New p.c. need advice.

BloodBath

Alright the college grant has gone through at last so i'm ordering my new rig next week. Have my mind made up on most parts,done a lot of googling, just need a second opinion from some tech heads.

Keep in mind I want to overclock this machine as much as possible.


Right keeping the budget around e2300 the system is as follows.

Thermaltake Lanfire Case.

420Watt true Blue power supply.

Pentium 3.0ghz.

Asus P4C800 Deluxe mobo.

Sapphire Radeon 9800XT 256mb.

Microsoft intelli mouse with ice mat.

For cpu cooling I was looking at the Aerocool Deep Impact DP-102 which is supposed to be the best fan+heatsink combo on the market. Should be able to get about 3.5-3.6ghz with that.

I was also looking at the Thermaltake SubZero4G T.E.C peltier cooler. Does anyone know how effective these coolers are? At e130 it's pricey but what kind of overclock could I achieve with a P4 3.0?

I want to get a good 19" crt monitor from elara. Any advice on what to get around the e350 mark?

The mobo is 800mhz so what ram should I get. The fastest DDR is 4400(550mhz). I'd be willing to get that but is it suitable for overclocking?

Lastly I was going to get a 160gig hard drive but now i'm thinking of setting up a raid array with two 80gig 7200rpm drives. That should give me about 14000rpm. I'm aware that if 1 failed i'd lose everything. Has anyone got this set up? Is it reliable/safe? I know very little about RAID.


Cheers for any help.


BloodBath

Ronaldo7

thats some college grant...beast of a system.:ninja:

Dingatron

Nice machine.

Lastly I was going to get a 160gig hard drive but now i'm thinking of setting up a raid array with two 80gig 7200rpm drives. That should give me about 14000rpm. I'm aware that if 1 failed i'd lose everything. Has anyone got this set up? Is it reliable/safe? I know very little about RAID.

I've a raid 0 setup on mine with 2 X WD RAPTOR 10,000rpm drives. Very fast on bootup, video editing etc. I've been running it for 6 months now with no problems. I have however heard of people getting data corruption and I think this was down to the SIL raid drivers they were using. Worth checking this out. I'd make a ghost image every so often for reasurance though.

BloodBath

Cheers. Waiting for this grant for months so have had pleanty of time to look around for the best components. Buget started at e1800 and slowly climbed to e2300. Could climb even more if I set up the RAID. Sounds very tempting.

Well i've got this far without it. I can go the rest of the year working. The grant is nearly 3 grand so not too bad. About bloody time. It's nearly febuary!


BloodBath

unkel

Originally posted by BloodBath
I want to get a good 19" crt monitor from elara.

I would go for a top class 21" CRT monitor - you're not doing that system justice with 19"

Originally posted by BloodBath
For cpu cooling I was looking at the Aerocool Deep Impact DP-102 which is supposed to be the best fan+heatsink combo on the market. Should be able to get about 3.5-3.6ghz with that.

It doesn't really work like that with the p4c. Even with stock cooler you can reach that level provided you have top of the range memory

Originally posted by BloodBath
The mobo is 800mhz so what ram should I get. The fastest DDR is 4400(550mhz). I'd be willing to get that but is it suitable for overclocking?

This is the crucial bit. Read plenty of recent reviews here. Did this myself a few weeks ago and had to conclude that OCZ EL 4200 were the very best. I bought this from shop4memory.co.uk (based in Cellbridge, Co. Kildare) - they ship for free

With this memory you could attempt breaking 300 * 4 = 1200FSB provided your mobo (and cpu) can take it. This would give you 4.5GHz. This is NOT unrealistic. You WILL need good (air)cooling. This will also require voltage adjustment to cpu and ram. Also bit of luck required. My AI7 mobo is the bottleneck now (some go 290, a lot only 250), so I'm stuk on 3.8GHz

Afaik your mobo is pretty good, but again check all the reviews and also mobo forums to check other people's experiences

Good luck with building a great rig

Oh yeah, have that lanfire myself - pretty good case

BloodBath

I would go for a top class 21" CRT monitor - you're not doing that system justice with 19"

I wish I could get a nice 21" but the money can only go so far. It's about e600 for a good 21".

It doesn't really work like that with the p4c. Even with stock cooler you can reach that level provided you have top of the range memory

Really? Well i'm not gonna use the ****ty stock one. It's there for backup. Thay thermaltake subzero cooling system looks promising and got good reviews, I just can't find any sites that used it to overclock.

Cheers for the help with RAM. Want to get this right before I order.

Ya I like the Xaser 3 too with it's 7 fans but I don't want a massive rig as i'm gonna be movin it around quite a bit so the smaller LanFire suits me fine. The best Lan case on the marker.


BloodBath

Cabaal

Originally posted by Ronaldo7
thats some college grant...

Nice to know its going towards his education :rolleyes:
I know I used to use a Sapphire Radeon 9800XT 256mb. just for coding C++ and using Word

Sleipnir

yeah it's great to know my tax euros are going toward educating some student on extreme gaming.
Oh the humanity.

BloodBath

How do you know im not doing a design course?

Yeah I like my games but it's not the only purpose of the machine. I need the power for video editing amongst other things.

So it is going towards my education too

Please don't give me that tax bull****. I've payed my share of tax and when i'm finished the course I will be paying even more. It's my money to do as I please.

Most students piss their grants against the wall. At least i'm buying something worthwhile.


BloodBath

Venom

Thermaltake Lanfire Case.

420Watt true Blue power supply.

Pentium 3.0ghz.

Asus P4C800 Deluxe mobo.

Sapphire Radeon 9800XT 256mb.

Microsoft intelli mouse with ice mat.

Very close system to my own but I would replace with the following....

DFI Lanparty Pro875B mainboard - these things kick major arse and have every add on that you will probley need. Look damm cool in a windowed case as well. Great reviews all over the web on this baby.

Terratec Razor Boomslang 2100dpi mouse. Take a while to get used to but smoother than any other mouse out there. Excellent for gaming and damm comfy to use. Look very cool as well.

Creative Labs Audigy2 soundcard. Amazing sound off this card. Pair with a good set of 5.1, 6.1 or 7.1 speaker and you will be in heaven.

Whatever DDR ram you go for get at least 1GB of it. Get a 2x512kmb paired set.

unkel

Originally posted by Venom
Creative Labs Audigy2 soundcard. Amazing sound off this card. Pair with a good set of 5.1, 6.1 or 7.1 speaker and you will be in heaven.

Have this myself as well and would highly recommend it. €75 from komplett.ie on this weeks special

Originally posted by Venom
DFI Lanparty Pro875B mainboard - these things kick major arse and have every add on that you will probley need. Look damm cool in a windowed case as well. Great reviews all over the web on this baby.

Have seen impressive reviews on this as well. This is the most important bit of your rig, BloodBath, make no hasty decision

Originally posted by BloodBath
I wish I could get a nice 21" but the money can only go so far. It's about e600 for a good 21"

True, but you could go second hand, keep it a few years, sell it on and buy a vastly improved (since now) greatly reduced 20"+ TFT then. You won't know your disappointment with a 19" on that rig. Bit silly to spend €500 on a graphics card and then only €300 on a new 19" monitor imho

EDIT: If you intend to move it around alot be careful what cooling you get. Very heavy heatsinks can do damage - check this out first. My Zalman weighs 775g (copper) and it is advised not to move it about much

BloodBath

Cheers I forgot to ask about a sound card and e70 was my buget.

Was looking at that DFI mobo. It looks sweet with UV and it is excellent for overclocking but in Benchmarks it is slightly slower than the Asus p4c800 and it's around the same price I think.


Ya I wouldn't mind buying a 21" second hand providing it was good quality and not too old. Does anyone know any sites I might be able to pick one up 2nd hand?

If you intend to move it around alot be careful what cooling you get. Very heavy heatsinks can do damage - check this out first. My Zalman weighs 775g (copper) and it is advised not to move it about much

Yeah I think that the thermalcool one weighs in around the same but thr p4's can handle a bit more weight than the athlons. It's 300grams for the athlons and 500grams for the p4 isn't it? Just gonna have to be careful.


Great help so far, keep it coming. Cheers.


BloodBath

astrofool

Get an athlon 64-3000+ or 3200+, both perform faster than a p4 3.0 and 3.2, and there's future 64-bit support which will give another little boost to things.

Motherboard wise, kv8-max3 for the athlon 64. If you're determined to go the intel route, the ic7-max3 is a better board.

You'd save about £20 by going for a 3000+ athlon 64 over the intel combo.

Cooling wise, zalmans new top model is very good and quiet.

The sapphire 9800XT has been great for me, just watch that you check on the hl2 voucher, mine didn't come with it, but was sent out after a quick phone call.

Monitor wise, idek iiyama is probably about the best price/performance wise. See if you can get one that does 1280x1024 @ 100hz.

I have had a raid setup for a few years now, going from 2x40gig ibm's and now have 2x120gig wd caviars (serial ata). Haven't had an array fail on me, I do however have an old 45 gig drive in the system as well which I use soley for backing up, and will probably look at getting a 120gig drive to back up to. Simply put its twice as likely to fail as a single hard drive. I would not run a raid 1 setup soley without a backup method, depends how valuable the data is tho.

Get an audigy 2 ZS rather than the old audigy 2. Besides that just make sure u have everything else ticked off, cd/dvd-rom/writer, floppy drive, speakers.

astrofool

heatsink weight wise, the athlon 64's have a high weight limit.

unkel

Originally posted by astrofool
Get an athlon 64-3000+ or 3200+, both perform faster than a p4 3.0 and 3.2, and there's future 64-bit support which will give another little boost to things.

Motherboard wise, kv8-max3 for the athlon 64. If you're determined to go the intel route, the ic7-max3 is a better board.

You'd save about £20 by going for a 3000+ athlon 64 over the intel combo.

The athlon 64 is certainly an alternative and doesn't cost any more so well within your budget. In unclocked form the cheapest one is faster in most tests than the p4 3000c. However with your setup you could get a 25% - 50% increase in system speed, the athlon won't go that far. You might want to look into this though and read more reviews

BTW I don't want to start any Intel v AMD discussion here!! This was just a quick and simple overview

Originally posted by astrofool
Monitor wise, idek iiyama is probably about the best price/performance wise. See if you can get one that does 1280x1024 @ 100hz.
QUOTE]

Good point. I have set this as the norm myself a while ago and will never go below this again. Also have had an IIyama for donkey's years before and was very happy with it. Second hand the Dell branded Sony Trinitron's are good. There are a good few around, post in the wanted forum

Woden

with regards to the power supply you mention a true blue 420W. is this the one by antec if so i think they only make it in 480W. which is what i have, antec also do a 550W version of there "normal" psu if your interested.

data

Cabaal

Originally posted by BloodBath
Most students piss their grants against the wall. At least i'm buying something worthwhile.

We all know Quake III and Battlefeild 1942 are worth while games...
:rolleyes:

zAbbo

most students get the grant because they requirte it, that said its been building me new pc`s for the past 4 years(except this year)

Woden

well its my first year getting the grant and it helped me with my pc

unkel

Well you guys are getting the grant so it is up to you to decide how to spend it. If it is on a pc, or on beer is up to you. I don't begrudge you that, even though I am paying for it - for just about one of those big grants a month

BloodBath

Get an athlon 64-3000+ or 3200+, both perform faster than a p4 3.0 and 3.2, and there's future 64-bit support which will give another little boost to things.

I've been reading up on this and was torn for a while between the P4 3.0 and the athlon 64 3200(both around e300) but i'm going to go for the pentium. The athlons only perform a little better in games but they are well below in multi media like div x and burning programs. Also there is little support at the moment in the way of mobo's and heatsinks. Lastly, like unkel said, they don't have the potential for overclocking that the P4 3.0 has. I could easily get it up to about 3.6-3.8ghz which would perform vastly better than the athlon.

Motherboard wise, kv8-max3 for the athlon 64. If you're determined to go the intel route, the ic7-max3 is a better board.

Might get the ic7, there seems to be very little between it and the asus though.

Cooling wise, zalmans new top model is very good and quiet.

Ya but it's not as good as the aerocool one I mentioned and despite the fact it has two fans it's still very quiet. I'd get a better overclock with the aerocool.

Monitor wise, idek iiyama is probably about the best price/performance wise. See if you can get one that does 1280x1024 @ 100hz.

Ya I was looking for something that would do 1600x1200 above 80-90hz.


Cheers for the advice on raid arrays. I'm going to get the two drives then and set one up. Going to have to wait a while before I get a third drive for backup. In the meantime I will just back up anything important to DVD.

Get an audigy 2 ZS rather than the old audigy 2. Besides that just make sure u have everything else ticked off, cd/dvd-rom/writer, floppy drive, speakers.

I'm not forgeting anything. Don't need speakers. I'm going to connect it to my sound system. Nice hi-fi and spekers for my 5.1.

Second hand the Dell branded Sony Trinitron's are good. There are a good few around, post in the wanted forum

Is there 21" ones and how much do they go for? Whats the refresh rate like?

with regards to the power supply you mention a true blue 420W. is this the one by antec if so i think they only make it in 480W. which is what i have, antec also do a 550W version of there "normal" psu if your interested.

Ya it's the antec. Sorry my mistake it is 480w. Heard good reviews for it. Very quiet.

Well you guys are getting the grant so it is up to you to decide how to spend it. If it is on a pc, or on beer is up to you. I don't begrudge you that, even though I am paying for it - for just about one of those big grants a month

Your paying 3 grand tax a month! What work are you doing?

Thanks for the help again.

BloodBath

Civilian_Target

One of the guys in our house has a LAN fire case and it's the most gimmiky piece of **** you'll ever see, with a tacky looking backlit flame on the front. Also, if you're going to have it in your room, the fans that come with it aren't exactly quiet. My advice would be to spend the money on a nicer case, like those sliver and blue chenbro gaming bomb ones, they don't have the heat monitor though, although they're not that expensive.

Also, Audigy2 is an overpriced POS if you ask me. Can I recommend the Videologic Sonicfury DVD for £50 stg. It's got 5.1 with good high-quality connector, and a 4th 3.5mm jack to stick your headphone into, as well as having the usual line in and mic sockets, and optical in and out. Only real downside is that it doesn't support EAX 3, but since nothing really uses that much yet, it doesn't matter. And on the upshot, it's about £40 cheaper than the Audigy2, which you can use to get a thermal monitor for your chenbro case, and some properly quiet fans.

And to correct you on a point, if you check out doom9.org, you'll find that while P4s are faster at enocding on DivX 5 and DivX3.1, for what is quickly becoming the most commonly used codec today, XviD (because it's prettier) they lag behind substantially, in fact I'm told an Athlon 2500XP outperforms the 3ghz P4 for XviD encoding. It's all about pipelining as much as Ghz.

unkel

Originally posted by Civilian_Target
Also, Audigy2 is an overpriced POS if you ask me. Can I recommend the Videologic Sonicfury DVD for £50 stg... it's about £40 cheaper than the Audigy2

Beg to differ on the Audigy2, although I don't know the Sonicfury. The audigy is €75 on Komplett which is pretty much the same as £50

Civilian_Target

According to Komplett.co.uk,
Creative Soundblaster Audigy 2 PCI
- Firewire,THX, DD EX6.1, Retail - £84

They have OEM ones for £30 less "Awaiting Stock, unconfirmed, 02 April 2004" which are presumably the ones you're referring to on Komplett.ie for €75, but if you want to wait until april for unconfirmed stock, go for it.

On dabs.com, they have the Soncifury RP for £40 incl. VAT, and the Sonicfury RP DVD for £51.07, the only difference seems to be that it has a hardware MPEG II decoder, which is not really necessary if you have a P4, although it will help if you're making DivXs.

BloodBath

The Thermaltake Lanfire case is rated as the best lan case on the market and none of the reviews I read said the fans were noisy. You think it's tacky looking! I think that chenbro case is tacky looking although the silver and blue one is alright. The LanFire is a beaut. They might not be expensive but it's easy to see why. Also it weighs over 8kgs. The thermaltake weighs only 4kg, has fan controls for the 4 well positioned fans and 2 temperture recorders for the case and c.p.u. You can set a max temp for both and if it is exceeded the diplay changes from blue to red and an alarm goes off. Now I think thats worth the extra money.


I'm still sticking with the Pentium. For most applications I will get better performance. Remember i'm going to overclock it to about 3.8ghz.


All opinions are welcome though. It's down to personal taste when it comes to cases I suppose. I prefer me thermaltake.


BloodBath

unkel

Originally posted by Civilian_Target
One of the guys in our house has a LAN fire case and it's the most gimmiky piece of **** you'll ever see, with a tacky looking backlit flame on the front. Also, if you're going to have it in your room, the fans that come with it aren't exactly quiet.

LOL Full of expletives today Civilian_Target? The flame is indeed tacky, planning on covering that up or ripping it off or something. The case is pretty good though and only weighs 4kg. Good value for a top brand full aluminium case. The fans are variable thus also the noise. Then you can always use resistor powercables to decrease the voltage, thus speed and noise.

Originally posted by BloodBath
I've been reading up on this and was torn for a while between the P4 3.0 and the athlon 64 3200(both around e300) but i'm going to go for the pentium

Might get the ic7, there seems to be very little between it and the asus though.

Had the same considerations before I ordered the components for my rig late last year. Careful with the choice of mobo though. I've seen great reviews of the IC7-MAX3 but also saw a lot of bitching about it in forums. I've the AI7 and it's a lovely board, but I got stuck just over 250FSB on it and I'm convinced it's the board. From the forums a lot of people are in this boat as well, but some have clocked 300+

Originally posted by BloodBath
Ya I was looking for something that would do 1600x1200 above 80-90hz.

That would look silly imho on a 19", I run 1280*960 @100Hz on my 21". Make sure the monitor can do 100Hz at whatever resolution you're going to use. Try the wanted forum to see are there any boarders mad enough to part with one

Originally posted by BloodBath
Your paying 3 grand tax a month! What work are you doing?

Not quite - thought for a mo your grant was 2k but now remember

I know SFA about setting up raid atm but intend to set up SATA Raid 0 over the next few months - will ask the experts here then

unkel

Crossed post with you there BloodBath

Originally posted by BloodBath
I'm still sticking with the Pentium. For most applications I will get better performance. Remember i'm going to overclock it to about 3.8ghz.

I'm running 3.8 and I consider myself unlucky that my mobo doesn't take any more. Any good quality mobo for 865/875, an average p4c and excellent memory this is the VERY LEAST you can expect. As I've pointed out, if your mobo can take more, 4-4.5GHz are possible with good aircooling.

This was for me the deciding factor about going p4c and not athlon64. I've been on amd for years before this. Also what I had read about HT played a part. This makes a big difference as well and in fact I'm happier with the HT then with the speed of the rig

On my last amd, an athlon xp3000, there were two chances of successfully burning a dvd, encoding a vid, listening to music, surfing etc at the same time

BloodBath

What case and heatsink/fan are you using unkel? 3.8 seems like a big overclock for a heatsink. Hoping for similar results.


BloodBath

Venom

BloodBath Iv a Xaser III case and with all fans going its very quite so dont mind the begrudgers

DONT however get an IC7 board. Far to many problems with them, hell Im about to upgrade mine Im so unhappy with it.

unkel

Originally posted by BloodBath
What case and heatsink/fan are you using unkel? 3.8 seems like a big overclock for a heatsink. Hoping for similar results.BloodBath

Have the lanfire as well (incl 4 fans) and the Zalman 7000CU. 3.8 is not a big overclock, this runs stable with all 4 fans set to minimum and the zalman to silent (minimum). The only thing you need is a good board and excellent memory and you get your 25% overclock even with STOCK cooling

Check the web (major site, can't remember which one) for a p4c 2.4 running stable at 3.3 with stock cooling, that's 38% overclock. Translating this to p4c 3.0 this results in 4.1. Now add good cooling and you can see how I arrive at my figures (have seen many > 4GHz posted on 865/875 forums with aircooling)

That is the very thing that made me decide p4c. You'd be very unlucky not to reach this

Waiting to get 1 or 2 SATA quiet drives, atm have very loud WD SE 80GB so all fans are switched to full

unkel

Originally posted by Civilian_Target
According to Komplett.co.uk,
Creative Soundblaster Audigy 2 PCI
- Firewire,THX, DD EX6.1, Retail - £84

They have OEM ones for £30 less "Awaiting Stock, unconfirmed, 02 April 2004" which are presumably the ones you're referring to on Komplett.ie for €75, but if you want to wait until april for unconfirmed stock, go for it.

We're on boards.IE, so I quote prices from komplett.IE

Also why would I have to wait until April

It says on the website the 4th of February (Wednesday week). Pain in the neck to wait, but could very well be these are not accurate as we've seen many times in the last months (how many - I stopped counting) that the site has been screwed up.

Also why the hell would you go retail. The card is £47 btw - just checked