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Need some input on my first system...

F

fixmarky

Member
Here's the setup (for day to day Windows use and some gaming):

-MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra ATX AMD Motherboard
-ATI 100-435500 Radeon X800XL 256MB GDDR3 PCI-Express x16 Video Card
-AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego Integrated into Chip FSB Socket 939 Processor
-CORSAIR XMS 1GB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered Dual Channel
-Western Digital Raptor WD740GD 73GB Serial ATA150 (prioritizing speed over space)
-CREATIVE Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS

-Lian Li PC-7BPlus-W Case (already purchased)
-SEASONIC S12-500 ATX12V 500W Power Supply

-VANTEC CCB-A1C Ball VGA COOLER (replacing mobo chipset fan)
-ZALMAN CNPS7000B-CU 92mm 2 Ball Cooling Fan/Heatsink (for cpu)
-ZALMAN ZM-2HC2 NP(Noise Prevention)Heatpipe HDD Cooler (for raptor silencing)
-ARCTIC COOLING ATI Silencer 5 Rev. 2 (for X800xl)

A few questions:
1) Obviously, is everything compatible and are there any potential bottlenecks in this setup? What's the overclocking potential?

2) A matter of physical space: with all the supplemental cooling devices (are any of them frivolous?) will I be able to fit everything in the case and on the motherboard? I don't really want any of my components pressing against each other. Any input from Neo4 owners would be greatly appreciated.

3) Ironically the hardest thing to choose was the case. I was torn between the Lian-Li and the ThermalTake Tsunami case. Did I make the right choice in terms of build quality, noise, and features?

Thanks in advance for any input or suggestions. I'm a long time lurker, first time poster and it's good to finally be able to contribute to the boards (that is if this post helps anyone besides me 😛)
 
Well i'll chime in on the Lian Li case.. I have a PC-70 myself and as far as quality and heat transfer i couldn't think of a better case. It's not a looker in any sense, but i wouldn't have gone any other way. As for noise, well it seals up very nicely but of course the more fans the louder it's gonna be.
 
hurtstotalktoyou: I was doing my homework on the motherboard and it seems to be notoriously loud. I'm going for the quietest case possible and i heard the Vantec does a pretty good job.
 
You might consider adding an additional larger capacity HD for storage, but otherwise it looks good to me
 
great system but I would suppliment the raptor with a storage drive or drop the raptor completely. Hell I have over 40gigs of music, add in doom3, WoW, Steam, Windows and Office I would probably fill a raptor... lol

I am not a raptor fan, but if you are only getting it because of the speed, your better off with just a nice 250GB drive.
 
hmm...what's a fast larger capacity drive that anyone could recommend? i heard good things about the maxline iii by maxtor w/ the 16 mb cache.
 
seagate and hitatchi are supposed to be good. Maxtor is good as well, but the extra cache is probably not worth the price premium.
 
Originally posted by: fixmarky
what's sata ii? is my motherboard compatible with it?
Click to expand...

disregard my entry, sorry, i was heavily medicated when i wrote the post. but sataII is the next gen sata and if the board supports it (doesn't look like yours does, sorry) the str speeds are excellent, but the seek time will still be the ~ the same for any other 7200 8MB cache drive.
 
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