Help me build my new computer...

[Darth Quorthon]

Only get 1 7800GTX. You can add the other one later, provided that your mobo supports SLI. The 7800GTX is the best card money can buy right now, and upgrading with a second one should be less expensive and comparatively easy in the future. It'll also bring your budget down, and I'm unaware of games that overtax even a single GTX, today.

He did mention that he wasn't good with computers. Maybe he should just get both right now. Also, don't you need the same ROM version on both cards? might be difficult to find them later.

NVIDIA updated the drivers so that the two cards in SLI only need to be the same basic model number. For example, you could have a BFG 7800GT OC and an MSI 7800GT running together in SLI. But yeah, if you're not planning on doing the work yourself, you'd be better off to just get the two cards now. Future-proofing, you know.

[InnocentBystander]

I just configured one on GamePC:

Code: Select all

<snip>

Subtotal Price (Excludes Discounts, Taxes or Shipping) 	- 	$3,127.00

EDIT: You might want to try two GeForce 7800GT rather than one 7800GTX

You understand that, minus their "tech support" that system is at least $1000 overpriced (compared to say, Mwave). Wonder if you get the manufacturer's warrenty on individual items after the 1 year? That's a whole computer right there...


Axis Kast, it's cool that you guys can afford a beast of a machine, but it really pains me to see the markup these places are putting on their hardware. You can afford 3 grand, but does that mean that you should pay too much for basically the same stuff?

Here is a bit of advice, don't try and buy a computer that will last forever, buy something that, unupgraded will last you 3 or so years; and understand that without upgrades you'll just have to bite the bullet and replace it in 3 years or 4 years time. With that in mind, you could really cut the price down under 2 grand, easily.

[Ace Pace]

Only get 1 7800GTX. You can add the other one later, provided that your mobo supports SLI. The 7800GTX is the best card money can buy right now, and upgrading with a second one should be less expensive and comparatively easy in the future. It'll also bring your budget down, and I'm unaware of games that overtax even a single GTX, today.

He did mention that he wasn't good with computers. Maybe he should just get both right now. Also, don't you need the same ROM version on both cards? might be difficult to find them later.

nVidias latest drivers took care of that. Which pleased me alot.

[Axis Kast]

1 x Zalman CNPS9500 LED Cooler for Socket-939 / 775 - $79.00
1 x Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe nVidia nForce4 SLI Retail - $188.00
2 x Infineon PC-3200 1 GB Performance Cooled DDR SDRAM - $270.00
1 x Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10,000 RPM OEM - $194.00
1 x Plextor PX-716SA SATA/150 DVD ± RW / CD-RW Retail - $160.00
2 x XFX GeForce 7800 GTX PCIe 512MB (ETA : 12/15) - $1,596.00
1 x Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music Retail - $138.00
1 x Logitech Z-530 5.1 Speakers Retail - $75.00
1 x Creative 5633 Modem Blaster v.92 56K OEM - $30.00
1 x D-Link DWL-AG530 802.11A/B/G Wireless Network Card Retail - $75.00
1 x Antec P180 Silver Full-Tower - $170.00
1 x Seasonic S12 600W PSU (Single/Dual-CPU Ready) - $160.00
1 x Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition OEM - $115.00
1 x Mozilla Firefox Browser and Thunderbird Email (Free With Any OS) - $0.00
1 x 1 Year Parts and 1 Year Labor Standard Warranty Included Free - $0.00
1 x Assembly, Burn-In, Drivers, and Benchmarks (Single CPU System) - $225.00


Subtotal Price (Excludes Discounts, Taxes or Shipping) - $4,163.00

So... based on Phongn's suggestions, and my own additions, this is what I came up with.

Obviously, the first question is whether I can cut back on $1,000 from any of the items listed herein.

Second is the question of whether all the parts listed are compatible and will form a fully-functioning computer. Do I need extra cables? Cooling devices? Special stuff? Do I have to add any special software to maximize the value of my hardware purchases, or do they do that for me at GamePC?

[Ace Pace]

Wheres the CPU?


1 x Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10,000 RPM OEM - $194.00

Unless you're pairing this with another drive, drop it, it costs alot more then a Diamondmax 10 16MB cache with 250GB space and preforms equally.

2 x XFX GeForce 7800 GTX PCIe 512MB (ETA : 12/15) - $1,596.00

Ugh...no....god....

Let me explain, yes, this is the fastest 'hawt' stuff on the market, its also absurdly overpriced, going with a pair of 256MB GTXs is more then enough.

Let me ask a straight question, what resolution would you game on? If its anything less then 1600X1200, then drop these babies(or buy them and send them to me ) and get a single 256MB GTX.


1 x Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music Retail - $138.00

Good choices for the rest, what I just said above should help cut more then 700$ off the price, you're graphics chip will cost roughly 400$. Since you're using GamePC.com

You also mentioned a need for a dialup connection so I'm throwing in a modem.

1 x AMD Athlon64 X2 4200+ (2.2 GHz) Dual Core Retail - $442.00
1 x Zalman CNPS9500 LED Cooler for Socket-939 / 775 - $79.00
1 x Asus A8N-SLI Premium nVidia nForce4 SLI Retail - $198.00
2 x Infineon PC-3200 512 MB DDR SDRAM - $116.00
1 x Maxtor DiamondMax 10 250GB 7,200 RPM OEM - $115.00
1 x Mitsumi 7-in-1 Black Memory Reader / Floppy Drive OEM - $55.00
1 x Sony DW-Q30A Black Dual Layer DVD ± RW / CD-RW OEM - $70.00
1 x Sony DDU-1621 16X Black DVD-ROM OEM - $35.00
2 x BFG Tech GeForce 7800 GT OC PCIe 256MB Retail - $880.00
1 x Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music Retail - $138.00
1 x Creative 5633 Modem Blaster v.92 56K OEM - $30.00
1 x D-Link DWL-AG530 802.11A/B/G Wireless Network Card Retail - $75.00
1 x Antec P180 Silver Full-Tower - $170.00
1 x Seasonic S12 600W PSU (Single/Dual-CPU Ready) - $160.00
1 x Papst 120SMGLLE 120mm Quiet Case Fan OEM - $26.00
1 x AcoustiProducts AcousticPack Standard Noise Reducing Foam - $70.00
1 x Microsoft Windows XP Professional OEM - $185.00
1 x Mozilla Firefox Browser and Thunderbird Email (Free With Any OS) - $0.00
1 x 1 Year Parts and 1 Year Labor Standard Warranty Included Free - $0.00
1 x Assembly, Burn-In, Drivers, and Benchmarks (Single CPU System) - $225.00


Subtotal Price (Excludes Discounts, Taxes or Shipping) - $3,069.00

This is 1000$ less, includes the CPU(where was it in your config) and loses only around 5-10% preformance IF(and I stress If) you intend to game on very high resolution.

[phongn]

Yes, GamePC does have a hefty markup on their goods, so you might want to look at another assembler to do it.

[Ace Pace]

A quick alternative is the Gigabyte board they have as an option, its stabler,cheaper.

[InnocentBystander]

Monarch computer might acutally be a good choice, as they offer a high level of customization, but still provide the kind of after purchase support you want (which is to say, calling "tech support").
You'd have to check their markup, as I know their prices are higher than many e-tailors.

[Axis Kast]

The CPU would be an AMD Athlon64 X2 4600+ (2.4 GHz) Dual Core - $688.00. Unless anyone really thinks I need the FS-X5 (2.6 Ghz) one for $920.00.

Also, I tend to run everything, wherever possible, at the smallest resolution possible. I even want to learn how to resize the screen in a game so I can cut out of Civ III or Civ IV momentarily to send an IM.

[Ace Pace]

The CPU would be an AMD Athlon64 X2 4600+ (2.4 GHz) Dual Core - $688.00. Unless anyone really thinks I need the FS-X5 (2.6 Ghz) one for $920.00.

Also, I tend to run everything, wherever possible, at the smallest resolution possible. I even want to learn how to resize the screen in a game so I can cut out of Civ III or Civ IV momentarily to send an IM.

No one needs an FX.

And with the new rig(any of these) you can run at high res and minimise really quickly, theres no real need to play in a small res.

[Axis Kast]

Er, I have been belatedly informed not to go over $2,000. So let's revise our high-end estimates.

I'm apparently keeping the NEC 19" screen I've got for sure, as well as the Alienware speakers I got last time around (so I don't know what that means in terms of a proper sound card).

I want the best computer possible. Really, I want to play Civ III, Civ IV (which can't run on what I've got now), and Battlefield 2 (ditto) at the smallest possible resolutions, with high performance and great speed. The computer should be fast and very reliable.

[Ace Pace]

Er, I have been belatedly informed not to go over $2,000. So let's revise our high-end estimates.

I'm apparently keeping the NEC 19" screen I've got for sure, as well as the Alienware speakers I got last time around (so I don't know what that means in terms of a proper sound card).

I want the best computer possible. Really, I want to play Civ III, Civ IV (which can't run on what I've got now), and Battlefield 2 (ditto) at the smallest possible resolutions, with high performance and great speed. The computer should be fast and very reliable.

At two K we get into the price range the earlier posters were talking about, and my original post in this thread.
Compiling the offers posted here.

Processor Athlon 64 3000+ Venice 512K 1.80GHz (939) - Retail 146$
Motherboard DFI LanParty UT SLI-DR 165$
Memory Patriot PC-3200 2x512MB Extreme Performance XBL 150$
Video Card XFX 7800 GT Overclocked 379$
Hard Drive Western Digital SATA II 160GB 7200RPM 8MB Caviar SE 81$
Optical Drive BenQ DW1640 Black (OEM) 43$
Case Cooler Master Cavalier 3 CAV-T03-UK 76$
Power Supply SunBeam 550W NUUO SUNNU550-US-BK Modular PSU 86$

Keyboard and Mouse Logitech Internet Pro Desktop 23$
Bottom Line 1150$ (rough)

Taking out the speakers and the monitor gives you around 700$ to play around with, first thing to do is use the CPU you mentioned above.


The Second system.

$368- SHUTTLE SN25P nVIDIA nFORCE4 CHIPSET AMD ATHLON 64 BARE SYSTEM (Retail)
$624 - AMD ATHLON 64 X2 4600+ MANCHESTER
$249 - CORSAIR TWINx2048-3200C2
$29 - Assemble/Test Bundle
$100 -MAXTOR 250GB MXDX6B or 6L250R0 UATA-133 PATA 16MB 7200RPM (Bare drive)
$45 - NEC ND-3550A SILVER 16X/16 DVD DUAL DOUBLE LAYER REWRITABLE DRIVE W/SW (White box)
$395 - JATON NVIDIA GEFORCE 7800GT 256MB DDR3 PCI-EXPRESS DUAL DVI-I
$134 - Microsoft Windows XP Professional X64 ZAT-00007 (OEM) (If used for gaming.)

$1947 total.

This system is very good technicly, and it will be small, but Innocent Bystanders post mentions some issues with small form factor boxs.

I've taken out double posting and small changes.


Both of these systems would be good buys, though the first(since its from a Do it yourself list) would require going to a tech or a local PC building shop and requesting they build it, adding abit to the price.

To sum it up, for 2000$ monitor less you can get a very capable configuration.

[InnocentBystander]

Ace and I banged this out @ Monarch
Note, I kinda round prices, shipping and *possibility* of tax not included.

Case - Thermaltake Soprano (Silver/Black) (@75$) - Your choice, Ace Pace likes it, I don't really care. TONS of choices here, prices can vary greatly.
PSU - OCZ Modstream 450 watt (More than you'll need) (@75$)
Case Fan - Thermaltake 120mm (@8$) Can upgarde for like 8 bucks to a "smart" fan from antec (variable speed I think)
Mobo - Gigabyte KN851GMF-9 (@80$) Ace Paces says it's stable as a rock.
CPU - Athlon x2 4400 (with stock HSF) (@515$)
Ram - Corsair TwinX1024-3200C2PT ($106) Likely worth the 30 bucks over value ram
HD - Western Digital 160gig HD, SATA/8mb cache/7200rpm (@$90) - You could find this for like 50 bucks with a deal at slickdeals.org, but knowing nothing, you're better off.
DVD - NEC Dual Layer +/- DVD RW (@$50)
DVD Software (@20$)
GPU - eVGA GeForce 7800 GT OC'd (@$350) a bit more than it should be IMO, but then again, not much you can do.
Floopy - (@$20) I think you could do without it, but your choice
Modem - Creative Modem Blaster (@30$)
Wireless - D-Link PCI G card (@$35) (you needed this right?)
Extra 5 usb ports (@$20)
24/7 Tech support + 3 years Onsite service (@200$) other service options available.
OS - XP Prof w/ SP2 (@$150) ouch
Mouse - Logitech mx518 gaming mouse (@40$) I have one, it's great
Free shit includes HL2 and a 128 meg usb flash drive.

It comes out to something like $1850 before shipping.
You could do better if you were to buy your own parts and plug them in (it really isn't hard), but if you aren't comfortable with doing that, then you've just got to pay the extra cash.

[Axis Kast]

Innocent...

If I were to get a 40GB or 80GB HD, forget the floppy drive, forget the mouse (I've got one), and take only 1 or 2 years of service, is there a possibility I could add more RAM for little extra cash? What about a 2nd graphics card?

[InnocentBystander]

Pal, I'm not selling you a computer, I went to www.monarchcomputer.com, I clicked on "Custom Systems" and scrolled down to the "Monarch Furia" which is the one for modern AMD based computers. That brings you to a selection of 3, for 1 video card choose the second computer (PCI-E) and for 2 video cards the third (PCI-E w/SLI). After clicking the "Buy Now" option you get this big list of Drop Down Lists. If you fill in them in with the stuff I've selected, you can customize things to your own liking. Note that monarch's config tool is pretty poor, and won't acutally, you know, add the shit up, so an excel spreadsheet helps with that regard. Play around with it, post ideas.

That being said; an 80gig HD will you run between 55 and 70$ (IDE vs SATA, I'll let others argue the value of one over the other).
So let's say -35 HD, -40 Mouse, -20 Floppy. That's $95, you can drop the service down to the basic 6 months parts and labor, no phone support and that's -200, or something like -100 to get phone support and less parts&labor support. If you could sacrifice Windows, that's another 150.

NOTE: This dosen't include the regular microsoft office shit, no word, excel, powerpoint, etc is included (though that's the case with all these boutique shops).
A second graphics card will require an additional $350 + 20 or 30 bucks to get a motherboard to support it.

So, play around with the numbers and see what you come up with. I've got a train to catch.

[Miles Teg]

Deleted

[Miles Teg]

Here's some things to look for when configuring a machine from your dealer of choice (I always build my own so I can't recomend a dealer to you). For the most part, I won't go into specific brands since you won't be asembling it yourself.

* nVidia nForce 4 Ultra (or SLI if you want dual video cards) This is VERY important. Do *not* get anything with an ATi or SiS or VIA chipset if you want to game with this machine.

* Athlon 64 X2 (4200+ or better) or an AthlonFX if you really want the fastest gaming processor available (the X2 is dual core so will be better overall, but slower for games). If the X2 and FX chips cost too much, get a fast (3500+) "vanilla" A64.

* 2GB or more (but *not* any less) of memory. Dual Channel Memory can't necessarily be upgraded later on and still be dual channel -- the new memory has to be nearly identical to the existing memory.

* An nVidia 7800 series card (GT or GTX depending on how much you want to spend).

* SATA or SATAII Hard Drive (SATAII is not faster unless you are running a RAID array). Important! Do *not* get an ATA100 or ATA133 Drive. A lot of dealers are gonna be trying to offload these old, slow POSs. Get SATA.

* Get any optional sound card upgrade. Onboard sounds cards these days are tons better than they used to be, but don't generally have gaming features (like EAX).

* Get a 450W+ Power Supply (500W+ if you are gonna do two video cards). Try to find a dealer that uses brand name power supplies (Preferably Antec or Seasonic). A good power supply is *absolutely critical* to a stable system.

The rest of the components (dvd drive, case, etc.) don't really matter too much -- make you decision based off of the above (primarily the power supply, Hard Disk, and motherboard choices). Also, if it comes down to money problems, then skimp on the CPU rather than RAM or video card.


Edit:

I just speced a couple of machine from Alienware that have the above components list, and they were both around $2,000. The Area-51 Series with Dual Core and SLI lists as "starting at ~$5,000" but if you customize it you can get it down to $2,200 with an X2 + 3GB + 7800GT.

Miles Teg

[InnocentBystander]

2 gigs is overkill, I believe it was OCZ who did something a month or two back where they did some benches and found there was "basically" no difference performance wise.

[Xon]

2 gigs is overkill, I believe it was OCZ who did something a month or two back where they did some benches and found there was "basically" no difference performance wise.

They obviously werent playing FEAR, Battlefield2, Doom3, Quake4 or any nuw games. Just running the stupid timed demoes which dont stress the dynamic content loading.

Either that or they werent doing much heavy multitasking.

[Ace Pace]

2 gigs is overkill, I believe it was OCZ who did something a month or two back where they did some benches and found there was "basically" no difference performance wise.

Where did you see that? nah, 2GB is very usful for fear or BF2.


Miles, I'm gonna ask you to look at some ATi motherboard benchs... they don't have the I/O to be a usful machine but damn their fast in gaming.

[InnocentBystander]

Where did you see that?

I seem to recall it was one of the links you threw at me.

[Ace Pace]

Where did you see that?

I seem to recall it was one of the links you threw at me.

I throw an average of 3 links a day at you, give me a time frame.

[InnocentBystander]

Pre-New computer...

[Miles Teg]

2 gigs is overkill, I believe it was OCZ who did something a month or two back where they did some benches and found there was "basically" no difference performance wise.

Where did you see that? nah, 2GB is very usful for fear or BF2.

My main reason for saying 2GB is the upgradability issue. With the exception of BF2, FEAR, and a couple of other games, 2GB *is* overkill for *now*. However, it won't be long (seeing how there are games that can take advantage of it now) before 1GB will be insufficient. Given that, and the difficulties of upgrading Dual Channel memory, a new buyer with the $$$ is better off going with 2GB+ right now =)

Miles, I'm gonna ask you to look at some ATi motherboard benchs... they don't have the I/O to be a usful machine but damn their fast in gaming.

Yeah, I haven't looked at ATi boards benchmarks, but the reason I say to avoid them for gaming is thus:

* Their Crossfire is entirely outclassed by nVidia's SLI technology (Crossfire has limitations on refresh rates that are unacceptable to me). This stems from Crossfire being a "holy shit, nVidia has something we don't, we better push something out quick!"

* I think it's a bad idea to mix an ATi chipset wtih an nVidia video card. I will not purchase, nor recommend ATi video cards. Their hardware sweet, but their drivers are consistantly total crap (In my experience at least). Also, given their history of crappy drivers, I wouldn't want my system board to be reliant on them

YMMV
Miles Teg

[Darth Quorthon]

I think one of the main attractions of CrossFire is that those new ATI chipsets offer two x16 lanes, instead of two x8 lanes. I think SLI has two x16 lanes now though, IIRC. The main thing that sucks about CrossFire is that one of the cards has to be a special "master" card, which costs more I think. As far as dual videocards go, ATI has a lot of ground to make up.