest and I decided to upgrade. My system was getting a little long in the tooth and I had to spend a week or so catching up my knowledge on the current hardware. This will be my 7th or 8th build if you count motherboard/cpu combos. I've done a lot of partial system upgrades through the years.

Current system:

Asus K8VSE Deluxe w/ Athlon64 3200+ (Newcastle) (this combo was the **** 3.5 years ago) w/ Zalman "flower" cooler.
2x512mb Mushkin PC3500
ATI X800XT AIW w/Zalman Flower cooler (plays all the games I have very respectably)
1-Seagate 250GB SATA drive (bought last year to install XP64 Pro)
1-WD 120GB IDE drive (has my XP32bit install on it)
1-Maxtor 120GB IDE drive (storage)
1-Seagate 80GB IDE drive (storage)
1-BenQ16x DVD burner
1-Asus 16x DVD ROM
Antec P-150 Case w/NeoHE 430 Power Supply.

The Asus board and CPU + the Maxtor 120GB are the oldest components in the system (The maxtor probably goes back almost 5 years)

The Asus was blessed with 3 IDE connectors, but all the new boards are lucky to have one IDE. So, I'm going to have to give up drives if I want to upgrade. I like the video card, but its AGP, so it will go for sale.
Here is what I decided.
I am going to get the following:
Gigabyte P35-DS3R board ($129)
Intel E2160 chip (this the $85 chip that TomsHardware overclocked from 1.8 to 3.2 on stock cooling) I plan to simply raise the FSB to 1333 and have a 3.0Ghz Core Duo2 (minus a little cache) I plan on using my current Zalman cooler, so I should have no problem getting 3.0 without any heat issues.
For video, I wanted quiet, so I went with a Powercolor X1950pro 512MB (with the A.C. cooler) ($129 after rebate) This is substantially better than what I have and it will more than keep me happy since I'm still mostly fooling around with 2-3 year old games.
I also grabbed 2x1GB of Corsair XMS PC6400 DDR2 memory ($48 after rebate)
And to replace both my burner and my ROM, I went with the Samsung 20x SATA burner. I can live with only one DVD drive.
I will also have to give up one of my IDE hardrive, probably the Maxtor 120 since it is the oldest and loudest. I may add another SATA hardrive If I think I need the storage. They are so cheap now, $60 for 250GB! I remember paying $200+ for 20GB when I built my first system.

Hopefully all goes well next week. I feel kinda bad turning my back on AMD since they have done me so well over the years, but the performance difference is too great with the CoreDuo2 architecture.

If I can sell the old parts for what I think I can, I will end up having this whole upgrade for less than $300. It should keep me for awhile. I can always pop out that cheap 2160 in a couple years with a newer processor as prices drop on Quad cores. I may need a bigger PSU before its all over, but I'll try the Antec first. The online power calculator says I only need a 370 watt supply, even with OC. Gotta remember that my old A64 was pretty power hungry, as well as the X800, and I'm already running stable with 4 hardrives and 2 ROM drives.

That should be a pretty sweet system. I see you chose my MOBO.

Systems

Im building a new system for myelf at work right now.

It starts with a Dell Precision 690

2 Intel Xeon quad core 2.0 ghz proc's w/ 1333 MHZ bus (8 cores at 2 ghz each)
Vista Ultimate

billbillw

audiobliss wrote: »

That should be a pretty sweet system. I see you chose my MOBO.

Well, its one of the best performers in that price range. It was between that and the Asus P5K.

audiobliss

ben62670 wrote: »

my secondary computer has this basic config, and it play fear nearly maxxed out.

Cool. I'd like to get FEAR at some point. Seems like a pretty awesome game.

ben62670

It is is sweet. It will scare you, and you will have a very hard time leaving your computer.

jakelm

I'm enjoying the hell out of my new PC. The AMD64 4200 x2 is supper fast. The ASUS A8V-XE is workign great and has all the SATA, RAM and IDE ports I need.

I know alot of people said, that the 939 chip set wasnt that great, but it it working superbly

BaggedLancer

I have 2 PC's with 939s and they work great. Never had a single issue with either.....

ben62670

My old computer had a 939 with an Opteron 165 with 2 gigs or coarair XMS, and ran just fine. My newer system has...

AMD dual core 5200X2
2 gigs Corsair 800mhz ram
2 WD Raptor 36 gigs striped
2 Seagate 250 gigs sata's striped
1 Seagate 500 gig
Nvidia 8500 GT DDR3 video card (need another for SLI)

jakelm

Very cool..