Another "Check my build list" thread

[HO]

Asus A8N-E
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+
Corsair RAM (4G, exact PN undecided)
Matrox P650 128 PCIe
Adaptec 19160N SCSI host adaptor (legacy from previous box)
Maxtor 73G Atlas IV SCSI drive (ditto legacy) for system disk
Maxtor 36G Atlas IV for Photoshop scratch (more legacy)
Maxtor DiamondMax 10 300G SATA for storage (maybe 2 if they're cheap enough)
Some sort of Plextor DVD (SATA?)
PC Power and Cooling Silencer 470 OR TurboCool 510
Antec P180 case

This rig is for Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, etc. It will never see a game, no need for SLI, 3D, etc. Reliability and stability are what I'm shooting for. Oh, and speed. 🙂

 

[superfly27]

what's the matrox for?

 

[Ricemarine]

Is this a server?.

 

[imported_rod]

Originally posted by: HO
This rig is for Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, etc. It will never see a game, no need for SLI, 3D, etc. Reliability and stability are what I'm shooting for. Oh, and speed. 🙂

Have you considered getting a Dual-Core pentium 4? For these uses, a P4 would probably outperform an equivalent A64 setup. And your obviously not worried about gaming performance.

BtW. For the DVD burner, i would reccomend a Pioneer. I have a Pioneer DVR-109, but I've heard that there is a DVR-110 availiably now (or very soon).

RoD

 

[JBDan]

Looks fast and reliable to me. If you treasure silence though, beware of the 510 TurboCool. The one component the P180 does not quiet down. Maybe a Seasonic 500W? Much quieter, cheaper (129$ I last saw), and a solid psu. The new slot loader dvd by plextor looks nice if you got the funds. Advantage of SATA on a dvd drive is the cable...thats about it.

 

[HO]

Originally posted by: superfly27
what's the matrox for?

Photoshop. Their 2d quality is just better. I've used nVidia and ATI, and finally bought a used G550 last year. The difference was striking.

Originally posted by: rod

Have you considered getting a Dual-Core pentium 4? For these uses, a P4 would probably outperform an equivalent A64 setup.

No P4s for me. I've seen benchmarks that show the A64 to be very competitive for PS use. Besides, money *is* an object. 🙂

Thanks for the info on DVD drives.

In another forum, a responder said the using 4G of RAM in a non-server board almost never works. Any thoughts on this?

 

[HO]

Another question: Should I opt for the retail Athlon kit or go with a 3rd party heatsink/fan? If the answer is 3rd party, is there an agreement on the best value for the $?

NOTE: this system will NOT be overclocked.

 

[Hacp]

Retail is just fine. I would go with 3rd party if your worried about hte noise though.