YANNBT - Yet Another Newbie New Build Thread

1) Chuck that PSU...that brand isn't quite the best and the wattage is way ovrkill... get the Corsair 550VX instead. $70

2) $380 is too much money spent on CPU...get the Q6600 for $200 instead. It overclocks really well too.

3) Ditch that cooler...the XIGMATEK HDT S1283 is the new boss out there right now. $36

4) Get the Corsair 4GB DDR2 800 for $85 instead.

5) Get a better GPU...the Radeon 3870 or Nvidia 9600GT ...both for ~$140

6) Rather than that Samsung, get the faster Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3750330AS 750GB HD for about $5 more.

All that should save you a heck of a lot of money and give you a blast of a performance.

Graphics card now : EVGA 512-P3-N861-AR GeForce 9600GT 512MB ($140).

CPU - I want the 3Mb per cpu L2 for compute intensive application (photo editing).

HDD - Speed for this drive is OK. Remember that the main drive will become the WD VelociRaptor when it is released later this month.

Memory - I'm not sure on this. Will research more.

PSU - OK. Will research further. What wattage range do you recommend ? Would I need more than 1 12V rail ?


Thanks,
Craig.

Mushkin makes good memory, I replaced my Corsair XMS Pro with it and have been very happy. In fact the Mushkin did one thing the Corsair couldn't do. That was allow me to run 4 2gb sticks without having to tinker with settings. The Mushkin just went in and was detected at its EPP settings in dual channel mode. Had to manually set the timings with the Corsair XMS and then one failed within three months. One nice thing about Corsair is service, three day turn around on the one I had to RMA. I haven't had to RMA any Mushkin yet. You really can't go bad with either one for that matter.

Thanks for the constructive advice.

Now if folks would back up what they say with WHY instead of just 'replace a with b' I may be more inclined to pay attention.

Thanks, I was planning on installing a single WD VR and seeing what the performance was like. The move to raid 0 would only happen if I really thought it would make a difference. I understand about losing the drives and backup accordingly.

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I am not building a gaming PC. I'm building a photo editing PC, hence the $1000 monitor.

I currently have a P4 3.2GHz Hyperthreading with 2Gb ram. The CPU goes to 100% and stays there for long periods of time. This is by far my biggest bottleneck, followed by HDD access speed.

Thanks,
Craig.

That's bogus. Nothing wrong with Vista64. Old people like their old things. Those same peope said those same things about XP when it came out years ago.

Do you mean driver or codec? Just use ffdshow codec for video playback. It handles everything.

The monitor is for color fidelity and for color/luminance that does not shift when you change position in your chair. Most LCD monitors use TN panels which are not good for photo editing. Try raising and lowering your head while looking at a color image on your monitor - you should see what I am talking about. The NEC uses a H-IPS panel. I use a colorimeter to calibrate my monitor.

To answer your question, the apps I use are Adobe Photoshop and Nikon Capture NX (NX is the main cause of my performance problems), It is also my primary raw conversion and editing app.

BTW, I do thank you for your earlier response. I do however, have to apply due diligence to all responses, as I do not know who you are or what your credentials are.

Back to the memory - will the DDR2-1066 allow easier overclocking than the DDR2-800 ? If not, why not? I thought that was the point of the higher spec memory.

Thanks,
Craig.