New member, new system!

[leatherface07]

Finally decided to make an account on here, and good timing because I need some input. I'm a hardcore gamer(or atleast used to be!), and I'm looking to build a new system. I'm on a budget of about $1000, and here is what I've come up with.

A-Top XBlade AT859A-BK-LCD Black/Silver Computer Case With Side Panel Window - Retail

ECS C19-A SLI (1.0A) ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail

Intel Pentium D 930 800MHz FSB LGA 775 Dual Core Processor - Retail

CORSAIR ValueSelect 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM System Memory - Retail

HITACHI Deskstar 7K80 80GB 3.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM

NEC 16X DVD±R DVD Burner Black IDE/ATAPI Model ND-3550A - OEM

As for the video card, I'm getting a ATI 1900XT through a friend who gets a pretty good discount.
My total right now with all of this, is right around $1000

I plan on upgrading to atleast another gig of Ram in the near future when I can get a few more bucks. Also, i chose a small HD just b/c I'm not worried about storing much on it, as I have another PC for storage.
As for cooling, I'm not sure how I'm going about this. As of now, i have a ton of old fans laying around that I might just use, I have to look into this some more.
Also, no software/OS needed.

Any thoughts/ideas or more info needed?

 

[leatherface07]

As a sidenote, I have found the
Intel 930
For about $13 cheaper on chiefvalue, and also the Xblade case with PSU for about $10 cheaper on the same site.

Just thought I'd post that up

 

[secretanchitman]

cpu - 920/930 barely makes a difference, and you can OC them both if you are fine with overclocking.
mobo - i have never seen that motherboard, but since you are getting an ATi X1900XT, theres no point in getting that SLI mobo. SLI only works on nvidia cards. but there is no problem running an ati card on an nvidia chipset. you might as well get a regular intel chipset board like a 955x/975x.
memory - memory seems fine.
dvd burner - good choice! be sure you know that the drive you picked is OEM and not retail!
case - your choice!
hd - they have the western digital SE16, but since you said you dont need the extra storage, and what the reviews say, that HD looks good.
psu - i would get a nice seasonic/fortron/antec/xclio or whatever good name brand psu.

im no fanboy to intel/amd, but...any reason not to go a dual-core amd? they run faster and cooler, even though they are more expensive.

and last, but not least, welcome to the forums!

 

[leatherface07]

"cpu - 920/930 barely makes a difference, and you can OC them both if you are fine with overclocking."

I probably won't overclock, just b/c I never have, and I dont know if now is the time to really try a hands on experience! ....however if going from a 2.8 to 3 gig processor really is no difference, then maybe ill save myself about $60 and take your advice.

"mobo - i have never seen that motherboard, but since you are getting an ATi X1900XT, theres no point in getting that SLI mobo. SLI only works on nvidia cards. but there is no problem running an ati card on an nvidia chipset. you might as well get a regular intel chipset board like a 955x/975x."

My friend found this mobo for me, and before he did that, I've never heard of it either! Seems pretty damn good though, especially for the price. Only problem/complaints are the problems with OCing. Again, I thought this was a great deal for the price, but I'll certainly look into your options.

"
memory - memory seems fine.
dvd burner - good choice! be sure you know that the drive you picked is OEM and not retail!
case - your choice!
hd - they have the western digital SE16, but since you said you dont need the extra storage, and what the reviews say, that HD looks good."

"psu - i would get a nice seasonic/fortron/antec/xclio or whatever good name brand psu."

Are you saying to ditch the ones that comes with the case?

"im no fanboy to intel/amd, but...any reason not to go a dual-core amd? they run faster and cooler, even though they are more expensive."

I think mostly b/c they are more expensive! I really wasn't sure which way I wanted to go, and still don't. So after a more than minimal search, I found the 900D intel series and just went with that.

"and last, but not least, welcome to the forums!"
Thanks alot !!!!!!!!!

 

[PurdueRy]

the obvious question...since you are a gamer expecially...why no AMD?

 

[leatherface07]

Originally posted by: PurdueRy
the obvious question...since you are a gamer expecially...why no AMD?

Well if I could find a system that would perform better, for the price range I've listed..I might very well go AMD. I'm really not too knowledgeable on the AMD/Intel thing to be honest.

 

[Howard]

Originally posted by: PurdueRy
the obvious question...since you are a gamer expecially...why no AMD?

QFT. You can get better performance for the same price by going AMD.

 

[PurdueRy]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103562

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131569

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820145579

You might be able to jump up to 2 gigs of ram with the savings if you go with a cheaper motherboard...

I don't claim to be an expert right now on whats the BEST buy but I am confident this is a step in the right direction... Others will be more up to date on what is the absolute best deal.

 

[leatherface07]

Originally posted by: Howard

Originally posted by: PurdueRy
the obvious question...since you are a gamer expecially...why no AMD?

QFT. You can get better performance for the same price by going AMD.

Ok then, can someone point me in a new direction? If I were to go AMD, what all would you change about my layout?(obviously the ram/mobo/proc) WHILE keeping it around the same price
MOBO - 90
proc - 300


Thanks a ton. I'm already learning alot !

 

[PurdueRy]

Originally posted by: leatherface07

Originally posted by: Howard

Originally posted by: PurdueRy
the obvious question...since you are a gamer expecially...why no AMD?

QFT. You can get better performance for the same price by going AMD.

Ok then, can someone point me in a new direction? If I were to go AMD, what all would you change about my layout?(obviously the ram/mobo/proc) WHILE keeping it around the same price
MOBO - 90
proc - 300


Thanks a ton. I'm already learning alot !

Check out my edit: As I said, might not be the BEST option...but it gives you a starting point

 

[leatherface07]

Quick question, and its probably very stupid but....
are all AMD's not yet compatible with DDR2 or what? Just curious as to how that works.

 

[Howard]

Originally posted by: leatherface07
Quick question, and its probably very stupid but....
are all AMD's not yet compatible with DDR2 or what? Just curious as to how that works.

There are currently no AMD CPU/mobos that use DDR2.

 

[PurdueRy]

Originally posted by: leatherface07
Quick question, and its probably very stupid but....
are all AMD's not yet compatible with DDR2 or what? Just curious as to how that works.

They don't really need it though...the integrated memory controller eliminates a lot of the delay and therefore memory speed is less important compared to intel systems.

Someone can correct me if I am wrong.

 

[Meractik]

Originally posted by: leatherface07

"mobo - i have never seen that motherboard, but since you are getting an ATi X1900XT, theres no point in getting that SLI mobo. SLI only works on nvidia cards. but there is no problem running an ati card on an nvidia chipset. you might as well get a regular intel chipset board like a 955x/975x."

My friend found this mobo for me, and before he did that, I've never heard of it either! Seems pretty damn good though, especially for the price. Only problem/complaints are the problems with OCing. Again, I thought this was a great deal for the price, but I'll certainly look into your options.

I found this motherboard right on anandtech's main page with a review that really made me feel it was really worth the $80 or so dollars it comes out to be, based on my friends budget it seemed like a real good deal.

Not only would it support him in the future if he went Intel to do future upgrades to the processor and video cards and other aspects of the system if he would like but its really left me with no reason as to not buy it since hes not considering overclocking and even on the newegg reviews people stated their only problems with it was 'unable to overclock' and some heat issues they had, but im sure we can remedy those by providing better cooling.

I am trying to help him build the best system he can and have the scalability to upgrade in the future whether it be upgrading processors/more ram/better video..

Can anyone provide some more insight into what exact AMD processors run parallel to the 2.8/3.0 ghz spectrum of intel?

also i myself would like to know some things about when intel/amd plan to roll out their next socket technologies in which case people would need to purchase all new motherboards to be able to support these, how far off is that?

 

[leatherface07]

any difference here? Just trying to find the best deals on the great items you offered!

AMD 3800

What is the venice model?

 

[PurdueRy]

Originally posted by: leatherface07
any difference here? Just trying to find the best deals on the great items you offered!

AMD 3800

What is the venice model?

I think the Venice core is preferred right now...I don't know the specifics. I would look them up but I have to go eat right now. Others will come and help you I am sure!

Oh, and Welcome to Anandtech!

 

[Howard]

Originally posted by: Meractik

Originally posted by: leatherface07

"mobo - i have never seen that motherboard, but since you are getting an ATi X1900XT, theres no point in getting that SLI mobo. SLI only works on nvidia cards. but there is no problem running an ati card on an nvidia chipset. you might as well get a regular intel chipset board like a 955x/975x."

My friend found this mobo for me, and before he did that, I've never heard of it either! Seems pretty damn good though, especially for the price. Only problem/complaints are the problems with OCing. Again, I thought this was a great deal for the price, but I'll certainly look into your options.

Can anyone provide some more insight into what exact AMD processors run parallel to the 2.8/3.0 ghz spectrum of intel?

The answer isn't cut-and-dry. What applications/games are you looking at?

EDIT: Perhaps a look at these charts will help you.

http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu.html

 

[Meractik]

Originally posted by: PurdueRy

Originally posted by: leatherface07
any difference here? Just trying to find the best deals on the great items you offered!

AMD 3800

What is the venice model?

I think the Venice core is preferred right now...I don't know the specifics. I would look them up but I have to go eat right now. Others will come and help you I am sure!

Oh, and Welcome to Anandtech!

There are four new features and changes that come with the Venice core that I would call important to the end user. First is the migration to 90nm process technology. While this has been happening for some months now, Venice is really going to be the core that gets it done across the board for AMD's K8 line up.

This core also marks the introduction of SSE3 instructions into the AMD processor lineup as well. Intel introduced SSE3 into their Prescott core processors as an add-on to the SSE2 instruction set. While this is an important step for AMD from a house keeping perspective, the performance advantages are going to be pretty slim as not many applications are using SSE3 specific code. Still, this keeps AMD ahead of Intel in instruction set support and is a good 'feather in the cap' of sorts.

As with most new core releases from AMD, the Athlon 64 has gone though another memory controller upgrade that addresses at least one specific issue that has plagued the platform for a while. Anyone who has tried to populate all four DIMM slots on an Athlon 64 motherboard with double sided DIMMs (most are) would find that the board might not work, and if it did, the memory timings would have to be relaxed for it to be stable. In some cases, the memory frequency would drop to 333 MHz as well. Obviously, that isn't the way many customers wanted to work, so the new Venice core is set to allow all four DIMM slots to be populated with nearly all memory and run at standard 1T latencies at DDR400. Other minor improvements were made as well that should make the overall performance on the Venice core just slightly faster than the Winchester or Newcastle counterpart processors.

Finally, the Venice core is introducing a new lower default voltage for the Athlon 64 processors in the form of 1.4v. This should lower our power consumption, heat dissipation and also give that extra bit of room for overclockers to tweak the system.

from http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=127 - Athlon 64 3200+ Review

 

[Meractik]

my turn to ask a question now, i am the one helping him to build this system... for boards the specify that they are dual channel boards does that imply that you have to run duel memory modules out of the board for it to work correctly aka for 1 gig memory you have to run 2x 512, and based on the boards module specifications is what determines the max amount of memory able to be placed in each port / the board in total?

this is a board i was thinking for him to go with using AMD platform.. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813128301#DetailSpecs

im just a bit confused about the dual memory specification.

 

[alimoalem]

according to the tomshardware link for benchmarking CPUs against each other, the 3800x2 beat the 920D in basically everything and the 930D was close to the 3800x2. in games, however, the 3800 was way ahead. since you're not going to be overclocking, i would recommend everything PurdueRy said to get but the motherboard can be changed to an epox 9npa+ Ultra (doesn't need to be) and the ram can be changed to this G.Skill ram. if you don't mind rebates, there's some good Corsair XMS ram you can consider of G.Skill or OCZ ram. they're in the $140-150 range but the corsair value ram is good too

 

[m1ldslide1]

The 3800+ Venice is a 2.4Ghz single-core with 512KB L2 cache.

The 3800+ Manchester is a 2.0Ghz dual-core with 2x512KB L2 cache.

There is little price difference, and if you want dual-core at a great price then you should get the 3800+ manchester. However, if you want a single-core processor at a great price, I would suggest the 3700+ san diego which is 2.2ghz with 1MB L2 cache. I've read benchmarks here at anand that suggest that having double the L2 cache is more advantageous than having the extra 200Mhz.

As for the motherboard, I'd really really suggest you save some cash and get a premium brand non-SLI board since you'll have a 1900xtx. It's up to you whether you want to go nForce4 or crossfire.

This MoBo is a good example:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813127222
-- It's a reputable brand and will save you some cash that you can spend elsewhere

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131530
-- Another comparable option.

For the RAM, I'd suggest going 2x1GB. You don't need to spend a bunch of cash trying to get really low latency timings or DDR500 or whatever. Value RAM will work just fine for this rig and with 2x 1gb sticks you wouldn't have to worry about upgrading until it's time to build a new system.

Here's an idea:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820145579
or
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820227210 ($162 after rebate)
or
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820220040 (which is $138 after rebate)

The whole idea of dual-channel memory is that you sort of double your memory speed. It doesn't end up being a very noticeable improvement, but it's still better to go 2x512 or 2x1 than a single stick.

I didn't look at the case you picked out -- that's totally up to your aesthetic preferences. But make sure you don't skimp on the power supply!!! If you're sticking a $500 graphics card in that system in addition to the other stuff then you need to protect your investment. Not only do inferior PSUs pose a risk to your hardware, they almost never supply the wattage advertised resulting in strange issues and poorer performance. If that case comes with a brand-X PSU you'll want to take it out and put something better in (Fortron, enermax, ocz, seasonic, antec).

Best of luck...keep the questions coming if you still have them.

 

[leatherface07]

Ok, so how is this looking now?

A-Top XBlade AT859A-BK-LCD Black/Silver Computer Case With Side Panel Window - Retail

Gigabyte GA-K8N Pro-SLI ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ 1GHz HT Socket 939 Dual Core Processor - Retail

G.SKILL Value 1GB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM System Memory - Retail

^^^^ I would like to do a 2GB setup, but If it is possible to hold out for a couple months and just use 1GB for now that would be great as i'm REALLY pushin for cash now lol.

HITACHI Deskstar 7K80 80GB 3.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM

NEC 16X DVD±R DVD Burner Black IDE/ATAPI Model ND-3550A - OEM

Video = ATI 1900xt

Definitely open to more suggestions/comments, as they have been a big help so far!
Also, i suppose OCing is possible for sometime in the future, but remember I dont want to do it anytime soon!

thanks!@

 

[Howard]

I wouldn't say you need a PSU, but I would never use a generic PSU anymore.

 

[PurdueRy]

Originally posted by: Howard
I wouldn't say you need a PSU, but I would never use a generic PSU anymore.

I agree with this...I know you a pushing for cash...but you really don't want your system destroying itself the night you put it together...and it happens...

 

[leatherface07]

Originally posted by: PurdueRy

Originally posted by: Howard
I wouldn't say you need a PSU, but I would never use a generic PSU anymore.

I agree with this...I know you a pushing for cash...but you really don't want your system destroying itself the night you put it together...and it happens...

Well I can buy the case w/o the PSU and save $30...then what PSU would you guys recommend?