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Building a new system

M

Matt2

Diamond Member
Ok, I finally broke down and decided to build a whole new syystem instead of trying to upgrade my current one (in signature). This way I can sell that system for around $300-$500 bucks to offset some of the cost.

Currently I have my heart set on the motherboard and processor:

Athlon 64 3000+ 512K 90nm Rev. E

DFI Lan Party UT NForce4 Ultra-D

Combo @ monarch computer for $285. Price might be a little steep, but I get HL2 and Far Cry for free.

Geforce 6600GT PCI-E (Any brand will do) I don't want to spend a wad of cash now when I can get good performance now out of a budget card. If not a 6600GT, what comparable solutions does ATI have now?

Now I need suggestions on RAM, DVD Burner, case/power supply and hard drive (SATA if possible) and cooling solution!

Everything else is pretty elementary unless you have any other suggestions!

I plan on gaming on this computer and overclocking it to the highest possible limits, but it needs to be relatively cheap for the poor guy!

Thanks

 
good choices on the basics. The 6600GT is your best bet in the $160 range, as ATI's X700 Pro is MUCH slower. XFX makes some pretty inexpensive 6600GTs and they have dual DVI, which is nice. Leadtek is good too, i hear. If your budget permits, you may want to look for a X800XL for around $250 - it, along with the recently cheaper 6800GT, are a little less than twice as fast as the 6600GT. They are all great values for their respective price points, though.
Power Supply - I have the Vantec Stealth VAN-520A and I love it. It's like $90. I also hear the Enermax Whisper 535W is great for around the same price. People have been raving about the Enermax. Both are ATX 2.0 (24 pin) which is important for PCIe. DO NOT GET A CHEAPIE PSU, OR ONE THAT CAME WITH A CASE!!!! It will not support good overclocking of your CPU/GPU, since they both eat up lots of 12V juice, and it may not even be stable.
RAM - It depends. If the DFI has lots of memory dividers (particularly a 3/4 divider, which my chaintech lacks) then go with budget memory. They can usually at least hit DDR420 speeds, giving you some room to work with, and you can just keep stepping up your memory divider rather than actaully running your memory in 1:1. Running dividers doesn't hurt your performance on A64s like it did with other systems. I'd try to find 2 1GB sticks if possible (Corsair, Mushkin, and kingston have 1GB sticks for $90) or get 2 512 sticks and maybe upgrade later down the road ($85-90 for a 1GB kit). If your dividers suck, then you may want to try some Crucial Ballistix 512MB sticks or something ($115 each). I think PQI sells some cheap DDR500 sticks also on newegg (the CL3 sticks are way cheaper than the CL2.5).
Case - your call. I like the Thermaltake Dream Tower, the Antec P160, and other brushed aluminum designs, but that's me.
Burner - For cheap, the NEC 5320A dual layer burner is like $50, and for like $80 you can get a BenQ lightscribe drive, which i think is awesome - you can burn images directly on the label, so you don't have to use sharpies. It can do full greyscale pics and stuff too.
HD - I just got the Hitachi T7K250 for $128, and i love it. Boot times are faster than anything other than a raptor. It's SATA-II, has NCQ, and is really quiet cause it only has 2 platters. There reliability has gone up a lot since the "deathstar" incident. I've also tried the Maxtor Diamondmax 10, which has 16MB of cache, and it helps transfer rates and burst speeds a bit, but it doesn't play nice with NF4 mobos - mine worked fine for a few hours, then simply disappeared from BIOS and wouldn't come back. It happened on 2 different mobos.
Cooling - The retail cooler is pretty decent, and I got to 2.55GHz on my 3000+ without too much of an issue. If you want bettter, Zalman's CNPS-7700-AlCu is great and very quiet (for $35ish). Thermalright's XP-90 and XP-120 are good, too, but they are more expensive, and depending on what fan you get, they can be kinda loud.
 
RAM--> Corsair Value Select, preferably 2 X 512MB

DVD Burner--> Pioneer 109 OEM

Case--> Antec Solution SLK3000-B Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case (comes with one 12 cm exhaust fan).

PSU--> XClio 450W

SATA HD--> Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 SATA NCQ ST3120827AS 120GB 7200 RPM




 
Thanks forthe input guys.

Hey gobucks or anyone else with a 660GT,

What kinda framerates are you getting? From the reviews I saw the 6600GT performed extremely well for being almost $150 less than the 850XL or the 6800GT.

I'm thinkin about bumping myself up to the x800XL or a 6800GT, but I just can't justify paying at least a $100 more when I can get enough performance out of the 6600GT to last me for a while.
 
dfi highly recommends 480 watts with native 24 pin power cord. for that board i recommend fortron blue storm 500watts and it meets the specs dfi requires. i dont know about value select either some have gotten to work fine with that board some havent. the board is picky about ram value anything is not recommended. try some twinmos sp or some ocz plat rev 2
 
What are the FSB speeds on the DFI motherboard? Is it native 200mhz so that any DDR400 will work?
 
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