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Thermodyne said:
What’s the NIC for? Doesn’t that board have two already built in?
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Looks like it, yup. NIC ditched.
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Ditch the IDE hard drive and go with SATA. Personally, I would use the included raid and go with a pair of SATA drives.
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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kerensky said:
For home theater sound, you might want to look into Klipsch audio speakers. They sound great and have a price tag of about $400US.
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/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!
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Imperator Fyron said:
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.
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Cheers!
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Alienware is just brand name. It is pretty easy to build the same machine, minus the god-awful case, for half as much money.
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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.