DescentBB

I'm looking for advice about the best components to use for a system that will function as both a gaming rig and game server. Please, tell me what you think about my current list of parts. It would be really helpful to know of any products with better performance, or sites that offer better prices on what I have listed. My budget is flexible, but I would like to stay around $2,000 for a total.

CPU: UPDATED AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Processor Socket 939 Retail $390 from www.zipzoomfly.com

HEATSINK/FAN: UPDATED Zalman CNPS7000A-CU Pure Copper CPU Cooler Retail $39.95 from www.zipzoomfly.com

MOTHERBOARD: UPDATED AGAIN MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum nForce3 Ultra Athlon 64(FX) Skt939 DDR ATX Motherboard w/Audio, Dual LAN, RAID/Serial ATA Retail $139.99 from www.zipzoomfly.com

MEMORY: UPDATED Corsair TWINX1024-3200XL 1GB Kit DDR400 XMS3200 Dual-Channel Xtra-Low
Latency Memory w/Black Heat Spreader Retail $279 each from www.zipzoomfly.com

HARD DRIVE: UPDATED Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10,000RPM SATA Hard Drive $176 from www.monarchcomputer.com

VIDEO CARD: UPDATED Gainward GeForce 6800 GT 256MB DDR3/8x-AGP/Video-Out/DVI $380 from www.monarchcomputer.com

SOUND CARD/SPEAKERS: UPDATED I have decided to use the onboard sound, and my existing Logitech 4.1 speakers.

CASE: Thermaltake VA3000 Dream Tower Tsunami $125 from www.newegg.com

REPLACEMENT SIDE CASE FAN: THERMALTAKE A1923 Thunderblade 90mm Red Led Fan $12 from www.itwarehouse.com.au

REPLACEMENT FRONT & REAR CASE FANS: THERMALTAKE A1927 Thunderblade 120mm Red Led Fan $15 each from www.itwarehouse.com.au

CABLES: I intend to purchase UV sensitive, round cables from www.coolerguys.com

Any help will be greatly appreciated!

Swap out that 754 3400+ for a 939 3500+. Motherboards and chips are available these days and they dont cost that much more. The performance is only a little better now, but there is a lot of room for improvement and upgrades later.

There is no need or point to getting two raptors unless you plan on mirroring them. If you are thinking RAID0 just forget it, with those drives, you wont see any worthwhile difference and RAID0 eats one of the biggest advantages they have which is the access latency. If you happen to get later a SATA controler that supports NCQ then you will get the most out of thay single raptor right when you need it. Additionally, get one rounded cable for your cdrom drives and get all Serial ATA hard drives. I suggest maxtor or western digital drives with fluid dynamic bearings. Maxtor also makes a drive with a 16 MB buffer that is worth checking out. And make sure that case has decent airflow over the hard drives, they get hot, else get HDD coolers.

Also on 939, if you plan on overclocking you can get an Athlon FX since all of them are factory unlocked and you can set the multi up if you want. Normal Athlon 64s are unlocked but you can only set the multi down. With RAM latency matters, get the lowest you can, it is also a safe bet if you plan on overclocking to get RAM rated to a higher MHz then what is default for your CPU.

Personally I dont like the feel of the mobo/graphics market for now. PCI express and DDR2 are looming around the corner and I do not like the look of chipsets right now.

Krom wrote:Swap out that 754 3400+ for a 939 3500+. Motherboards and chips are available these days and they dont cost that much more. The performance is only a little better now, but there is a lot of room for improvement and upgrades later.

There is no need or point to getting two raptors unless you plan on mirroring them. If you are thinking RAID0 just forget it, with those drives, you wont see any worthwhile difference and RAID0 eats one of the biggest advantages they have which is the access latency. If you happen to get later a SATA controler that supports NCQ then you will get the most out of thay single raptor right when you need it. Additionally, get one rounded cable for your cdrom drives and get all Serial ATA hard drives. I suggest maxtor or western digital drives with fluid dynamic bearings. Maxtor also makes a drive with a 16 MB buffer that is worth checking out. And make sure that case has decent airflow over the hard drives, they get hot, else get HDD coolers.

Also on 939, if you plan on overclocking you can get an Athlon FX since all of them are factory unlocked and you can set the multi up if you want. Normal Athlon 64s are unlocked but you can only set the multi down. With RAM latency matters, get the lowest you can, it is also a safe bet if you plan on overclocking to get RAM rated to a higher MHz then what is default for your CPU.

Personally I dont like the feel of the mobo/graphics market for now. PCI express and DDR2 are looming around the corner and I do not like the look of chipsets right now.

THE GREAT OZ HAS SPOKEN!!

Based on Krom's advice, I changed my mind about several components, and updated my original post to reflect that.

Thank you, Krom.

I'm still at a loss about which would be the best heatsink/fan combination, so any suggestions will be welcomed.

Welcome.
I am also at a loss for whats good in heatsinks, been spoiled by my water cooler. For the sound, the onboard audio on that motherboard will do just fine believe me.

Oh, by the way...

I may decide to go the watercooling route, as well, but I figure that can come later, if I find that it's necessary.

Since you've been so helpful, thus far, could you recommend a good watercooling system, for if/when I do that?

Oh...and thanks for the kind, toothy missile welcome lol

Angel, if you're not going to be overclocking, the stock heatsink will do fine until you can find something better. With retail chips, you actually get a decent warranty and the heatsink they send you isn't too bad. My XP2800+ with its stock heatsink sits at around 39C at idle and peaks at around 48 - 49C. Of course I'm really anal about airflow, and if I really wanted I could drop it down a couple more degrees.

MD-2389, I've heard that the processor manufacturers are doing better about supplying heatsinks that are up to the task. Still, there is a good chance that I will overclock, to some degree. Being intrinsically lazy, I don't want to go through the process of changing the heatsink, later lol

Your point about case airflow is definitely valid, too. That's why I will use nothing but rounded cables, and make sure to tuck them out of the way. One of the great things about the Thermaltake Tsunami case is that it offers a 120mm fan in the front and another in the back. A 90mm fan resides in the window. I hope that this combination, along with a good quality heatsink, will allow for some minor overclocking.

Thanks for the input, MD-2389!

What, no speakers?

I think you should wait on a sound card. Creative is supposed to be releasing the next line-up of cards next year, you might want to wait for that. Or not, but if I were in your shoes I'd be waiting for sure.

I have a inovatek watercooling kit for my system. I get irratated if my CPU temp goes over 32C at 100% CPU utilization. The CPU is an Athlon XP 1700+ running at 2.4 GHz, or 935 MHz over its spec. The highest overclock I have gotten from it was 2.6 GHz, it was able to POST at 2.8 GHz but windows would not boot.

Thermalright(not Thermaltake) makes some very nice heatsinks for the Athlon 64. Check them out.

Something you might also be interested in, is those Thunderblades have a reputation of sounding more like 30 decibels then the 21 decibels Thermatake advertises. Consider looking at some diffrent fans.

Now I've never had a gigabyte board myself, but they don't seem to have the most solid of reputations. Asus and Abit boards seem to be the ones most people rely on.

Oh, and try to buy from as few vendors as posible. While one site might have, say, a fan for $5 less then elsewhere, you might find that with multiple tax and shipping charges it would have been cheaper to just get it all from one place .

Other then that, that looks like a really nice system!

Yeah, about the only reason I will buy something from any place other then newegg is if newegg doesnt have it.

Zalman CPNS7000A-CU is the way to go for good aircooling with virtually no noise. It does have some limitations as to what motherboards it will fit on. There is a database on the zalman site that lists which are incompatible.

I'm currently using this cooler and i have to say that it works great, is virtually noiseless on low and medium settings, and is reasonably priced. Looking funky in a windowed case is also a bonus.

thats a nice case. i think your current setup you are purchasing is going to do just fine.

Oh god, stay away from zipzoomfly.com. Many people had trouble there, especially with support and exchange. You WILL get headaches one way or another, especially when you need to make an exchange. They are horrible! You can very easily get great service and cheap prices at the same time if you go to newegg.com.

Sweet computer

although some of it is beyond my needs

Thanks, once again, to Krom for all of his help. Also, my thanks to BAAL for the heatsink recommendation. I have, at this point, changed nearly every component from what I had initially proposed. That says to me that posting here was the right thing to do (either that or I'm just very indecisive lol).

When comparing price, CFM, and dB, I am still satisfied with the Thunderblade case fans. If any one can find lower than 30 dB, with better than 78 CFM, 120mm and 90mm fans, then I would be grateful! Of course, any further tips are always welcomed, too.

I really appreciate all of the replies. I hope to make my purchases within a few days. Once the system is assembled, I'll post the results.

Angel of Death wrote:That says to me that posting here was the right thing to do

Told you you would get good advice from the tech junkies here.

Krom wrote:I have a inovatek watercooling kit for my system. I get irratated if my CPU temp goes over 32C at 100% CPU utilization. The CPU is an Athlon XP 1700+ running at 2.4 GHz, or 935 MHz over its spec. The highest overclock I have gotten from it was 2.6 GHz, it was able to POST at 2.8 GHz but windows would not boot.

How come when other people watercool their systems, it always sounds like the best thing since sliced bread, but when I do it, it blows up in my face... or my leg... and it doesn't cool that well anyway!

Maybe I just suck at putting stuff together.

Angel, that price looks a little high for the 6800 GT. I paid significantly less for mine back in July. It's up for $386.50 on pricewatch. Did you pricewatch all your items?

DarkShadow wrote:... tech junkies ...

junkies? well in Krom's case It is an Obsesssion.

"teh tceh junky" <~~Krom's title

On most days I spend less then 10 minutes reading sites on tech stuff. Except on days when anandtech gets a new article out. I also read THG, Firing Squad and on rare occasion Sharkey Extreme. I do not read hardocp because I think their "playable framerates" suck, if it goes under 100 FPS it is not playable! (With the exception of Doom3 capped to the 60 Hz tic, then anything under 60 FPS is not playable. )

I spend more time on average lately looking for, downloading, or watching anime. For instance I know bubba's avatar is from the end credits of Trigun and is the silhouette of Vash the Stampede (AKA "The Humanoid Typhoon").

Suncho, I did not use pricewatch, yet. When the "big day" of ordering arrives, I may take a peek. To tell the truth, though, price isn't everything to me. I compared prices between newegg, zipzoomfly, monarch, coolerguys/pctoys, and a couple of other shops, because they have excellent ratings on reselleratings and/or my experiences with them have been good. While I don't want to be ripped-off on price, I also don't want to be screwed when it comes to after-the-sale service.

With all of that said, I've also noticed that the 6800 GT cards have become scarce, over the past week or two. I saw better prices, but they were on out-of-stock items. So, when I am placing my order, I will certainly check to see if a less expensive board is available.

As before, I really appreciate the help. It's nice to find people who genuinely want to help a stranger (or, in some cases, even their own friends lol).

...and the biggest thanks to Dark Shadow for recommending the descentbb as a resource, along with all of the research with which he has assisted.

Mr. Perfect wrote:Now I've never had a gigabyte board myself, but they don't seem to have the most solid of reputations.

I can attest to that. Out of three gigabyte boards, only one still works worth a damn. (The other two crapped out for no apparent reason.) Granted, all three are "super" socket 7 boards, but I'll never trust anything from Gigabyte ever again.

Given the bad press that some of you have given Gigabyte, I am considering the MSI K8N Neo2 nForce3 Ultra board. I am in the process of hunting for reviews of it. Other than these two mobos, I have not located any that use the nForce3 chipset with socket 939, include SATA raid, 4 memory slots, and Gigabit LAN. If there are other options, perhaps from ASUS or ABit, I'd be pleased to learn of them.

My research time is running out. Plans have changed, and I now intend to make my purchases some time during Sept. 1st (technically, that's today, where I live).

Your last-minute coaching could make all of the difference for me. Thanks, again!

Does anyone else change their mind as easily, and often, as I do?? lol

Okay. After noting the comments of Mr. Perfect and MD-2389, and reading a couple of reviews on the MSI K8N Neo2 Ultra ( such as http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=57 ), I have decided that MSI's reputation, the board's performance, and the lower price make it worth the change from the Gigabyte GA-K8NSNXP-939.

Also, if I buy the MSI board, the 1GB Corsair memory kit, and Doom 3 (all of which are on my list, anyway), then I will receive a total of $55 in mail-in rebates. This deal sounds frighteningly good lol. I'm left to wonder what must be the catch.

Any input on this board, the mail-in rebates, or your philosophy on life will be welcomed! lol

The catch is you have to drop a couple hundred on a new motherboard, ram, and game.

First of all, I want to say thank you to every one who shared their advice. I'm extremely happy with my new PC! Aside from some XP SP2 issues (which are not, in any way, hardware related), it's run flawlessly. Soon, I hope to make the transition to Linux.

My time has been limited, but I did manage to take one picture.

Also, My 3dMark2001 SE score was 22,574 . Does any one know of any 6800 GT tweaks, other than overclocking?

Nice.

I demand more pics!

Angel of Death wrote:Also, My 3dMark2001 SE score was 22,574 . Does any one know of any 6800 GT tweaks, other than overclocking?

Riva Tuner

Possibly some third part drivers, such as Omega drivers. But I doubt they make that big a diffrence.

Don't forget to slim down Windows too.

By the way, how does that Zalman do?

Dude, if you're going to link Black Viper, atleast have the courtesy of direct linking to the article in question.

http://www.blkviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm

Thank you, Ace Combat. That Riva Tuner is certainly a full-featured tweak utility. I have some research to do, regarding a few of those settings.

Are there any opinions concerning the usefulness of running the Omega drivers, if I'm already using Riva Tuner? For that matter, can the two even work, simultaneously?

Mr.Perfect and MD-2389, I've already reduced Windows down to DHCP Client, Event Log, Plug and Play, Remote Procedure Call, TrueVector Internet Monitor, Windows Audio, Windows Management Instrumentation, and Workstation as the only automatically running services (not counting about three others that are set to manual, so they only run as needed). It's less than what the Viper recommends, but I'm running smoothly, now that most of the software installations are done. I had to temporarily start Windows Installer, and DCOM Server Process Launcher in a couple of cases, to get through that.

I might say it too often, but thanks for the recommendations.

MD-2389 wrote:Dude, if you're going to link Black Viper, atleast have the courtesy of direct linking to the article in question.

You're right, I was being shamefully lazy. Good thing he didn't mistakenly look at the Kitties part of the site, we may have had to call in the Humane Society.

I hope to have enough time to take a couple of pictures of the inside of my case, tomorrow.

For now, I thought that it might be fitting to post some descent3 timetest numbers. This was run at 1024x768 resolution in opengl.

648.69 Descent3 v1.4
429 Min
811 Max
811 Second 1
771 Second 2
558 Second 3
639 Second 4

I'm pleased, but I would like to know how this compares to the results from those of you with similar hardware.

My hardware is a good ways below yours but i get...

1024X768 OpenGL

345.84 Descent3 v1.4
233 Min
504 Max
306 Second 1
365 Second 2
504 Second 3
425 Second 4
294 Second 5
281 Second 6
333 Second 7
342 Second 8
338 Second 9

With an XP2400+ (stock speed) 2.0 Ghz
ATI 9000 Pro
512 meg PC2700

But still stuck at 114 fps due to the mouse framerate problem.

D3 isn't exactly a great benchmarking program anymore.