OT: Building A New System

[narf poit chez BOOM]

how much does liquid cooling cost?

[Atrocities]

That is a good question, probibly several hundred bucks.

[hicksz]

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. Have you thought about making the Romulan Scimitar?

I'm going to bed.

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

[Fyron]

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

[hicksz]

Originally posted by narf poit chez BOOM:
how much does liquid cooling cost?

Premade liquid cooling cases at this website:

http://www.koolance.com/

go for 240 to 270 dollars.

[Roanon]

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.

[Atrocities]

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. Better order the SP disks.

[Atrocities]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Be very wary of anything you buy at Fry's... very shady stores.

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.

[Fyron]

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

[Thermodyne]

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 ]