Buildin' A New Mid range-System---Help PLEASE!!!

Since you don't plan on OC'ing, i'd probably just stick with the 6400. You may want to look at a better power supply in the 450-550W range especially if you decide to upgrade your video card down the road. The Gigabyte board you chose is among the top 3 choices among it's price range.

If you can get that case without a power supply, I would get a bigger power supply. I wouldn't go with anything less than 480w for that system. That is just me though.

I built a system for someone using the 6400 instead of the 6300 only because I knew the person would never be overclocking anything, and the price difference was worth it. This all depends on how cheap you can get the 6400, of course. The next leap in the price from 6400 to the 6600 wasn't enough to justify the higher cache (or cash, for that matter).

You power supply technically is enough for your system (on paper), but you might want to up it a bit only because the cost is so low in terms of improvement. Heck, zipzoomfly shows many 400+ PSU's with rebates making them 30 to 40 bucks in total price.

The video card decision is a tough one. If you truly are not going to upgrade for possibly 2 years, then get a good one now - consider even getting one with 512mb memory. If you may upgrade when the dx10 cards are everywhere, then you need not get something expensive now. You would do just fine with a current midrange card.

With respect to onboard sound, this all depends on your ears, and your speaker system. If you are someone who doesn't mind listening to music coming out of a small boombox, or doesn't really notice too much of a difference between cassette and CD sounds, then stick with the onboard. Also, if you have an older, small speaker set-up; you will not gain anything by using a sound card. The sound card will only help you if you have a semi-decent speaker set-up that would allow you to notice the difference. If your processor+MB was older and slow, a separate music card might also improve things very slightly, but the new chips on the motherboards should be just fine.

Overall, you have a pretty nice combo up there. I would just change the PSU power, and think further into your future options with the video card. Of course, that is only my humble opinion.

Take a look at ATIs X1950 Pro. Better and cheaper than the 1900GT.

Get the Asus eax1950 Pro from NewEgg it is cheaper then the GT and performs better. Also, the Seagate 7200.10 320GB HDD would be a better deal. Other then that, your build looks nice. Consider a diff PSU as well.

There are a ot of ATI lovers here. I personally went with ATI just because it was a good card for a good price, but I am not against NVidia. The 7900 series of cards may suit you just fine if you are looking to upgrade to the dx10 cards next year.

That newegg ATI 1950 card costs $420 after rebate. That is a pretty high price for a card. You can get the 1900xtx still for about $310 (after rebate) and the performance difference is not huge. The price may still be scary though.

The 7950 GT is around $270 on zipzoomfly, and isn't a bad card.

All of these would suit you just fine if you want to spend more.

However...

If you think you may be updating the card next year, you could even get away with buying something older like the ATI Radeon X850PRO, which newegg has for $136. It will play the current games fine, and would allow you to save money to put into a new card next year.

I agree with everything TSIMonster said here. The most important thing to change in your setup is the power supply. Consider getting a case that does not have a power supply and buy a power supply that has a good 12V rail(s).

The rest of your setup will work fine, but you can make changes to it at the discretion of your budget.

One other thing I have to mention: I checked the monitor you have chosen on newegg and noticed it is an open box item. I don't know where you are going to purchase your items from, but if you are going to purchase your monitor from newegg, then it will be an open box item. Open box items sold on newegg are claimed to be functional. Someone returned the monitor for a reason. A monitor can still function with a few dead pixels. I do not know newegg's policy for dead pixels on open box monitors, but there is always the possibility you might get a display with a few bad pixels. Since you plan on watching movies and playing games on your monitor, I suggest going to an electronics store and checking how the display you plan on purchasing looks.

The EAX1950Pro is only $165 !!

Its not that we are ATI lovers as I recommend the 7600GT and GS quite frequently. We just reccomend the best hardware for the job. DUH!!

your graphics card is a severe overkill for those games. my geforce 6200 le played call of duty on high graphics now if you going to play bf2 yeah that 7900 or ati card will be awesome i have a 7600 and can get all but 1 setting on max. might wanna get at least 1.5 gb of ram tho i have 1 gigs and its not enough for games i have to reinstall OS every now and then to free some ram. Also i think someone said this but 350 watt psu may not be enough.


Heres my question. i have a pentium D 805 and have only hit 100% cpu usage once during a virus (and i havent overclocked it yet so technicaly its running at 50% of max speed). so how is conroe way better. it cant open programs faster being that it depends on hard drive speed. so whats so better about it? note im dieing to get conroe im not against it.

I missed the fact that you were pointing him to a slower card. I thought you were referring to the X1950XTX 512mb card. The one that you were looking at was based on the eax1950Pro 256mb and may be a good option for him.
(Oh, and by slower, I just mean slower than the x1950xtx - a card that is overkill for its price right now. It seems right on par with performance of the 7950.)

My mistake.
I will have to look more closely at what you reccomend.. um.. I mean recommend in the future. :wink:

Your 805 is still a very good processor, especially for overclocking. The only reason I personally went for the new intel line is that I do a lot of video conversion and image processing. The new processors really do speed this up. Take a look at the CPU charts on the main page and you can see some speed differentials.

4 modifications.

CPU/Case: Antec Sonata II with 450W PSU. 80 bucks after MIR at Newegg. Good until the end of the month.
Video Card: X1950Pro. $199 with free shipping at Zipzoomfly. Better than X1900GT. Currently best bang for the buck. Here.
Memory: Get 2x1GB. These Crucial Cas latency of 3 are a descent price. If you can't afford this, then I recommend getting a 1GB stick and then another 1GB stick down the road. You only gain around a 10% increase in performance for Dual-channel. With VISTA, 2GB will be standard.
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB Perpendicular Drive SATA 3.0GB/s

so it only really shows a difference in video stuff. ill check the charts. im wandering what cpu usage id be getting compared with my Pentium D.

I wouldn't say only in video, but that is where I noticed the biggest difference. The charts are actually very good. They can let you specifically compare, say a E6400, versus the P4D 805. It will show you the benchmark differentials.

Here is a link to the charts.

what do u guys think of this case- Thermaltake VA3000BWA Tsunami Aluminum Case (TTVA3000BWA)- it comes with a 400 watt power supply...........by the way, is there any real advantage of having a direct-x 10 card, and what is it...thanks

Nice looking case. Have any details on the power supply?
No real advantage at the moment. First of all you need Windows Vista installed to use DX10. And then you need a program/game that actually uses DX10 programming as well. The first DX10 video cards will be expensive.

You'll need to check each program/game to see what advantages it's DX10 programming will offer. http://www.crysis-game.com/

Some games that say "DX10" will only support a very few DX10 options.

It is a nice looking case and I was considering getting it for my setup. It is light, if you plan on carrying it around, but I read it also dents easier than other cases.

But, which you will need to change.

Bottom line for the case: It looks nice and it will perform adequately for your setup, but at the same price, or slightly more, you can get a better designed case that has better airflow. If you are planning on going to LAN parties with the case you chose, I say go for it and get it, but change the power supply.



The first DX10 graphics cards should be released in a few weeks. In a few weeks there will be no real advantage of getting a DX10 card because DX10 won't be out by then and you will still be playing WoW and Battlefield 2. The newer cards should be faster, but they will also be much more expensive than what you are considering putting in your setup. When DX10 finally comes out sometime next year, you would need to purchase Vista in order to actually see the true benefits of DX10. You should consider getting 2 GB on RAM before getting a DX10 card. The real advantages of DX10 will be known when it comes out, but here is a glimpse of the graphics using a DX10 engine in the game Crysis: http://www.gamershell.com/pc/crysis/screenshots.html.

looks nice, but will cost you your lunch money for the next few months. :twisted:

*Edit: Yeah, what WR2 said.*

There's so much good advice on this thread I don't know if it's worth me posting... but then I guess every little experience helps.

I use a Super Lanboy with an Antec HE550 modular power supply. It keeps it all pretty neat inside the case. I definitely think it's a good combination. Purdue also has a great idea with the Antec Sonata II from Newegg ( if you are in the US ). As you aren't overclocking I would think the stock cooler would fit nicely under the Sonata's air ducting. In fact the Sonata styling reminds me of the original Lanboy. Of course the Sonata isn't made of Aluminium, so if transportation is key then this is something to also consider.

The only change I would recommend is to go for a Seagate 7200.10 320Gb hard drive ( with Perpendicular recording technology ). I used to ony buy WD drives but the 2 of these in my rig have been great. For about $90 they are fast and quiet.

Good luck on your build.

Personally I find the Super Lanboy to have great airflow. It has dual 120mm fans ( 1 front, 1 rear ) and I have had no issues with keeping a highly overclocked Intel 805 cool inside it.

The only possible issue I foresee is that the current selection of DX10 cards I have seen pre-release pictures of online are not going to fit inside it. I am hoping that the boards will become more compact before I migrate to Vista.

:roll:

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3200820AS 200GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM $74.99
mushkin 550200 ATX12V 550W Power Supply 115/230 V cUL,CE,CB,FCC - Retail $89.99
MSI 975X Platinum V.2 975X Core 2 Extreme/Core 2 Duo/P4/P4EE/Pentium D/Pentium XE/Celeron D 1066FSB LGA775 DDR2 ATX ***Free Shipping*** $179.99
Asus EAX1950PRO/HTDP/256M Radeon X1950 Pro 256MB PCI-Express Dual-DVI, HDTV-Out Retail ***Free Shipping*** $199.99
OCZ S.O.E 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Retail $219.99
SAMSUNG 205BW Black 20" 6ms DVI Widescreen LCD Monitor with Height Adjustments 300 cd/m2 700:1 - Retail $289.99
Intel® Core 2 Duo E6300 Conroe Processor 1.86GHz, 1066FSB, LGA775, 2MB Cache Retail ***Free Shipping*** $181.90
LG Black 16X DVD+R 8X 2M Cache E-IDE/ATAPI Super-Multi DVD Burner - OEM GSA-H10N $30.99(2)
Raidmax Horizon 287 ATX287WGP Mid Tower Gaming Case (Green) Retail ***Free Shipping*** $54.99
SAMSUNG Beige 1.44MB 3.5" Internal Floppy Drive SFD321B/LEB - $5.21____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Subtotal= $1359.02

this is my next system (hopefully) and it is midrange with an lcd, so i hope this helps.

Suggestions:

1) Change the CPU to a C2D E6300
2) Get 2GB RAM
3) Change the HDD to the 320GB Seagate 7200.10 (make sure to get the model with 16MB cache and perpendicular recording)

Question:

What model is that power supply? 350W SHOULD be enough for that system; you just need adequate amps on the +12V rail(s).[/b]

Holy Cow.... almost $1400 and it's only midrange !!! Geeez my last midrange build was considerably less than that. I think I'd have to consider it better than midrange. :roll:

hey, to some of ya guys that said that the thermaltake tsunami case might not have proper airflow, what part of the pc would heat up the most, based on my rig, and should i get a proper cooler for it, instead of changing the case??? cheers

The tsunami will be adequate for your current setup; I don't think you would need additional coolers.

[quote="GavinLeigh"]

Holy Cow.... almost $1400 and it's only midrange !!! Geeez my last midrange build was considerably less than that. I think I'd have to consider it betterthan midrange. :roll:[/quote/]

that is with a 20.1 inch lcd widescreen. without it and without the second dvd drive, its about like $1000. plus, all the magazines show midrange as $1000-1500.

Holy Cow.... almost $1400 and it's only midrange !!! Geeez my last midrange build was considerably less than that. I think I'd have to consider it betterthan midrange. :roll:

that is with a 20.1 inch lcd widescreen. without it and without the second dvd drive, its about like $1000. plus, all the magazines show midrange as $1000-1500.

Those must be Apple Prices  

lol but i dont think so.anything lower than a 7600gt isnt midrange, or the equivalent on the ati side. in order to build a pc with a monitor, and parts that balance the system, u need at least $1000 especially with a huge widescreen.

You are right, a 20" monitor is an expense. I bought a Dell 2005 widescreen a couple of years ago ($400) and it has been a good performer. I've also bought a 19" Viewsonic (1440x900)($200!) which has, in fact, been a better gaming monitor. The reduced resolution is less taxing on my lower mid-range graphics card.

i would not really say that x1950pro 512mb is medium low. it pretty high-low end. it should run all games at the monitors native res at the highest setting with a nice frame rate. except for oblivion  

I'm sorry I was talking about my own system. Not the ATI card... geezzzz... message boards are confusing.

lol. ok i think we have hijacked this forum enough. the guy who started it probably forgot about it already!