Calling All Tech Guru's

[disrupter007]

Hello Guys,
I am about to build a new system and need some suggestions from you pple to improve it further. I hope i get more replies from you guys than i did in anandtech with was zero
But before you start please remember that i will not be using it for OverClocking but for only playing games.
Also i want to make sure that my system is FutureProof for atleast one year.
I have a tight budget so no costly opinions please.

i want to know if i should go for the raid 00 or 01 configuration (whats the best option) , or the simple Sata would do??

Also i would love to get a DX 10 ready card like 8800 GTS but i cant afford it right now other cards like 7950GX2 are a bit to costly aswell. so i am goin for a X1900XTX . Will it work fine for the upcoming games??

Here are the Specs.

All things are selected from microdirect.co.uk

Asus M2R32-MVP AM2 CrossFire GF6150 dual PCI-E x16 SATA RAID Giga LAN 8ch.audio ATX Motherboard £49.95

AMD CPU AM2 Athlon 64 Dual Core 4200 Retail Box inc Fan, Socket AM2 940 PIN, Energy Efficient (3yr Manufacturers Warranty) £43.99

Coolermaster Elite 330 Black/silver midi tower case micro ATX NO PSU £22.95

OCZ 600GXS Sli -UK nVidia Sli Ready 600W Power Whisper Technology Active PFC (3 year Direct Manufacturer's PowerSwap warranty) £51.19

Corsair 2024MB TwinX XMS2 6400 DDR2 Memory Kit (2 x 1024MB) £55.99

500GB Seagate Barracuda® SATA II 300 Hard Disk Drive 7200rpm 16MB cache (Manufacturer's 5yr Warranty) £49.99

Pioneer DVR-112DBK Black 18X DVD +/-R/RW DL IDE OEM (Drive only) £17.86

Ati X1900XTX 512MB GDDR3 £121.86

Thx in advance. i will wait for your replies.

 

[g-paw]

I'd suggest a mobo with 3 PCI slots and unless you plan on running 2 video cards I'd go with a non Crossfire/SLI board unless you want onboard firewire in which case you'll likely have to get a board with one of these.

 

[disrupter007]

hi,
thx for the reply
can u please suggest any good non Crossfire motherboard.
which has all the important features in it.
thx

 

[g-paw]

If you don't need firewire, this is a nice board
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16813131022

If you want firewire, this looks good but it's SLI but almost impossible to find non SLI/Crossfire boards with firewire and the ones you find are nVidia nForce4, which is older tech than the 550 and 570. If the 570 above is too expensive, you could go with a 550, which would save you about $20

 

[uberman]

All in all it looks like you picked some decent parts that will make a pretty solid gamer.Raid isnt't necessary,if you can afford extra drives it would be better spent on the 8800.The 1900xtx is a beast but I am too lazy right now to look at some Price/performance comparison to 1950 series but might be worth a look.

 

[disrupter007]

i have found out a couple of motherboards
let me know which 1 is better

Gigabyte motherboard GA-M55S-S3 nForce 550 Socket AM2 PCI-E SATA 3G Gigabit LAN 8ch HD Audio Firewire ATX £49.51

Abit KN9 Ultra Nvidia MCP55P-Ultra Skt AM2, 2000FSB, PCI-E, SATA 3G RAID, HD 8ch Audio, GB LAN, USB2, Firewire, ATX Motherboard £60.51

Abit motherboard AN52 socket AM2 nVidia 520 PCI-E SATA 3G RAID 8ch Audio GB LAN ATX £43.51

is there any huge difference between 520, 550 and 570 ultra chipset??

also will it not be a safe bet to go for a crossfire solution or just upgrade the single vga to a better one ??
cause the price difference between a crossfire chipset mobo and a 570 ultra chipset one is very minimal.

 

[altazi]

The AMD CPUs are pretty darned cheap right now. I'd bump up the CPU performance as much as you can reasonably afford. Current Newegg price for AM2 Athlon X2 5600 is $149.50, X2 6000 is $169.99. You also might want to consider a mobo with the AMD/ATI 580X chipset (Crossfire Xpress 3200). Both the MSI K9A Platinum and the ASUS M2R32-MVP mobos are highly rated on Newegg.

Regards,

Altazi

 

[uberman]

I believe the poster is in Britian or something since the posterwas quoting prices in pounds so nwegg wouldn't do him any good.That being said I agree with Altazi's CPU recommendation.The MBs mentioned will do fine.Most chipsets will work fine,some over clock better than others.

 

[disrupter007]

I believe the poster is in Britian or something since the posterwas quoting prices in pounds so nwegg wouldn't do him any good.That being said I agree with Altazi's CPU recommendation.The MBs mentioned will do fine.Most chipsets will work fine,some over clock better than others.

its true i am located in UK,
ok here is my final build
Akasa Black Zen Silent Cool Mid Tower Case £35

OCZ GameXStream 600W PSU - 120mm Fan SLI Ready ATX12v v2.2 £68

AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Socket AM2 2.6GHz Energy Efficient L2 1 MB
Brisbane £76 (is there a much difference between brisbane and windsor core amd 5000 processor??)

EVGA nForce 590 SLI Socket AM2 8 channel Audio ATX £60

Corsair 2GB Kit (2x1GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 XMS2 Memory Non-ECC Unbuffered CL5 £67

EVGA 8800GTS 640MB DDR3 320bit Dual DVI PCI-E £216

Pioneer DVR-112DBK 18x DVD1RW OEM £20

Seagate ST3320620AS 320GB Hard Drive SATAII 7200RPM 16MB Cache OEM £49

Just need to know if i will be needing any other extras like cables or anything else because i have never build a custom made PC before.
both HD and DVD are OEM but motherboard comes with a SATA and IDE cable so i wont be needing those cables, also the case comes with 2 Akasa fans but
(if there is anything else that i have forgotten to add please do let me know.)

 

[g-paw]

If the CPU is retail, it will come with the HSF and there is nothing else you should need. If you do not want to get a small second hard drive, 60GB to 80GB, for your OS and programs, would strongly recommend you partition the hard drive putting the OS and programs on the first, make it about 35GB to 40GB, and data on the second. Sooner or later you will likely have to reinstall Windows and having your data on a separate hard drive, safer, or a separate partition makes life easier and less stressful.

 

[uberman]

Any cables you need should come with the motherboard .On the CPU OEM doesn't come with heatsink retail does so if you are ordering OEM be sure to get a CPU cooler.Should be very nice esp. with that 8800.Enjoy.

 

[disrupter007]

will changing my cpu to 5600 with 2MB cache compared to 5000 with 1MB Cache for an extra £25 cache make any significant difference
adding a second drive is a nice idea, i have an IDE maxtor 80GB diamondmax with 2mb buffer , so if i use it with my new hardisk which has a 16mb buffer will it not decrease my overall system performance ??
but like g-paw suggested it can also be done by making seperate partition. i will be using a 30-10-140-140 partition setup. 30 for windows and prog. 10 for swap files, and rest for games. any better suggestions??
i hope this system will be more than enough to play current and future games. wish me luck

 

[pat]

hi,
thx for the reply
can u please suggest any good non Crossfire motherboard.
which has all the important features in it.
thx

I would check the Gigabyte MA69G-S3. This motherboard use the newest ATI chipset, has lot of PCI-e slots.

I just build one with this board, and so far, very good and solid motherboard. Much better that the older Asus.

It has integrated video with HDMI, which may be unneeded, but the board by itself is rather inexpensive and IMHO, the best buy ATX mobo for now.

 

[coldmast]

DX10 really isn't that big of a worry right now, I don't think game developers are going to ignore over 90% of pc gamers, their might be 2 DX10 only titles in the next year and chances are they would be from M$ we really haven't seen the capabilities of DX10 beyond the TECH DEMOS which are just pre-rendered concepts anyways, just like we don't see complex physics interactions in every game where not going to see the fancy new 3D bump-mapping in every game as well, DX10 is going to be that thing that developers do after they sold a million copies, then port the game and ad one new effect.

So get a video card you can afford and a processor that won't bottleneck and you should be having fun for at least one year.

I think the motherboard and processor could be a little better.

if you get end up getting an newer Intel Board try using their Intel Matrix RAID technology
two hard drives, two partions: one partion for RAID1, one for RAID0. Best of both world, redundancy for data, speed for games.
Matrix RAID is currently only available in Intel's ICH6R south bridge

all in all I don't see any major problems with your current build

 

[disrupter007]

Thanks for the replies guys due to that i was able to build a good system.
coldmast like i said earlier in my post i want to build a futureproof computer and because i dont want to upgrade my pc every 6 months.
also when in terms of price to performance ratio AMD is much better than Intel.
Anyways i am waiting for my order to arrive as soon as i am done building it i will post my first expression.
I am still waiting for your reply on the second hardrive opinion.
Will adding a second lower quality hardrive effect my overall system performance. i will use the faster drive for windows and games and other for paging files and backup.
Thanks again for all your replies. i really appriciate it.

 

[coldmast]

Don't worry I'm no Intel fan,

my better processor comment was to get a AMD Athlon 64 X2 EE 5000+ w/ 2x512K Cache (Socket AM2)

 

[g-paw]

Thanks for the replies guys due to that i was able to build a good system.
coldmast like i said earlier in my post i want to build a futureproof computer and because i dont want to upgrade my pc every 6 months.
also when in terms of price to performance ratio AMD is much better than Intel.
Anyways i am waiting for my order to arrive as soon as i am done building it i will post my first expression.
I am still waiting for your reply on the second hardrive opinion.
Will adding a second lower quality hardrive effect my overall system performance. i will use the faster drive for windows and games and other for paging files and backup.
Thanks again for all your replies. i really appriciate it.

Using the 80GB as a back up drive shouldn't hurt performance

 

[disrupter007]

thanks for the reply g-paw. now i will definately use the 80GB for backingup/swapfile usage.

i am work at the moment but my parcel arrived in the morning, so i cant wait to get home and start unwrapping all the stuff and put it all together.

thanks again.

 

[g-paw]

thanks for the reply g-paw. now i will definately use the 80GB for backingup/swapfile usage.

i am work at the moment but my parcel arrived in the morning, so i cant wait to get home and start unwrapping all the stuff and put it all together.

thanks again.

Given the differences in the drives I would partition the 300 making the 1st partition about 40GB for the OS and programs and the reminder for data and the swap files if you want them on a separate partition, You could always create a small 3rd partition for the swap files and then use the 80GB strictly for back up. Hope the computer gods smile on you and your build goes well.

 

[disrupter007]

Hello guys,
Sorry about the late reply.
ok my pc is up and running. it all went smoothly apart from some minor difficulties.
firstly mobo came with only 2 fan connections so i couldnt get one of my three fans workin.
secondly when i was installing windows it didnt detect my 320GB hardisk. but after i installed SP2 it worked fine but still it only shows 294GB of space dunno what happened to the rest of the space. any idea??
my first expression about my new built was WOW. man i couldnt believe that latest games would run that much smoother even on highest detail its just sweet.
Thank you again for all those replies.

 

[uberman]

Any drive will show less than what it says on the sticker.My 320 shows as 298 can't remember what the reason is.But somebody on the forum can give you a technical explanation.What are your final specs?Glad it's all working good for you.

 

[disrupter007]

Any drive will show less than what it says on the sticker.My 320 shows as 298 can't remember what the reason isquotemsg]

Well that sux...lol

Any ways here are my final Specs

EVGA nForce 590 SLI Socket AM2 8 channel Audio ATX
Corsair 2GB Kit (2x1GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 XMS2 Memory Non-ECC Unbuffered CL5(5-5-5-12) Heat Spreader Lifetime Warranty
Akasa Black Zen Silent Cool Mid Tower Case (Comes standard with 2 120mm Akasa Fans)
OCZ GameXStream 600W PSU - 120mm Fan SLI Ready ATX12v v2.2
Seagate ST3320620AS 320GB Hard Drive SATAII 7200RPM 16MB Cache - OEM
Maxtor 80GB ATA133 2MB Cache
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ (2.8GHz) Socket AM2 2MB L2 Cache (2x1MB) Retail Boxed Processor
Samsung SH-S203B 20X DVD1RW/RAM / DL Serial ATA Black Bare Drive - OEM
ASUS NVIDIA GeForce 8800GTS 640MB GDDR3 DVI HDCP HDTV out PCI-E

Here are the current games iam playin on it without any problems

Quake 4 (Ultra Settings, 1280x1024)
Gothic 3 (Ultra Settings, 1280x1024)
Comapany of heroes ((Ultra Settings, 1280x1024)
Dirt (Ultra Settings, 1280x1024)
GRAW 2 (Ultra Settings, 1280x1024)

Its like been in a HD Heaven.

Thankyou for your replies.