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Building a new PC |
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Talen Morgan
Amused
Join date: 2 Apr 2004
Posts: 3,097
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04-25-2005 07:46
Well my good ol Compaq compter bit the dust last week and I decided to build a new computer that will have a lasting impact and be upgradeable for quite some time and hopefully play SL on full blast..So heres whats going in mine...Post what you have or any suggestions you might have for me. As it stands now this system is under $2000 which I think is pretty damn good considering the parts.
Thermaltake Tsunami case Asus a8n-sli deluxe mother board AMD athlon chip 3500+ Venice core ( new chip out this week) XP 90 heat sink ( for now till the overclocking begins  )2 Ge Force 6800 GT Video cards 1 Gig of Crucial Ballystix 2 seagate 200 gig Sata drives in a raid 0 config 2 sony dvd rom/burner 1 sony floppy drive Fan controller unit with led temp readouts for cpu/ case/ and vid card. _____________________
Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day...set a man on fire and he'll be warm the rest of his life
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Ace Cassidy
Resident Bohemian
Join date: 5 Apr 2004
Posts: 1,228
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04-25-2005 07:47
1 sony floppy drive How Neanderthal can you get, Talen? - Ace _____________________
"Free your mind, and your ass will follow" - George Clinton
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Talen Morgan
Amused
Join date: 2 Apr 2004
Posts: 3,097
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04-25-2005 07:50
How Neanderthal can you get, Talen? - Ace Have no choice...the raid drivers for the Sata drives come on.......floppy. Was trying my damdest to get rid of it but they tell me I need it . _____________________
Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day...set a man on fire and he'll be warm the rest of his life
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Rose Karuna
Lizard Doctor
Join date: 5 Jun 2004
Posts: 3,772
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04-25-2005 07:51
How Neanderthal can you get, Talen? - Ace Talen, just a thought, and I'm not sure whether or not you actually have to pay for the floppy drive, but if you do you may want to consider a USB Flash drive instead. Much cheaper and more versatile. (Sorry, I posted this before I saw your reason for the floppy) . _____________________
I Do Whatever My Rice Krispies Tell Me To
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Talen Morgan
Amused
Join date: 2 Apr 2004
Posts: 3,097
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04-25-2005 07:55
Talen, just a thought, and I'm not sure whether or not you actually have to pay for the floppy drive, but if you do you may want to consider a USB Flash drive instead. Much cheaper and more versatile. . I'll be getting a flash drive later and the floppy only cost me 5 bucks lol...I already have a external zip drive but there was no way around the floppy drive ...some bastard somewhere is still thinking up reasons why we still have a floppy drive or else it would have switched to flash or zip drive by now. _____________________
Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day...set a man on fire and he'll be warm the rest of his life
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Isablan Neva
Mystic
Join date: 27 Nov 2004
Posts: 2,907
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04-25-2005 08:45
You could ask for a combination floppy/memory card reader drive. They are about $25. I have one in mine and it reads the memory cards in both our digital cameras.
http://www.mitsumi.com/products/fa402amain.html _____________________
 http://slurl.com/secondlife/TheBotanicalGardens/207/30/420/ |
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Catherine Omega
Geometry Ninja
Join date: 10 Jan 2003
Posts: 2,053
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04-25-2005 12:38
That system looks good, but make sure you do some reading on forums for people with similar systems to make sure the power supply you're planning on getting is going to be sufficient. That computer is going to use an insane amount of power. Like... almost approaching electric heater levels.
 One suggestion I do have is that you might not want to do RAID 0 on those hard drives. Hard disks are so cheap and crappy these days that you're almost assured of a hard drive crash at some point, and with RAID 0, you lose all your data instead of half. Seagate drives are pretty good, but I still don't know if I'd risk it, personally. It comes down to performance vs risk. If you don't store much on your computer that you can't easily restore, it's probably not a big deal, but if you're planning on filling up those drives with a lot of data, you might run into trouble. _____________________
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Yashu Vindaloo
Velvet Dominant
Join date: 24 Aug 2004
Posts: 121
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04-25-2005 13:40
Get 2gb of ram... (at least)
It is a shame to see people buy such nice hardware and only get 1gb of ram. they make low latancy 1gb sticks... but if you had to get ones that were 3.3.3.6 it would be ok because mem latancy doesn't effect a64 very much, especially with dual channel. Oh, you might want to get a 3700+ 1mb cache that has the san diego core. Not only will it better adress more ram with less mis pages then a 512k part, but it is a good bit faster all around in windows. |
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Chance Abattoir
Future Rockin' Resmod
Join date: 3 Apr 2004
Posts: 3,898
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04-25-2005 13:41
No 8-track?
Athlons are hot. My girlfriend has one and it heats up the whole apartment. Not really a performance issue, but it's something to consider if you have Summer where you live. _____________________
"The mob requires regular doses of scandal, paranoia and dilemma to alleviate the boredom of a meaningless existence."
-Insane Ramblings, Anton LaVey |
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Yashu Vindaloo
Velvet Dominant
Join date: 24 Aug 2004
Posts: 121
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04-25-2005 13:43
Modern Athlon 64s are actually cooler then modern pentium4s...
the a64s use more then 30 less watts in some cases. |
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Torley Linden
Enlightenment!
Join date: 15 Sep 2004
Posts: 16,530
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04-25-2005 13:44
Alright Talen, looks really cool -- just let us know how it runs Second Life because that's all that matters, K?
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Chip Midnight
ate my baby!
Join date: 1 May 2003
Posts: 10,231
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04-25-2005 13:45
AMD athlon chip 3500+ Venice core ( new chip out this week) My personal advice is to never be the guniea pig for the latest and greatest. Never buy Rev A anything, ever. Let other people discover the bugs and faults. Get something that's been out in wide circulation for a while. I learned that the hard way when I bought in to AMD's first dual processor chips. I ended up with a piece of crap Rev A motherboard, partity errors, fried RAM, corrupted files, and hundreds of lost hours... basically I bought a $3000 paperweight. I will never make that mistake again. _____________________
 My other hobby: www.live365.com/stations/chip_midnight |
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Chance Abattoir
Future Rockin' Resmod
Join date: 3 Apr 2004
Posts: 3,898
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04-25-2005 13:46
Modern Athlon 64s are actually cooler then modern pentium4s... the a64s use more then 30 less watts in some cases. Ah, I didn't know. I'll have to look into that. Thanks for the info. I have a p4 and it is pretty cool. If modern athlons really run at lower temperature, then I might have to switch on my next build to save some scrill. _____________________
"The mob requires regular doses of scandal, paranoia and dilemma to alleviate the boredom of a meaningless existence."
-Insane Ramblings, Anton LaVey |
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Talen Morgan
Amused
Join date: 2 Apr 2004
Posts: 3,097
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04-25-2005 14:01
My personal advice is to never be the guniea pig for the latest and greatest. Never buy Rev A anything, ever. Let other people discover the bugs and faults. Get something that's been out in wide circulation for a while. I learned that the hard way when I bought in to AMD's first dual processor chips. I ended up with a piece of crap Rev A motherboard, partity errors, fried RAM, corrupted files, and hundreds of lost hours... basically I bought a $3000 paperweight. I will never make that mistake again. Yeah I've been rethinking this as well even though the preliminary test are insanely good. I moght go with a 3500 winchester and tweak it to 2.6 and wait to see what the venice does. As for the power supplly brought up earlier I'll have a 550 watt antec supply so no worries on power _____________________
Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day...set a man on fire and he'll be warm the rest of his life
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Talen Morgan
Amused
Join date: 2 Apr 2004
Posts: 3,097
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04-25-2005 14:03
Ah, I didn't know. I'll have to look into that. Thanks for the info. I have a p4 and it is pretty cool. If modern athlons really run at lower temperature, then I might have to switch on my next build to save some scrill. The winchester , venice and san diego are all running on a smaller chip...the winchester/venice cores have been overclocked to 2.6 on air cooling with excellent results and low temperatures.... _____________________
Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day...set a man on fire and he'll be warm the rest of his life
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Talen Morgan
Amused
Join date: 2 Apr 2004
Posts: 3,097
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04-25-2005 14:05
That system looks good, but make sure you do some reading on forums for people with similar systems to make sure the power supply you're planning on getting is going to be sufficient. That computer is going to use an insane amount of power. Like... almost approaching electric heater levels. One suggestion I do have is that you might not want to do RAID 0 on those hard drives. Hard disks are so cheap and crappy these days that you're almost assured of a hard drive crash at some point, and with RAID 0, you lose all your data instead of half. Seagate drives are pretty good, but I still don't know if I'd risk it, personally. It comes down to performance vs risk. If you don't store much on your computer that you can't easily restore, it's probably not a big deal, but if you're planning on filling up those drives with a lot of data, you might run into trouble. That is a good point...I never thought about it because I have never had a HD go south on me for some reason. I may set it up to mirror then....or spend a lil more and put 3 drives in _____________________
Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day...set a man on fire and he'll be warm the rest of his life
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Talen Morgan
Amused
Join date: 2 Apr 2004
Posts: 3,097
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04-25-2005 14:13
Get 2gb of ram... (at least) It is a shame to see people buy such nice hardware and only get 1gb of ram. they make low latancy 1gb sticks... but if you had to get ones that were 3.3.3.6 it would be ok because mem latancy doesn't effect a64 very much, especially with dual channel. Oh, you might want to get a 3700+ 1mb cache that has the san diego core. Not only will it better adress more ram with less mis pages then a 512k part, but it is a good bit faster all around in windows. Love to.....send me more money Already have 300 invested in ram alone ...I'll get another gig ater I see what I can do with timings and slight overclocks to the ram._____________________
Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day...set a man on fire and he'll be warm the rest of his life
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Jeska Linden
Administrator
Join date: 26 Jul 2004
Posts: 2,388
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04-25-2005 14:21
Moved to Technical Issues Forum for further hardware discussion
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Yashu Vindaloo
Velvet Dominant
Join date: 24 Aug 2004
Posts: 121
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04-25-2005 15:08
Get the venice core or better, the san diego core...
Venice is not a "rev. A" it is actually a rev. E of the original SledgeHammer core. Venice is the most refined core yet. It has a much better memory controller... infact, it can actually address all 4 mem slots in ddr400 dual channel mode now. something that the winchester and previous cannot do. |
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Teeny Leviathan
Never started World War 3
Join date: 20 May 2003
Posts: 2,716
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04-25-2005 17:02
You had better have a pretty hefty power supply running that new machine. With two 6800 GT vid cards you will need it, since you will probably use at least 4 molex connectors just to power them. Get a good high quality power supply. Personally I prefer Antec.
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The Default Avatars were created by Linden Lab
They evolved. They rebelled. There are many copies. And they have a plan. |
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Kathmandu Gilman
Fearful Symmetry Baby!
Join date: 21 May 2004
Posts: 1,418
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04-26-2005 00:32
It's been mentioned that SLI doesn't benefit Second Life so if this is an SL machine, you might want to look into the video set up.
From what I have read, the best set up for a fast HD would be a Raid 0 set up with two WD Raptor SATA drives, dual 36 gig. I won't trust a Raid 0 configuration again because 1. If one drive fails, you lose everything(which it did) 2. You have to guesstimate your typical file size you will be using and if you guess wrong, your setup can actually be slower than a single drive or see no benifit at all. (mine was slow) 3. It adds significantly to boot times since the computer has to run through the normal boot sequence looking at the CD/DVD drives and what have you on the IDE cables then has to do the boot up of the raid array(granted the faster processor may negate the time differnce) 4. Complicates everything by adding another layer of "things that can go wrong" for marginal benifit. Also the motherboard has been reported to be unstable with the 6800 sli set up although it may be traced back to the power supply and not having enough juice. I would suggest looking at some reviews first. You may want to wait a bit for the release of the 6800's with 512meg of video memory in the next few weeks, the added memory may be a big help with SL. |
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Talen Morgan
Amused
Join date: 2 Apr 2004
Posts: 3,097
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04-26-2005 06:10
It's been mentioned that SLI doesn't benefit Second Life so if this is an SL machine, you might want to look into the video set up. From what I have read, the best set up for a fast HD would be a Raid 0 set up with two WD Raptor SATA drives, dual 36 gig. I won't trust a Raid 0 configuration again because 1. If one drive fails, you lose everything(which it did) 2. You have to guesstimate your typical file size you will be using and if you guess wrong, your setup can actually be slower than a single drive or see no benifit at all. (mine was slow) 3. It adds significantly to boot times since the computer has to run through the normal boot sequence looking at the CD/DVD drives and what have you on the IDE cables then has to do the boot up of the raid array(granted the faster processor may negate the time differnce) 4. Complicates everything by adding another layer of "things that can go wrong" for marginal benifit. Also the motherboard has been reported to be unstable with the 6800 sli set up although it may be traced back to the power supply and not having enough juice. I would suggest looking at some reviews first. You may want to wait a bit for the release of the 6800's with 512meg of video memory in the next few weeks, the added memory may be a big help with SL. After some thought I'm probably going to go with a mirror configuaration. For some reason I have been really lucky I guess as I have never had a drive go bad on me so I don't know what its like to lose everything....and I don't want to find out either. The motherboard problems with the SLI setup are a thing of the past supposedly...have heard a lot of good things on this board ...if it doesn't perform I'll go for the DFI lan party board which is supposed to be the mother of all SLI boards with a price tag to match....but for now trying to do it under 2k and it seems I have. The Machine will be for gaming and multimedia and although it won't be playing just SL I think it will do a good job of it...as for the SLI not really being a benefit with SL we'll have to see. Running 2 vid cards has to make at the very least a miniscule difference. Hopefully I'll have all the parts by friday as everything is ordered now and on its way. The final breakdown is: Thermaltake Tsuanmi case Asus a8n SLI deluxe motherboard Antec 550 watt psu AMD Athlon 3500+ Clawhammer/Sledgehammer core 2.2 g Thermalright xp-90 heat sink 1 Gig Crucial Balystix ram 2 seagate 200 gig Sata drives 2 Ge Force 6800 gt vid cards 2 Lite on DVD rom / burner 1 sony Floppy drive Creative sound blaster audigy 2zs Multifunction fan controller and temp guage All together $ 1885.00 Once together with a lil tweaking I should get some nice numbers out of this machine especially from the cpu/motherboard....Hopefully I'll find out this weekend _____________________
Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day...set a man on fire and he'll be warm the rest of his life
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Yashu Vindaloo
Velvet Dominant
Join date: 24 Aug 2004
Posts: 121
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04-26-2005 18:07
you can make a custom SLI profile for SL and it will will work... you just have to experiment with the settings untill you find the best ones...
More reason why SL needs a static benchmark script or something. |
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Vicious Volos
Hi..I Don't Care, Thanks.
Join date: 11 Sep 2004
Posts: 264
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04-26-2005 18:20
Get 2gb of ram... (at least) It is a shame to see people buy such nice hardware and only get 1gb of ram. they make low latancy 1gb sticks... but if you had to get ones that were 3.3.3.6 it would be ok because mem latancy doesn't effect a64 very much, especially with dual channel. Oh, you might want to get a 3700+ 1mb cache that has the san diego core. Not only will it better adress more ram with less mis pages then a 512k part, but it is a good bit faster all around in windows. i agree i have 4gb of ram in mine, go for at least 2 |
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Tommy Costello
Registered User
Join date: 10 Apr 2005
Posts: 1
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04-28-2005 11:30
Your probably gonna want 2 gigs of ram.....Personally if i was buying a new computer id put 2 74 gig raptors in raid 0 for gaming (Cheetah's work to)..an buy a 160+ to store data...If you go above the 3500+ make sure you have the extra cache otherwise its not much of a performance difference. I would hold off on the SLI alot of times it gives less FPS then a single card would.
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