Critique My new build, help me save some money

[alazeer]

BTW I just wanted to add in that this will be my first build.

Thermaltake Shark Full Tower Case (Black) Love this case

Asus MsN32-SLI Deluxe Wireless Motherboard (give me ideas on a better Asus Motherboard)

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Windsor 2000MHz CPU

PC Power & Cooling 510 SLI Power Supply

4GB XMS 240 Pin DDR2 800-6400 Ram

Western Digital 500 GB Sata II Internal HD

EVGA Geforce 7900GT KO SuperClocked Video Card

Plextor PX-230A Cd Burner

Sony DDU 1615 IDE CD-Dvd Rom Drive

Klipsch 2.1 Speakers



Questions:

How good is the sound on this Motherboard? Do I need to buy a sound card to play games.

Do you think I'll need extra cooling with this setup or will the stock setup suffice?

Any and all input will be appreciated.

 

[shadowduck]

BTW I just wanted to add in that this will be my first build.

Thermaltake Shark Full Tower Case (Black) Love this case

Asus MsN32-SLI Deluxe Wireless Motherboard (give me ideas on a better Asus Motherboard)

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Windsor 2000MHz CPU

PC Power & Cooling 510 SLI Power Supply

4GB XMS 240 Pin DDR2 800-6400 Ram

Western Digital 500 GB Sata II Internal HD

EVGA Geforce 7900GT KO SuperClocked Video Card

Plextor PX-230A Cd Burner

Sony DDU 1615 IDE CD-Dvd Rom Drive

Klipsch 2.1 Speakers



Questions:

How good is the sound on this Motherboard? Do I need to buy a sound card to play games.

Do you think I'll need extra cooling with this setup or will the stock setup suffice?

Any and all input will be appreciated.

Drop to an X2-3800+, 4200+ offers no real speed advantage- save $40
Drop to Asus M2N-E- no need for an SLI board, and especially that one- save $100+
XP does not jive well with 4GB of RAM.. I would buy 2GB now and 2GB later- save $255
Use some of that money you saved and buy a $121 Creative Labs X-FI ExtremeMusic Sound card

In December or January when you go Vista.. upgrade to a 65nm CPU, add the other 2GB of RAM, and pop in a DX10 video card.

 

[alazeer]

[/quote]


Drop to an X2-3800+, 4200+ offers no real speed advantage- save $40
Drop to Asus M2N-E- no need for an SLI board, and especially that one- save $100+
XP does not jive well with 4GB of RAM.. I would buy 2GB now and 2GB later- save $255
Use some of that money you saved and buy a $121 Creative Labs X-FI ExtremeMusic Sound card

In December or January when you go Vista.. upgrade to a 65nm CPU, add the other 2GB of RAM, and pop in a DX10 video card.[/quote]

Well if that's the case and I'm going to have to upgrade to another CPU again in December or January just to support Vista (where did you get this at?) as I thought the X2 was supposed to be AMD's CPU of the Future, at least for the next couple of years anyway as they still have room on the chip to expand from what I've been reading.

 

[louky]

He's right, if you want an x2 go with the 3800+ and the M2N-E would be a good choice. If you are a gamer, get the single core 3800+, then upgrade in the future when dual core is utilized. Also, like suggested drop to 2GB of memory.

 

[nikolokolus]

BTW I just wanted to add in that this will be my first build.

Thermaltake Shark Full Tower Case (Black) Love this case

Asus MsN32-SLI Deluxe Wireless Motherboard (give me ideas on a better Asus Motherboard)

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Windsor 2000MHz CPU

PC Power & Cooling 510 SLI Power Supply

4GB XMS 240 Pin DDR2 800-6400 Ram

Western Digital 500 GB Sata II Internal HD

EVGA Geforce 7900GT KO SuperClocked Video Card

Plextor PX-230A Cd Burner

Sony DDU 1615 IDE CD-Dvd Rom Drive

Klipsch 2.1 Speakers



Questions:

How good is the sound on this Motherboard? Do I need to buy a sound card to play games.

Do you think I'll need extra cooling with this setup or will the stock setup suffice?

Any and all input will be appreciated.

Your choices are fine for the most part. There's a couple of questions you need to ask yourself though.

Do I plan to get another 7900gt at some point and run an SLI config?
Yes: then keep the motherboard
NO: downgrade to a non sli nforce 5 chipset board from Asus

Do I really need 4GB of RAM?
Yes: if you do tons of multi-tasking eg. video encoding, while gaming at the same time and/or I use a 64bit operating system. Then MAYBE you need 4GB or RAM, but you will have to use msconfig to change the BOOT.ini advanced options to set the ceiling for RAM higher, to utilize it under 32 bit WinXP.

No: This is probably the answer you will choose if you are building your computer primarily for gaming. Win32 has a 2GB per process limit anyway and running four banks of RAM will actually increase latency, degrading overall performance.

Am I going to be overclocking my computer?
Yes: Then keep your PCP&C power supply and get a zalman (or some other high quality) pure copper aftermarket heatsink and fan.

No (or only a light to moderate overclock): Then ditch the PCP&C power supply and get something like the Antec true power II 550 for about $130 less; it's stable, reliable and more than adequate for your current system, or even get a Tagan 530 watt for just around $110. PCP&C makes by far the best power supplies out there, but they are just complete overkill unless you are going to be doing some heavy duty overclocking, 24/7 high load computing, or just want the baddest a$$ power supply money can buy. As for cooling the stock heatsink and fan will be fine unless you really plan to push your silicon.

other thoughts
instead of a plextor CD-writer there are some excellent DVD-burners for around $40, the BenQ 1650, NEC 4550 come to mind

Onboard sound has gotten much better in terms of quality and overhead, but onboard sound uses the CPU, and you will take a framerate hit in games when using onboard sound. I don't know much about Asus's onboard sound for that motherboard, but an X-fi would be complete overkill for a 2.1 speaker setup (even though it's high quality Klipsch). I'd recommend an Audigy 2 ZS; you'll get good sound quality and save yourself a handful of cash.

 

[nikolokolus]

He's right, if you want an x2 go with the 3800+ and the M2N-E would be a good choice. If you are a gamer, get the single core 3800+, then upgrade in the future when dual core is utilized. Also, like suggested drop to 2GB of memory.

The prices are so low on AMD chips right now, were talking about the difference between $113 for a single core 3800+ and $154 for a dual core X2 3800+ its very hard not to just get the dual core chip.

if you plan to upgrade your CPU in a couple of months then by all means get the single core, if you plan to keep it for awhile the dual core will probably scale better (once more applications and games are optimized for dual core CPU's)

 

[nikolokolus]

Well if that's the case and I'm going to have to upgrade to another CPU again in December or January just to support Vista (where did you get this at?) as I thought the X2 was supposed to be AMD's CPU of the Future, at least for the next couple of years anyway as they still have room on the chip to expand from what I've been reading.

You won't need to upgrade your CPU to run Vista; Vista is most stressful on the memory subsystem(lots of overhead so far in the beta) and video subsystem (aero glass).

Honestly I would stay away from Vista for a few months anyway; if the past is any indication of the future, Windows releases are never the smoothest affairs.

 

[alazeer]

Well if that's the case and I'm going to have to upgrade to another CPU again in December or January just to support Vista (where did you get this at?) as I thought the X2 was supposed to be AMD's CPU of the Future, at least for the next couple of years anyway as they still have room on the chip to expand from what I've been reading.

You won't need to upgrade your CPU to run Vista; Vista is most stressful on the memory subsystem(lots of overhead so far in the beta) and video subsystem (aero glass).

Honestly I would stay away from Vista for a few months anyway; if the past is any indication of the future, Windows releases are never the smoothest affairs.

Decisions, decisions. I've been trying to put together the right system for weeks now and everyt time I think I have "THE" system I want to build something comes along to make me wonder if I reallyh want to build it now or wait for a few months longer, LOL. I already put off building the system for 6 months earlier this year now I'm not sure if I should do it again and wait for Vista to come out or build it now and say to hell with it? It's probably going to take the Software people quite a while to write stuff just for Vista, especially the games which is what I'm mostly interested in anyway!

 

[louky]

He's right, if you want an x2 go with the 3800+ and the M2N-E would be a good choice. If you are a gamer, get the single core 3800+, then upgrade in the future when dual core is utilized. Also, like suggested drop to 2GB of memory.

The prices are so low on AMD chips right now, were talking about the difference between $113 for a single core 3800+ and $154 for a dual core X2 3800+ its very hard not to just get the dual core chip.

if you plan to upgrade your CPU in a couple of months then by all means get the single core, if you plan to keep it for awhile the dual core will probably scale better (once more applications and games are optimized for dual core CPU's)

I was offering an option based on the title of this thread, "save me some money". If money is a concern, the single core not only saves money, but performs better for gaming. If the title of this thread was "future proof" my rig, I would not even mention a single core. Also, it may only be $40 bucks, but $40 saved on multiple parts adds up for someone on a tight budget.

By the way, I am not arguing your point, just saying why I mentioned the single core option.

 

[alazeer]

[/quote]I was offering an option based on the title of this thread, "save me some money". If money is a concern, the single core not only saves money, but performs better for gaming. If the title of this thread was "future proof" my rig, I would not even mention a single core. Also, it may only be $30 bucks, but $30 saved on multiple parts adds up for someone on a tight budget.

By the way, I am not arguing your point, just saying what I mentioned the single core option.[/quote]

I got you, sorry If I was sounding argumentative, I just didn't know that about Vista is all.

 

[Doughbuy]

Let me add to the general confusions...

DON'T BUY ANYTHING. HYBRID HDD's are coming out. DX10 Cards will be out soon. 1TB HDD's will be out also. The sun will turn into a huge hunk of coal...

Seriously though, we all know the rate at which technology change, and we can wait and wait and wait, and we'll still be waiting. If you need it now, get it now. If you don't, just wait a while. I suggest waiting until late this year to get a full handle on whats exactly's going on in the tech world.
Microsoft's coming out with Vista, AMD/ATI merger, hybrid HDD's are looking interesting, especially with fast-booting vista. DX10 will be implemented, not to mention a lot more physic support will be needed for future games so GPU's are bound to change there also.

I'm just laying some of the facts. If you want to upgrade now, be my guest. If you want to wait a bit longer and see exactly what will happen, then your more than welcome too. It's what you want. Me... Imma wait =)

 

[shadowduck]

Well if that's the case and I'm going to have to upgrade to another CPU again in December or January just to support Vista (where did you get this at?) as I thought the X2 was supposed to be AMD's CPU of the Future, at least for the next couple of years anyway as they still have room on the chip to expand from what I've been reading.

You won't need to upgrade your CPU to run Vista; Vista is most stressful on the memory subsystem(lots of overhead so far in the beta) and video subsystem (aero glass).

Honestly I would stay away from Vista for a few months anyway; if the past is any indication of the future, Windows releases are never the smoothest affairs.

The X2-3800+ will run Vista just fine. The reason why that was suggested is the 65nm AMD CPUs should provide a much better leap in performance than S939 to AM2 did. At that point, you buy the CPU you are going to use for 2-3 years. This is much the same as the ones that wre buying Pentium Ds as a stopgap for when Conroe came out, same idea just AMD this time.