New PC , need help

T-b0n3

cool nice one bazH.
specs sound okay now?all suggestions welcome

only thing im missing ( as far as i know ) is the CD-Rom drive , i think it be best to get 1 drive that can do everything ( read cds/dvd and burn cds/dvds ) any one any suggestions on what to buy? i heard the sony dru is best?

CASE > Shuttle Spacewalker XPC SN45G nForce2 Ultra 400 Aluminium Barebones System (FS-020-SH) - E213

SOUND > Creative Soundblaster Audigy 2 PCI soundcard w/1394,THX, DD EX6.1, Bulk - E75

GFX > PowerColor Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB - Retail (GX-006-PC) - 300

CPU > AMD Athlon "Barton" XP2500+ 333FSB (Socket A) CPU - OEM (CP-039-AM) - E90

MEMORY > OCZ 512MB (2x256MB) PC3200 Dual Channel Platinum Series DDR CAS2 (MY-004-OC) - E166

HDD > Samsung SP1213C 120GB - OEM (HD-011-SA) - E100

Coolermaster Aero 7 Lite (Socket A) (HS-007-CM) - E20
Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound (3.5g) (AC-000-AC) - E10

everything included now? aint missing any thing that ill need? or ne suggestions to improve system. thanks

adam

netman

I'd swap the hard drive for something with a better track record.

Nothing worse than the hard drive failing on you and having no backup, trust me.
It ain't worth the 10-20 euro you're gonna save on it.

Get a well-known brand with a good reputation. Seagate Barracudas are excellent, quiet, and not getting too hot. If you want something that performs a bit better, and is a tad bit noisier and warmer, go for a Western Digital.

Also, you don't need to waste your money on a separate sound card, the nForce chipset comes with a state-of-the-art sound onboard. You won't notice the difference between the nForce and Audigy2 sound.

Other than that, I think you're set.

Just one word of advice. If you're looking to upgrade your system, you'd be better off with a full sized desktop PC. The shuttle is great, looks really cool, takes up little to no space, easily portable and still gives you pretty much all you want out of a PC. But you can forget about changing the motherboard, adding another hard drive, optical drive etc.

So before you spend all this money, make sure you're happy knowing that your only upgrade options are pretty much the same as if you bought a Dell PC. You can upgrade the graphics card (up to the point where AGP cards are available), processor (up as far as Socket-A will go) and memory (up as far as DDR will go).

This year we'll be seeing DDR-II memory coming out, PCI Express cards (PCIX-16 graphics cards, and PCIX-1 expansion cards), new sockets and new CPU's, new chipsets etc.

The next time you want to get a new CPU you will most likely have to sell the shuttle and get a new one. With a desktop PC, you'll have to change a few parts, but you'll be able to keep some of them bringing the cost of that upgrade down.

If you wanna run the latest games then all of the PC's become pretty much obsolete within a year.

Venom

Good point netman, shuttles have never done anything for my tastes tbh, but I fully agree in paying out for a good case that will outlast any chip and mobo you by.

T-b0n3

i wanted a shuttle but that kinda puts me off now.
can ne one suggest a nice case then?
the Globalwin GAT-001 v.2 Aluminium Case (CA-008-GL) is nice? or what else is on the market?
and still in need of CD-Rom drive ( all in one dvd burner etc. ) any ideas?

adam

Woden

well for a burner i recommend the lite-on 52x one, liteon make quality burners, check out a review of there dvd burners i'm not so sure what the story is with them.

cases try an antec sonata or a coolermaster black widow or the new antec super lanboy haven't ready any reviews on that last one but it looks nice and hopefully they fixed some of the issues with the previous lanboy like possible bad airflow

Venom

Originally posted by T-b0n3
i wanted a shuttle but that kinda puts me off now.
can ne one suggest a nice case then?
the Globalwin GAT-001 v.2 Aluminium Case (CA-008-GL) is nice? or what else is on the market?
and still in need of CD-Rom drive ( all in one dvd burner etc. ) any ideas?

adam

I love my ThermalTake Xaser III case. Looks cool, well built, lots of expanability and plenty of fans to keep stuff cool.

T-b0n3

k cheers ill have a look at it
still need PSU for that , ideas?

adam

Woden

some thing from antec, depends on how much your willing to spend, i have a nice antec trueblue 480W that would do the job for ya nicely but you'd probably get away with a good 350W psu, dont skimp on a crappy generic psu, antec, zalman, be quiet and fortron are well recommended psu's, i'm sure others will back that up

bizmark

480! hes not powering a small country is he

380 would do him fine Antec are a good company as well

T-b0n3

lol cheers.

CASE > Globalwin GAT-001 v.2 Aluminium Case (CA-008-GL) - E135
( thermaltake case costy :E )

MOTHERBOARD > Abit NF7-S v2.0 nForce2 (Socket A) Motherboard MB-028-AB - E100

GFX > PowerColor Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB - Retail (GX-006-PC) - 300

CPU > AMD Athlon "Barton" XP2500+ 333FSB (Socket A) CPU - OEM (CP-039-AM) - E90

MEMORY > OCZ 512MB (2x256MB) PC3200 Dual Channel Platinum Series DDR CAS2 (MY-004-OC) - E166

HDD > Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 Serial ATA 120GB - OEM (HD-004-SE) - E105

Coolermaster Aero 7 Lite (Socket A) (HS-007-CM) - E20
Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound (3.5g) (AC-000-AC) - E10

( dont need auidgy2 with that motherboard , do I? i remember someone saying i dont )

any thing else i need? or suggestions ?

by the way , sorry this has dragged on so long , really appriciate it all thanks

adam

bizmark

Nice pc ....maybe a 400w-480 psu would be a good idea

Woden

ha ha bizmark how do you like those applies eh?

T-b0n3, www.shop4memory sell the ocz stuff make sure you not just getting the stuff from www.overclockers.co.uk, komplett and that may be cheaper

bizmark

ha ha bizmark how do you like those applies eh?

shouldnt you be watching Enterprise mod boy

netman

get a good-brand 300-350W power supply. the quality makes a big difference, as you'll see in the price. you can probably get a no-name 500w power supply for half the money you'd pay for a decent 300w power supply.

it's better for the system stability and component durability to have a steady, controlled current coming out of the power supply, than a seemingly unlimited amount of power coming out in deviating voltages and loosing current as soon as you put it to a more demanding task.

i got a 550w antec power supply. simply because i got it cheap in the states. otherwise, i see no difference between my enermax 365w and this one. the system simply doesn't need any more.

now.. i know i've kinda put you off the shuttle.. but hear this before you decide...

in the next year, we'll get a new memory (DDR-II), new bus (PCI-Express), new sockets (both Intel and AMD), new chipsets to support the new processors and sockets, AND!! new motherboard format and new case format!

i bought my case about 5-6 years ago, and it's taken me through the days of pentium till the days of pentium 4. absolutely amazing in these days. but the new format - BTX, is taking off from ATX, and offers smaller, more compact and better cooled PC's.

there will be transitional motherboards in the first while, so going for a desktop PC instead of a shuttle will last you a bit longer, but not 5-6 years.. maybe another 6-12 months longer.

to go with BTX, you'll pretty much have to throw away everything.. case, motherboards, power supply, processor, memory, graphics card.. they will have a few PCI (normal PCI, 32-bit) slots in the beginning... so the only thing you'll be able to keep is your mouse, keyboard and monitor.

shuttle doesn't sound so bad anymore

i haven't put the figures down, so i don't know what the difference is.. if it's in the favor of the shuttle, go that way. save a bit of cash and upgrade in 12-18 months.

i'm in a different position, i got a good case, motherboard etc. i'll get on to the prescott bandwagon, get a new cpu and everything else says the same.. a year from now i'll probably replace everything but the monitor/keyboard/mouse. need to start saving now!

netman

btw.. i got a tub of arctic silver.. never gonna use all of it, so you're more than welcome to use it for your cpu.. if you're in dublin i could meet you in town..

otherwise, it's 10 euro.. not that much

T-b0n3

lol , now i want the shuttle again
too tired at the moment , ill think tomorrow , thanks for the good advice and information tho , really helps cheers.
but with the motherboard , do i need a good soundcard? some-one said the onboard sound was just as good?

night night now
adam

Woden

the onboard sound on the nforce 2 is quite good but not as good as an audigy or audigy 2, the question is will you be able to notice the difference and i have to say i don't know, i replaced my onboard nforce 2 with my audigy just to have a handy firewire port, don't think i notice much difference but i do think the audigy is better, question is it is €80 better for you? and should you put the money it something else

uberpixie

T-bone why are you building a new box?

Dataisgod made a good point in the second post and i think you should listen to it.

Buy a 9800 pro and another 1/2 gig of ram for your dell machine. It wont be the fastest PC on the block or win awards for its 3dmark score but with that setup you will play any game for the next year on high detail at solid playable rates.

New graphics and a bit of ram 350-400 euro? With about 600e in your back pocket for what ever.

To be honest a 2600xp machine you will spend twice to three times as much money on making for very little real gain in performance.

If you really want to build wait 6 months. Wait for the next line of Intels, wait for AMD to switch to the new socket for AMD 64s, wait for PCI express wait for prices on gfx cards to fall.

Build now and all you will do is make yourself a cul-de-sac PC that is a waste of money.

However if you decide to build now best of luck, building is worth all the pain and hassle and it's a great buzz when it all finally comes together and works :-)

netman

Yeah, it's not a good time to be buying now, as we're coming to the point where everything is transitioning to a new standard.

I know the feeling though, I can't wait either, gotta have new toys.

Don't be mistaken, waiting for the new stuff to come out will turn out to be extremely expensive. DDR-II RAM is already reported to be twice as expensive. I'm sure PCI-X cards will be more expensive too.. motherboards too.. cases too.. It won't be worth switching to until it becomes mainstream, probably a year later when ATX gets completely phased out.

If you keep an eye on what you're buying, you'll most likely get about 18 months out of it. And then you gotta sell everything to keep in the game.

Or.. You can replace the graphics card, which is the worst part of that Dell, get a Radeon 9800 Pro and you won't know what hit you. I had a 1 GHz P3 and replaced a Geforce 1 with a Geforce 4 card and I couldn't believe the difference. Later on I upgraded to 1.8 GHz Pentium4, DDR RAM and all the goodies, and didn't see much benefit from that as I did from the graphics card.

Look... It's worth considering... You were gonna buy the 9800 Pro anyway, so why not get it first, see if you're happy with that, and if not you can get yourself a shuttle or a new desktop.

It's also worth checking with Dell what's supported on that PC. You might be able to get a faster CPU as well. Honestly I don't think you need more RAM, I know it's cheap these days, but there's hardly anything out there at the moment that would use up more than 256 MB. I got 512 on my machine and I'm running a virtual development linux server on the same PC, and still have plenty of RAM left. I'm guessing people are buying tons of RAM and never checking the task manager to see how much they're actually using. My guess is it's gonna be 80% free

T-b0n3

sounds as though it be 18months or more before this stuff is widely available , to be honest , dont think i can hold out on this rig till then , even if i was to just buy a new gfx card for this rig.

if i sell this rig now (sell it now while it mite be worth something :E) , and buy new one , wont cost me that much more then just buying gfx card.

or whats the rest of your opinions?

adam

netman

Well...

Intel will launch the new Pentium 4 processors based on the Prescott core (extra instructions and twice the cache size) in february. Then sometime between april and june they will launch new chipsets and new motherboards supporting higher spec processors.

Those new chipsets will also have support for DDR-II memory and PCI-Express. My guess is that some of them will be in BTX format. So waiting for another two months could save you a lot of hassle down the road. The power supply & case you get for BTX will probably last you for another 5 years. DDR-II memory and PCIX card will also last longer, you'll have very few components to change when upgrading.

In general being an early-adopter usually means being a guinea pig and beta-tester for these companies. Windows doesn't support PCI-Express, and only the new version of Windows (which isn't out yet and may not be out on time) will support that new hardware.

If you're buying now, you'll be selling the whole system when you upgrade, so you might as well go for the shuttle if that's what you like.

T-b0n3

if i was to wait , how long would i have to wait to get a new rig , with all that stuff? and it probs be really expensive? :E

u suggest waiting? or buying new rig now and then upgrading when thats all out and dropped in prices a little?
sounds to me like it will be a good while before most people have this stuff, and from experience , most things get delayed for one reason or another.

adam

Venom

Netman you make good points about waiting to upgrade but, those new chips, mainboards and ram are going to cost a fortune. Tbon buying new parts for a pc is always hard due to haw fast new tech comes on the market. Buying the top spec bits and peices to have the ultimate pc = 2 months max untill the next items hits the market.

If your going for a wait and see approch then start buying the part you need that wont change for a good while like case and psu.

Woden

tbh theres always something around the corner, you might as well upgrade now, even if you wait for the prescott big deal at the moment your not even going for a pentium system, you only have €1000 as is your keeping you monitor to get better hardware, and while your getting a good system its still not top end so i say just go for it

data

T-b0n3

aye data , thats what i was thining matey.

kk back to this :E , sound okay now?

CASE > Shuttle Spacewalker XPC SN45G nForce2 Ultra 400 Aluminium Barebones System (FS-020-SH) [ got motherboard with good onboard sound and PSU with it? correct?] - E212

GFX > PowerColor Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB - Retail (GX-006-PC) - E300

CPU > AMD Athlon "Barton" XP2500+ 333FSB (Socket A) CPU - OEM (CP-039-AM)-E90

MEMORY > 512Mb DDR RAM, PC3200, 184 pins - OCZ Top performance - E129

HDD > Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 Serial ATA 120GB - OEM (HD-004-SE) - E105

CD ROM > all in one dvd burner , yet to be decided , open to ideas/suggestions.

Coolermaster Aero 7 Lite (Socket A) (HS-007-CM) - E20
Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound (3.5g) (AC-000-AC) - E10

all in order? and all included?

cheers for all the help
adam

Woden

ok get that powercolour from komplett its availabe there for €266, use the extra money to get 160gb s-ata drive instead

by top performance ocz memory that is not the platinium ocz memory which is actually better but of course dearer , also they don't have it as a single stick on shop4memory only as 2*256 your decision about how much you wanna spend on ram, end of the day chances are you won't notice the difference.

all in one burners, check out the contenders from pioneer, lite-on and i've heard good things about LG cd-burners recently so check out there dvd burners, perhaps the nec ones also, what you need is a good comparitive review go google.

i'm not familiar with all the small form factor pc's and the different choices, if your getting onboard sound make sure its soundstorm with the nforce 2 mb

unkel

Originally posted by Dataisgod
ok get that powercolour from komplett its availabe there for €266

Yeah if you're a gamer - that is very good value for money imho

Originally posted by Dataisgod
by top performance ocz memory that is not the platinium ocz memory which is actually better but of course dearer , also they don't have it as a single stick on shop4memory only as 2*256 your decision about how much you wanna spend on ram, end of the day chances are you won't notice the difference.

Top of the range (PC4000 / PC 4200) ocz comes in Performance and EL versions at the mo. The latter is more expensive and better

Make sure you are going to need that high a quality of ram - indeed for AMD you don't really need faster than PC3200

T-b0n3

so what ram u suggest lads?

cheers bout gfx card.

ill have a look at the dvd burners.

i can buy auidgy2 if sound isnt up to it at a later date.

adam

Woden

get good pc3200 or pc3500 ram that is all you need with the amd.

check out these ram sticks, the last two are basically the same stick but one has fancy led's on it and as a result is a little dearer

OCZ 512MB PC3200 Platinum Series DDR CAS2 (MY-016-OC)

Corsair 512MB DDR XMS3200LLPT Low Latency Platinum CAS2 (MY-014-CS)
Corsair 512MB DDR XMS3200LL Low Latency Pro CAS2 (MY-028-CS)

both of these are quality sticks and will set you back about €150, i'd recommend just buying one stick of 512mb then you can upgrade with another stick of 512 if you need to later, don't know how many ram slots are on a shuttle tbh

T-b0n3

k cheers ill have a look now mate

everything else in order?

adam