Could someone please lend some advice on this setup?

[ph0e]

Hi all, thanks for your time.

(First PC build by the way.)

Due to the untimely death of my laptop, I'm in need of a new pc. I figure I never really took the laptop out of the house that much anyway, and that for the same price as i would spend on getting the laptop repaired, I could build a decent desktop.

I'll mainly be using the new desktop for intensive photoshop work, and also cad work - but I do intend to game on it too (BF2, Doom 3 and Fear for instance).

It isn't uncommon for me to have lots of resource heavy programs running at once, like photoshop, illustrator, dreamweaver and firefox - so my main criteria is a stable and powerfull system.

In terms of parts; this is what I am thinking and what i'd like your advice on;

Gigabyte 81945p Pro Motherboard http://atomicmpc.com/article.asp?SCID=16&CIID=23761

Nvidia Geforce 7600 GT Graphics card

Pentium 4/3.4 Ghz Dual Core Processor.

1GB of DDR II memory.
200GB SATA II Hard drive
16x dvd burner + atx case and a quite power supply + memory card reader.

A friendly little guy at the local computer markets quoted me for $1350 australian dollars (that is with a Geforce 7600 GS instead, but i've heard the GT is worth the extra cost.) - I feel it is a good deal, but am unsure as to what case/power supply/memory he will be using exactlly, hence the lack of details about memory and so on.


Will the processor, graphics card and motherboard all play nice together, resulting in a high powered, future proofed system?

 

[f1nal_0men]

Seems like a decent build. Make sure you get a high quality power supply, the 7600gt is definetely worth the extra coin... Make sure your motherboard can support conroe for upgrading purposes, infact if you can't wait for conroe I would get a cheapy proc for now and upgrade later on... 805 comes to mind, it's about 100$ usd.

 

[Sonic_Reducer]

make sure you get a good quality psu, and memory , maybe kingston would fit your needs, very good quality memory , but not very good overclocker compared to corsair and so...

 

[GherkinPekul]

I might go with a cheapy processor for now to be able to afford 2 GB of ram, and then upgrade to Conroe. There is no real future-proofing. As close as I could get on my new pc was to go pretty high end with my video. I was refinancing my house at the time, which made the whole build possible. It's tough to balance the fantasy and the reality of a build. You're off to a good start. Good luck

 

[ph0e]

I've decided on a final setup of

Pentium 4/ 3.4 GHz Dual Core Processor.
Gigabyte 8I945P Pro Motherboard.
Nvidia GeForce 7600 GT 3D graphics card.
Antec "P150" Case, with the High Efficiency 430W NEO HE PSU.
16X dvd burner - dual layer + floppy drive + card reader.
200GB SATA II Hard drive.


The 430W power supply comes with the case, but from what i've read around here, 430W should be suffient to power this, yeah?

Also, would 2GB of Memory be overkill? or should i just spend the cash on getting good quality memory to make 1GB?.

Also, does RAID offer such a perfomance boost as to warrant spending another hundred odd dollars on a hard drive?


thanks a lot, peter.

 

[f1nal_0men]

I've decided on a final setup of

Pentium 4/ 3.4 GHz Dual Core Processor.
Gigabyte 8I945P Pro Motherboard.
Nvidia GeForce 7600 GT 3D graphics card.
Antec "P150" Case, with the High Efficiency 430W NEO HE PSU.
16X dvd burner - dual layer + floppy drive + card reader.
200GB SATA II Hard drive.


The 430W power supply comes with the case, but from what i've read around here, 430W should be suffient to power this, yeah?

Also, would 2GB of Memory be overkill? or should i just spend the cash on getting good quality memory to make 1GB?.

Also, does RAID offer such a perfomance boost as to warrant spending another hundred odd dollars on a hard drive?


thanks a lot, peter.

Simple answers to those 3 questions...
Seeing as your getting an Antec powersupply you should have more than enough power.

As for memory... nothing really benefits from 2gb of ram today, unless you do photo or video editing. However, it would be a good choice because of up coming games in the next year... BF2142, Spore, UT2007...

And raid.... there is no right answer. Yes raid does decrease loading times in games, although windows doesn't seem to load faster. However, I have raid0 myself from 2x 250gb WD drives and I plan on breaking the raid and just having 2 harddrives. Why? Well if one of the harddrives is lost or even if the raid 'falls apart' temporarily, all your data is lost. Scary thought on my part. Also the performance gained, some people will argue is minimal. The only benefit youi will get out of raid is less loading times, and moving large files around will be faster as well. Otherwise there is no benefit. The only way I see raid working is raid5. But you need a minimum of 3 harddrives and a raidcard for that one (unless you have onboard raid5... wich is rare). If you don't know what raid5 is, look it up, you might be interested in it. But I recommend for gaming, email, web browsing, maybe some basic video editing, a single harddrive will be enough.

 

[kobe08]

Hi all, thanks for your time.

(I'll mainly be using the new desktop for intensive photoshop work, and also cad work - but I do intend to game on it too (BF2, Doom 3 and Fear for instance).

It isn't uncommon for me to have lots of resource heavy programs running at once, like photoshop, illustrator, dreamweaver and firefox - so my main criteria is a stable and powerfull system.

I strongly recommend 2GB RAM then...

 

[Newf]

I would keep the case and PSU, get 2GB ram and only add raid later as $ allow. The GT card is faster and worth the money for gaming, but not for anything else. Value/standard ram works fine unless you plan to overclock.

 

[hball]

Phoe, like you said, you would also be playing some games like BF2. That extra gig of ram is just what the doctor ordered. You'll see much smoother play and quicker loads with 2 gb of ram.

hball