Tell me if I've made a good choice please?

[Germonicus]

Hi Guys,I value your opinion and wanted to ask what you all think about my choices.
Yes I know I should have asked prior to ordering but I've spent a week looking for reviews and critiques on the parts I could afford and just wanted to get rid of my budget before I spend it on wine,women and song (not necessarily in that order 😉 ).

So here's my old components:

Asus a7N8x deluxe mobo

AMD athlon XP3000+

Coolermaster aeroflo cpu blower (forget the model atm)

2GB samsung OEM pc3200 mem (4 x 512)

ATI Radeon 9800 pro

Qtek 535 watt PSU


Now my new components:

Abit AN8 SLi Fatal1ty nForce4 SLi (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4400+ (Socket 939)

Zalman CNPS7700-CU Ultra-Quiet CPU Cooler

GeIL 1GB (2x512MB) PC4400 Ultra Platinum CAS3 (will get extra 1GB when i sell my old parts)

Sapphire ATI Radeon X800 GTO² 256MB DDR3 PCI-E

Enermax Liberty 500W ELT500AWT ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU

All told it's costing me £750 and should hopefully last me at least 18 months if not 2 to 2 .5 years cos I'll be lucky if i can justify spending any more cash before then lol.

I decided on the Saphire X800 GTO² because it seems awesomely overclockable for the price and so far I have heard of NO problems with oc'ing and unlocking the 16 pipes (although blowing the ROM invalidates the warranty which worries me slightly).

The rest will most likely be run at stock,or maybe just oc'd using the Abit guru bios settings (but I'm a noobie and never oc'd anything since I locked up my previous system and couldn't get it to reset from the PC case and had to unplug from the mains to stop it beeping at me 😀 ).

OK post away and let me know what is good and what is bad about my choices.

PS. Should get my components tomorrow and install over the weekend so I'll keep you informed.

 

[crazylegs]

I notice ur a fellow Brit (due to £)... Out of interest where did you buy from and what you doing with your old bits?

Oh.... and yeh your chosen components look pretty decent to me... but i think you knew that anyway!?!?!?

GL unlocking those pipes that'll be sweet !! You gonna need extra cooling for it after???

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

I would have kept the old ram or gotten a single 1gig stick rather than two 512s.

I wouldn't have spent so much on the Fatal1ty motherboard. (especially if not overclocking)

If this was for gaming I would have spent more of the budget on the videocard and knocked the CPU down a notch to a 3800+

Especially if you're not overclocking that ram looks like a big waste. You can even overclock on valueram.

 

[Germonicus]

Yeah Crazylegs I'm a brit (Geordie to be precise),I'm gonna be selling my old bits when I've got my new rig set up and running stable.I want to sell the whole lot as a package deal as it were,either as is or I may add an old IDE 60GB HDD and my old Audigy 2 sound card and sell on E-Bay as a (almost) system.Not sure as of yet how much to ask for it though as they're all around 2 years old now.

Ordered my parts from Overclockers UK,good choice,fast and reliable ...bought most of my gear there so decided to go for somewhere I know and trust.

@YoYO well I say I "won't" be OC'ing but if i could find a nice tutor here who'd explain all the intricacies of OC'ing I might just be tempted to see what sort of performance I could get 😀

Hmm why a single stick of 1GB ram? I was under the impression that 2 x 512mb ran faster than a single stick or did i misread?

 

[Icepick]

How do you like that Enermax Liberty? That's one that I'm considering for my next build. Now that you have experience installing and using it, would you recommend it to someone else?

Overall, that's a nice high-end system and you'll be happy with it.

A few comments: I agree with Yoyo on the parts selection. I would have gotten one stick of 1GB value RAM. When you upgrade to four modules of RAM with an AMD processor it will run slower due to the architecture of the CPU's memory controller. The Fatal1ty motherboard is overpriced for the features. There are motherboards that overclock better for less money. The Epox NForce4 Ultra motherboard is an excellent overclocker's board that sells for less $$. I would have used an X2 3800+ CPU and spent the money on a 7800GT instead.

 

[Icepick]

Originally posted by: Germonicus

Hmm why a single stick of 1GB ram? I was under the impression that 2 x 512mb ran faster than a single stick or did i misread?

The reason he said this is that you stated that you intend to upgrade to 2GB later. If you start with 2x512 then you'll have to add another 2x512 to get to 2GB and run in dual channel. The AMD CPU's memory controller has limitations where you'll have to run four memory modules at 2T timings and possibly DDR333 speed instead of DDR400. That's a limitation of the CPU's architecture.

A better plan (if you are definitely going to upgrade soon) is to buy a single stick of 1GB and take the 0-5% performance hit (depending on the app) from running in single channel. Then buy another stick of 1GB later.

 

[Germonicus]

Aha gotcha,thanks for the heads up about the memory....just phoned the suppliers and changed my order to 1GB stick instead of the 2 x 512.

Hehe I guess I was figuring that if 2 x 512 runs better than 1 x 1GB then logically 4 x 512 would run even better than 2 x 1GB sticks lol

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Originally posted by: Germonicus
Aha gotcha,thanks for the heads up about the memory....just phoned the suppliers and changed my order to 1GB stick instead of the 2 x 512.

Hehe I guess I was figuring that if 2 x 512 runs better than 1 x 1GB then logically 4 x 512 would run even better than 2 x 1GB sticks lol

What about changing the motherboard, processor, and videocard too?

 

[edmundoab]

hmm, u really want to run with 4 sticks of RAM??

 

[Germonicus]

Too late was the cry,they've already shipped my parts so it looks like I'm getting my new system delivered sometime tomorrow....guess a new GFX card will have to wait for a while lol.

But as long as I can see a noticeable increase in my system speed and gameplay I'll still be happy .....although I don't really play too many massively GFX intensive games 🙂

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

<-- not feeling guilty since it's the first things I said to you and if I was in your shoes probably would have called to put it on hold until I got everything sorted out to make sure I knew what I wanted first 😛

 

[crazylegs]

Well wa hey man... all my family live in Necastle / Sunderland / Durham area 😛

I'm a soft southerner though!!!

OC is actually a reletively simple and harmless procedure if you prepare properly.... i am new to this OC business but after reading as much information as i could find both here and on other forums i was able to achieve a very nice 1st time OC 🙂

My A64 is single core only... which may be a little easier but there are pleanty or links and resources out there for first time x2 OCers !!

Good Luck buddy !!

EDIT: got to luv those QTEK PSU's 😛

 

[Germonicus]

Thanks Crazylegs,as everyone is telling me I really should OC this new system I guess I'll give it a damned good try and see what extra performance I can get out of it 🙂

Once I've got it all installed I'll keep you posted on what I get out of it.

 

[stelleg151]

Originally posted by: icepik

Originally posted by: Germonicus

Hmm why a single stick of 1GB ram? I was under the impression that 2 x 512mb ran faster than a single stick or did i misread?

The reason he said this is that you stated that you intend to upgrade to 2GB later. If you start with 2x512 then you'll have to add another 2x512 to get to 2GB and run in dual channel. The AMD CPU's memory controller has limitations where you'll have to run four memory modules at 2T timings and possibly DDR333 speed instead of DDR400. That's a limitation of the CPU's architecture.

A better plan (if you are definitely going to upgrade soon) is to buy a single stick of 1GB and take the 0-5% performance hit (depending on the app) from running in single channel. Then buy another stick of 1GB later.

Quiiick correction... Im pretty sure its not a CPU issue, because I think I remember hearing that the new ATI boards can run all 4 dimms at 1t. Someone correct me if I have misheard though.