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Gaming Rig?? Opinions
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01-09-2009 4:46pm#1
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Is that HWVS? If so...
CPU is great, you could be a little better off with a faster, cheaper AM3 but the Q9550 would still encode a hair faster. Of course a BE AM3 is easier to OC. Your choice.
CPU cooler is a bit pricey - try the Xigmatek S1283 or even the Arctic Freezer 7 Pro. Both are superior and cheaper to boot!
Mobo sucks. ICH7 fail. Stick with a G/P43 at least as the chipset on the G/Px1's are prehistoric.
RAM is okay but a lot of people (myself included) have had issues with DDR2 Platinum. And it hates LGA775 especially.
Graphics are great but there are cheaper HD4890s with the same spec on HWVS (the XFX one is well under €150 now
)
No complaint over the HDD, but the 1GB Hitachis and Samsungs are usually only €2-5 more.
Case is a bit closer to overkill. A Xigmatek Midguard or Coolermaster Dominator are quite a bit cheaper. All three are nice though.
PSU is plain naff. You could get away with a 650W or even a decent 550W for less money. If you want to run a second HD4890 in the future pony up the extra for a Corsair TX750 or take a walk on the wild side with the far cheaper Superflower Atlas 680W - both are far superior to that cack Sirtec PoS you listed.0 -
Is that HWVS? If so...
CPU is great, you could be a little better off with a faster, cheaper AM3 but the Q9550 would still encode a hair faster. Of course a BE AM3 is easier to OC. Your choice.
CPU cooler is a bit pricey - try the Xigmatek S1283 or even the Arctic Freezer 7 Pro. Both are superior and cheaper to boot!
Mobo sucks. ICH7 fail. Stick with a G/P43 at least as the chipset on the G/Px1's are prehistoric.
RAM is okay but a lot of people (myself included) have had issues with DDR2 Platinum. And it hates LGA775 especially.
Graphics are great but there are cheaper HD4890s with the same spec on HWVS (the XFX one is well under €150 now)
No complaint over the HDD, but the 1GB Hitachis and Samsungs are usually only €2-5 more.
Case is a bit closer to overkill. A Xigmatek Midguard or Coolermaster Dominator are quite a bit cheaper. All three are nice though.
PSU is plain naff. You could get away with a 650W or even a decent 550W for less money. If you want to run a second HD4890 in the future pony up the extra for a Corsair TX750 or take a walk on the wild side with the far cheaper Superflower Atlas 680W - both are far superior to that cack Sirtec PoS you listed.
Thanks Solitaire,
Would you recommend the following instead for value for money and specs?
AMD Phenom II X4 945 Box 95W, Sockel AM3 - 144,81 €
or
AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition AM3 BOX - 100,97 €
Gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3P, AMD 770 - 73,57 €
or
Gigabyte GA-MA790XT-UD4P, ATX, Sockel AM3 - 102,21 €
Arctic Freezer 64 Pro Sockel 754/939/AM2 - 16,55 € ???
4GB-Kit Corsair Twin3X4096-1600C9DHX DDR3, CL9 - 79,57 €
Coolermaster Dominator Xcalade (CM690) ohne Netzteil schwarz - 66,28 €
XFX RADEON HD 4890 1GB DDR5 PCI-E 2.0 - 146,90 €
Super-Flower Atlas Design 680W - 75,60 €
Samsung HD753LJ 750GB S-ATA II, 32MB Cache - 58,45 €
LG GH22NS40/NS30 bare schwarz SATA II - 24,54 €
Total €698 with the AMD Phenom II X4 945 and the Gigabyte GA-MA790XT-UD4P or total €625 with AMD Phenom II X3 720 and Gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3P.
Thanks0 -
CPU: Swings and roundabouts. The X4-955BE is cheaper and faster than the Q9550 but it runs hotter. Great stock performance, just be prepared for near-i7 levels of toastiness
The X4-945 is cheaper still, compares well to the Q9550 performance-wise and runs a lot cooler and more efficiently. But be prepared for running it at stock or devoting a lot of time and irritation to OCing it - its not BE so you're stuck with upping the FSB, and with AMD that means mucking about with HT multipliers and stuff. The X3-720BE is a great low-mid-range CPU, and was almost born to be OCd (whether to 3GHz or 3.9GHz... up to you! ). But the lack of a third core will increase (multithreaded) encoding times a fair whack so dropping this low is a bit of a sacrifice.
Mobo: Don't bother with a 770 or 785 chipset if you really want CrossFire, you'll need a €90+ **790 chipset for that! The others only have the 16+4 "BorkedFire" layout. If you can lose the second card, don't want RAID5 and you're not OCing a 125W CPU like the X4-955BE then just go for the basic MSI 770-C45, cheap as chips and OCs like the clappers (even a X4-945 if you're lucky!)
Cooler: Not 100% sure about using it on an OCd X4-955BE (try a full-tower cooler like a S1283 for that) but the rest of the time this tiny terror should be fine. Small and quiet, but has more cooling potential than many 120mm towers (the Intel version can keep a ~200W OCd-QX9650-on-a-rampage in check. Just.)
Memory: DDR is going up in prices at the moment
Bear in mind that AMD doesn't officially support DDR3-1600, but there's probably some way of making it work. Or underclock it to 1333MHz then tighten the latencies instead
Case: That or the Midgard. If you want bling there's a cute windowed version of the Midgard going for under €70.
Graphics:. That is all. 
PSU: The Corsair TX750 is even better, but the 40% price premium is a sharp jump for the slight boost in quality and output. The Atlas 680W is as low as you can go and run a pair of HD4890s (it actually has the right connectors, unlike the EarthWatts 650W). Do you need a pair though? If not then downgrade to the VX550 or the Basiq Plus 550. Unless you like the bling 0
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