Processor Selection Help

rcameron

Distinguished
May 24, 2006
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I'm building two rigs: a gaming/HTPC desktop in a full size case, and a laptop from a whitebox. Important considerations to me are
power (speed)
reliability (if I get something working I want it to continue working without my further involvement)
features (total compliment of ports/busses on mobo, etc)
most of all: control (overclocking, full customizability of settings) I appreciate and am willing to pay for well-engineered components, but want components that have proved their reliability, not necessarily the bleeding edge components.

My selections for the desktop are:
2048 MB RAM (2x1024)
$525 nVidia GeForce 7900 GTX 512MB
$546 2x WD1500AD 150GB SATA (300GB Total)
$110 Creative X-Fi XtremeMusic
$180 Seasonic S12 600Watt Power Supply
$100 Plextor PX-760A 18x/10xDL+/6xDL-

I'd like to know whether I should look at mobo/ram for the Opteron 170, Pentium D805, or something else. I'm highly interested in being able to overclock the system to gain more performance from it for video conversion and other processor-intensive tasks. The Asus P5WDG2-WS has caught my interest with its 8-phase voltage regulator, two PCIe 16x connectors, and great array of ports. I would like the motherboard to have onboard 1394b though. If anyone could suggest a motherboard, processor, and ram combination for an HTPC/workstation rig, I'd appreciate it.

Laptop:
$710 MSI MS-1029 Whitebox Notebook 15.4" 1280x800
$270 AMD Turion64 MT-40 2.2GHz
$246 2x Crucial 1GB DDR400 PC3200 SODIMM (2GB Total)
$34 MSI Wireless LAN Card
$250 Seagate Momentus 5400.3 160GB HD

I want the laptop to be fairly close to a desktop replacement rig. Ability to play recent games and use as a home entertainment console (for stereo system, home video projector) are a must. I have similar priorities for this as for the desktop (power, reliability, features, control). I'd like to be able to control power consumption levels while using my battery (slow down processor, etc). I'm not sure how the mobile processors compare to eachother, so any help in creating a shopping list for this would be hugely appreciated.
 

1Tanker

Splendid
Apr 28, 2006
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I'm thinking, that although the 805D, an Opty 170 are great/overclockable

CPU's, the cooling you'll likely need isn't " HTPC Friendly".It will take more

to cool the 805, but the Opty is still going to need an efficient cooling system,

also. If those are your options, you may want to consider H20.


GL trying to work this one out. :)
 

rcameron

Distinguished
May 24, 2006
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I'm not very concerned about noise levels for the HTPC function, the sound of computers running has never bothered me at any volume that was sub-"jet airplane".

Mostly I need help choosing a motherboard. And would PC4000+ RAM offer any tangible performance gains over PC3200 for overclocking?
 
I agree with 1Tanker. The Opterons are great overclockers, and if you decide to go that route... get some PC4000 if you are going to overclock it. If you are not going to do any overclocking, stick to PC3200. If you don't want to deal with the maintenance of a water cooling setup, then go for the Zalman CNPS9500.

AMD:

CPU: Opteron 170

Motherboard: Asus A8N32-SLI

or if you aren't going to use SLI...

Asus A8N-E

Intel:

CPU: Pentium D 805

Motherboard: Abit AW8-MAX

RAM: OCZ Gold 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2-800

Cooling:

Zalman CNPS9500.