System Upgrade - Can you help?

[aikixen]

I'm putting together a new system soon and could really use some guidance from the experts. I have decided to go with either an Opteron 165 or 170 depending on the feedback I get. I'm upgrading from an Athlon XP 2000+, 768mb DDR, Asus A7V333, GeForce TI4400 based system.

Parts I have decided on:
DFI LANPARTY UT nF4 Ultra-D (not looking to do SLI)
eVGA 7800GT (already ordered and shipped)
2 x WD Raptor 74gb (Raid of course)

Parts I already have:
3 x WD 200gb PATA drives (my current "storage" drives)
Audigy ZS
NEC 16x DVD+R
Floppy

I am not a "serious" overclocker, but I do plan on taking advantqage of the Opteron's OC capabilities somewhere in the middle of complete stability and peak performance. Can I get some suggestions for the following:

Parts I need help deciding:

CPU - Opteron 165 or 170 - I need overall performance more than peak gaming. Yes I will play games, but mostly video, photo, sound editing...Unraring big downloads and checking Par files.

Motherboard - I know I put this under "already decided", but just in case there are some strong opinions about that DFi board. Again, not looking for SLI today or tomorrow, just a good base for OC right off the bat or in the near future.

DDR Memory - I'm looking for at least 2gb. Is it better to have 2 sticks of 1gb or 4 sticks of 512mb? I'm looking for any quality ram around $200 - $250 that would help with the overclocking. OCZ, Patriot, etc.?

PSU - Quality, of course. I know this depends on the power draw of all of the components in the case, but I have no idea. I'm thinking somewhere around 500w to 600w. Am I in the right ballpark or way off? Brand recommendations? Antec, OCZ, Enermax, etc.? $80 to $150.

Case - Cool, Quiet, and Cool - Looking for great internal cooling as well as quiet for around $100 to $150. That second "Cool" is looks. But I guess a nice polished box shape will do just as well. But it would be a shame to not show off with a side panel and a couple of lights.

CPU Fan - So many choices, but obviously cooling and quietness are what I need. Not looking for water cooling at this time. Zalman, Thermaltake? $20 to $40 range, but higher if it made a serious difference.


Any help you can give is greatly appreciated. I have been through so many threads that it really gets confusing at times. Thanks a lot.

 

[TrueWisdom]

For the light to medium overclocking you plan on doing, I would recommend a Seasonic 600W PSU. Newegg charges 150 for it, and it's worth every penny. (Tom's did a roundup on all ATX 2.0 PSUs and this was by far the best top-end one) A Zalman HSF will cool the chip just fine, although people around here love the XP-90 for OCing. (If you go Zalman, 7000AlCu should do just fine, but if you've got some cash to spend, you can get a later iteration.)

I would not recommend getting 2 Raptors unless you're mirroring--time and time again it has been shown that RAID offers little to no performance benefits for a desktop user. Get one for the performance, but RAIDing two of them won't do much for you. Definitely go with the 165 if you're concerned about budget at all--you will, at the least, be able to get to 170 speeds on an OC, and that will have saved you 80 bucks.

A case is largely personal, so just browse around. Antec makes some spiffy-looking mid-size towers. Whatever you do get, make sure it uses 120mm fans--they're quieter and push more air, so you win on both counts.

The Mobo is fine, but when you're choosing your RAM make sure you check out DFI's memory page and get something verified to work. The on-chip memory controller is very fickle, and so is the board, and the last thing you want is to grab some RAM that pisses one or the other off. As far as your RAM is concerned, I'd get 2x1GB, just to give you room to expand later. The latest core revisions of both the Opteron and A64 have been tweaked to do better with 1GB DIMMs, so you should be fine.

 

[aikixen]

thanks for starting things off. any others with some advice/opinions?

 

[Icepick]

Get the Opteron 165 if you can find it. Better bang for the buck. Unfortunately, it's been sold out just about everywhere I've looked lately so you might not have a choice. The 170 is still a decent processor for the money if that's all you can find.

I agree with TrueWisdom about the Raptors. Just get one and use it for your OS. Setting up two of them in RAID will not yield much (if any) performance advantage and will cost you a hefty sum.