Question

pablo21

Thread

How do Folks, I've been given a free Intel Northwood 3.2 ghz chip to build a PC with here at work (Nice that!) and I want to build a serious piece of Kit around it and I'm looking for a few suggestions from some of the more experienced of you. Now within reason, money is not really an object because its gonna be for personal use only as opposed to customer spec. So heres my question, if you were building a wish list PC, would you pick this chip to start on or something different or seeing as I'm getting this chip for free what kind of wish list would you build around it?? I want something very fast and a bit special. All help and info greatly appreciated! I'm gonna go down the snazzy case road aswell and probably use a DVD burner and a pretty good spec sound and graphics. Looking forward to hearing your suggestions!!!

Adeptus Titanicus

Pablo, you could do worse than look at Loki's spec starter kit here and go for something like the high-end machine, swapping your CPU and chosen motherboard into it. It's a very good start point. Then just research the individual bits.

Col_Loki

Motherboard: MB ATX S478 Abit IC7-MAX3 € 176,98
CPU : Your 3.2ghz Intel
CPU Cooler : ZALMAN CNPS-7000-AlCu € 27,99
HardDisk : 2 x SATA 160GB Samsung SP1614C 8MB € 107,85
DVD/CDRW : DVDR IDE Pioneer DVR-107 bulk € 119,89
DVD/CDRW : DVD IDE Pioneer DVD-120S 16x/40x € 34,48
Graphics : 128MB Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro L € 206,98
Memory : DDR PC433 1GB Mushkin Dual-Kit Level 1 € 288,80
Sound Card : Creative SB Audigy 2 ZS Retail € 74,99

Have a look at www.jes-computer.de for all these parts .....and also if you need a keyb and mouse.

Speakers....... www.creative.ie (the audigy supports 7.1 sound, so mabye surround sound speakers - free delivery)
Case........... www.xcase.co.uk (case is sort of a personal choice)
Case/Monitor ........ www.komplett.ie (cheap delivery on heavy items)
Case/Monitor....... www.elara.ie (cheap delivery on heavy items)
PowerSupply .......
www.hitide.ie (silent, very powerfull and excellent quality.... generally the PSU that comes with most cases arent that good)

This is a rough guide, if you need advise on cases / keyb & mouse just shout. The DVD burner is one of the best you can get, motherboard is superb, i love the audigy soundcard - great quality, very good Ram and a dual kit to take advantage of Dual-DDR on the intel motherboard (big memory performance gains), Nice quiet but good performance hard drives (ready for Raid0 if you like - extra performance), one of the best silent coolers for the CPU, and also very decent PSU, one of the best graphics cards you can buy (the 9800XT is a waste of money).

If this is over budget or theres some other thing you would like to add to just give us a shout.

pablo21

Loki, thats champion information! Thanks a million for your help!

tman

fair play Loki, i've actually started checking this board more frequently since you became mod.
you've given nothing but sterling advice thusfar

Woden

loki do you know how that burner compares to liteon's best offering?

i've heard good things about pioneer burners, but i hold the lite-on cd-rw in high regard due to the fact that they can burn almost any cd regardsless of protection

data

Col_Loki

Cheers guys, glad to know im being a bit of a help !!

[edit] I think generally you just cant go wrong with pioneer , plextor or LiteOn ....... some of the best brands IMO. Ive just hears so many good things about the pioneer 106 & 107 that its easy to recomend.

Ive the NEC DVD+R burner and while ive had no problems with it, i have a couple of friends who got it and have had all sorts of problems. Also NEC dont have any Firmware upgrades for the burner....... so i dont recomend them.

LG i found pretty good with there CDRW & DVD drives, but i need to research their DVD burner's a little more.


Ohh and thats my 1000th post !!

Adeptus Titanicus

Happy 1000th Post!

On the LG Drives, I got one of the "Super Multi" DVD burners, the GSA-4040B. It writes a whole load of formats.
DVD+/-R write at 4x,
DVD+RW write at 2.4x,
DVD-RW write at 2x,
DVD-RAM write at 3x

and the usual CD R at 24x
RW at 16x

I believe there's a new model out with increased speed, but this is a good all rounder. Good price too

Col_Loki

Yea i remember reading up on one LG dvd writer and it got a fantastic review........ as it turns out it is the GSA-4040b that i was reading about. The fastest drive of the review for just about everything....... it was followed closely by the Pioneer 106 !!

Have always liked LG and AFAIK there linked with hitachi which definetly isint a bad thing. The only drive that had DVD-Ram compatability. Top drive, would have liked to see the LiteOn and Plextor in the review aswell ...... will just have to go searching!!

PS review is toms hardware, which i normally dont like as i spot serious blunders in sometimes (Very noticable to me in the PSU and AMD64 review)........but i found this one quite good and its definetly worth a look ....... http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/20031027/index.html

Gerry

Tom and his crackpot team make serious blunders with "secret" new cpu's, and try to stir the amd-intel "battle" in whatever way they can, but they do occasionally come up with great articles, like the infamous thermal death videos. I also enjoyed the psu testing, no other site that I've seen tests psu's to destruction. The site is also good for comparing graphics cards, as they test a wide range of cards, on many apps. Check out the big vga guides as well, very handy for seeing how graphics cards from the last 3-4 years measure up, on both a fast and slow system.

Also, COL_LOKI, even more off topic, but just wondering if you have heard of any problems with the ic7, a friend is having bad stability with his, tried slowing down the ram, but still the occasional crash. Is it just very fussy about memory? Its kingston pc3200, thought it would be ok.

Col_Loki

Yea i feel the exact same way about his reviews, the whole intel V amd thing is crazy........ especially when he used 2-2-2-5 corsair ram in the intel system and 2-4-4-8 no-name in the AMD64. Ohh and i also remember the secret new CPU review aswell which he had to retract a while later if i remember correctly (but still got read by alot of people before that).

Dont take his PSU reviews too seriously either, he shows the benchmarks of the PSU's and how they performed.... which is correct. Then goes on to recomend another PSU saying it outputed the highest ammount when it wasent even close.... little mistake that seems to happen in favour of his main backers.

The site is also good for comparing graphics cards, as they test a wide range of cards

Yea i find the site very good for some reviews, it depends really........

Col_Loki

but just wondering if you have heard of any problems with the ic7

Ive heard of people having problems with the on-board sound but never really with memory. Ive just done some checking through the overclockers forum and couldnt find any problems. Kingston hyperX is very popular in the US and alot of IC-7's seem to use it. I wouldnt have forseen any problems with that match up myself. Am mainly an AMD guy but have read up alot about the IC-7's .

Have you tried different Ram in his system?
Put up the voltage a notch?

(am sure you have thought of this already)

Gerry

Yup, basically I view the place as a good provider of performance numbers, I don't think they are morally corrupt enough to mess with those, but everything else must be taken with a pinch of salt. Still, if you aren't vulnerable to being taken in by the spin, it makes for hilarious reading

Col_Loki

Still, if you aren't vulnerable to being taken in by the spin, it makes for hilarious reading

lol, yea thats definetly true. At first i found it confusing, and after a while i found it very amusing..... blatently obvious but still funny.

banbutcher

hey loki, thanks for all the info it will be a huge help when i build my own rig later this year!!

Sir Random

Gerry,
Tell your friend to check the BIOS ver. The IC7 Max-3 was known for some memory problems, but BIOS 14 has fixed them.

BIOS 14:
Fixed a problem where the system hangs if
- DRAM ratio is set to 5:4 or 3:2
- DRAM timing by SPD
- N/B strap CPU as FSB800
Fixed an issue where the system would hang at post code "AF" with certain memory modules installed.

Bigtoe has also made customised versions of BIOS 13 & 14:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/ad.leach/modded%20bios%20files
bts_13.zip & max3bt14.zip

I was going to get a Max-3 myself, but after reading early reviews I opted for the P4C800-E Dlx instead. Another reason I went with Asus, is Abit's noisy northbridge fans .

Gerry

Thanks for the reply Sir Random. He has updated the bios ok, but I'm not sure if he's on 14, I'll get him to take a look here. Its good to hear the asus is working well for you, thats what he'll get if this abit can't be sorted. As for their northbridge fans, well they tend to trap heat, as long as you have good case airflow, you can just remove the fan. Or epoxy on a bit of an old heatsink, whatever

JustHalf

Said friend has an IC7-G, with 2x256 megs (matched pair) of Kingston Hyper-X 3200, rated for 2-6-2-2 (if not 2-5-2-2) @ 400MHz. Said friend is obviously me.

It was crashing like crazy, so I reduced the memory timings. That seemed to have some positive effect on stability, but not much. Lowering the memory clock to 333MHz made it a lot more stable, but slower; and I've had one similar crash so far.

I have a BIOS for the board that fixes the problem Sir Random mentioned. I'm going to run memtest on the RAM, then if that shows a fault try out a friend's 333 RAM... memtest that. If there's no fault there, I have faulty RAM. If there is, it's very possible I have a faulty board

The "noisy" Abit northbridge fan is NOTHING compared to my dying GPU fan

JustHalf

I left memtest running over night.

110 passes, zero errors. I'm guessing it's a board problem.

davidclayton

get a shuttle SB75G2!

http://www.shuttle.com/hq/product/barebone/default.asp?B_id=23

stick in dual ram, a hdd raid, dvd burner and a 9800xt.
it all fits!



dave

check www.sudhian.com [go to forums] for more opinions on shuttles.

JustHalf

No. I am not stupid. I will not buy hotter components then cram then in a much smaller space.