View Full Forums : Inc.. My new computer, looking for suggestions.


SudaWilde
02-04-2004, 07:12 PM
Here is my new computer... Tell me if I am buying wrong plz

AMD Athlon 64 3400+
MSI K8T NEO (Athlon 64) Mother Board
Sound Blaster Live 5.1
SPK Klipsch Promedia 5.1 (speakers)
ATX 668 Aluminum case 520v power
7 fans (3 on power, 4 on case)
Windows XP pro, and Linus 64 bit os (run Dual operating systems)
LITEON DVD+R/-R 8X/4X CD R/W
2 GIG pc3200 Dual channel DDR 400mhz ram(2 1 gig modules)
74GB Western Digital Raptor Serial ATA 10,000 RPM 8MB Cache
ATI RADEON™ 9800 XT 256MB 8x AGP w/DVI & S-Video

It all sounds good to me, but I am sure someone out there has more knowledge than I do.

oakdad
02-17-2004, 01:35 PM
To many new things coming out with computers in the next 6 months or so to get one now if you ask me but the one you listed sounds great for whats out there on the market now. With 7 fans it may sound like its winding up for take off may consider looking for low db fans say less than 25db each.

Panamah
02-17-2004, 03:45 PM
IMHO If you wait for the next thing in computers you'll always be waiting. And paying top $$ when you finally do buy. And you still end up with a computer that needs upgrading in a couple of years.

For instance, buying a 64 bit processor. Why? Unless you're running some pretty hefty Unix applications, maybe databases and such and you get a 64 bit unix os to run on it. But Windows isn't 64 bit yet is it? There aren't many applications that will take advantage of it. Certainly EQ isn't.

How much software or OS is actually taking advantage of that now? It'll probably take a couple of years for the software to catch up to the hardware and that'll only happen as lots of people buy the 64 bit hardware and ask for the 64 bit software. I think buying it now is premature unless you've got special software needs.

http://insight.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/servers/0,39020445,2133126,00.htm

About the fans... man, a single powerful loud fan is really, really hard to live with. I had one that was a great fan, far more powerful than the one that came in my computer. Unfortunately it sounded like a jet engine.

Uuldiin
02-17-2004, 05:02 PM
Price of that comp Setup would help, to Help compair other Options.

jtoast
02-17-2004, 05:34 PM
AMD Athlon 64 3400+
As Panamah said, nothing out there to actually use the 64bit chip. My suggestion is to get a standard AMD or high end P4. Less money and less risk of "betting on BetaMax" if AMD's chip flames out and gets no software support.

Also, the P4 Extreme pretty much kicked the AMD 64 chips ass in 3rd party benchmarks.

Heres the relevant quote from www.tomshardware.com

Thanks to its ideal configuration and use of the best components, the P4 3.2 in the Extreme Edition (actually a Xeon labeled 'P4') wins the performance crown. Its former gaming weakness against the Athlon 64 has been ironed out by the 2 MB L3 cache.

Still too early to really know which will be best since they used an Alpha version of Windows 64.

MSI K8T NEO (Athlon 64) Mother Board Not a bad board. I personally would prefer one of the boards from Asus simply because I have had greater stability overall with Asus than I have with MSI boards.


Sound Blaster Live 5.1
SPK Klipsch Promedia 5.1 (speakers)
ATX 668 Aluminum case 520v power
7 fans (3 on power, 4 on case)

Looks fine but make sure you don't end up with some piece of crap cheapo powersupply. It's worth the extra money to get a good one.

Windows XP pro, and Linus 64 bit os (run Dual operating systems)
No problems here although I prefer to run 2 boxes as opposed to a dual boot system.

2 GIG pc3200 Dual channel DDR 400mhz ram(2 1 gig modules) Fine as long as its a decent brand (Corsair, Kingston, etc). Cheap/no-name RAM causes problems..just like cheap powersupplies.

74GB Western Digital Raptor Serial ATA 10,000 RPM 8MB Cache
This may sound like a stupid question but are you sure 74GB of storage is enough? I personally have a 160GB and an 80GB in my machine and am considering upgrading..lol. Of course I have a lot of movie files and My EQ folder alone is 4-5 GB. At the minimum buy 2 and RAID them in my opinion.

ATI RADEON™ 9800 XT 256MB 8x AGP w/DVI & S-Video
Love this card. Its what I have and its awesome.

Overall, I would say it's a pretty nice system but it's really a lot more than anyone needs at the moment. I personally go with the theory of buying cutting edge not bleeding edge technology so that the early adopters can pay extra to work the bugs out for me...heh.

King Burgundy
02-17-2004, 08:04 PM
Overall, I would say it's a pretty nice system but it's really a lot more than anyone needs at the moment. I personally go with the theory of buying cutting edge not bleeding edge technology so that the early adopters can pay extra to work the bugs out for me...heh.

Exactly, plus, price/performance wise, with certain components you generally want to get a tier or two down from the top of the line. (Unless you have money to burn and will continue to have money to burn with each new hardware generation, in which case, by all means, splurge)

If I were buying the system, I would actually step down from that athlon 64 3400 to the 3200 for price/performance reasons. I would also step down from the ATI 9800 XT 256 to an ATI 9800 128 PRO or the like. Among other things, there is really NOTHING out there that will take advantage of the 256 mb of memory on those video cards unless you are running in some sky high super resolution.

Nothing wrong with your motherboard selection, but like another poster here I prefer the Asus boards. Motherboards are something I'll always buy the cream of the crop on. I'd probably pick up the ASUS K8T800 - K8V Deluxe board.

On the hard drive, I can't imagine only having 74GB, but maybe you already have another drive to slave in the new machine. Anyway, What I'd do at this point is buy two of the 36.7 GB Raptors and configure them for RAID 0. Then your primary "disk" will be cheaper and faster than a single 74GB Raptor. Then I'd buy a third drive for storage if I didn't already have one, like a normal WD 160GB.

Final comment, make sure that your Power Supply and Memory are not skimpy generic components as someone else mentioned. Power Supply, Memory, and Mainboard are the three components I always make sure to buy cream of the crop components on, as all three can cause really ****ed up problems that are hard to diagnose if they are bad.

Logilitie
02-18-2004, 10:04 AM
AMD Athlon 64 3400+
No real benefits now, but in the near future software will be converting to 64-bit. NO there is no 64-bit windows version yet , and won't be until 2005 sometime. Could save $150+ just dropping to 3200+.

Windows XP Server Edition 64-bit is in Beta if you wanna try that. but it's BETA!!

Below is from Microsoft.com:
"Important: Windows XP 64-Bit Edition for 64-Bit Extended Systems is only compatible with 64-bit AMD Opteron– or Athlon 64-based computers. It cannot be successfully installed on 64-bit Intel Itanium–based systems."


2 GIG pc3200 Dual channel DDR 400mhz ram(2 1 gig modules)
The more the merrier. Kingston is great, and less than $150 a stick.
for twice the price you can get PC4000 operating at 500Mhz. If your board can take advantage of all that.


74GB Western Digital Raptor Serial ATA 10,000 RPM 8MB Cache

I got this from CNET too.. but this sounds like a great HD. maybe not all the storage you need, but performance sounds amazing!!!!


CNET Product Brief

Description: The Western Digital Raptor WD740GD is a 74GB, workstation class hard disk drive. Relative to other workstation class hard drives on the market, it is midpriced at around $293. Compared to a typical hard drive, its data transfer rate of 150 megabits-per-second is relatively fast. This is a 10000 rpm drive and has a 8MB buffer.

Pros: Has a quick, 4.5 ms seek time, which is considerably faster than some similarly priced hard drives. In fact, the typical cost of a product with this fast a seek time is $427. Also, this hard drive has a 8MB buffer, which is larger than some similarly priced hard drives. With a Serial-ATA controller interface, this drive sports one of the most advanced technologies for high-speed data transfer.

Cons: None noted, given available product data.

Suitability: A workstation class hard drive, suited for workstation class data storage and transfer. This drive accepts not only a SATA power connector, but also an IDE power connector, making it easier to install in conventional PCs (it still requires that you install a Serial ATA controller card, of course).

Value: In general, this hard drive has good features for the money. In fact, you would typically pay about 34% more to get a workstation class hard drive having a comparable data transfer rate.

Suggestions: None.


ATI RADEON™ 9800 XT 256MB 8x AGP w/DVI & S-Video

Sweet. That's probably one of the best video cards out there. Do you have something larger than 19 inch monitor? This is overkill for sure, at least for Everquest, but if you're a CAD programmer you'd be justified.
Could save $100 if you go with ATI ALL-N-WONDER Radeon 9700 PRO 128MB AGP.

Nimchip
02-18-2004, 11:23 AM
just a thought... why do you want to put Dual Channel ram if AMD's CPUs still dont have dual channel support, you can save a few bucks changing to single channel.

BTW your Mobo selection is great, I read it's one of the best for Athlon 64s on tomshardware.com.

Cloudien
02-19-2004, 08:23 PM
*Whistles*

Very nice setup.

There may be a small element of 'power for the sake of power' there - I guess if you have the budget, then more power to you (pun not intended).

There is the usual ATI/NVidia discussion. Personally I'd go with NVidia as they seem the most supported... take Second Life for instance, another massive online world, but ATI drivers don't play well with it. But that's a bit of a holy war.

King Burgundy
02-19-2004, 11:05 PM
I dunno Cloudien... I've been a hardcore NVIDIA fanboy for quite some time, and I have a dislike of ATI dating back 3 years to a really bad customer service experience, and I still can't find a legitimate reason to go with NVIDIA in this hardware generation. *shrugs* I'm really rooting for them though, I hope they knock the pants off of ATI next go round.