Hey guys, I'm looking into a new.. mid to top-end system, that will have great expandablity. I'm just going to list what I was considering, and if you guys got any great suggestions for replacing any particular part, please... let me know.

CPU: AMD Athlon - 3200+ S939 Venice
MB: DFI LANPARTY nF4 SLI-DR
RAM: Corsair 1GB XMS3200 TwinX (2x512)
HDD: 250GB Western Digital Cavier SATAII-300 (16mb cache)
Video: BFG GeForce 7800 GTX OC
Audio: SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS
PS: OCZ 520W Power Stream
DVD-RW: LG Dual Layer 16x DVD±R/RW
DVD-Rom: LG 16x DVD-Rom

I know the CPU is on the low side compared to everything else... but, it's really overclockable. if anyone can think of a better suiting cpu, please speak up. But, please note, this is already pushing the budget...

 

Yeah, that Venice is a good o'clocker...I have a 3200+ Wichester and she SUCKS to overclock (I bought a later one).
What are you going to use for cooling? air? liquid?

Let me know how you like the 7800GTX I have a 6800GT and she has her ups and downs.

http://www.hardforum.com is a great forum and should answer any questions you would ever have about building your own computer.

 

Thanks for the link.. great information is always good to have. I've built a bunch in the past, but never really gotten into overclocking, either the person was cheap, or they wanted intel.. neither of which is great for OC. and as for personal use... well, i'm too broke.

As for OC'ing, just going to be air for now.. I'm pretty sure I can get a 3700+ (equivalent) out of that cpu on the stock cooler. Again, same thing applies.. any comments/suggestions...

 

My .02...

I'd change HD brands from Seagate to Maxtor. Seagate uses a layer of foam under the platters. Why in the world would they do that? Does foam not retain heat? :pat:

Also curious why you chose LG instead of Plextor. Plextor has had the best rep for quite a while.

Otherwise, that's looking to be a kick ass machine. That would be really cool if you could document the build then post pics and stuff.

 

I have known a few people who are not happy with that case...cooling issues. I have the ThermalTake Tsunami Dream and she has 2x120MM fansand a 92MM fan.

the 6600 is a good card but what gaming do you do? I would drop down to a min of a 6800gt /oc ot go over to ATI (I am not as happy with my 6800 as I thought I would be and my next card will be ATI unless Nvidia cleans their act up)

I have heard great things about the DFI MBoard and if I had to do my build over again that is the one I would get. I have the ABIT AN8 and again not happy with her.

 

Also think about an Asus mamaboard.
I build only with Asus MBs, they are very reliable.
The rest looks good.

Pick up a copy of the new Maximum PC mag.
They have a great article on building an AMD based gaming rig for $1,256.
Here are the specs:

Athlon 64 3000+ CPU $149
NVIDIA 6800 GT $295
MSI K8N Neo4/SLI $149
Antec Performance TX640B $115
Plextor PX-716A $114
Windows XP Pro $144
Maxtor 300 GB DiamondMax 10 SATA $175
1 GB DDR400 Corsair RAM $109

$1,255 or so

I am also partial to ATI video cards.
My next one will be the X800 XL.
I also like Seagate hard drives better.
I have heard to many horror stories with Maxtor.
I run Seagates now, and have never had an issue with them.

The above case they built this with comes with a 400 watt PSU, and most of the time included PSUs suck.
They mention in the article not so in this case, it is a good one.
Here is the case, and part of the article I mentioned in a PDF file on Antecs site.
http://www.antec.com/pdf/press/Maximum%20PC_10_05.pdf
The case:
http://www.antec.com/us/productDetails.php?ProdID=61640

 

ok, it's too much of a pain to quote every point.. so i'll just comment. thx for the input guys, this is great.

well, turns out he changed his mind again, going back to the mac daddy computer.. lol
BFG 7800 GTX OC so, that concern is gone...

as for the LG vs Plextor.. i used to love plextor, then i got a batch of crap drives, i've never had an LG fail me.. (installed.. 300 of them)

as for hdd's.. didn't know that about seagate.. interesting... when i used to work at a computer shop, i seen 20 dead maxtors for every 5 seagates and every 1 western digitals. i was talking with a friend at work today, he hates WD, and I hate maxtor, but we both seemed to be cool with seagate. Either way, WD and seagate both have 5 year warranty. And I know Seagate has REALLY cleaned up their act in the past little while, making a rock-solid, very quiet product.

interesting about the case... i will have to inform my friend.. about the tsunami dream.. thats a beautiful case isnt it? but its 50% more expensive. i ordered one for my cousin last month, wanted black, got silver by mistake and loved it more then the black, so he kept it. lol

the thing about asus... yes corey, i agree. asus makes a GREAT, stable product. I was at a LAN party and a guy freaked out and started jumping on his case (side was off) and he was jumping on the motherboard but yea, then he picked it up, plugged it in, and it ran better then it did before all the ruckus.. LOL. But I'm after a high-end gaming board thats got a slew of OC'ing features, and DFI seems to be the #1 according to ALOT of people.

I'm an ATI guy to the core, lol.. still running a Radeon7500.. (bOOyah!) it's a canadian company, im a canadian guy what can i say.. but as of late.. ATI seems to be slacking a bit... they have what.. 36 variants of the x800 chip.. thats insane! but please, if someone can think of an ATI card that bests the nVidia.. (thats the same price or less) let me know, i will use that instead.

 

http://www.pricerunner.co.uk/computi...336142/details

Sony Vaio RA304 Pentium 4 3.6GHz / 1024MB / 500GB / DVD / DVDRW / WinXP Home

 

ugh.. INTEL.. lol, and sony.. no thx.. I like building em more...

ooops, and oh yea.. will definetely post pics of putting it together, OC'ing it.. and then do some benchmarking to post the results.. should be at my house for a lil bit.. my payment is I get to play with it for a lil while..

 

From all that I have read, Asus is king of OC'ing.
I run my 2.4c Intel chip at 3.12 GHz for the past year now or so with no problems.

Very good BIOS to do all that through, or a Windows interface too.

 

hmm.. maybe consistantly you're right.. and I do remember the OC ability for the 2.4C from a while back.. but the 2 recent LANPARTY boards by DFI have gotten rave reviews. here's a sample list of some of the bios settings.

FSB Bus Speed 200-456 Mhz in 1 Mhz increments
HyperTransport Ratio 1-3 in 0.5 steppings 3-5 in integer steppings
HyperTransport Bandwith 8/8, 16/8, 8/16, 16/16
CPU Multiplier Ratios 4 to CPU Max in 0.5 steppings
PCI Express Frequency 100-145Mhz in 1 Mhz steppings
CPU Voltage 0.800-1.550 in 0.0125v steppings; voltage multiplier settings 1.00, 1.04, 1.10, 1.13, 1.23, 1.26, 1.33, 1.36
HyperTransport Voltage 1.20v to 1.50v in 0.1v steppings
Chipset Voltage 1.5v to 1.8v in 0.1v steppings
DRAM Voltage 2.5v to 4.9v in 0.1v steppings
Memory Divider 1:2, 3:5, 2:3, 7:10, 3:4, 5:6, 9:10, 1:1
Command Per Clock On/Off
CAS Latency Control (TCL) 1.0-4.5 in 0.5 steppings
RAS Latency Control (TCL) 0-7 Bus Clocks
Min RAS active time (Tras) 0-15 Bus Clocks
Row Precharge Time (Trp) 0-7 Bus Clocks
le time (Trc) 7-22 Bus Clocks
Row Refresh Cycle Time (Trfc) 9-24 Bus Clocks
Row to Row Delay (Trrd) 0-7 Bus Clocks
Write Recover Time (Twr) 2-3 Bus Clocks
Write to Read Delay (Twtr) 1-2 Bus Clocks
Read to Write Delay (Trwt) 1-8 Bus Clocks
Refresh Period (Tref) 16-4708 Cycles; varied stepping size
Write CAS Latency (Twcl) 1-8 Bus Clocks
DRAM Bank Interleave On/Off
DQS Skew Control Increase/Decrease Skew
DQS Skew Value 0-255
DRAM Drive Strength Level 2-8
DRAM Data Drive Strength Level 1-4
Max Async Latency 1-15ns
Read Preamble Time 2-9.5ns in 0.5 ns steppings
Idle Cycle Limit 0-256 Cycles; stepping increments are double the previous value
Dynamic Counter Enable/Disable
R/W Queue Bypass 0,4,8,16
Bypass Max 0-7
32 Byte Granularity 4 or 8 Bursts

 

http://www.pugetsystems.com/liquid.php?sys_id=35 only $12,000

 

I'd rather buy an FJ-40 for that price

 

I used to work at Maxtor doing their tech support. I can tell you that they now all have a 5 year warranty and the technology that they put into their drives is probably the best in the market. I know for a fact that they have the best customer service out of any hard drive company as you get free lifetime tech support. I always had people with WD drives that would call to ask a quick question because our tech support was free and WD's wasn't.

We all have our own preferences and I know that I won't buy anything but Maxtor drives for any of my computers.

 

I second that. Yeah, hard drives fail, and you're gonna get bad batches here and there. The university I work for... I've seen more seagate and WD drives fail than Maxtor. Our two main external backup drives are Maxtors, and we've tortured them and they still work without any problems.

 

That looks good...but I have one question. Please correct me if I am wrong (and I very well may be) but AMDs and the MBs to my understanding can not use anything more then PC 3200 ram (400) am I wrong? or are the newer AMDs able to us it?

Where do you order your stuff? and what are you using for cooling besides the 2x120MM fans?? I use an XP90 and it has dropped my temps over 15C idle and over 20C while playing BF2 and IL2(Pacific Fighters)

 

i am planning to order all the components from newegg. yes, I'm going to be putting in more cooling, exactly which cooling, is still to be decided, going to order all the components, get them here, assembled, then make a list of extras to be ordered from another online source

possible things on that list are...
- xp90-c w/panaflow fan
- uv cold cathodes
- pci fan card
- upgraded 120mm fans
- etc...

like i said, those things are still up in the air, the only thing for sure is the heatsink and fan... have to get the system assembled and tested, see how much more cooling it actually needs

as for the ram, yes, it will underclock the memory down to 400 (at stock settings) thats the most that can be used... but, by getting the ddr550, i now have the ability to up the bus speed, and have the ram still be very stable (and cool). this particular ram is recommended by DFI for overclocking...

 

I would get 2 hard drives with decent storage rather then 1 with a massive amount.

Like 2 x 100 gig HD's or something....I dunno what you use the computer for but I find if I keep important files on one HD, or use only one for media music and movies I have a better chance saving all my data if a hard drive start failing.

 

yea, i agree with you about 2 harddrives.. he's already got an external 160gb

 

Good point on the drives. I actually prefer to start off with a fast 20 to 40 gig drive to run my OS('s) and software on, then a bigger drive (or two) to store my big files.