Budget system. What do you think ?

DetConan

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Mar 13, 2006
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For my wife scrapbooking and my gaming. Can not spend more on this rig. Any comments ?

Case Antec Sonata II
CPU : Athlon 64 3200+ 939
Motherboard : MSI K8N-NEO4 Platinum
Videocard : XFX 7600GT
RAM : 2 x 512 de Kingston KVR400X64C25 value ram
DVD : Asus DRW-1608 16X
Hard drive : Seagate Barracuda 120gig SATA

Any suggestions (corsair instead of kingston, etc...) Will it be a good price/performance balance ? (around 1000 canadian, including XP).
Will it be a good long term investment ? Will it be easily upgradable ?

I bought my current computer (hp pavilion 6730, celeron 600) 6 years ago, without much research : I entered the store and left with it... I loved it anyway and it is still running... But today, I would like to buy a computer that I would like even more, and for as long as this one...
 

mesarectifier

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I think some people would say to save money and get a 6800 instead of the 7600, but I don't really know.

What I would change would be the drive - 120gb is a pretty useless capacity nowadays, look for a 200 or 250gb, they aren't that much more expensive but the extra size really helps. I was going to get a 160gb instead of my Maxtor 250gb thinking I wouldn't use the extra space - I've used 150gb of the Maxtor already - you'd be surprised.

What size cache does that Seagate have?
 

Ultraviolet

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Yeah all seems good. RAM is personal preference really, but Kingston or Crosair is good. MSi boards are good. Depending on what games you want to play, but that gpu seems fine also.
 

chenBrazil

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your rig is fine , easy to upgrade to X2 in future if necessary... Kingston memory are fine, but Corsair , Gkill or Patriot can be interesting options for more agressive timing within same price range...
Get a bigger HD... at least 160 GB to get more time lag for next upgrade... I don't like seagate ...some problems with some barracuda... WD are more reliable for me ...same price range ...
 

MrsD

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Well everyone says use a bigger drive, but do you really need it. I put all my stuff on DVD once I have enough to fill one. I have a few games installed on my 80gb. I still have 65gb free after 3 years. I reinstall windows about once a year and start fresh. 160gb is plenty for most people unless they download a ton of music, even then, if you put it on dvd you save space.
I would recommend a western digital though. Seagates are crap, especially the cheaper models. Go with the WD RE series, they have a 5 year warranty, even the oem's. I also prefer Corsair value over Kingston value.
 

jap0nes

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i have only a 80GB drive... running windows and linux, lots of free space. but some people like to rip a dvd and save tons of movies on disk (dunno why.. lazyness to get the dvd from the shelf), or have several games that they dont actually play... so 160GB is plenty enough, as you said
 

timberwolf1

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1) The Antec Sonata II
Pros: Extremely quiet, and easy to use and assemble. This is the 3rd case that I have bought and it is worth every dollar....

Cons: The LEDS on the front are very bright.


2) The XFX GeForce 7600GT
Pros: SLI capable setup, low load temperature, fast and incredibly stable. In addition, this board idles at 45 Celsius and runs at 51 on full load ... in a game using it as a single board without SLI setup.

Cons: it does not boast speeds of other boards with same 7600GT chipset and GDDRr3 memory.


3) The MSI K8N-NEO4 Platinum
Pros: This board has all the features you could ever want (assuming you don't wnat SLI). Packaging is top notch, and supplied extras are great. Setup was easy, booted up first time. Runs like a champ. Nice colors if you have a window. Board layout is excellent, with everyting in just the right place.

Cons: Voltage is insufficient for OC'ing . Board is finicky as to what memory it will run, couldn't get my Corsair 2x512 to run in Dual channel configuration (random lock-ups), but they work fine in standard mode. Suppilied round cables are just flat cables wrapped, don't use them. MSI is very slow with BIOS upgrades. I would like to see dual-core support sometime soon for this board.
 

DetConan

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Following your comments (thank you), some questions and comments came to me

-RAM : Some recommend to buy 1 stick of 1gb of RAM. But I tought it was better to buy 2 X 512 because of the better performance. Am I wrong ?

-Hard drive : as i already have a hard disk on my computer (i added it 2 years ago) of 40gb (a Western Digital, in fact), i am thinking that 120 gb more should be enough. The seagate barracuda i am looking for has 8mb of cache. The choice between Seagate and Western Digital is very hard. On one professional site, they give the nod to Seagate, the other to WD... And there I found no benchmark between the 2 for "small" capacity. They only are for the very big disks (500gb) and I do not think that performance test results can apply for the smaller one.

-VIdeo card : when I choose the videocard, I did not realize that a particular videocard, the xfx 7600gt for instance, could have many "editions" For instance there is a xfx 7600gt and a 7600gt xxx edition, etc... As if this was not complicated enough to choose !!! So is there big differences in prices and performances between them ?

But at the end of the line, i should tell myself that i can only do better than i did with my Pavilion (which was in fact a good computer, after having put a ATI radeon 32sdr inside it along the way)