Hey folks,
Been years since I've built a pc, last one was 1.3 ghz, Ive been using a 2ghz single core with a basic 6800 vid card I got from a friend.
What id like to do is have the PC be very power efficient (I buy clean electricity and want to contribute as little to pollution as possible) and have good value.
My budget cap is $1000 according to the lady who wears the pants, I've quit my job to stay home and raise the kids for a few years, so we are value conscious about it - but it's also become my social outlet. Excluded from that budget are the OS, PSU, Case, HD, optical drive, keyboard and mouse. (Monitor can stay, but if a bigger one fits in the budget, that'd be great).
I would like to be able to hook it up to water cooling (I use a water cooler I built out of scrap copper at the recycling yard, which is hooked up to a drinking fountain).
If it's a lot more power efficient to use some other kind of cooling, I'm up for that, but it has to be *really* quiet, because our house is all brick and tile, and noise seriously amplifies in here - and I'm mildly allergic to dust. I don't know what cooling is like now but it looks a lot different than the jet-engine thing that came with this computer, some thermaltake volcano or something, split the eardrums and I hooked the drinking fountain up to it straight away. Not worried about condensation (to those who always inquire), as the lines & filing cabinent the pc mounts into are highly insulated.
I have a 19" LCD, though I wouldn't mind going bigger if it fit into the budget.
Have winXP which I'm happy with.
Have a PC & C 610 Silencer with a single rail. It's massive overkill for my current system, but I bought it to be sure I was being efficient on electricity use.
Have a seagate HD, 7200rpm. Its like 250gb or so.
Just got a nice burner for making home movies on dual layer discs, a LiteOn, burns pretty much everything except blueray, which I care nothing for.
So those are the parts I have to keep using, OS, HD, PSU (monitor).
Now, I've done some reading, and I know that Intel recently came out with some power efficient processors lately, that sounds great. I don't know much about em though.
I wanted to upgrade awhile back, but I read that the 8800 vid cards ate massive power, and I just didn't feel right about it. Are any of them more power efficient now?
Anyways, would appreciate some pointers and advice to get me started on where to look, what to look at, and what might be coming up in the next months to wait for in terms of efficiency.
Oh - PC is to be used to play Warhammer beta, my current dog of a pc has hung in there just fine the past 9 months of beta, but I'd like an upgrade to enjoy it even more. Other than that, I'd like it to be able to run Age of Conan really well in pvp, and strategy games like Civ & Spore on really large maps - my current pc cannot handle the really big maps in Civ, etc, without taking *forever* to make one turn.
Thanks so much!
Been years since I've built a pc, last one was 1.3 ghz, Ive been using a 2ghz single core with a basic 6800 vid card I got from a friend.
What id like to do is have the PC be very power efficient (I buy clean electricity and want to contribute as little to pollution as possible) and have good value.
My budget cap is $1000 according to the lady who wears the pants, I've quit my job to stay home and raise the kids for a few years, so we are value conscious about it - but it's also become my social outlet. Excluded from that budget are the OS, PSU, Case, HD, optical drive, keyboard and mouse. (Monitor can stay, but if a bigger one fits in the budget, that'd be great).
I would like to be able to hook it up to water cooling (I use a water cooler I built out of scrap copper at the recycling yard, which is hooked up to a drinking fountain).
If it's a lot more power efficient to use some other kind of cooling, I'm up for that, but it has to be *really* quiet, because our house is all brick and tile, and noise seriously amplifies in here - and I'm mildly allergic to dust. I don't know what cooling is like now but it looks a lot different than the jet-engine thing that came with this computer, some thermaltake volcano or something, split the eardrums and I hooked the drinking fountain up to it straight away. Not worried about condensation (to those who always inquire), as the lines & filing cabinent the pc mounts into are highly insulated.
I have a 19" LCD, though I wouldn't mind going bigger if it fit into the budget.
Have winXP which I'm happy with.
Have a PC & C 610 Silencer with a single rail. It's massive overkill for my current system, but I bought it to be sure I was being efficient on electricity use.
Have a seagate HD, 7200rpm. Its like 250gb or so.
Just got a nice burner for making home movies on dual layer discs, a LiteOn, burns pretty much everything except blueray, which I care nothing for.
So those are the parts I have to keep using, OS, HD, PSU (monitor).
Now, I've done some reading, and I know that Intel recently came out with some power efficient processors lately, that sounds great. I don't know much about em though.
I wanted to upgrade awhile back, but I read that the 8800 vid cards ate massive power, and I just didn't feel right about it. Are any of them more power efficient now?
Anyways, would appreciate some pointers and advice to get me started on where to look, what to look at, and what might be coming up in the next months to wait for in terms of efficiency.
Oh - PC is to be used to play Warhammer beta, my current dog of a pc has hung in there just fine the past 9 months of beta, but I'd like an upgrade to enjoy it even more. Other than that, I'd like it to be able to run Age of Conan really well in pvp, and strategy games like Civ & Spore on really large maps - my current pc cannot handle the really big maps in Civ, etc, without taking *forever* to make one turn.
Thanks so much!
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