- Feb 28, 2004
- 52
- 0
- 18,630
I just wanted to say thank you to everyone in the THG forums! I really appreciate everyone who takes the time to answer newbie questions like mine. I've found a wealth of knowledge in this forum by reading as many posts as I could.
Three or four years years ago I upgraded a computer I had at the house. New motherboard, CPU, RAM, HDD, graphics card, etc. I didn't do much research and was unhappy with the result. It locked up and crashed frequently. I later learned that the chipset I had wasn't so hot, the HDD wasn't a great choice and the socket was outdated already. I think my wife was more unhappy than I was since the $800 I spent seemed to be wasted on a system that never seemed to do what I needed it to do.
Two weeks ago I bought and built my new system (from Chiefvalue.com by the way - great experience, well packaged, fast delivery. They even price adjusted the Pinnacle card $43 after it dropped that much 6 days later!)
I was confident this time, since I had done so much more research this time around. Most of that research was done here.
Here's what I built:
DFI Lanparty UT nF4 Ultra-D
Athlon 3200+ Venice retail
1GB OCZ Gold DDR400
Antec TruePower 2.0 550W PSU
Leadtek WinFast 6600GT Extreme Edition
Western Digital 160 gb SATA II 3.0gb/s (x2)
Aerocool Jetmaster case (black)
Logitech X530 Speaker System (5.1)
Lite-On 1693S DVD Burner
Lite-On CDROM, black floppy drive, new keyboard, mouse
Pinnacle AV/DV Deluxe w/Studio 9 Plus & HFX transitions pack
This computer is great! It's fast and, most importantly, very stable. Everything I ask it to do it does. No problems, no funny blue screens or restarts. Easy set-up. Couldn't be happier.
All together, with the Pinnacle card I spent around $1350 (including s&h, etc) In my opinion this is a great set-up for someone in this price range. I went back and forth over the PSU (stress test on the Antec @ THG) but in the end so many people seemed happy with their TruePower from Antec I went with a trusted brand.
For the record, the WD SATA II's are great, very fast and quiet. Also, I can't believe how quiet and cool this whole system is! Even on stock air cooling and 1 intake fan in front, 1 side fan blowing out and just the PSU fan in the back the system is cool. I've panicked a few times because the CPU fan turns off sometimes but the BIOS won't let me disable the "turn CPU fan off at <25 degrees" feature and sometimes it is that cool (Arctic Silver 5, BTW)
Thanks again to everyone who spends their time helping people on this forum. Your advice has been a life saveer (and a money saver too!!!)
Sure, I would've loved to spend $500 on a video card and gone with a "top of the line" CPU, but for a budget this system is great. Thanks to everyone!
Mike
PS - I'll be back when I'm ready to attempt my first overclock!! God knows I'll need all your help then!!
<i>"Newbie" never felt so good!</i>
Three or four years years ago I upgraded a computer I had at the house. New motherboard, CPU, RAM, HDD, graphics card, etc. I didn't do much research and was unhappy with the result. It locked up and crashed frequently. I later learned that the chipset I had wasn't so hot, the HDD wasn't a great choice and the socket was outdated already. I think my wife was more unhappy than I was since the $800 I spent seemed to be wasted on a system that never seemed to do what I needed it to do.
Two weeks ago I bought and built my new system (from Chiefvalue.com by the way - great experience, well packaged, fast delivery. They even price adjusted the Pinnacle card $43 after it dropped that much 6 days later!)
I was confident this time, since I had done so much more research this time around. Most of that research was done here.
Here's what I built:
DFI Lanparty UT nF4 Ultra-D
Athlon 3200+ Venice retail
1GB OCZ Gold DDR400
Antec TruePower 2.0 550W PSU
Leadtek WinFast 6600GT Extreme Edition
Western Digital 160 gb SATA II 3.0gb/s (x2)
Aerocool Jetmaster case (black)
Logitech X530 Speaker System (5.1)
Lite-On 1693S DVD Burner
Lite-On CDROM, black floppy drive, new keyboard, mouse
Pinnacle AV/DV Deluxe w/Studio 9 Plus & HFX transitions pack
This computer is great! It's fast and, most importantly, very stable. Everything I ask it to do it does. No problems, no funny blue screens or restarts. Easy set-up. Couldn't be happier.
All together, with the Pinnacle card I spent around $1350 (including s&h, etc) In my opinion this is a great set-up for someone in this price range. I went back and forth over the PSU (stress test on the Antec @ THG) but in the end so many people seemed happy with their TruePower from Antec I went with a trusted brand.
For the record, the WD SATA II's are great, very fast and quiet. Also, I can't believe how quiet and cool this whole system is! Even on stock air cooling and 1 intake fan in front, 1 side fan blowing out and just the PSU fan in the back the system is cool. I've panicked a few times because the CPU fan turns off sometimes but the BIOS won't let me disable the "turn CPU fan off at <25 degrees" feature and sometimes it is that cool (Arctic Silver 5, BTW)
Thanks again to everyone who spends their time helping people on this forum. Your advice has been a life saveer (and a money saver too!!!)
Sure, I would've loved to spend $500 on a video card and gone with a "top of the line" CPU, but for a budget this system is great. Thanks to everyone!
Mike
PS - I'll be back when I'm ready to attempt my first overclock!! God knows I'll need all your help then!!
<i>"Newbie" never felt so good!</i>
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