OT: New PC!

[Caduceus]

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

[Thermodyne]

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

[AgentZero]

wildcard06 said:
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

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.

[Fyron]

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.

I know Alienware makes wicked gaming machines...

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

[kerensky]

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

[AgentZero]

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

Looks like it, yup. NIC ditched.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

/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!

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.

Cheers!

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

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.

[Atrocities]

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.

But good luck to you.

[AgentZero]

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. 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?

[JAFisher44]

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.

[AgentZero]

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?