OT: New PC!
 

No, I don't have one yet, but I'm planning on getting one soon. I've got a rough spec on it, but I'd really like to hear what y'all think.

Especially Fyron, since you really seem to know your stuff, especially in regards to what's good, what's not, and why. So here's the spec I've currently got in mind. Lemme know what you think, and where I could maybe get better performance for less money, or at least shave a few bob off the pricetag without a noticable difference in performance.

Intel® Pentium® Processor 840 w/ Dual Core Technology 3.2GHz 800MHz FSB
Enermax EG701AX-VE (W) 600 Watt Power Supply SLI ready
nForce™4 SLI™ Intel Edition Chipset Motherboard PCI Express SLI
2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz - 2 x 1024MB
Dual 256MB PCI-Express x16 NVIDIA® GeForce™ 7800 GT - SLI Enabled
160 GB Serial ATA 7,200 rpm w/ 8MB Cache
16x Dual Layer DVD±R/W Recorder
Creative Sound Blaster® X-Fi XtremeMusic
NEC 19" MultiSync LCD1970NXi-BK
Creative® 7.1 Inspire™ T7900
Logitech Internet Keyboard
Razer Diamondback Mouse


The only thing that aren't open to debate is the sound system & the RAM. Rest of it is wide open.

Re: OT: New PC!
 

This site has some good info:

http://shsc.info/PCPartsPickingGuide

I personally don't like the quality of Creative sound cards or speakers... That site mentions the M-Audio Revolution 5.1/7.1 ($75/$90).

The only place where high end audio is appropriate is music, and for that you only need two channels. Swan m200's are great speakers. They are a basic pair of self-amplified two-channel speakers. They are a good way to get into high end audio without breaking the bank or getting too complex. CD Music is not mastered for more than 2 channels anyways.

What are you planning to use those extravagant creative speakers for?

Re: OT: New PC!
 

Cool, thanks. The extravegant speakers are mainly for turning small animals into piles of gelatenous goo, but also for a having "ooo... wow!" quality set up for gaming, and to double as a home theatre system.

Re: OT: New PC!
 

I'd go with a AMD processer and motherboard personally.

Re: OT: New PC!
 

From what I have heard, "home theater" setups generally aren't worth it without going high end. You would probably get better quality sound with the Swan m200s, not just mediocre sound pumped from a bunch of speakers. Its up to you whether you prefer impressing the small animals with high audio quality or "turning [them] into piles of gelatenous goo." http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: OT: New PC!
 

First, get an AMD processor. They tend to work better for games.

Second, I'd probally get the 6800, not the 7800. The 7800 is only a minor increase in power, for a big pricetag.

And Fyron, it would be awsome to play Battlefield 2 with a large monitor, and surround sound speakers. Most people would start drooling once they heard surround sound.

Re: OT: New PC!
 

Agent, in what price-segment do you expect your configuration from post #1 to end ? Im going to buy a new pc as well, though in january, and i personally feel like spending a max of 1300 $ (= 1100 € for me) is by far enough to get a system which will stand about 2 years.


edit: given im only talking about a tower here, no display, no keyboard/mouse, no boxes.

Re: OT: New PC!
 

If you're looking to use this rig for gaming, I'd go AMD, not Intel.

Re: OT: New PC!
 

OK, so I've done a little revision after reading that parts guide Fyron was kind enough to supply, and I've done a little revision. Biggest change is swapping over to AMD from Intel, since AMD scores higher points in gaming. Even though Intel scores higher in 3D rendering, I doubt I'll be doing anything complex enough to notice a difference for some time yet. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif
All the bits & pieces are basically those recommended by Fyron's link, and bits taken from the Alienware website. I know Alienware makes wicked gaming machines, but f***ed if I'm going to pay THAT much. I took this shopping list to Newegg.com and it came out 1550.00EUR cheaper, even without a case, and I know that even if NewEgg delivers to Ireland (anybody know anything about that?), I'm gonna get drilled on the shipping, but I don't think shipping'll cost me 1550EUR. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

So, without further ado,

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Processor
ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI X16 ATX AMD Motherboard
Maxtor MaXLine III 7L300R0 300GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra ATA133 Hard Drive
2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200)
eVGA 256-P2-N383-TX Geforce 6800 256MB DDR PCI Express x16 Video Card x2 SLI
SONY 1.44MB 3.5" Internal Floppy Drive
NEC IDE DVD Burner Model ND-3540A
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS (7.1) Channels PCI Interface Sound Card
Creative Inspire P7800 7.1 Speakers
Sennheiser HDR120 Wireless Headphones
NEC Display Solutions 19" 16ms LCD Monitor
Logitech Media Keyboard
Razer Diamondback Mouse
Enermax EG701AX-VE SFMA(24P) ATX12V 600W Power Supply
3com 3C996B-T 10/100/1000Mbps PCI Network Adapter

Couple extra questions on top of the obvious, 'what do you think?' One, since I need a case, how exactly would you recommend I make sure everything fits? Get all the parts together then go out and find one the right size? Or is there some sort of number/model system for cases that would let me know which is the right one?
And two, that 3com Network Adapter is what I want to plug my broadband (ADSL or DSL) line into. Is that the right one?
Three, does the brand of RAM make much of a difference? If so, what manufacturers are recommended?
Four, if anyone sees any components on the list that'll go boom (or something equally unpleasant) if combined with other components on the list, please let me know now rather than later.
Finally, um, am I missing anything?

Edit: Took Ashton's advice and switched to a 6800

Re: OT: New PC!
 

Ignore post #1, it's obsolete. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif The second system comes out at USD2370.60 on NewEgg, but if you just want the box it's USD1866.00, or USD1647.00 if you don't want dual SLI video cards. And you could probably shave a few bob here and there if you don't ease off on the processor a bit, take a RAM hit and go for a smaller HD.
In case you're wondering, here's the price breakdown of the above system:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Processor $400.00
ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI X16 ATX AMD Motherboard $249.00
Maxtor MaXLine III 7L300R0 300GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra ATA133 Hard Drive $126.50
2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) $219.00
eVGA 256-P2-N383-TX Geforce 6800 256MB DDR PCI Express x16 Video Card $219.00x2
SONY 1.44MB 3.5" Internal Floppy Drive $10.00
NEC IDE DVD Burner Model ND-3540A $38.99x2
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS (7.1) Channels PCI Interface Sound Card $93.00
Creative Inspire P7800 7.1 Speakers $85.25
Sennheiser HDR120 Wireless Headphones $49.00
NEC Display Solutions 19" 16ms LCD Monitor $299.99
Logitech Media Keyboard $19.95
Razer Diamondback Mouse $49.99
Enermax EG701AX-VE SFMA(24P) ATX12V 600W Power Supply $129.99
3com 3C996B-T 10/100/1000Mbps PCI Network Adapter $123.00

Total $2370.65USD

Re: OT: New PC!
 

Oog, that's a ton of bread, man. What are you going to be running that you need an SLI set-up? Just curious.

I just made an AMD 3700+ system from the ground up in late May and it is still running. I would recommend Thompson's book - Building the Perfect PC

Re: OT: New PC!
 

What’s the NIC for? Doesn’t that board have two already built in?

Ditch the IDE hard drive and go with SATA. Personally, I would use the included raid and go with a pair of SATA drives.

I would also go with a 7800 video card. Despite what other peeps have said, it is worth the price. It has noticeably better performance and runs a lot cooler/quieter than the 6800’s

Also, while the DC AMD chip is a good pick, you should get some better cooling for it. The best air cooling is still a Swifty pin sink with a Delta. You can quiet it down by going with a 120mm fan and an adapter.

As for sound, I would use the onboard for now, and wait a few months. There are some new cards on the horizon that should push the state of the art.

EDIT:

You also don't neet that $250 board unless you plan to SLI a pair of vid cards. One of the sub $100 boards will do you fine. We actually don't use the ASUS boards for HiPo systems. The DFI Lanparty boards are the top of the line at the moment.

This is what I would use Lanparty

Re: OT: New PC!
 

Well, considering that I've gone from a pricetag of 4,179.88EUR to 2,028.97EUR for essentially the same cost, its looking positively affordable at the moment. SLI, well that's mainly for running FPS at insanely high resolutions at insanely high speeds. Kind of a 'can your machine do this?' to all my console owning friends. And, traditionally, the video card has been the weakest part of my rig, so it's also me making sure that my new system will be OK in that department for some time to come.

Re: OT: New PC!
 

10/100 ethernet is all you need for Internet. The best broadband is only ~8 MB/s, one twelth the bandwidth of a normal NIC.

I would go for high quality sound (ala Swan m200s) over quantity mediocre sound (ala low end home theater speakers) any day, but that's me. Home theater setups are really only worth it if you go high end. Those creative ones might give you a lesser experience overall than the Swan m200s. Of course, the quality costs more.

Alienware is just brand name. It is pretty easy to build the same machine, minus the god-awful case, for half as much money.

Re: OT: New PC!
 

For home theater sound, you might want to look into Klipsch audio speakers. They sound great and have a price tag of about $400US.

Re: OT: New PC!
 

Looks like it, yup. NIC ditched.

Done. But erm, can someone explain to me this whole RAID/SATA thingy. I've been out of the loop for a while, and I don't get it. I know SATA is like the fancy new technology, ergo using it is good, but what's RAID? Heard about it for ages but still don't know what it is. Oh, & on the topic of HDs, is Western Digital still a reputable company? WD and Maxtor are the only companies I'm really familiar with.

Jury's still out on this one until I do some further research. Better performance and cooler/quieter is a definate big plus for me, almost worth paying an extra $240.00USD
Ooo, dang, heatsinks! See, that falls into the 'What am I forgetting' category when I'm trying to get all the bits of my new machine costed out. Speaking of which, as a rule will all required cabling come with the various bits & pieces, or will those require seperate purchases?

And out of curiosity, if I wanted to go fancier than air cooling, what are my options?
To be honest, I've never really noticed a huge difference from one sound card to the other, it's always been the speaker system that was the make or break, so I figure as long as I have a halfways decent card that supports suround sound, I'm happy.
I am planning on SLIing a pair of video cards, which is why I'm willing to fork out the extra few quid for a motherboard that'll suport it. Besides, the first PC I ever built had an ASUS board, and I'm feeling nostalgic. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

/me hugs kerensky Thank you! A friend I've lost touch with had a set of Klipschs and they just rocked, but I couldn't remember the name of them. Now that I have, they're on the list!

Cheers!

Well, I did know they were overpriced, but you're very right about the 'half as much money part' The rig I'm describing weighs in at a bit over 4,000.00EUR as an Alienware, whereas it's currently around the 2,100.00EUR mark at the moment for building my own, & I've gotten to use a few bits that aren't options from Alienware. Although I kinda like their cases, especially the black with red internal lighting. Evvvillll! Course, that's just a matter of taste.

Re: OT: New PC!
 

Damn that is an expensive system... I remember spending near abouts $2,000.00 on my blue box back in 2001. I had the latest everything and within a month..... after building said machine, it was obsolete and I could have built it for about $500.00 less. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

But good luck to you. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: OT: New PC!
 

Well, it's currently quite a bit cheaper than my current system which cost me 2,500.00EUR and I had to cut a lot of corners to get it for that, so I'm relatively pleased at how it's going so far. BTW, here's the system as it stands at the moment...

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Processor $400.00
ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI X16 ATX AMD Motherboard $249.00
Western Digital Caviar SE WD2500JS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive $104.00
2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) $219.00
eVGA 256-P2-N383-TX Geforce 6800 256MB DDR PCI Express x16 Video Card $219.00x2
SONY 1.44MB 3.5" Internal Floppy Drive $10.00
NEC IDE DVD Burner Model ND-3540A $38.99x2
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS (7.1) Channels PCI Interface Sound Card $93.00
Klipsch PROMEDIA ULTRA 5.1 470 watts 5.1 Speakers $299.99
Sennheiser HDR120 Wireless Headphones $49.00
NEC Display Solutions 19" 16ms LCD Monitor $299.99
Logitech Media Keyboard $19.95
Razer Diamondback Mouse $49.99
Enermax EG701AX-VE SFMA(24P) ATX12V 600W Power Supply $129.99


Total $2439.89
Total(EUR) 2087.19EUR

Yeah, the price has gone up, despite getting a cheaper HD and knocking out the network card, but that's coz kerensky talked me into an expensive speaker system. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif Things like heatsinks et al I'm still considering so any input on them (or anything else) is still appreciated.

Edit: Any point on splashing out on a liquid cooling system with this setup? Are liquid cooling systems considerably more efficient that air cooling?

Re: OT: New PC!
 

The only reason to use liquid cooling is if you are going to overclock your PC (which you should not do)

This is what RAID is, http://computer.howstuffworks.com/scsi6.htm

Raid has nothing to do with SATA. It is a backup system for SCSI.

Re: OT: New PC!
 

No, overclocking bad. I've always seen overclocking as a way for people who are unwilling/unable to afford the performance they want to still get it, but I personally don't think the risk is worth it (burn out a $300 dollar processor trying to get $500 performance, & you end up paying $600 for a $300 processor). Oh, and overclocking is also quite usefull when highschool geeks are trying to sound cool.
"I got a wicked PC!"
"Is it overclocked?"
"No."
"rotflmao! u n00b! Mine's overclocked and it's l33t!"

Thanks for the linky explaining SCSI, it makes a bit more sense to me, but I wasn't able to find anything on that site about SATA. Wassup wit dat?

Re: OT: New PC!
 

Why should you not OC your system? Why not buy a cheaper low end chip and run it at the same speed as the high end parts?


Water cooling is a viable upgrade to air cooling; some of the cooling tower kits are quite nice. Air is the most dependable, but can have some limitations with today’s chips during hot weather. The next step up and the first to really be advanced cooling would be water cooling with pelts. The pelt chills the CPU and electronically moves the heat the water cooled side of the pelt. These work well, but can have some condensation issues and are not cheap. The top of the line is phase change. This method uses refrigeration equipment to chill the CPU down to around -30c at start up and maintain temps around 0c to 15c during normal operation. Again, condensation can cause problems and the cost of the chiller would buy you a nice mid level PC.


That is one use of raid. It is not only for SCSI systems, it can be used with IDE SCSI and SATA. The board in question includes a SATA raid chip and SATA is faster than IDE, so naturally you would go with SATA raid. For performance, you would build a stripe set so that you could use the bandwidth of both drives at the same time. If you were interested in data integrity, then a mirror would be better with each drive having exactly the same data. With three or four drives, a raid 5 would give you some of both. A little more speed and almost the same data integrity.

Your last statement is at best, uninformed, and as such should be removed.

Re: OT: New PC!
 

Everything you need to know about SATA raid is in the board manual. Just remember to press (F6) when windows promps at the start of setup, and load the included RAID driver.

Re: OT: New PC!
 

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Processor $400.00
Listed for $430.00
ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI X16 ATX AMD Motherboard $249.00
[/b] Listed for $173.00[/b]
Western Digital Caviar SE WD2500JS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive $104.00
Listed for $139.00
2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) $219.00
$220.00 (@ 1 Gig x 2)
eVGA 256-P2-N383-TX Geforce 6800 256MB DDR PCI Express x16 Video Card $219.00x2
$319.00

Re: OT: New PC!
 

OK, AT, looks like I might get my motherboard from ENU, but for the rest, NewEgg.com's got em beat.
As for overclocking, I'll tell you a little story about why I'd never do it.

When I was in High School, I had the most brilliant computer science teacher ever. He was a bit odd, never actually slept, just took lots of 30min catnaps throughout the day, but he knew EVERYTHING about EVERYTHING PC related. One day, he let a few of the geekier members of the class play around with overclocking a few of the PCs, with explicit instructions to clean the dust out of their insides first, to be very careful, and to switch the machines off when they were done. Of course, they didn't pay him any attention because they were uber and knew what they were doing, so they didn't clean out the dust (of which there was a considerable amount), and they left the machines running when they went home. During one of Mr. Miaki's (MiaKI not MiaGI!) catnaps, a few of the machines overheated enough to ignite some of the dust, which in turn ignited some paper left nearby (so much for being careful!) and within a few minutes there was a nice fire going. Mr. Miaki never woke up because the smoke & fumes kept him unconcious, and though his life was saved by the fire brigade, he came out of it so badly brain damaged that to this day he has to re-learn to tie his shoes every morning.

And that, in essence, is why I wouldn't OC anything. Especially since I have my PC in my bedroom, and have a habit of leaving it on overnight. I don't think I'd ever sleep a wink after overclocking my machine, even if I had the most expensive phase change cooling system in the world. I know it's unlikely the same thing would happen, but one does not recover from the trauma of losing a friend like that very easily.

Re: OT: New PC!
 

Sounds like an urban legend..or.......

Cough Cough....bull****......Cough Cough

I've let the smoke out of a few processors and mainboards, but never had anything close to a fire. If one of those PC caught fire, it was prolly rigged to do so.

Re: OT: New PC!
 

Well, I can give you a number for him, and you can ask him about it but he usually only answers around 12 noon when an attendant is helping him with lunch, since when he's alone the telephone frightens him since he doesn't know what the 'alarm' is for.
As for whether it was on purpose, it was ruled an accident, but the possibilty is there. And it's really not that difficult, given the nature of dust (and I'm not talking a thin film of dust either, I'm talking under-your-bed kind of dust, proper dust bunnies & all that, since the school board had all kinds of red-tape surrounding even opening the cases [since it 'voids the warranty'] so they didn't allow very frequent cleaning), that once it achieves high enough temperature, it creates a nice little air circulation effect, sending dust floating all over the place, and if any of that dust happens to ignite, it doesn't take long for it to spread.
And while burning dust usually doesn't last long enough or produce the heat required to melt and ignite computer components, it can ignite paper, and burning paper does create the temperatures needed to get plastic burning.
So even if I stored my PC in a freezer, I still wouldn't be comfortable overclocking anything.

Re: OT: New PC!
 

Oh man, that's bad. Read the instructions first.

Re: OT: New PC!
 

The right kind of dust in the right amount can be explosive in air. For example, grain dust is highly explosive when sufficient quantities are suspended in air.

Re: OT: New PC!
 

But at what temp will it combust? Most of the dust inside a PC is from the local environment. In a school environment that would be mostly carpet fiber, ceiling fibers, chalk and human misc. like skin, hair, and clothing. Not a real good source of tinder. Also, the insides of a PC are very fire resistant. That’s one of the reasons that they are so hard on the environment.

Let’s look at this from an informed point of view.

First, did you actually see the fire, or the charred PC lab?

Second, how would OC’ing cause the fire? The CPU is long dead before it reaches 200c; the power supply has built in thermal protection. Newer CPU’s have thermal protection too. And there are no high voltage components on the mainboard. At best, the alleged OC would have been modest, so that the systems would have been stable enough to run for an extended period of time. OCing involves bumping up the multiplier and or the Front side Buss frequency. If possible, you will also want to bump up the Vcore a tenth of a volt or even 5 tenths. None of this is the stuff fires are made from.

Now some point’s of reality. Most schools buy commercial off the shelf PC’s. You aren’t going to do much OC’ing on them. At best they will have a FSB jumper with 66, 100, and 133MHz settings. They might also have some settings for the memory. But for the sake of conversation, we will assume that these were custom OC’able systems. These would also be built to operate safely at their most aggressive settings. In the real world, we kill parts when we start v-modding boards and cards. I seriously doubt that the teacher let the students start bypassing circuits with 1000 ohm trimmers and such. So let’s assume that the system was OC’ed and overheated. It would have shut down long before it got hot enough to ignite dust, unless something was done to actually cause a fire. Magnesium filament and flammable liquid wired to a NS relay would be the easy way, but again I doubt this could happen in a school and not be found out.

And lastly, lots of peeps here have had system shutdowns caused by accumulated dust. They don’t catch fire; they just shut down or lock up. PC are basically fire proof, the plastic won’t even sustain a flame. Until recently, the insides were coated with a fire retardant dust. Many of the components vent fluorocarbons at high temps. They will smoke and stink profusely, but seldom if ever burn.

Re: OT: New PC!
 

Well, fire hazards aside, The reason I would never OC a chip is because it is bad for it. Period. No matter how well cooled the chip is OCing will reduce its life expectancy. Chips are built to run at certain speeds. The process of heating and cooling causes the silicon in the chip to expand and contract. The materials used are rated to do this at a certain speed. If you overclock (even with proper cooling) this will occur more often and to a greater degree and will degrade the chip. This means that the chip will fail sooner than it would at its rated speed, often far sooner. This is why you should not do it.

Not to mention the fact that overclocking your chip is a guarenteed recipie for failure if your cooling system ever hiccups. Sure, overclocking is fun if you can afford to buy a new system every year, or buy multiple chips, if necessary, when things go wrong, but for your average working joe, you would be best served to just use it at rated specs.

If you do insist on overclocking you should go with a Pentium chip, as they seem to tollerate it better, relatively, than AMD chips. However this means that you have to use a Pentium chip (not good if you want a gaming machine). I would also recommend dropping a some cash on a good liquid cooling system as well.

Re: OT: New PC!
 

By the way, SATA is a similar technology to the older PATA technology which is being phased out. PATA, or Parallel ATA, is what you are most likely using if you have the flat ribbon cables connecting your hard drives and cd drives to your computer. Parallel meaning that there are multiple parallel wires in the cable which each carry information at the same time.

In the time of the dinosaurs everything was serial, meaning that there was one wire connecting a drive to a computer. Of course when people ran into frequency limits and could advance no further, someone got the brilliant idea to just add more wires. 8x the connections means 8x the speed.

Well, using parallel wires has its own set of problems. The major one being RF. See, when an electrical signal moves down a wire it creates a sort of radio frequency "shock wave". This shock wave is stronger the higher the frequency of the signal. This RF shock wave interferes with the signals in parallel wires. Over time, several things were done to limit this sort of problem. For example in most modern parallel cables there is an inactive "buffer" wire in between all active wires. This wire helps to absorb the RF interference.

So, now that tech has advanced, we have new materials that can handle far greater frequencies than we used to be able to use, but, if we run in parallel the interference kills the cable. So, we return to serial.

SATA, or Serial ATA, is a new interface for drives that provides serial information transfer for a drive at higher frequencies. Because of the previously stated increases in tech we are now able to increase the frequency to a point that even with only 2 wires (one to send and one to receive) they out-perform 40 wire parallel cables (26 of those carry data). Also, the cables can be much longer for SATA than for PATA, 39 inches vs. 18 inches.

So, basically SATA is a new controller that allows for far faster data transfer at lower power costs. Buy it. Use it. Enjoy it. It's just better.

Re: OT: New PC!
 

Your first statement is partially true. But it’s not the increase in frequency that causes it. The additional Vcore accelerates electron migration, which is what ages the chip. Heat cycles don’t come into play, and of themselves are not large enough to adversely affect the chip. So my chip last seven years of 24/7 instead of 12, I really don’t care.

Your second statement is false. Chips are hardwired to run at certain speeds. They are designed to run in a target spectrum of speeds. The speeds are determined by binning each lot, then burning to fit inventory needs. If you get a P4 woody of 2.4GHz and another of 1.8GHz, and they have the same lot # on the core, they are the same chip. One had the multiplier burned to 19 and the other was burned to 18. Other than that, they are the same chip.

Your third statement is not true; the materials seldom change within a family of chips. One P4 woody is the same as any other P4 woody material wise. More often than not, it is manufacturing advances that change not the materials.

Your fifth statement is a repeat, but it is still untrue. Electron migration is the problem, and it is caused by voltage. Older processors could be killed by heat, but it took excessive amounts, far beyond what a stable system would run at. Newer chips have built in thermal protection.

Your sixth statement is untrue. If the cooler fails, the thermal protection will shut down the system. More likely, the system would gradually overheat, causing the OC to become unstable, and cause data corruption which would eventually crash the system.

Your seventh statement is sort of a generalization, and a mater of personal opinion. What people can afford is none of my business so long as they manage to pay the bill. Some people OC just to push the state of the art. Others do it because they can’t afford top end hardware to run new games with; others do it because they enjoy it. Who are you to say what would be best for them?

Your last statement is pure uninformed bull****. While Intel systems still hold the reputation of being the most stable, the only place they exceed AMD on OC’ing is raw FSB and cold start on chilled systems. You can not alter the multiplier on an Intel chip, and if you push the Vcore more than a couple of tenths, you’ll be flirting with sudden P4 death. Push it to 1.8v and you can measure the life in hours. AMD chips thrive at 1.8 and on most of them, you can alter the multiplier. Also AMD offers a chip just for the OC’ing crowd. The FX comes with an unlocked multiplier. Also, AMD chips tend to cost less, so it hurts less when you kill one. So, if you want to do serious OC’ing, you are more or less forced to use AMD. Also, 90+% of OC’d computers are cooled with air. Water cooling is for the hard core guys, and phase change is almost a novelty. I probably know 400peeps who OC. Very few, less than 20, use anything other than air for cooling. Perhaps 15 use water and there are five of us with phase change systems. AFAIK, I’m the only one still messing with pelts. The average OC of the people I know is probably 100MHz on the FSB. These systems run for years like this with no problem.

Re: OT: New PC!
 

So in other words, OC'ing can easily fry a chip, if you do it wrong! Since many people don't have much knowledge of OC'ing, they really shouldn't do it since there'd be a pretty good chance that they'd totally fry something, simply by doing it wrong. On the other hand, I'm sure you're right that if done correctly OC'ing will do no harm, since when your chip lasts only 8 years instead of the 12 it might have, its so far out of date that it doesn't matter.

Re: OT: New PC!
 

I love my ATI Radeon X800 XL, but check out NVIDIA New Card

Re: OT: New PC!
 

Sure, there is no protection for the uninformed. But, with that said, adjusting Vcore is more advanced than basic OC’ing. And a three year old chip is usually not worth much. Unless you need it and it’s the only one you have. People “OC” all kinds of things and in so doing usually trade off some reliability for performance. Cars, RC toy cars, game consoles, their own bodies are some of the things that come to mind. TV repair has been doing it for years. Remember when that old console TV got dim when you were a kid? A man came out and for a few bucks made it as good as new. He installed a voltage kicker onto the tube harness and kicked the voltage to the guns up. I always wondered what that did to the radiation coming out the other side

Let’s state some obvious things here. IMHO You should not go hog wild OC'ing your only rig if you can't afford to replace it. And it would be best if you had a good knowledge of how PC's work before you start altering default settings.

As an example, the board listed in the build above comes with an OC’ing program. The OC ability of the board is the main reason people will pay almost $200 for it. It will allow you to OC on the fly, or to have it happen automatically only when the system needs more speed. You can set it to specific settings, or as a percentage of system speed. All you need to know is how to use a mouse. It does not allow the average user to make big Vcore changes. These still have to be done in the bios code. IIRC, the highest bump is 10%. That would work fine for anyone willing to invest in some upgraded air cooling. 5% would be fine for any stock system that was not in an overly hot environment. The ability to OC is more or less universally included in aftermarket PC parts these days. The OC’ing crowd makes up the largest segment of the market for these parts, and demand that the ability be included.

Re: OT: New PC!
 

If you do overclocking right, you can get about a 15% increase in performace, at no risk to the component you're overclocking. Graphics cards are probally the easiest to overclock, since they're more resistant to heat. Simply increase the clock settings bit by bit, playtesting it for 5 minutes every time you adjust it, until you notice graphical artifacts. Then adjust the settings back a little, and do an extended playtest. If a graphics card overheats, you'll know it, because of those graphical artifacts.

Re: OT: New PC!
 

The 7800 sli’s are cool. The 512’s went on sale marked up to almost $800 dollars on Monday, and were sold out before the end of business on Wednesday. That 800XL is still a pretty stout card, especially since the new High end ATI cards are still more or less vapor ware. The 800 series still hold some of the higher marks.

3DMark01

Re: OT: New PC!
 

Interesting...

Thermodyne are you Thermo (Rank #2)on the 3D Mark 2003 page?

Where do you work? (You can ignore if that's too personal.)

Re: OT: New PC!
 

50% stable, is what we shoot for, but seldom achieve. Best I ever got was 900MHz bump on a 2GHz Northwood. That was with air cooling. The low end CPU's are where the big OC's come from, because that are basicall the same parts as the high end chips. We have about 10 peeps with 50%+ OC's at the moment. Over Clocks

Re: OT: New PC!
 

Yep, that be me. Thoes are on air. I have some higher numbers with the phase change cooling, but I'm still not completly stable. Damn AMD's and coldstart lockups. As a rule, we don't publish results on non-stable systems. I got a new controller for the chiller and I'm working on a bare bones Windows install. When I get some time I'll go after #1 in 03 and 05. The #1 in 01 is a vmodded dual phase amonia coold system, I can't touch that one yet. Perhaps when I get a pair of 7800/512 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Sharkys is a good forum for any of you guys with PC questions, or if you just want to talk about PC's

As to my job, PM me.

Re: OT: New PC!
 

While we are on the subject, 3DMark 05 is good bench mark. It will bring a high end OEM system to its knees. If you want to see what you have, run the mark and compare it to about position 10 on down. Above 10 and your against some tough tweaking and custom OS’s

Re: OT: New PC!
 

Well, there you have it. I have been pwned. So, I'll strap on my bib, and eat my humble pie. Listen to Thermodyne, he obviously knows what he is talking about when it comes to overclocking a comp.

Frankly OCing a comp is not something I am very interested in doing, so I have never really done any real research into it. I guess this is what I get when I relay second hand info from someone who I thought knew something about the trade.

Lesson learned. Never climb out on a limb unless you have personally checked to see if it is stable. In the future I'll personally research anything I choose to give advice on.

I'd like to think, however, that when I do have more knowledge than others I would use it to help people out rather than to lord my superiority over them. It is too bad that manners and knowledge aren't a package deal.

Re: OT: New PC!
 

And let that be a lesson to you! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: OT: New PC!
 

Indeed. ¬¬

Re: OT: New PC!
 

Na......Not pwned.....I'm not into all that. It was just a good aggressive debate. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif

Re: OT: New PC!
 

A good old google search will do wonders for debates like this.

Re: OT: New PC!
 

Weeb!
http://www.extremeprometeia.com/cgi-...rometeia%2ecom
%2facatalog%2fsearch%2ehtml&WD=ii%20mach&P N=Prometeia_Mach_II%2ehtml%23a76#a76]http://www.extremeprometeia.com
/cgi-bin/sh000005.pl?REFPAGE=http%3a%2f%2fwww%2eextremeprom eteia%2ecom%2facatalog%2fsearch%2ehtml&WD=ii%2 0mach&PN
=Prometeia_Mach_II%2ehtml%23a76#a76

I was thinking of getting this one, because not only could I put my beer on top of my PC to keep it nice & chilled, but I could use my PC cooling system as colateral for a mortgage.

Seriously though....


I haven't been able to find what you're talking about anywhere. Linky?

Re: OT: New PC!
 

Swifty

Go to the MCX64-V under heatsinks

Re: OT: New PC!
 

Thanks! Think I've got me a proper system now, so all that's left is to appropriate the funding for it. Actually, I already have the funding for it, what I need to do is get my *** a job so that I don't have to use my savings to stay afloat. And spending two grand on a new computer when you're jobless is just not a good idea. Unless you've got way more money than I do, anyway.

Re: OT: New PC!
 

Could you shrink the link? Thanks.