Help requested - building new system around 8800GT

[marmin]

Hi all,

A little background, first. I've only ever built two systems in my life:
- in 98/99 with the classic Celeron 300A / Abit BH-6 combo,
- in 2002 when the TI 4200 graphics card came out.

Life's been busy (house, 2 kids), but now we have the 8800Gt, and it's time. 🙂 I'm planning to purchase components in late December. I've spent the morning reading through this site and the forums and I'll tell you, catching up on 5 years of computer progress is tough. 🙂 I'll next describe what I'd like my system to include. But the key points are: it should be reasonably quiet, I'm not overclocking, eventually I want to SLI a 2nd 8800GT, tuner card, and my motherboard needs WIFI.

Processor: Core 2 Duo E6xxx (I'm okay here), no CPU cooler (I'm not going to overclock, so I can rely on the Intel HSF, right?)

Motherboard: it must have wifi, and I want to eventually SLI a second 8800GT. Is the ABIT IN9 32X - MaxWiFi the only option?

Memory: ddr2-800, pc2-6400, 4-4-4-12 timing, 4 gigs worth

Video Card: 8800GT, don't know whether 512 megs is significantly better than 256 megs. Anyhow, buy one now, a second a little later. Oh, I also need a tv tuner card.

Hard Drive: Samsung SpinPoint T Series, SATA, 250 gigs.
Optical Drive: maybe a Pioneer DVR-212BK

Case: Coolermaster Cosmos 1000, or another good quiet case.

PSU: Quiet, and strong enough to support 2 8800GTs and a tv tuner card. Seasonic?

Display: Acer AL2216WBD 22"

O/S: Vista home premium, 64 bit.

Thanks again for any tips people have. I'm hoping to build something that will last several years (even if it can't play the latest games in 2010), with future upgrades limited to presumably swapping in improved optical drives and increased hard drive storage.

 

[emfiend]

One thing. If you've got kids and have many home videos, I'd opt for a Quad Core. I can convert a 1 hr dvd in about 45 minutes and by putting all four cores to use. The grandparents were happy to see long lost videos I grew too lazy to convert (till I got my new system). 🙂

 

[marmin]

Another weekend morning of reading the before the kids got up, and I'm slowly learning. 🙂

Yes, you're right - for my needs, which includes home videos, a quad of the same price makes more sense.

And as for requiring wifi built-in to the mobo - silly. I'll get that on a card instead.

Slowly but sure, I'll figure this out. 🙂

M.

 

[nullpointerus]

Originally posted by: marmin

I'll next describe what I'd like my system to include. But the key points are: it should be reasonably quiet, I'm not overclocking, eventually I want to SLI a 2nd 8800GT, tuner card, and my motherboard needs WIFI.

What is your budget for the tuner card? Do you need HD?

Personally, I have heard good things about the ATI 550 and 650 cards. I have an ATI TV Wonder 650 PCIe on the way. Absolutely do not get a Hauppauge PVR-150/500 card if you intend to run 64-bit Windows because it's been driver hell ever since Vista was released. Hauppauge's other cards may be fine...

Video Card: 8800GT, don't know whether 512 megs is significantly better than 256 megs. Anyhow, buy one now, a second a little later. Oh, I also need a tv tuner card.

You will absolutely want the 512 MB version of the 8800GT.

The 256 MB will kill performance in most new games if you intend to run at or near the native resolution of your flat panel display.

Hard Drive: Samsung SpinPoint T Series, SATA, 250 gigs.

If you intend to use this computer to record TV shows in the background, opt for a second hard drive, say 120 GB for personal/SD use but at least 320 GB if you do HD or record shows for multiple people.

Using a second hard drive will prevent games, DVD rips, etc. from slowing to a crawl just because your TV show has started recording.

(CPU usage of TV recording is way low nowadays, so dual core is fine for a HTPC as such.)

O/S: Vista home premium, 64 bit.

Make sure any peripherals (e.g. printers, mice) you want to use have drivers for Vista x64.

Thanks again for any tips people have. I'm hoping to build something that will last several years (even if it can't play the latest games in 2010), with future upgrades limited to presumably swapping in improved optical drives and increased hard drive storage.

As emfiend said, go quad-core. And get a good aftermarket cooler to deal with the heat and noise. Trust me, double the $$ to double your processing capability is perhaps the best long-term performance upgrade you can do. Decent quad-core chips run $266 these days...

 

[nullpointerus]

Originally posted by: marmin

Motherboard: it must have wifi, and I want to eventually SLI a second 8800GT. Is the ABIT IN9 32X - MaxWiFi the only option?

WiFi can be tricky and very irritating to work with. Depending on your range, traditional Wireless-G devices may not be reliable or fast enough for your needs.

I found the Linksys SRX equipment gave me a HUGE boost in signal quality/strength, even with SRX on the WiFi adapter by itself with a normal G router. I even picked up about six other routers in the neighborhood (although with low signal strength on many of them).

However, if you are in the same/adjacent room, any Wireless-G device should work fine -- even the ones that come on motherboards.

Wireless-N stuff is just coming out and might be a decent alternative. The problem is stability and compatibility. By mid-December, the situation may have changed. I would personally go with G stuff and get N stuff a year or two from now if I needed to stream HD or something over the home network.

 

[thejez]

Originally posted by: nullpointerus

Personally, I have heard good things about the ATI 550 and 650 cards. I have an ATI TV Wonder 650 PCIe on the way. Absolutely do not get a Hauppauge PVR-150/500 card if you intend to run 64-bit Windows because it's been driver hell ever since Vista was released. Hauppauge's other cards may be fine...

what specifically have you had problems with regarding the PVR tuners? I have the PVR-500MCE and it seems to run perfectly on Vista x64... i haven't noticed even one issue. The bigger problem is playback in x64.. only software decoding seems to work in x64...

 

[MarcVenice]

If you are buying in december, do yourself a favor, and buy a single 8800gts 512mb card, instead of a 8800gt, and forget about SLI alltogether. SLI mobo's cost more, have aged chipsets and won't be as stable as p35/x38 chipsets AND sli doesn't scale really well, runs hot, needs a bigger PSU and gives driver problems AND by the time you plugin another 8800gt, there will be a single card beating your SLI-ed 8800gt's with far less hassle. This would be a good mobo with wifi: http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16813131196

Oh, and soon we will be seeing Phenom as well, I'm pretty sure 2.2-2.3ghz Phenom x4's will be able to compete with a q6600, if you are buying in december, do yourself another favor, and wait for benchmarks to hit the web, then decide what's best for you. AMD/ATI videocards might also be interesting, since they have a lot of stuff, like audio encoding built in. Besides, AMD mobo's are often cheaper, maybe they'll be offering the same functionality for less money.

Three more personal recommendations, buy a 500gb samsung spinpoint, it performs better then the 250gb HD, runs cooler/quieter then most other HD's out there, and the sweetspot for $/gb is around 500gb. Secondly, I love the antec p182 myself, quiet case, good looking. Pair it with a corsair 520hx and you've got yourself the main components for a quiet, stable rig. Last but not least, even if not overclocking, buy something like a arctic freezer 7 pro, for 15-20$, runs really quiet, and still cools better then the stock HSF.

 

[nullpointerus]

Originally posted by: thejez

Originally posted by: nullpointerus

Personally, I have heard good things about the ATI 550 and 650 cards. I have an ATI TV Wonder 650 PCIe on the way. Absolutely do not get a Hauppauge PVR-150/500 card if you intend to run 64-bit Windows because it's been driver hell ever since Vista was released. Hauppauge's other cards may be fine...

what specifically have you had problems with regarding the PVR tuners? I have the PVR-500MCE and it seems to run perfectly on Vista x64... i haven't noticed even one issue. The bigger problem is playback in x64.. only software decoding seems to work in x64...

Depends on how much RAM you have. Most of the point of running Vista x64 is so that the operating system can use the full 4+ GB of system RAM; however, Hauppauge PVR-150/500 cards do not work well (or at all) in such situations. Users have experienced the infamous "green screen" playback and corrupted recordings (i.e. 0 MB files) because the driver usually craps out in 64-bit mode w/ more than 3 GB RAM.

Here's a composite thread put together by the moderators because there were so many posts in so many other threads regarding the same issue. I'm running SP1 beta just to get a half-working card; other people have found that configuration to fix their problems completely. For many people, however, the solution is just to disable some of their RAM, which obviously runs contrary to the purpose of running 64-bit Windows.

IMO, the OP should just avoid the PVR-150/500 mess altogether.

 

[marmin]

MarcVenice / nullpointerus / thejez/ emfiend: thanks again for all of your comments - it has been very helpful. Combined with further reading on my own, I've backed off a SLI board. I'm not a gaming enthusiast, wanting to balance long term stability / low noise / cool running with decent performance. I'm now edging towards:

mobo: ASUS P5K-E/WIFI-AP http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16813131196
(marcvenice - thanks, and I see it's well reviewed)
(nullpointerus - I only require wifi at close range, so I'll hold my breath and go with the mobo option)

cpu: quad 6600 or E6850
(emfiend - still a tough call between noticing immediate FPS difference in games vs video encoding times)

cpu cooler: arctic freezer 7 pro

tv tuner: ATI TV Wonder 650 PCIe

Videocard: 8800GT, 512 megs
(nullpointerus - thanks for the 512 recommendation, I agree.)
(MarcVenice - at 10:27am you recommend an 8800GTS over the 8800GT? http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3140&p=7)

Case / PSU: Antec P182, Corsair 520HX

Hard Drive: I didn't realize how cheap they've become. Ok, 2 500 gig samsung spinpoints. With apologies to Bill Gates, "1 tera should be enough for me." 🙂

Display: same - Acer AL2216WBD 22"

O/S: vista home premium 64 bit

Memory: same specs, 4 gigs, ddr2-800 pc6400. Probably Corsair, for peace of mind.

Thanks again for all your input!

 

[MarcVenice]

The 'new' 8800gts, coming out on the third of december. It's better then the 8800gt, and since you were considering sli-ed 8800gt's I figured you might be interested in something faster. Last remark, if you are going to spend 250$ on a cpu, then I'd rather have the q6600 then the e6850. If you need some more speed, then the q6600 can always be oc-ed to 3ghz without any trouble. But when applications that can use 4 cores become normal, then you can't add 2 cores to the e6850. Otherwise, buy a e6550 or so, and throw in a qaudcore in a year ? The rest of your rig is looking awesome, it's nearly identical to what I would build/have allready 😀