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The Pastor
29th March 2008, 22:13
This is my current proposed build.

graphics card = Palit 9600GT 512MB PCI-Express 256bits DDR3 HDMI DVI ($266.99)
cpu= e8400 ($313.88)
Ram = Apacer 4GB Dual Kit DDR2-800 PC6400 240Pin UNB PC2 6400 2GB 2 ($133.13)
mobo =Gigabyte GA-N650SLI-DS4L LGA775 NFORCE 650i SLI FSB 1333 DDR2 80 ($170ish)
PSU = Corsair 450 Watt VX Series Power Supply Unit ($120.00)
case = NZXT Lexa Blackline Blue LED Edition, (SKU: LEX-301) ($160.00)
HDD =Western Digital 500GB 7200rpm SATA (programe installs) ($147.68)
=Western Digital 500GB 7200rpm SATA (my files, music etc) ($147.68)

Running xp.

What do you think? I'm building it for games, I think it will run crysis on low res. I get the cheap vid card and PSU with the view to upgrade them when i go SLI - once a system comes out that will run crysis at at least 60fps with out costing more than 1k (i expect the next series of nvida will do it)

I don't know too much about the ram - any suggestions? 4gb will be the min, i

I chose the e8400 over the 8500 cpu because it gets very simerlar results on tomshardwares mother of all cpu chart yet is $100 cheaper. oc's to a stable 4ghz too but I wont be doing it. (but i want this water cooling thing cos it looks awesome http://www.zalman.co.kr/ENG/product/Product_Read.asp?idx=183)

Any way I could save a bit of $ without affecting performance? Maybe get overseas?

Cheers. I'll post up a photo when its all done.

Disco Dan
29th March 2008, 22:16
** Coughs "nerd" **

p/t

shingo
29th March 2008, 22:17
Why would you want to play crysis, that game is utter shit.

The Pastor
29th March 2008, 22:21
Cos ive heard so much about it and I wanna system that will run it (on low res/settings for now)

Jeaves
29th March 2008, 22:34
get a bigger power supply.

The Pastor
29th March 2008, 22:37
get a bigger power supply.
the power supply ive chosen is a very good one. Its advertised at 450w, but it outputs 570w. If you read the post I said I'd upgrade it when I go SLI.

the Corsair 450 Watt VX is really good here is a review http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/540

Edit: i re read it and it wasnt clear what I meant i'll change it now

mister.koz
29th March 2008, 22:40
Hey dude,

why the 80gb? keep windows on the same drive as your program files or you will get blips in performance while dx hard caches to disk for non-graphics rendering (audio clip/music/map/3d mapping/lan etc are all directx) it sounds like it would be faster if it was on different disks but it isn't.

Ram >4gb is likely a waste of time, crisis is a large game but you wont see it use more than 2gb because its heavy gfx and you would want to suffer the performance by running anything else at the same time. Also i can't remember 100% but i think the memory addressing on 32bit windows (4gb limit) on systems that have more than 4gb creates about 10% overhead for message formatting to ram and back so you will suffer perfomance issues with >4gb either that or it just wont use the higher mem so the extra ram will only look cool in procview

With hard drives, i would keep them all hitachi.

If you are looking to update the gfx cards and/or go for sli don't waste your time on a 450w psu, it will be running at 90% all day and die too quick, good thing to factor in is how much everything will use at average and add 50% i worked out my machine (which has rather allot in it) is around 550w rated, so i put an 800w psu in it.

If you can part with the extra dollars, i would also recommend going with a large case, i have a thermaltake xaser III case, its fairly old (and therefore cheap of trademe) but its got HEAPS of room and cooling and you can unplug those silly flouro's

Steam
29th March 2008, 22:42
You need more cc's.

Nerd.

mister.koz
29th March 2008, 22:44
You need more cc's.

Nerd.

You have 2 excellent points :P

Steam
29th March 2008, 22:48
You have 2 excellent points :P

Hey, you fit in well here already! Welcome to the madness.

PS, leave while you still can!

mister.koz
29th March 2008, 22:51
I am at home with crazy, all of my invisible friends agree. :shifty:

The Pastor
29th March 2008, 22:56
Hey dude,

why the 80gb? keep windows on the same drive as your program files or you will get blips in performance while dx hard caches to disk for non-graphics rendering (audio clip/music/map/3d mapping/lan etc are all directx) it sounds like it would be faster if it was on different disks but it isn't.

Ram >4gb is likely a waste of time, crisis is a large game but you wont see it use more than 2gb because its heavy gfx and you would want to suffer the performance by running anything else at the same time. Also i can't remember 100% but i think the memory addressing on 32bit windows (4gb limit) on systems that have more than 4gb creates about 10% overhead for message formatting to ram and back so you will suffer perfomance issues with >4gb either that or it just wont use the higher mem so the extra ram will only look cool in procview

With hard drives, i would keep them all hitachi.

If you are looking to update the gfx cards and/or go for sli don't waste your time on a 450w psu, it will be running at 90% all day and die too quick, good thing to factor in is how much everything will use at average and add 50% i worked out my machine (which has rather allot in it) is around 550w rated, so i put an 800w psu in it.

If you can part with the extra dollars, i would also recommend going with a large case, i have a thermaltake xaser III case, its fairly old (and therefore cheap of trademe) but its got HEAPS of room and cooling and you can unplug those silly flouro's

I think the PSU will cope just fine, i posted up a review a few posts up. I will upgrade it to 700w+ when I go sli.

Is the case I have said a small case? I kinda like the look + price of it :)

The ram, I know vista like 4gb and I know xp doesn't use more than 2gb. But you're right i'll get 2gb for now (can always get more later :D :D) Do you have any reconmendations on type and brand? I read somewhere that even the "low performance" are fine for gaming if you're not going to oc it.

The hard drives, I thought that windows liked to be on its own drive? Good point on having the same brand hdd, i didnt think about that.

Thanks for your advice _b

Indiana_Jones
29th March 2008, 22:59
....and you can unplug those silly flouro's

But you gotta have the neons and chrome ow!


<img src="http://myspace-207.vo.llnwd.net/00721/70/23/721993207_l.jpg">

-Indy

The Pastor
29th March 2008, 23:11
I might change the mobo to a Gigabyte GA-N650SLI-DS4L LGA775 NFORCE 650i SLI FSB 1333 DDR2 80 its $170ish atm, saving quite a bit of moolah :)

mister.koz
29th March 2008, 23:12
Cool about psu, typing is slow tonight.. too much programming...

Its really good to keep windows away from your big files and always keep 20% free on your windows drive (its not an exact science!) but i wouldn't seperate windows from registry based stuff like programs/games because windows is inevitably stupid

I think the case you've picked is a good size, its more the cooling and layout of the thermaltakes that i like. I've got 8 sata drives a few optical, a few cards, big psu, cables to the wazoo and still enough room for air to move, its bloody good! this one also comes with 7 super quiet high speed filtered case fans, moves air like a jumbo jet and doesn't wake up the mrs while i am on KB late at night. Price wise u could get a cheap one off trademe?

Ram is a tricky one, i bought the "not quite so cheap" ram thats a couple of steps up from the bottom, i can't remember the brand. and it does a really good job. You can go all crazy with ram, a mate of mine spend $500 or $600 on ram for 4gb, cause it was "better"... I stuck to ddr2-667 4x 1gb and its fairly quick :) and xp can use >2gb just doesn't do it often!

From memory intel chips really like paired ram so its more important to buy ram that has the same timings, i like the amd chips with their "hypertransport" thing making cpu to ram real fast but i gather they aren't as good for gaming...

I would also (if possible) stick to windows xp unless your games are DX10 because vista's overheads are completely stupid! my machine at work (a clone appart from the big blue case) is about 25% slower than my one at home for everything and the one at home was about 2 times faster running gentoo but then i couldn't play games.....

Its all pretty subjective in the end, you've got the right ideas just don't buy the cheapest anything, the "2 steps up from the bottom" rule serves me and my wallet well

mister.koz
29th March 2008, 23:13
But you gotta have the neons and chrome ow!


HA! got rid of the chrome with my GN :)

The Pastor
29th March 2008, 23:13
also dropping the ram to 2gb

The Pastor
29th March 2008, 23:22
Changing my mobo, dropping to 2gb ram and losing hte 80gig hdd saves me $280. Thanks heaps guys

mister.koz
29th March 2008, 23:23
Sweeet :rockon:

Bren
29th March 2008, 23:25
Its really good to keep windows away from your big files and always keep 20% free on your windows drive (its not an exact science!) but i wouldn't seperate windows from registry based stuff like programs/games because windows is inevitably stupid



keep windows away and outta the equation completly. run Linux instead. A good all round linux to start off with is Ubuntu 7.10 (although 8.4 aint far away). Run windows based programs within Wine. Works for me!

mister.koz
29th March 2008, 23:28
Yeah until you want to run a heavy directx game or a badly built com+ and IE dependant accounting package (like quickbooks) :crybaby:

I like good old debian etch over ubuntu or gentoo for its MAD speed.

Steam
29th March 2008, 23:32
case = NZXT Lexa Blackline Blue LED Edition, (SKU: LEX-301) ($160.00)


Save yourself $160 on the case and just stack everything using the crudest framing possible. Salvaged metal strips from the dump - maybe a vertical CD rack bodged to hold your components.
Or everything hung vertically from a horizontal bar.
Everything is naked and if you stack it so the cables and connectors are facing outwards, it just looks the fucking dogs bollocks.
People will think it's much cooler than it really is, nobody sees the insides these days.
Just don't touch the electrical bits

Paranoid Android
29th March 2008, 23:33
thats an odd choice for a graphics card. i would go for an 8800 gts. and the 8800 sli'd go real fast trust me. memory i am hoping you are talking matched sets of 1 gig pairs. you can start with only 2gig if you want to save money.

also save yourself some grief with the power supply. unless the corsair is free dont pay for it. if you pay 120 now you will have to pay 250 for the thermaltake one you will be buying soon 250+120=370.

now the case you are looking at i understand to be small. this is a problem with modern video cards. and if you do end up with two cards you will end up melting a pc through whatever it is sitting on. before you do anything think about your case and cooling soloution. a bigger case will allow room for air to flow or to install water cooling and the assoc radiators etc. forced air (lot of fans set up to all run in the same direction) or water cooling with vga water blocks and a cpu block. also look at the video cards cooling method mine are setup with external venting heat sinks. i am old school. lots and i means lots of fans all with pretty neons.

now why run direct x 10 video cards, games and a 64bit processor and install xp. vista will let you run your processor at full speed and let you get the most out of the expensive video cards. yes vista is a dog. hell what windows isnt. bill you are a bad man. but i have played with both setups vista will game better right now and will only get better (slighty) as windows does.

shop around to save money. dont skimp on parts. it will bug you when you are replacing stuff. have a look at www.c1com.co.nz often cheap and www.pbtech.co.nz are always stable and helpfull while always being well priced. and its always worth looking at www.nvidia.com if you are thinking about sli'ing video cards

force be with you:Police:

Bren
29th March 2008, 23:34
Yeah until you want to run a heavy directx game or a badly built com+ and IE dependant accounting package (like quickbooks) :crybaby:

I like good old debian etch over ubuntu or gentoo for its MAD speed.

debian aint too bad, fiddled around with it for a bit but I find Ubuntu based distros the most stable. Currently running geubuntu...or as it is know now OpenGEU. It uses enlightenment over gnome as its desktop and looks good and perform well. I must say Ubuntu is the easiest to use for newbies, and has everything advanced users would want too...

The Pastor
29th March 2008, 23:46
thats an odd choice for a graphics card. i would go for an 8800 gts. and the 8800 sli'd go real fast trust me. memory i am hoping you are talking matched sets of 1 gig pairs. you can start with only 2gig if you want to save money.

also save yourself some grief with the power supply. unless the corsair is free dont pay for it. if you pay 120 now you will have to pay 250 for the thermaltake one you will be buying soon 250+120=370.

now the case you are looking at i understand to be small. this is a problem with modern video cards. and if you do end up with two cards you will end up melting a pc through whatever it is sitting on. before you do anything think about your case and cooling soloution. a bigger case will allow room for air to flow or to install water cooling and the assoc radiators etc. forced air (lot of fans set up to all run in the same direction) or water cooling with vga water blocks and a cpu block. also look at the video cards cooling method mine are setup with external venting heat sinks. i am old school. lots and i means lots of fans all with pretty neons.

now why run direct x 10 video cards, games and a 64bit processor and install xp. vista will let you run your processor at full speed and let you get the most out of the expensive video cards. yes vista is a dog. hell what windows isnt. bill you are a bad man. but i have played with both setups vista will game better right now and will only get better (slighty) as windows does.

shop around to save money. dont skimp on parts. it will bug you when you are replacing stuff. have a look at www.c1com.co.nz often cheap and www.pbtech.co.nz are always stable and helpfull while always being well priced. and its always worth looking at www.nvidia.com if you are thinking about sli'ing video cards

force be with you:Police:

The only item that could be of poor quality is the ram. its just first off pricespy.

Problem with the case is I can't find a big one that I like the look of, and is less than $200.

The 9600 I chose will run crysis on med-high settings by its self. Its good and cheap.

I will re use the 450w psu when I upgrade it in my other pcs.

Jeremy
30th March 2008, 00:25
Get 4GB of ram. Win32 will use 3.5GB of it, since you have a 512mb graphics card. The 2GB number is the process limit for ram. So although crysis (32 bit) will only use 2GB in it's own process, you'll still have 1.5GB being used for other things.

Don't bother with SLI.

Dargor
30th March 2008, 01:40
Learn the art of partitioning (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_partitioning) your hard drivers, and ditch the 80Gb. The only reason to have windows on a different partition is because when it inevitably gets screwed, you want to be able to format it without loosing your important data. And for that you dont need an extra hard drive.

As for saving money and buying lots of hard drives, buy them when you need them, it should take you a while to full the first 500Gb then when you come to buy the second it will be cheaper.

Gremlin
30th March 2008, 02:46
Get 4GB of ram. Win32 will use 3.5GB of it, since you have a 512mb graphics card. The 2GB number is the process limit for ram. So although crysis (32 bit) will only use 2GB in it's own process, you'll still have 1.5GB being used for other things.

Don't bother with SLI.
Pretty much spot on... I run with 4gb of ram, end up with 3.5, and I still find I rarely go over 2.5gb usage ish.

A top end 8 series nvidia card will still walk all over a mid level 9 card, so bear that in mind. Just because the first of the 4 numbers is higher doesn't mean it will be immediately faster (I have 2x 7950gt and they still out perform a lot of 8 series cards, except for the top end). If you use multiple monitors (I have 3, hence the dual gfx) forget SLI, it will only run on one monitor, and switches off the others.

As said, use partitioning on the drives, 500GB WD are good $/gb at the mo. Programs and OS on one partition. Install what you need. Only issue is that if you move to raid (as I did over the new year) you will need to rebuild the machine.

Don't have to buy expensive memory unless you o/c, and transcend etc performs fine, and comes with lifetime warranty.

Case. It holds bits, bear in mind cooling and space. Unless you want to show it off, don't bother buying something fancy. I use one of these (http://icute.com.tw/english/S901.html) and I've just run out of space, so I'll get this (http://icute.com.tw/english/A18.html). Basically, your big issue will probably be the length of the gfx, and the space between the front bays and the rear, as the card plus wiring will need to fit (my issue at the moment, plus the entire front is full :()

Really depends how far you think you will build it. I thought my case would be plenty... now its not. Just be careful that you can really blow money away by sinking it into parts.

bobsmith
30th March 2008, 08:12
I second the post about 8800gt 512Mb cards. with palit ones it's only 100 more than the 9600 and when you want to go sli instead of buying 2 new cards you just need to buy another one. I'm running one 8800gt with 2gb RAM (cheap samsung ones) and AMD 3800+ AM2 CPU and it runs crysis 30-50 fps (dips down to 20 at times) on mostly high settings with some mid setting as well at 1280x1024

scracha
30th March 2008, 08:26
Get a Seagate AS SATA drive (500GB HDD with a 32MB cache is)....they're stupidly fast for the money ($170 - 5 year warranty ain't bad either). For backup or additional storage then NAS is the way to go.

The 8400 IS good bang for buck. Not much of a drop in performance with the E6550 though and it's a lot cheaper. Can't really help with the video cards...gaming ain't my thing.

DDR800 is similar in price to 667....wouldn't spend the extra on the 1066 or DDR3. 2GB of DDR2 800 is $60 so why skimp?

If you don't care about looks just get a full sized case...much easier to keep cool. Don't be tempted to save a few bucks with a cheapo mobo....the difference an extra 50 bucks spent there is staggering.

I'd shove on Vista business myself....then you can legally downgrade to XP if you must. You'd be an idiot to actually buy XP at the moment (in a few months you won't be able to anyway) but if you've got a copy lying around then why not. After Vista SP1 and turning off some of the extra bells and whistles the performance difference is negligible. Pity Microsoft didn't just make Vista 64 bit only. Of course you can always become a linux hippy.

TerminalAddict
30th March 2008, 10:04
debian aint too bad, fiddled around with it for a bit but I find Ubuntu based distros the most stable. Currently running geubuntu...or as it is know now OpenGEU. It uses enlightenment over gnome as its desktop and looks good and perform well. I must say Ubuntu is the easiest to use for newbies, and has everything advanced users would want too...

you do know that ubuntu, kubuntu etc etc etc are all based on debian eh?

debian is the *meta* distro :P

I've had an ubunut (yes I spelled it that way on purpose :) ) desktop for a while, and it's pretty nice I must say.
Would never use ubunut on my servers, but as a desktop its pretty painless

mister.koz
30th March 2008, 10:21
Ubuntu is based largely on the unstable or experamental packages from debian, which is why i went debian, had a couple of things not go so well on my production system :s

Then i went to Gentoo because source-based is ALLOT faster it does take a very long time to set it up tho. got my system ready to rock with aiglx bluetooth, wifi, and all the bells, whistles and software needed and it only took 24 hours of compiling :-D

TerminalAddict
30th March 2008, 10:24
excellent .. until the next version of glibc comes out.

then its emerge -e world && emerge -e world

mind you .. gives you a few days out on the bike while everything compiles :D
.
.
.
edit: .. I've just read your profile page ... software engineer .. oh dear :nya:

mister.koz
30th March 2008, 10:32
Exactly :) and you get the added bonus of having a really fast, stable system (if you get your use, cflags etc right)

mister.koz
30th March 2008, 10:35
yeah, i sometimes think in one's and zero's but normally in hex.

Computers are boringly perfect, everything's gotta be 100% or nothing will work right. Thats what makes bikes so brilliant, tollerances and balances from ignition to killswitch.

sigh! computers got a whole lot more boring about 6 months ago with my first bike - the gn

TerminalAddict
30th March 2008, 11:02
Exactly :) and you get the added bonus of having a really fast, stable system (if you get your use, cflags etc right)

it gets real boring when you have 90 servers to do tho'
suddenly, binary distros look really atractive

mister.koz
30th March 2008, 11:09
There are ways and means for multiple servers.

Have all the same servers, making a distributed gcc setup and mass compiling things to binary, creating your own portage binary cache and pointing all your servers to that.

To be honest, i can't be arsed so i just use debian for the servers i maintain, they are all running at 20% load so i don't care about the benefits of source based penguins, gentoo has its purposes but its still a "tinkering os" so i wouldn't put it into production anyways.

The Pastor
30th March 2008, 14:14
Oh no what have I done? :S its revenge of the nerds!

mister.koz
30th March 2008, 14:22
it happens :-D

scracha
30th March 2008, 19:04
it happens :-D

#ifdef __NERD__
#include <"lots_of_shite_about_linux.h">
#else
#include <"just_install_fuckin_windows.h">
#endif

PuppetMaster
31st March 2008, 11:21
01011011011100010111010101101111011101000110010101 01110101001111011010000010000001101110011011110010 00000111011101101000011000010111010000100000011010 00011000010111011001100101001000000100100100100000 01100100011011110110111001100101001111110010000000 11101001010011001000000110100101110100011100110010 00000111001001100101011101100110010101101110011001 11011001010010000001101111011001100010000001110100 01101000011001010010000001101110011001010111001001 10010001110011001000010010111101011011011100010111 01010110111101110100011001010101110100001101000010 10000011010000101000001101000010100100100100100000 01100110011101010110001101101011011001010110111000 10000001110010011001010110001101101011011011110110 11100010110000100000011011000110010101110100011100 11001000000110001001100101011000010111010000100000 01110100011010000110010101101101001000000111011101 10100101110100011010000010000001100001001000000110 11000110010101101110011001110111010001101000001000 00011011110110011000100000011000110110000101100010 01101100011001010010110000100000011000010110111001 10010000100000011100110111010001101001011000110110 10110010000001110010011000010110110100100000011101 01011100000010000001110100011010000110010101101001 01110010001000000110001001101111011101000111010001 101111011011010111001100101110

scracha
31st March 2008, 16:17
66:75:63:6b:74:61:72:64

EJK
31st March 2008, 16:19
5754463f

+10

The Pastor
5th May 2008, 23:42
Doh the e8400 is a 45nm chip, the mobo only supports up to 65nm.

Dose anyone have a 45nm mobo they can test my chip on and see if it goes or not?

chances of it being dead?

Boob Johnson
6th May 2008, 00:08
Can't help u there, will not touch an Intel. Google can be your friend. What's the rest of the specs of the system btw?


ps: a correction to some of the advice given in a previous post. Win32 (or Vista32 for that matter) will only read 3.25GB not the 3.5 as suggested earlier when using 4GB, hell at the price of it today why not go with 4GB?

Spuds1234
6th May 2008, 01:43
Havnt read the last 2 pages, but try looking at the Corsair HX520 or 620 range of PSU's. Much better than the one you first picked and will easily do SLI.

Also you dont need a really huge PSU 90% of the time. Even if you get a 700W PSU, the most your computer will probably draw will be about 400 watts unless you add in lots of drives and lights and fans etc.

The Pastor
6th May 2008, 20:52
if you read, you would see im upgrading the 450w psu when i go sli.

my mobo is rated at 400w min.

but

Is anyone able to test if my 45nm cpu works?

Spuds1234
7th May 2008, 14:26
Your MB might be rated at that, but I can guareentee you that you dont need some uber high wattage psu to run all that with SLI.