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New Comp!!!!!!

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Panasonic floppy drives are garbage. I bought 2 from PCcanada.com and 1 from Newegg neither can read floppy disks properly. Finally got a Mitsumi one and works like a charm.
 
Originally posted by: ComatoseDelirium
http://secure.ncix.com/pcbuilder/index....tion=config&id=1961579&platformid=1000 check that out.. and configure a system i made one better than yours.. cheaper.. factor in the tax, and anything else seperate you want to get.. iono.. just check out the avenue.
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Yeah but you forgot to add the monitor. The PSU in there isnt 24-pin and has a weak 12V rail for the future. The motherboard is a VIA chipset and not the amazing overclocker like DFI. The case is worse too. Once you add the monitor you arent saving much more than him but all other key components worse.
 
NCIX is more expensive for most of the things that I plan to get and I would have to pay a bundle for shipping from B.C. ComatoseDelirium, if I got a system like that now it would be like shooting myself in the foot...AGP is not a good thing to be investing in now. Fresh Daemon, I've never heard of PriceNetwork.ca, I've used bbf.ca in the past but I'll give yours a try.
Now I have a question...Is their a difference between the NEC3520 and the NEC 3520A?
 
Is there an NEC 3520? I thought it was just the 3500 and the 3520A, and the 3500 is discontinued now - the 3520A is the newer, upgraded version. On NEC's website, if you look up "3520" you get the 3520A page. There's not a huge difference, but the DVD+RW and -RW speeds have been upgraded to 8x and 6x respectively. Other than that it's practically the same drive.

AGP is not a good thing to be investing in now.
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(Dons flameproof suit) I don't know about that. PCIe is a bit up in the air right now, there's still teething troubles, SLI is buggy and not supported by many games, apparently ATI has a competing scheme coming out soon, and so on and so forth.

Unless you're going with SLI (which isn't a wise move right now, IMHO), there's nothing it can do that AGP can't. Unless you want a 6200 Turbocache (bah). AGP, however, is an older technology, and as such it'll be more reliable, stable and compatible. I say let someone else work the bugs out of PCIe and SLI, get AGP for now and look again at PCIe in 6 months or so.
 
I'm a 14 year old student and cannot afford to purchase a new system every six months. I said that thing about AGP because, as you said it is an older technology and will be phased out shortly. Buying a PCI-e system IMHO is more future proof than a similar AGP system. Anyways...I'm gonna go with the "Benq DW1620 16x +/- Dual Layer DVDRW Drive OEM(Black)" I've heard good things about it and it's priced fairly reasonably.
 
Well, here's my thinking. Right now, even the most cutting-edge gfx cards are available in AGP. It's probable that something will come out for PCIe that's better than all of them, and even if it's PCI-e only (which isn't certain), it's going to be very expensive, and you're a 14-year-old student. So you won't be upgrading to it for quite a long time after it's released when it comes down to your price range, at which point there'll be dual-cores and this new card will probably be bottlenecked by your old CPU. So you'll probably have to upgrade your mobo anyway. Sure, they say dual-cores will work with current mobos - but how many times have we heard that? I bet that there'll be quite a few boards that just won't be able to do it, and it's impossible to tell now which ones they'll be.

My personal experience is that every major upgrade is usually accompanied by a new mobo and often a new CPU. That being the case, I wouldn't spend much on "future-proofing" and certainly not the premiums that are being charged for a PCIe mobo. In the future, everything will be cheaper (an Iron Law of free market economics). Just my $0.02. If you really want a PCIe mobo, and you're sure that you'll need a PCIe-only graphics card in the near future, and you're sure you don't want to wait and see the SLI solution ATI comes up with, go for it.

Benq isn't bad as a brand, although I've never used a DW1620. However, the NEC 3520A is widely acknowledged as being the best you can get right now, so unless you're getting a killer deal on the Benq, I'd still go for the 3520A.
 
Updated specs:

Case Coolermaster Centurion 5 w/window $115

Power Supply OCZ Modstream 450w PSU $99

Motherboard DFI Lanparty UT NF4 Ultra-D $189

Processor AMD Athlon 64 3000+ $189

RAM Corsair Value Select PC3200 DDR400 512MB 184-pin DIMMx2 $156

Hard Drive Seagate 80GB S-ATA, 8MB cache $82

DVD-ROM Benq DW1620 16x +/- Dual Layer DVDRW Drive (OEM Black) $69

Floppy Mitsumi 7-in-1 Internal Floppy Drive w/ Card Reader (Black) $32

Video Card MSI GeForce 6600GT 128MB DDR3 PCI-E $249

Keyboard/Mouse Logitech Cordless Desktop LX300 w/ Optical Mouse $40

Monitor NEC FE771 Black S. Bright $135

Speakers Logitech Z-3e 2.1 40W Speaker System w/ Wired Remote $71

Total w/ Tax $1662.90
 
Originally posted by: Fresh Daemon
Is there an NEC 3520? I thought it was just the 3500 and the 3520A, and the 3500 is discontinued now - the 3520A is the newer, upgraded version. On NEC's website, if you look up "3520" you get the 3520A page. There's not a huge difference, but the DVD+RW and -RW speeds have been upgraded to 8x and 6x respectively. Other than that it's practically the same drive.

AGP is not a good thing to be investing in now.
Click to expand...

(Dons flameproof suit) I don't know about that. PCIe is a bit up in the air right now, there's still teething troubles, SLI is buggy and not supported by many games, apparently ATI has a competing scheme coming out soon, and so on and so forth.

Unless you're going with SLI (which isn't a wise move right now, IMHO), there's nothing it can do that AGP can't. Unless you want a 6200 Turbocache (bah). AGP, however, is an older technology, and as such it'll be more reliable, stable and compatible. I say let someone else work the bugs out of PCIe and SLI, get AGP for now and look again at PCIe in 6 months or so.
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The 3500A is Retail while the 3520A is the OEM version.
 
I just realized they're the same thing....In the store it's listed as the 3520 but in the specs it says 3520A. Looks like I'm getting the NEC burner instead! Yay! I hope it's as good as you guys say.
 
Just a suggestion: what if you substitute an MSI K8N Neo4-F for the DFI mobo, and spend the difference on upgrading the graphics card? It doesn't have SLI, but I don't know if/when upgrading to an SLI system would even be feasible for you.
 
Originally posted by: the wombat
I'm a 14 year old student and cannot afford to purchase a new system every six months. I said that thing about AGP because, as you said it is an older technology and will be phased out shortly. Buying a PCI-e system IMHO is more future proof than a similar AGP system. Anyways...I'm gonna go with the "Benq DW1620 16x +/- Dual Layer DVDRW Drive OEM(Black)" I've heard good things about it and it's priced fairly reasonably.
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That's a lot of money to spend on a system, I'm 30+ and in good financial standing and I didn't spend that much on my rig.


Tom

 
I agree with the recommendation to save some bucks by going with an Nforce 4 Ultra board instead of SLI. That, along with the money you saved by going with Corsair Value Ram, will allow you to upgrade your 6600 to an X800XL, which is significantly faster and more future proof.
 
That isn't an SLI mobo... it's the DFI LANPARTY NF4 Ultra-D...You might be confusing it with the SLI-D, or SLI-DR? Can't afford anything else for the rig. 🙁 But it's pretty good right now, so no complaints. I think I might buy all the parts today! 🙂
 
I have to ask again what you want an SLI motherboard for. You're paying a big premium, and if you're looking at 6600GT-level cards you could spend a lot more before even needing SLI. For instance, the performance of two 6600GT's in SLI is not much different to a Radeon X850 XT - and you don't need SLI for the Radeon. If you are a 14-year-old student, when do you think you'll have the money for a 6800GT SLI setup (which is the performance level you need to exceed any single-card solution)?

Arctic Silver is good.
 
I'm not getting an SLI mobo...did you see the configuration? It's the Ultra-D. As in not SLI. If it seems more expensive its because of CDN dollars.
 
Good Setup but I would spring for a larger hard drive...reason because then you cna partition it and have a poor mans backup device.

Ausm
 
Larger hardrive=cant afford right now. Might go for another 80gig down the road, but for now will probably stick to dvd's for backup.
 
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