Building my Budget Dream Machine

[badboyeee]

It's been 2 weeks since I have decided to start building a new rig. I'm gonna use this thread as a notebook while I continue researching and hopefully get some of you to help me. These notes are what I have so far and I will be updating it as I find more info and get questions answered. I already spent $450 on the my CPU, motherboard, and HSF (from Monarch), which is what I spent total for my last rig (see sig). I also already have a Dell 2005FPW 20.5" LCD which I bought with my first paycheck a year ago. Well, here it goes:

Budget: ~$1000 (finally some money to play with! now that I'm out of school and with a so-so full-time job)

Use for (in order of importance):
Encoding
Video/Photo Editing
DVD burning
Multitasking (browse web and the 3 things above at the same time)
Watching DVD's
Mild gaming (not important at the moment)

Other goals:
Stable & Mild Overclocking
Clean & Simple Look (on the outside at least)
Try to keep quiet (my current rig is too loud, that it bothers me when I watch DVD's)

Future goals:
Get a decent gaming card
possibly HDTV Tuner/Capture card

------------------ITEMS BOUGHT----------------------------------------------------------

CPU/HSF:
AMD Opteron 165 ($270 @ Monarch)
Zalman CNPS7000B-AlCu ($40 @ Monarch)
I would like to at least reach 2.5ghz, 2.6ghz would be great, 2.7+ghz would be awesome.

MOTHERBOARD:
DFI LanParty NF4 Ultra-D ($125 @ Monarch)


MEMORY:*updated*
G.Skill HZ PC4000 DDR500 Ram (~$178-$15MIR @ Newegg)


CASE/PSU:
Antec TX640B ($49 shipped @ Anandtech FS Member)
I was able to find someone here to sell me a new case without the PSU. Decided to stick to my first choice, its pretty heavy but its okay I really like the look of it.

Antec 480w TruePower PSU (~$65 @ Fry's)
This was kind of a impulse buy, I saw this on sale two weeks ago at Fry's.

VIDEO CARD:
ATI X300 PCI-E (~$22 shipped @ Ebay)
Got this on Ebay, although cheap it took awhile to get here.

DVD BURNER:
NEC ND-3550A OEM(~$41 shipped @ Shop4Tech.com)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16827152058

 

[Heligrin]

First, dont expect to get any gaming done with your videocard. Period. That thing is a POS. Only thing youll be able to play is tetris, on medium graphics

If you do upgrade your videocard, you will have to upgrade your PSU along with it. For ram, how far are you exaclty going to be OCing? I would recommend the G.SKill HZ(DDR500)-250mhz each stick. This ram will let you run at a 1:1 ratio. However you will be sacrificing timing 3-4-4-8 compared to drr400 models which are 2-3-2-5. Hard Drive: Pretty simple, just buy one from a reputable company and your fine. I have had my WD 120GB for almost 3 years now, been very good for me. I would recommend Western Digital, i personally have never had a problem with them, but thats my opinion.

1T- sends commands at 1T, <---- Want to run mem
2T- sends commands at 2T, <--- Killer on sisoft sandra mem bandwidth test....

This is all you need to know: 1T yeilds better perfomance in beches, not much else. YOU WILL NEVER notice the difference between 1T and 2T. <---Maybe my opinion.
In real world, no difference, in benches, big differnce. Considering what you are doing, command rate doesnt matter, ram size does!

Everything else looks good.

 

[Tostada]

So you're just trying to overclock your CPU as much as possible to encode stuff faster?



CASE/PSU:

I'm pretty sure an Antec 400W will be just fine, but you are overclocking a dual-core CPU, so there is some doubt there. Antecs are a good deal (since they come with OK PSUs), but not that special. If you like the all-black look with no silliness in your case, you should see if you like the Cooler Master ones:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811119068

The mesh on that case is really cool, and it's very easy to work with. The whole front is black mesh with washable black filter foam behind it. The ones NewEgg is shipping now aren't as silvery as the pictures they have there (the silver across the top of the front is now black, and the silver strips on the side are thinner). If you're using the onboard sound on the Ultra-D, you do have to cut a little notch in the exhaust fan bezel to fit that goofy sound riser card without squeezing it a lot. It has a 120mm fan in the back and an 80mm fan in the front (even though NewEgg says it's only one fan).

Nothing wrong with that Antec, but you can't get it without a PSU. I'd get a SeaSonic 430W. People will tell you to go with 500W, but that's just not necessary unless you're overclocking and you have an SLI setup with two high-end video cards.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817151023



MEMORY:

Things get a little tricky here with the Opteron 165 because of the 9X (4.5X DDR) multiplier. With the X2 3800, you can just set your HTT to 250 and then you're running the CPU at 2.50 GHz and you can get DDR500 and run it synchronously. With the Opteron 165, if you set HTT to 250, you're only running the CPU at 2.25 GHz, and you'll be able to do a lot better than that. So, you have to decide whether you want to get expensive RAM and try to run synchronously, or just not worry about it and run asynchronously.

If you want to try and run synchronously, you should get either the G.Skill DDR500 or the Mushkin DDR500. If you get the G.Skill, make sure you manually set all the timings because it will not be detected correctly. I just got the Mushkin DDR500, but the price just went up $10, but now they have a $30 rebate.

There are also reports of people running the Mushkin stuff at 278MHz (synchronous with an Opteron at 278x9 = 2.5 GHz) at lower than the default voltage. So it's really good stuff for overclocking.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820146397



VIDEO CARD:

Keep in mind that your old 128-bit GeForce Ti 4200 with 4 pipes and 8.0GB/s bandwidth is still an OK video card if you don't crank up the resolution and features. The Radeon X300 is not a decent card and never has been. It's a 64-bit card with 3.2GB/s of bandwidth. Even if you don't care about gaming, you really don't want something that has less than half the fillrate of your last card.

I also don't see you getting an X300 delivered from a reputable place for less than $52. If you really don't care at all about gaming, the refurb X300 for $31 might be a good idea:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102415R

But I'd say at the very least you should get a Radeon X550, which is a 4-pipe 128-bit DX9 card with 8.0GB/s bandwidth for $65.50 if the specs are correct:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102626

The X550 will be about the same as your Ti 4200 and it's passive. You can get a GF 6600 with a passive heatsink for around $100, which has twice the pipelines and a little more bandwidth. I got the XFX 6600 (I also upgraded to a LanParty Ultra D and had to ditch my Ti 4200), which is a nice card with a big heatsink, no fan, and has the extra molex connector on it. They seem to have discontinued that, though, and there aren't really any passive 6600s that are as good. If you don't mind the fan, Biostar has one with a very good heatsink for $105:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814141018

Don't get the 6600LE. It only has 4 pipes, and it's only $10 cheaper than you can get a real 6600.



HARD DRIVE:

Well, if you're doing a lot of DVD encoding, you want a lot of space, right? Right now I think the WD2500KS (250GB, 7200RPM, 16MB cache) is by far the best bang for the buck in hard drives.

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=101220-12

Obviously if you have the budget, the Raptor 150 is the best, but for DVD encoding, you're going to want two good drives. So I'd get two 250GB drives, then you encode from one onto the other. For $208, that's the best you're going to be able to do.

 

[badboyeee]

Thanks for the replies. I am at work so a quick post here...

CPU
Like stated above, I am wanting to OC to at least 2.5ghz

CASE
If 400watts is too low, I will probably get that centrion and buy a seperate 500w power supply

PSU
Ya I had some doubt with 400watts, since I will be overclocking my cpu. And possibly my memory if needed, and future gaming card. Also I might be adding a HDTV tuner/capture card.

MEMORY
I will read that part later

VIDEO CARD
I will probably just go with a X300 as I found someone who can sell me one really cheap used. I was hoping it would come a lil close to my Ti4200, but I guess gaming will just have to wait. Just as long as I can get my system running and it will be strong enough to run 2d applications on my dell @ 1680 x 1050 and do my video editing work.
Then probably in the summer I will get a 6800GS or 7800GT. Or I may just get an AIW, but I read its better to get a seperate gaming card and hdtv tuner/capture card.

HARD DRIVE
I do have 4 hard drives in my current rig, as I am not sure if I will be using one of those and if any are 7200rpm/16mb/supports SATA ultra

ok well gota get back to work

 

[i1o0i]

Take one of your current hard drives, you'll probably need at least 1 gig ram, 450-500watts power supply will be enough for overclocking, I'm sure that centrion case is pretty good and 6600gt will be great for mild games. ;-]

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

You'll be able to play games on an X300, just not that very well. WoW should definitely be playable. I'm guessing you coul take it up to 1280x1024?

 

[d3lt4]

cpu- opteron 165 $329
memory- OCZ platinum 2gb pc3200 @2-3-2-5 $195@newegg right now
case- centurion $60
HD- same as listed above $105
mobo- DFI NF4 UltraD $130
psu- Fortron blue 500w $91
gpu- 6800gs $175@newegg right now
total-$1085
so u may want a cheeper power supply or wait to get a good gpu or something.

 

[Tostada]

Originally posted by: d3lt4
cpu- opteron 165 $329
memory- OCZ platinum 2gb pc3200 @2-3-2-5 $195@newegg right now
case- centurion $60
HD- same as listed above $105
mobo- DFI NF4 UltraD $130
psu- Fortron blue 500w $91
gpu- 6800gs $175@newegg right now
total-$1085
so u may want a cheeper power supply or wait to get a good gpu or something.

Well done. He already re-confirmed that he doesn't care about gaming and doesn't even want to spend $65 on a video card, but you're suggesting a 6800GS.

And why would he want to spend $195 for PC3200 when he's overclocking? He's not going to get much benefit out of expensive CL2.0 memory when it's not even running synchronously. Might as well save another $35 and get cheap memory if he's going with PC3200.

 

[badboyeee]

Okay I finally got my X300 today. Bought a bunch of other stuff as well (I will update original post after this). Still got a couple of concerns...

HARD DRIVE
Here are my hard drives (all are pretty much 7200rpm, ~9ms seek time, regular ATA 133, 8mb cache):
Western Digital Caviar SE 80gb
Maxtor Diamond Max Plus 9? 80gb
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 10? 200gb
Maxtor MaxLine something 250gb (need's to be RMA'd)

Should I still be looking into getting a better hard drive? I was thinking of just using my Western Digital HD for my system drive, keep the 80gig in my current rig, and the rest for storage/backup. Or should I upgrade to SATA and maybe a Raptor? Maybe go for some RAID action? I'm thinking its not worth the upgrade...

MEMORY
As for memory, I'm still confused on what to get. 33% say get PC4000, 33% say get fast timings, 33% say just get ValueRam since I am going to use a divider and try to OC at 2.7ghz and AMD cpu's doesnt really care about timings and bandwith. Can someone put me to rest on this topic!

Thanks

 

[badboyeee]

bump

 

[Effect]

I'd personally suggest the value stuff, as long as it's a good company. The money you save could go towards a better video card down the track. The G.Skill CL2.5 @ $169 stuff you mentioned looks to be good.

A new hdd shouldn't be a priority update just yet, but keep one in mind.

If you've saved enough money, in the future (perhaps a month or two), i'd suggest picking up a 7900gt for some gaming.

As for the cpu cooler, someone may be able to suggest a better one, but IMO, keep the stock opty one until you need to upgrade.

 

[badboyeee]

Okay back to update, I had to troubleshoot my motherboard which I had to eventually RMA. That really sucked but happy now that my replacement board seems okay now.

I also got some new RAM. I originally had the OCZ DDR500 2gb ram from outpost but I returned it when the equivilant Gskill got cheaper at Newegg. Also glad I made that move as the OCZ ram had Memtest errors producing when OC'd to 258MHz while I am currently seeing how far my Gskill ram goes, and I am up to 264 MHz with no errors (both at stock voltage, 1:1 ratio).

Questions:
So how long should I be memtesting to consider my ram to be OC stable?

What max temperature would be safe for my CPU when I starting overclocking it, and at what voltage?
How do I change the CPU voltage? settings at CPU Vid Startup Value?