OT: Building A New System
 

I have come to realize that this HP (POS) is just not meeting my needs and my BLUE BoX, (AMD) is just to unreliable for continued use. So I must now consider building a new system.

The system will be Pentium 4.
Any suggestion on Mother Boards, Ram, and Such would be greatfully appreciated.

I will be buying most of my parts from http://www.enuinc.com/ or Fry's Electronics in Wilsonvile.

(I already have a GeForce FX 5700 card.)

Re: OT: Building A New System
 

ASUS makes good motherBoards. ATI and nVidia are tied for video cards. Onboard sound card with the motherboard is quite sufficient in most cases.

I suggest you just cannibalize the old systems and buy as few parts as you need.

Re: OT: Building A New System
 

Atrocities

How much money are you planing to spend on your new system? Also, do you have anything special in mind like a RAID 0 configuration? Are you going to have a 800MHz FSB setup with the P4? This will affect how much RAM you buy.

I would also look at www.newegg.com for computer parts too. They have a good reputation.

For MotherBoards, like Imperator Fyron said, ASUS is good. But I believe Abit is good too. I'm personally thinking about getting the "ASUS 875P P4C800-E Deluxe" when I upgrade. It will be awhile before the Athlon 64-Bit FX-51 comes down in price so I'm going to stick with P4 for now.

For Ram, I like "Corsair", "Crucial", and "Kingston". I feel they're all about the same in quality unless you want to overclock or buy a high-end RAM stick. I would recommend RAM Heatspreaders.

If you use on-board sound, I still recommend buying a cheap 20 dollar soundcard a month or two later in case it goes out.

Knowing that Valve Software used an ATI card for their Half-Life 2 presentation was enough to convince me to want one. I currently have Nvida.

Hope that helps.

[ March 20, 2004, 06:38: Message edited by: hicksz ]

Re: OT: Building A New System
 

HL 2 would look the same on an equivalent nVidia video card...

Re: OT: Building A New System
 

I know, http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif but it's the fact that Valve choose ATI to show off. Isn't that enough to convince you? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif Of course their have been issues and conflicts with games working better with either Nvida or ATI drivers. Diablo 2 and System Shock 2 actually play better with my 3dfx Voodoo 2 than my Nvida card. I have also notice that current games have been choosing sides with a certain vendor. Nvida is the offical card of Deus Ex 2 or something like that.

[ March 20, 2004, 07:09: Message edited by: hicksz ]

Re: OT: Building A New System
 

That is only because nVidia and ATI give those companies money to do so. It is just like all sorts of logo sponsorships in all sectors of advertising. It doesn't actually mean that those companies really think nVidia or ATI is so much better than the other. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: OT: Building A New System
 

I believe what happen was Nvida offered Valve software a video card but it had to be liquid cooled. I don't remember why though. But ATI was able to offer a card at that time that didn't and that's why Valve went with ATI.

Re: OT: Building A New System
 

Thanks guys. Here is what I want to do.

I want to buy a new case, one that has bette cooling and such.

I would love to run dual 200 GB Hard Drives. My blue box is raid, but I could never figure out how to take advantage of it. Now it is just to old to use. (And unreliable)

I know nothing about the new motherBoards or the FSB features and such. Hence I am asking. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Ideally I would like to set up the new system to be:
P4 2.5 (or higher)
1 gig (or more) Ram
GeForce Fx 5700 Card (Already have)
2 200 or 180 GB Hard drives
DVD Burner/Player/CDRW/CD Recorder Rom
(May be one of each, DVD Burner, and a CDRW/CDR drive)
Lots of cooling and a quiet system.
I have considered buying a premade system, less all the troubles of trying to get a new system to work well. But the cost is an issue. Additionally the cases they offer SUCK.

I will be running XP on the system as the OS. That is going to be spendy unless I can use my extra HP OS disk. (For some reason I got two of them when they sent me this replacement PC Last year.)

I mainly want the system for video and photo editing. This system works well, but it lacks the HD space. I am running an exteranal HD with it now and still both HD's are full. Video takes up a lot of space. Ideally what I need is a good DV - Video deck that will communicate with my system as well as my Sony Digital Cameras do.

I could spend the big bucks and buy the Alien PC, but I would rather pay off other bills first.

Re: OT: Building A New System
 

If you want lots of cooling and you want it to be quiet, you will want to get liquid cooling. Better cooling than fans, and makes no noise.

Re: OT: Building A New System
 

Humm, I had not considered that. Thank Fyron, I will check it out.

Re: OT: Building A New System
 

how much does liquid cooling cost?

Re: OT: Building A New System
 

That is a good question, probibly several hundred bucks.

Re: OT: Building A New System
 

Atrocities

I have been looking at buying this case from Antec. It has a lot of room and good airflow. You could do liquid cooling or support 5 fans for airflow. It also comes with a 430W Power Supply.

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...129-115&depa=0

Some of the new motherBoards have onboard RAID. The ASUS motherboard I suggested supports RAID 0/1.

I would recommend you try to go higher on the P4 if you can until the price gets crazy. Probably no higher than 3.0 or 3.2. Extreme Editions are too expensive. The P4 you get should have a C in the name. This is why:

'C' designator:
This letter designator identifies Pentium� 4 processors that support Hyper-Threading Technology � and an 800 MHz front side bus. For example, the Pentium� 4 processor at 2.40C GHz supports an 800 MHz front side bus and Hyper-Threading Technology1.

Here is a document to help you understand the 800Mhz bus with DDR memory.

http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/Dual_DDR_SB.pdf

Basically to achieve the 800MHz bus you need 2 or 4 identical DDR RAM sticks. The motherboard manual will tell you how to install them for 800MHz configuration. Buying one stick of RAM won't give you the 800MHz bus speed.

I recommend that you try to get 2GB of RAM depending on what games you play. Some of the newer games are requiring 500MB of RAM. But recommend 1GB of RAM.

I like Seagate HDs. I think the 10,000RPM HD are too expensive for the amount of storage they give you. For you internal HD, use Serial ATA cable for better airflow (smaller cable) and faster data transfer. 2x200GB HD should be fine for video and photo work.

I think you should have a DVD Burner and a CDRW/CDR drive. The DVD burner will be great for backups especially with 200GB HDs. Make sure you get a DVD burner that has +/- DVD R and +/- DVD RW so you don't have to worry about which format to get.

There was an excellent article in the March 2004 copy of PC World on Quiet your PC. Here is a few of the links they provided:

www.quietpc.com and www.siliconacoustics.com

If you were to buy a prebuilt system, I would go with Alienware too.

Also, good job on the Romulan ship in your STM post. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Have you thought about making the Romulan Scimitar?

I'm going to bed.

[ March 20, 2004, 09:12: Message edited by: hicksz ]

Re: OT: Building A New System
 

Be very wary of anything you buy at Fry's... very shady stores.

Re: OT: Building A New System
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Premade liquid cooling cases at this website:

http://www.koolance.com/

go for 240 to 270 dollars.

Re: OT: Building A New System
 

A good case is not a case with lot of places for fans. More fans = more noise = not a good idea normally.
There also is a big difference in fan noise, and usually cheaper = more noise. Over here, you can get CPU fans from 10 to 80 � - and you hear the difference. Very much. Same for power supplies. Also check out the latest graphic cards not only for performance, but a few companies (ASUS has started it) are offering cards with more efficient, noise-reduced fans. Up to a few years ago, the graphic card fan usually was the loudest and crappiest, this is not a must any more.

ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe has had a lot of failures lately - 2 out of 3 for me, 5 out of 12 I know, and I won't buy another ASUS board for some time. They have started ruining their good reputation some time ago, and now it's really bad. Everything within warranty, but still annoying. Right now, I recommend AMD and EPOX Boards. Stick to the VIA chipsets, though, nForce is still not good. With latest drivers, there are no big problems with VIA now.

RAM: Corsair or Kingston (don't know Crucial), expensive but very good. No no-names - too many failures, and memory errors can happen at odd times after some time of perfect service, giving you a hard time to find out what is really wrong with your system.

And remember: no Windows XP Home if you want to utilize more than 512 MB RAM. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: OT: Building A New System
 

Thanks for the insight and info. You would think that MS would have fixed that 512 Ram issue by now.

I guess its back to Win2k for me. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif Better order the SP disks.

Re: OT: Building A New System
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Fry's is Fry's. You get fried everytime you buy from them. I have had to return a google amount of things I have bought from them and I had a two year long battle with them over my former Incredible Universe card.

I only buy from Fry's with a credit card so if the crap fails, I can refuse the charges. The law works well that way. I buy NAME brand stuff only from them now. No cheep chinese crap.

Re: OT: Building A New System
 

Just get XP Pro if you want XP... it is not much more expensive than XP Home these days, only a couple of bucks.

Re: OT: Building A New System
 

Here is what I would go with for a machine that needed to be stable first, and reasonably fast at the same time.

Intel Pentium 4/ 2.8C GHz 800MHz FSB, 512K Cache, Hyper Threading Technology - Retail
Specification
Model: Intel Pentium 4 2.8C w/ Hyper Threading
Core: Northwood
Operating Frequency: 2.8GHz
FSB: 800MHz
Cache: L1/12K+8K; L2/512K
Voltage: 1.525V
Process: 0.13Micron
Socket: Socket 478
Multimedia Instruction: MMX, SSE, SSE2
Warranty: 3-year MFG

Intel 865PE Chipset Motherboard for Intel Socket 478 CPU, Model "D865PERLK" -OEM
Specifications:
Supported CPU: Socket 478 Intel Pentium 4(HT)/Celeron Processors
Chipset: Intel 865PE + ICH5R
FSB: 800/533/400MHz
RAM: 4x DIMM for DDR400/333/266 Max 4GB
IDE: 2x ATA 100 up to 4 Devices
Slots: 1x AGP 8X/4X/1X(0.8/1.5V), 5x PCI 2.2
Ports: 2xPS2,1xCOM,1xLPT,1xLAN,8xUSB2.0(Rear 4),3xIEEE1394(Rear 1),RCA/Optical SPDIF Out,Audio Ports
Onboard Audio: Analog Devices AD1985 Codec
Onboard LAN: Intel 82547EI 10/100/1000Mbps Ethernet
Onboard SATA/RAID: 2x Serial ATA, RAID 0/1
Onboard 1394: Agere FW323, 3 Ports
Form Factor: ATX

2 sticks of
Buffalo Technology 184 Pin 256MB DDR PC-3200 - OEM
Specification
Manufacturer: Buffalo Technology
Speed: DDR400(PC3200)
Type: 184 Pin DDR SDRAM
Error Checking: Non-ECC
Registered/Unbuffered: Unbuffered
Cas Latency: 3
Support Voltage: 2.6V
Bandwidth: 3.2GB/s
Organization: 32M x 64 -Bit
Warranty: Lifetime

2 of these
Maxtor 160GB 7200RPM IDE Hard Drive, Model 6Y160P0, OEM Drive Only
Specifications:
Capacity: 160GB
Average Seek Time: 9.3 ms
Buffer: 8MB
Rotational Speed: 7200 RPM
Interface: IDE ULTRA ATA133
Features: Maxtor Shock Protection and Data Protection Systems
Manufacturer Warranty: 3 years
Remark: OEM Drive Only

And two of these
Western Digital Raptor 36.7GB 10,000RPM SATA Hard Drive, Model WD360GD, OEM Drive Only
Specifications:
Capacity: 36.7GB
Average Seek Time: 5.2 ms
Buffer: 8MB
Rotational Speed: 10000 RPM
Interface: Serial ATA
Features: Not specified
Manufacturer Warranty: 5 years
Remark: OEM Drive Only

The other stuff you can buy what ever you can find on sale. This system would not need a lot of air, so almost any case and about 3 fans. Two blowing in and one out, a little positive pressure in the case keeps the readers clean. I like cases with filtered intakes.

I would set the system up with a bootable sata mirror on the raptors and use the ide drives in a windows mirror for storage.

What I�ve listed here can be had for $845.00 US. If you need a gig of ram, just add another 90 bucks.

It would make a right good system, real stable and on the lower edge of fast. But if you want real fast, you have to go with a Hammer

http://Groups.msn.com/ThermodynesPlace/fx51244ghz.msnw

[ March 21, 2004, 18:29: Message edited by: Thermodyne ]

Re: OT: Building A New System
 

Thanks Therm. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

That is very helpful.

Re: OT: Building A New System
 

I'm currently on a Soyo MB, with Athlon CPU. But they seem to have a rather nice P4 mobo as well {link}.

Memory, I've used Kingston and PNY in the past, and they've worked well for me, no failures. Get cooling sleeves though, they only cost something like $1.50, and I know DDR can get fairly hot (friend's personal experience with burned fingers, not my own).

For the DVD Drive, I have a Lite-On DVD burner, supports +, -, +/-, RAM DVD formats, and was at same speeds to the other DVD burners I was looking at (a Sony and some other brand). Only difference was the Lite-On was $190, and the other two were $240.

HDDs, I've only used Maxtor and Western Digital. I haven't had a hard drive failure. One of my friends had a Western Digital fail after something like 9 years (I think the computer was dropped...).

Re: OT: Building A New System
 

Therm's specs are fine. But figure on 2 Memory modules. P-4's are memory hungry, there want a lot, & the want it fast. 2 modules will make use of the dual DDR.
you also might look at the Asus P4P800. It has comparable specs to the Intel board (I think expect for firewire) for a comparable price. Asus has a proven record for stability, performance & tweakability. Intel keeps their Boards pretty average.

Re: OT: Building A New System
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">They have a long record, but are relying on it lately, instead of producing Boards up to their previous standards. Their latest Boards, especially the P4B800, has serious design flaws. Capacitors blowing is not what I call stable or reliable, and waiting for replacement Boards 4-6 weeks is not customer service. I seriously advise against Asus right now.

Re: OT: Building A New System
 

Your right about the capacitors, but it is a wide spread problem.
There is some really cheap caps coming from China.

We had one customer who is buying those cheap caps, and then complaining about our power management chips.

It seems this cheap stuff tests OK on RCL analyzer equipment, but fails under real life stress.
We found that some old, crude, tried and true methods, would expose the weakness. Take a few measurements, mix in a little MATH, and the problem is well defined.
Then the real problem of communicating some basic math and science to managers begins.


BTW: I have been very happy with MSI mother Boards.

Re: OT: Building A New System
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You are correct; the post should have said two sticks. The pricing did reflect 1/2 a gig of ram. 512 is the min. amount for an WinXP system that is going to do more than word process.

[ March 21, 2004, 18:32: Message edited by: Thermodyne ]

Re: OT: Building A New System
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">They have a long record, but are relying on it lately, instead of producing Boards up to their previous standards. Their latest Boards, especially the P4B800, has serious design flaws. Capacitors blowing is not what I call stable or reliable, and waiting for replacement Boards 4-6 weeks is not customer service. I seriously advise against Asus right now. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">This has to be the most fustrating thing when during research on a new piece of hardware. For instance, I've done a lot of research on the ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe and I have read many reviews that its the best motherborad that they have ever bought. But your right, I got a handful of people who had nothing but trouble. Some people even get 2 or 3 Boards and have nothing but problems like DOA. But it's not just ASUS. I would do research on Abit Boards, generic Intel Boards, and even EPOX Boards and see people complaining about tech support or a problem on the board. I guess it boils down to features you want, which board you feel comfortable with, and which board didn't screw you over. If I got 3 bad mobos I would be upset too but you read how so many people have no issues.

My first computer I bought myself was a Packard Bell many years ago that still runs fine today. But I have read dozen of websites where hundreds of people had bad experiences with hardware, tech support, etc. But I bought another one two years later from buying the first one and never had one problem. I haven't done much reseach on the ASUS AMD Boards but PC World just gave the ASUS A7V600 motherboard 4 out of 5 stars. So you sit there going what do I believe? I probably still get the ASUS board (unless I get a AMD 64-bit FX-51) because I like the features and hope everything works out ok.

[ March 21, 2004, 19:03: Message edited by: hicksz ]

Re: OT: Building A New System
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">ASUS is ok, but they are overkill for an Intel system that will not be OC�d. I use the ASUS SK8N for my FX51. It was an early board and chip, so I had a few issues at first, but with the latest bios and drivers, it runs real well. When I put Windows 64 on it, I found the driver support to be awful, but that should get better with time.

When I first booted it up, this was the first thing I saw.
http://Groups.msn.com/ThermodynesPla...oto&PhotoID=15

Re: OT: Building A New System
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Do you see any better performance from the Windows 64 OS? I assuming since most programs are written in 32-bits you wouldn't but I was curious. I'm assuming that Windows "Longhorn" will be 64-bits but I haven't read that yet.

Re: OT: Building A New System
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Do you see any better performance from the Windows 64 OS? I assuming since most programs are written in 32-bits you wouldn't but I was curious. I'm assuming that Windows "Longhorn" will be 64-bits but I haven't read that yet. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Na, but then I couldn't use the raid and I didn't have any 64bit apps.