Building Athlon 64 system with A64 3800+ (939)

[Finnatic]

Thinking about building an A64 3800+ system on the 939 platform to put in my existing Lian Li PC68 case with a Audigy 2 ZS Platinum sound card, BFG Tech Geforce 6800 GT OC video card and Samsung 191T 19" LCD. Of the motherboards out there, this is the only nforce3 Ultra 939 board I could find at Newegg (in fact the only 939 board they had in stock):

Gigabyte GA-K8NSNXP-939 nforce3 ultra
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-128-254&depa=0

I've heard the nforce3 ultra's play nice with the Geforce 6800 GT's, so since that is my video card, I would like to stick with nvidia motherboard chipsets. Is the Gigabyte gonna make me a happy camper?

What RAM would you guys recommend in the 2 x 1 gigabyte arena so I can stay at 2T (is that right?) I am flexible here.. I can order from crucial or one of the other guys, as long as it's in stock. I love me some multitasking, so the more RAM the merrier. I'm doing a lot of City of Heroes at 1280x1024. Are timings going to kill my performance since 2x1024 is not CL2?

Hard drive.. everyone seems to say the Hitachi 400gb SATA is fastest 7200 rpm.. is that the one to get? They are all barebones it seems so I guess I need to buy a cable or something separately. I would imagine it has a driver disk but I wouldn't need that on a 939 board, right? Wanna pair it up with a Raptor 74gb 10,000 rpm SATA as my system drive, or is that going overboard?

Power supply.. wanna replace the 400W Antec in my Lian Li PC68 case with something bigger.. suggestions? Maybe the Enermax 600W

Heat sink fan.. best to stick with the retail package or go with something aftermarket? I'm not an overclocker (at least not by nature!)

DVD rewriter... Pioneer DVR108 is the way to go now it looks based on the specs, at least.

Thanks for your expert ideas. Links are much appreciated! Seriously, thanks guys.

 

[jdogg707]

I am not even going to start on how unnecessary some of the things you are looking for are, I am just going with the flow...

Anyway, the Gigabyte board seems to be alright, a little expensive, but it has an excellent feature set. Just stay away from MSI, no matter what the reviews say, those boards are the suck. If you have to go with 1GB sticks, it doesn't look like there is much available in the low timings area, at least not yet. I personally would go with the Corsair TWINX2048-3200Pro 2GB Kit. Unless you do a lot of multi-tasking, and I do mean a lot, you will not really see the benefits of 2GB of RAM for quite some time, and most likely by then it will be time for another upgrade! Regardless of the timings, you most likely will not see a big performance hit going with the Corsair, maybe 2-5 FPS if that. For a hard drive, do you really need 400GB? If not get the Raptor and a 250GB and keep the $300 bucks you saved to spend on something else. As far as a PSU, I personally like the Antec TruePower 550W unit, it has given me great rails and never failed, even through several power surges. The included HSF with the retail unit should be fine, unless you want an ultra quiet system, in which I would suggest a Zalman CNPS-7000B-Cu set on silent mode you shouldn't be able to hear it. If you can wait a few weeks, it might be worth it to wait for the NEC 3500A, as it seems it will be quite a bit faster at the same settings as the DVR10, and most likely cheaper. Have fun with this overkill system, it should be awesome!

 

[jpeyton]

all your questions answered