Help With A7N8X rig. (long).

[timmie]

Hello! First, a bit about myself and my situation: I am an Alberta (that's in Canada) University student who normally doesn't do much coding. however, unfortunately my course load this semester has taken an unexpected turn, and I need to make some changes to my computer:

I am running a computer that is no longer what I need, and it has to go as soon as I get my new rig up, running, and online.

This new rig was originally planned for about easter at the earliest, so I have been casually educating myself about hardware so my next computer could be scratch built (something I have wanted to do for a while now). but now, I need to move the timetable ahead from about 4 months away to now. Right now, unfortunately. I have to have my new computer up and running ASAP, inside of two weeks ideally. Tomorrow I go monitor and case shopping. From there I start mail ordering from the states all the components that aren't too heavy to practically ship across international borders.


So, where do you come in? I don't know near as much as I would like about what I am doing, but having to make the best of it, I am throwing some components together and hoping it all works out and I can learn more as I go along. Here is my proposed system, please let me know about any concerns with it or anything I should do differently.

Motherboard: asus a7n8x deluxe motherboard.

Ram: 2 sticks 256 mb corsair ram: I am thinking pc2700. Is this appropriate? (I am told that slots 1 and 3 are the ones to put them in... correct?)

Processor: Athlon xp 2100+: processors is something I don't know much about at ALL. I mostly looked at motherboards, storage, audio, and video when I was doing research. Any advice on this would be welcome.

Cooler: Thermalright slk-800. I read in several places that it is heavy enough to throw through a cinder block wall, and that it works very well.

Hercules 9700 pro radeon. (good bundled software, not likely to need upgrading in the near future.)

twin 60 gig 7200 rpm hard drives (ata 100). Undecided as of yet on exact model numbers and brand names.

Floppy drive: yes, I will have one. As I understand, it makes absolutely no difference what kind I have.

Undecided on cd drive: I have an external usb cd-rw unit I will likely use until I can make this decision at a later date: I don't need to be playing games on this thing in the near future, it just has to be running appropriate mathematics and coding software by the tail end of the month. I plan on using a dvd/ cdrw combo (edit: just realized that dvt/ cdrw combo could be interpereted as one drive that did all functions. In fact, mean "one dvd drive, and one cdrw drive."), like many others, but that is something I think can wait until I can better decide what I want/need.

Originally, I had hoped to find a lian li pc60 case in my home town, and a well priced 19" viewsonic p95f monitor, but with the new time frame, I will likely settle for the easier to find antec cases and I don't know what I will find for monitors. I am holding off on power supplies till I see if I end up with one supplied with the case. Approximately how much wattage would I need to get this system up and running (assuming I add a 19 inch crt monitor, 2 optical drives, all the standard usb peripherals, and having some room for bells and whistles and dabbling in overclocking)?

Needless to say, I have the appropriate mice, keyboards, etc, kicking around, and I plan to use onboard sound until I can decide a little more firmly on what is the "right" sound card, and I will be holding off on speakers for the same reason. Onboard network, I believe, is on the card, so I should be all right there, or so I hope.

So, sorry about the long and rather disjointed post, but unfortunately I am in way more of a hurry than I had anticipated. What I would like to know, is will there be anything I will suddenly realize I don't have when I try to put this thing together (other than the obvious thermal compound, fans, and possibly psu?)? Is there anything I will regret buying later?

What do I use my computer for? Writing various office documents, matlab, maple, some basic coding in c++, and this new machine is going to need to boot unix (something I know almost nothing about, but that is not a pressing concern), watching dvd movies, as a home theatre, and a little gaming. Obviously, everything but the "work" can wait. Processor recommendations are especially welcome: I am not even sure as to what is compatible with the motherboard: can I put any socket A/462 processor into the motherboard? If not, what can I put into the motherboard? I went rather low end on processors to put some cash into a decent 3d card, because there weren't a lot of really attractive other options, from what I could see on the market right now (low end radeons up here are not fantastically cheaper than high end radeons, and from what I can tell, geforces are NOT the way to go at present.) will the slow processor hurt me a lot? Would it be worth my while on this rather budget system to go a little higher (though realistically, a 2700 processor is NOT going to be in the works for me).

Thanks for any assistance you can provide about what will/won't work with this motherboard, what is a good idea, what is a bad idea, and what I will need to get this thing up and running. Just wish I hadn't found myself in this sort of situation.

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by timmie on 01/11/03 01:51 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Quetzacoatl]

Are you going to be overclocking or just using it for stock speed? What exactly do you need to use this for? Seriously, if you're not doing a lot of games, you can downgrade the vid card for a fast overall system. You're motherboard is good, ram is good, plenty of flexibility if your processor. The Slk800 is a great heatsink, and has a good 3 clip system as well. If you want quiet, use a low rpm fan. If you need ultimate air cooling, then a Delta/Vantec Tornado, or other high rpm fan will give you great cooling potential. For the twin hard drives, i'm a fan of Maxtor myself, but Seagate makes nice quiet drives, and Western Digital has the great performing "special edition" 8 mb cache hard drives, now in 40 and 60gb variety as well. For CD drives and such, i'd suggest just getting two seperate drives, one fast CDrw drive and one good DVD drive.

Lian li and Antec both make GREAT cases, and Antec also makes some great power supplies too. Oh, right. You'll need a good PSU for the system. I'd go either Antec or Enermax, Thermaltake and Vantec are also pretty good. I'd get at least 400 or so watts, you've got two hard drives, and a decked out system in general. I'd definately just stay with the stock sound, the Nforce APU is GREAT, and better than a lot of cards out there.



Instead of Rdram, why not just merge 4 Sdram channels...

 

[Crashman]

I think you've made good choices based on what's available now. The last guy said the card was probably too expensive to justify it for you, but that's not taking your time frame into account, by Easter I expect the card to be around $200! That is to say, by Easter the GeForceFX should be out as well as the replacement for the 9700. I actually expect the 9700 Pro to get upgraded to the .13Micron process around the same time, because it's cheaper to produce chips once implemented, and because it would solve the need for an extra power input. But they'll probably name it something else (for example, if the new R350 core card is called a 9800 Pro, the revised 9700 Pro might be called a 9800 Gold, etc). Anyway, you look like you're on the right track, keep watching the prices fall!

<font color=blue>You're posting in a forum with class. It may be third class, but it's still class!</font color=blue>

 

[timmie]

Well, I do admit the fact that I have thus far been unable to locate anyone other than the online site of hercules itself who actually SELLS this thing.

The reasons I thought it was a good choice? Lately, I have been going through some extreme frustration (I admit I spend more time in the gym than I do gaming, but I do game on occasion.): I have been running a laptop with a compaq manufactured graphics card that appears to predate capitalism, if not Christianity. As a result, I have missed out on some of the titles I would rather not have missed. One is morrowind, and a game I am in absolutely no danger of failing to buy, meaning that that makes the hercules, already cheaper than the ati brand card, appear even more attractive. In addition, Tom's comparison of the cards makes it appear that the claims made by hercules at having the most overclocking capable 9700 pro are perhaps not just idle chatter.

Next, I have lately found an interest in cg art, and have been dabbling a bit.

What would you recommend for someone then who wants to be able to run at a reasonable level most of the new titles int he forseeable future, is obviously an AGP card (because my motherboard is not PCI compatible), would like a card that lets me fool around with the settings a bit, and still not feel left out of rendering by having a card that is found wanting?
(and, of course, be able to run a monitor at 1600 by 1200 with a refresh rate of at least 85hz, though that I understand is something most any card can do that is currently on the market.)

What sort of thing would be a good choice? I assume one of the lower radeon models, in that case, but how low can I go without beginning to really notice the performance slowdowns?


As for how serious I intend to be about overclocking? Well, I AM an engineering student: meaning that I generally insist on fooling around with anything that can be plugged into an electrical outlet until I am severely electrocuted.... at LEAST twice. This will be very much an entry system into the field, but It is something I would be curious about learning how to do, and I suspect I will be either very glad I went with the best copper heat sink I am aware of on the market, or I will be very upset I didn't go with a water cooling system or peltier/water combination. That is also the reason I spent the extra cash and went from no-name brand ram to corsair. I do tend to know way more than is healthy about whatever I am interested in the time, though this is a sad exception to the rule.

 

[timmie]

hmmm... I think you may have misunderstood my plan: I originally had HOPED to wait until easter to assemble this computer. Unfortunately, circumstances have changed, and the current plan is to have this thing sitting at my desk and running (though perhaps bare bones) inside of 14 days. As I understand, the spp model of the a7vn8x (the one I intend to buy) requires a graphics processor to even get started... right? This would mean that I need to buy a 3d card in the VERY immediate future: meaning in the next 7 days.

 

[Crashman]

You have a lot of choices. For ATI, I'd suggest an 8500 (OEM version is under $100), 9500 Pro, 9700, or 9700 Pro. The 9500 non-pro and the 9000 series are not good values IMO.

<font color=blue>You're posting in a forum with class. It may be third class, but it's still class!</font color=blue>

 

[timmie]

All right, thanks for the help, guys! Still looking at hard drives (can't find the 60GB western digital special editions at the site I was hoping to get them at, so it is either drop some extra cash on 80 gigs or go with another brand), and I don't have a 3d card picked yet, but here is what I am pretty sure about

case: lian li pc-60- it's sitting beside me, and I installed a 450W Startech PSU.

MB: A7N8X
Ram: 2 256Meg Corsair pc2700 sticks.
CPU: Athlon XP 2100+.
Sound: Onboard.
Speakers: Probably Altec.
Monitor: Looking at the Viewsonic p95f+.
Optical Drives: Lite on or Asus dvd and cdrw drives.
Cooling: I was thinking of a tornado/ SLK-800, but here is the problem: I have read that there is lots of room for this much gear on my cpu, but what about weight? given my board is going to be vertical (along with everyone else since 1993 ), what do you guys think? Too heavy? is this going to work out, or am I just going to tear my heatsink right off my motherboard? Little worried here, as I have never mounted a heatsink before. First time for everything though, right?

Looking over 3d cards, still undecided, but any advice on heatsinks, or any links to very good beginner articles on mounting heatsinks would be appreciated, thanks.

 

[Andyddr]

My current heatsink is a CoolerMaster HHC-001 (heat-pipes) and it works Very well on an overclocked 1700+XP running @ 2200+ (around 42c idle and 50c full-load in Summer with ambient air temp of 30c) but if you go for the SLK-800 you will have enough space on the A7N8X to install and the retention clips will keep it just where you put it (vertical or not).
As far as drives go the WD is worth every cent and IMO the best drive on the market. Very quiet and as far as I know the only hard-drive with a 3 year warrantee.

A Radeon 8500 is a good choice in that if you get more into gaming and you feel you want to upgrade the FX will probably be out and prices will drop for the 9700. The Gigabyte Maya Deluxe (AP64D-H) is a good choice and very overclockable.

Good luck and remember we are always here if you need help.

Your new hardware is out-of-date

 

[whillowhim]

This seems eerily simmilar to some of my experiences a month ago (and unfortunately, I still haven't gotten the dang thing stable [although I haven't had much time to spend figuring out the right tweaks], may you have better luck). I was looking for more features on my system, but a lot of the basic parts are the same or simmilar.

First off, you won't be able to get the Hercules 9700 pro. I found 2 online stores besides the official one that had it listed, but they both were only taking pre-orders. Eventually I ordered it from the Hercules online store, only to be emailed 5 days later that it was out of stock and on back order (my email to cancel the order was acknowledged 4 days after the fact, when I already had the replacement video card in hand. Gotta love fast customer service...). Things may have changed in a month, but both the other venders I found earlier still say "coming soon", so I wouldn't count on it. I eventually ended up buying a 9700 pro card made by sapphire tech, but I'm not sure I'd recommend it yet because my system is still a bit unstable. From looking at a couple stores it seems like a few brands of 9700 pro cards have come down a bit, although I'm not sure of the quality. Just saw one made by PowerColor on www.googlegear.com for $276 with $1 2-day shipping if you want to risk a brand I know nothing about. I would personally be thinking about geforce cards if you decide not to go with the top-of-the line 9700 pro, since they've historicly had better drivers and more luck installing well the first time.

As far as the motherboard goes, its nicely stacked with features and should do well for you, but might take some tweaking to get it up and working well. There are two ethernet adaptors on the board so you're covered well there, and if you need to you can use the extra one to share a network connection. I haven't used the onboard sound myself, but I've heard that its perfectly acceptable and even nicer than quite a few of the sound cards on the market. I would've gone with PC3200 or PC3500 ram to take full advantage of the dual-DDR400 abilities of the nforce2 chipset, but from what I've heard the jump from DDR333 to DDR400 is only a relatively small improvement, its the dual-DDR thats important. You do need a graphics card, however, unless you want to spend a lot of time staring at a blank monitor.

I'm not an expert on processors or coolers, but I don't think either will be a major problem. The only thing I've heard about the heavier copper coolers is that you should probably take them off if you're going to be moving or are in any other situation where the computer will be jostled and bumped. I personally have a cooler thats a bit on the heavy side (copper Zalman flower heatsink) but it seems to be working quite well for my athlon 2700+. As far as mounting the heatsink goes, I just used the instructions on arctic silver's webpage, since I was using Arctic Silver 3. It was my first time as well, but I didn't encounter any problems.
http://www.arcticsilver.com/arctic_silver_instructions.htm

As far as troubleshooting goes, I'd disable AGP 8x support for a while. This seemed to fix some issues I was having with the system locking up about 10 seconds into any game. I'm guessing later bios revisions and drivers will fix this issue so you'll probably want to try enabling it whenever you notice a new BIOS or video driver is available. Since AGP 8x isn't really needed yet this isn't a big deal. There are also quite a lot of threads in the motherboard section of these forums that can help if you can't get the motherboard to start up, which seems to be a common but fixable problem with these motherboards.

I've also heard that increasing the video arpeture size to 128MB and increasing the AGP voltage to 1.7V can help with the 9700 pro cards, but since my system isn't stable yet I can't give a good comparison.