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.
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.