New System

[ZanatosFox]

Hello,

I'm putting together my first computer system and have it pretty well narrowed down, and would like to see if i could get a bit of advice on what looks good and what should be modified a bit, as I'd like to not make a major mistake when dealing with this kind of money.

So far i have:

Case: Deciding between: Thermaltake Tsunami, Lian Li PC-65, Lian Li PC-V1000
Antec Truepower PS - 380W or Thermaltake Silent PurePower 420W
AMD Athlon 64 3500+ socket 939
Thermaltake Venus 12 CPU Cooler For AMD Opteron and Athlon 64
Asus AV8 Deluxe MOBO
2GB Kingston Hyper-X PC 3200 Ram
Saphire ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB
Arctic Cooling VGA Silencer (Since i plan to flash the Saphire to a 9800 XT Bios and OC it to XT Speeds)
NEC Dual Layer DVD+-RW Drive
Maxtor 200GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive


I guess my main question is, which case would do the best cooling job, if i get a lian li i plan to do a few case mods to make it look a little nicer, but i'd like to be sure my system would say failry cool. Also i was wondering if i was getting a large enough power supply for my equipment. If anyone has any other suggestions/criticisms/whatever please feel free to throw them out there.


Thanks a Lot

Zanatos Fox

 

[thetman]

yeah, I think you should go with a little more power from your psu. Maybe an antec TrueBlue 480W?

 

[mAsTAd]

I think you should remove a gig of Ram and buy a Geforce 6800 for $299 instead of the 9800 with the extra cash becuz nothing really uses 2 gigs.

 

[akira34]

I think you'd do just fine with a TruePower 430W PSU (do you REALLY need blue light coming out of the back of the computer??? didn't think so). I'd also HIGHLY recommend using MSI motherboards (754 pin Athlon64) since they are top rated for the Athlon64 (I've used several and they're generally MORE stable, reliable, etc than other brands. Plus the 3 year warranty rocks). I'd also go with the 754 pin Athlon 64 right now since you'll save MORE than a few $$ that way. The stock cooling for those more than does the job, especially if you keep the room air at a reasonable level. If your dead set on using a different heatsink (remember, OEM processors have a 90 DAY warranty, retail have 3 year warranties), check out Thermalright over Thermaltake. I also agree that 1GB of memory (DDR400 of course) is more than enough. Save the money for now, until the larger sticks go down in price and you actually NEED to get that much memory. I'd also go with either a Seagate or Western Digital SATA hard drive. Get a pair and put them up on RAID 0 and you'll have more capacity and better speeds than the maxtor can give you.

BTW, you'll need a 500W+ PSU to run the 6800 video card. That will throw more heat into your case that you'll need to deal with. Get the ATI card (9800 Pro for now, you can always get the X800 Pro/XT later) and you won't need to worry about needing a mega-PSU.

As for the cases, I've NEVER been impressed with lian-li cases. I've seen them, know people that have them (and rave about them) but everytime I get my hands on one they are NO better than one from either Antec or Coolermaster. If you're not going to be lugging the thing around town on your back, I'd look into either Antec or Coolermaster for a case that has the bays and space you need/want.

Take all of the above as you wish. I'm going from personal experience coving several years here. Not some newb that doesn't know RAID 0 from 5.

 

[Mik3y]

dont spend money on the other gig when ur not gonna use it (and we know that). only buy more ram when you actually need it. use the money on an x800 pro, which is over double the performance of the 9800 pro, so thats well worth it. the radeon 9800 xt is not that much greater then the 9800 pro. in fact, its only a tad bit faster. as for a good cooling case, i'd have to recommend you the antec 1080amg. its big and not too bad lookin and has a lot of space in it.

 

[ZanatosFox]

Wow, the vote is unanimous, i should ditch a gig of my ram! Well, I actually already had my ram, i had a deal for 40% off of Kingston ram so i just bought 2 GB, but as long as I can return it to Kingston i suppose i'll trade my two 1GB sticks in for 2 512 sticks, as i want to stick with the dual channel thing. I didnt realize that 2 gigs was so much overkill, as i have 512 in my 5 year old system as it. Also im probably not going to be constantly upgrading my system, once its built and running good i'll probably just let it be (as long as i can resist the upgrade urge hehe) for as long as it'll last me.

Are the new NVIDIA chips really that hot? I'll probably still just stick with a Radeon 9800 Pro and OC it a littlefor now. I'd consider an x800 but they're still over 400, although if im able to trade in my ram I can afford one.

Also, getting the 754 pin Athlon 64 is out the window since i've already ordered a 939 pin MOBO. Im thinking of getting the retail processor now because of the Warranty as long as stock cooling will work pretty well.

I'll look into putting 2 Drives into raid, although i've never worked with raid before, is it very tough? I figure i can get 2 120 Gig drives for just a slight bit more than one 200 gig drive so that may work.

The antec 1080AMG case that was suggested looks ok, do you know if there's a version with a window? I still may consider the Lian Li PC-65 too, its not overly expensive like the PC-V1000. Does anyone have the Thermaltake Tsunami case or know if it will cool very well? I may just ditch it since nobody seems to know anything and all the reviews i've seen for it haven't seemed very technichal ie. "this is a really good case it looks cool you should get it".

Thanks so much for your suggestions.

Zanatos Fox