Eleo attempts to build a computer

http://secure.newegg.com/NewVersion/...Number=3891246

Here's me: I'm interested in speed. I am not really a gamer; I'd like to be able to play games but that is not my current interest. My current interest really is heavy multitasking and video encoding. Because of that I designed my machine to just be as fast as affordably possible but at the same time I wanted it to be fairly versatile come 1-2 years now and not be totally outdated.

I think I have mostly what I want but would like to reduce the price to about $1000. There are certain things I am not totally willing to compromise on. I'd like my monitor to remain 19". I've thought of reducing the RAM. I wouldn't consider 2GB overkill these days (running Windows without page files is great). I'm seeing very little places I am left to cut corners. Maybe the hard drive, but then again hard drives seem to get exponentially cheaper as you go up. I definitely currently have plenty of hard disk space but it is all external and also ATA; I didn't want my hard drive speed to hinder things. Maybe that is not as huge of an issue as I think.

Please give me your suggestions. I've never built a computer before and while I know some basics, I can honestly admit I am not totally sure on the difference between AGP and PCI(-e).

How ya doing, buddy?

It might help if you paste the list here, as you need a Newegg acount to visit that link.

Most amazing jew boots

Sorry I didn't post the public link. Should work now.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Eleo

Sorry I didn't post the public link. Should work now.

Thanks.

I'd say that looks pretty good, but if you want to shave off a few bucks, you could lower the Ram to 1GB, and you could most definately get a cheaper mobo. It wouldn't be as good, but there are certainly quite a few decent ones of a much lower price.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Can you suggest any?

Double Post:
Meh the RAM I wanted got sold out anyway. My new choice of RAM + my new motherboard reduces the total to just over $1000. Maybe I could bastardize RAM from my older systems for the time being, I don't know.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Unless you have DDR2, no you probably can't bastardize RAM.

Eleo, that's a good system build. Again, like Free said, the mobo's you are choosing are top dollar, and there are other options out there. Here's an ASUS board I've been hearing pretty good things about...
-> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131030 <-
It's a bit cheaper but still high quality. The 975 chipset you have on your wishlist is actually quite a bit older than the the one I linked, even though the 975 is "superior", the 965 uses newer tech. Might be something to consider.

As to your grphx card choice, its not too bad. If you wanted to, getting that ASUS board would save you a bit, and I'd look into a 7600GT (unless you are partial to ATI). It is a bit better of a performer than the X1600XT.

The only other thing to make sure is that you will be happy with a monitor that has a max resolution of 1280x1024. To me, that is barely enough especially without widescreen (which is an option you might consider especially when doing video encoding). So, I'd think on this choice a bit more to make sure you are happy with it.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by Dayvon

Unless you have DDR2, no you probably can bastardize RAM.

Eleo, that's a good system build. Again, like Free said, the mobo's you are choosing are top dollar, and there are other options out there. Here's an ASUS board I've been hearing pretty good things about...
-> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131030 <-
It's a bit cheaper but still high quality. The 975 chipset you have on your wishlist is actually quite a bit older than the the one I linked, even though the 975 is "superior", the 965 uses newer tech. Might be something to consider.

As long as Eleo isn't planning on using RAID setups I fully recommend that board as well (I bought one for myself about a week ago and the only problem is its odd RAID configuration *see journal entry*) Maybe there will be a patch to fix this problem but I'm not going to hold my breath.

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by Dayvon

Unless you have DDR2, no you probably can bastardize RAM.

Eleo, that's a good system build. Again, like Free said, the mobo's you are choosing are top dollar, and there are other options out there. Here's an ASUS board I've been hearing pretty good things about...
-> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131030 <-
It's a bit cheaper but still high quality. The 975 chipset you have on your wishlist is actually quite a bit older than the the one I linked, even though the 975 is "superior", the 965 uses newer tech. Might be something to consider.

As to your grphx card choice, its not too bad. If you wanted to, getting that ASUS board would save you a bit, and I'd look into a 7600GT (unless you are partial to ATI). It is a bit better of a performer than the X1600XT.

The only other thing to make sure is that you will be happy with a monitor that has a max resolution of 1280x1024. To me, that is barely enough especially without widescreen (which is an option you might consider especially when doing video encoding). So, I'd think on this choice a bit more to make sure you are happy with it.

I would have Eleo stay with the MSI board. It's a stable board, and supports Kentsfield (quad-core Conroe) in the future (he's more into video than games, remember.) And from what I'm hearing, the P965 chipset isn't that great at all compared with the 975X. Not to mention, as of late, ASUS' reputation has been shat on with recent buggy boards (AMD & intel), and Antec power supply incompatibilites. Also, proper RAID support may be a big issue to him with his video stuff. (This board was my second choice, with the Badaxe being my first.)

I've always thought that G.Skill memory was no-name, but there are some people who swear it's high-end stuff. I dont' know anything about them at all. Seems like reliable stuff.

Not sure about the X1600 vs. the 7600GT, but I've heard for a long time that ATI gives a better image quality. Around Canada, the X1600 has a better price.

And GO WIDESCREEN! It is so pleasing to use a WS monitor. Dell, Samsung, or uber-expensive Apple are best. A 19" WS monitor probably won't cost you hardly more than a regular 19".

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

1280x1024... I think that will be fine for me. Right now I have a 20in CRT. Thing is the size of a TV with the same hypotenuse. I'm using 1280x1024 and am quite pleased, I would imagine a single inch smaller and I would still be pleased. (Actually in fact I currently have my sister's 19in monitor for reference. I think it looks alright, IMO).

The thing is there seems to be a huge jump in price from 19in and larger monitors. Kind of like how I have the fastest Core 2 Duo that I can get before taking a huge leap in price, I glanced over the monitors and got the same.

Widescreen to me is... Meh. I'm not against the idea, it's just that the height is compromised for the sake of the width and, even if I am using my computer for movie playback, I kind of dislike the look for general things like coding and general use. If I could have a decently priced widescreen monitor that was also fairly tall I would go for it. I will look over Newegg for something. I get the feeling I won't find anything that's not going to break me.

Double Post:
Also I don't intend to use RAID. I have a very weak understanding of what it is. I believe it's using two of the same hard drives to make one large pseudo-drive, right? I guess I've thought about using it but can't see the advantage to just having a lot of smaller drives unless I happen to have a huge file that doesn't fit on them. Which would be retarded.


There's one other difference between those two motherboards, one of them has 2 ATA and the cheaper has 1. Now correct me if I'm wrong, isn't the ATA interface used for devices such as IDE hard drives and also used typically for optical drives? I was told that if I had optical two different drives on two different IDE channels then I could theoretically burn two DVDs/CDs at the same time, or otherwise use both optical drives simultaneously without any performance loss. I'm not sure if ATA = IDE but that's the impression I got.

And yes, I think I would like to be able to burn two DVDs at the same time; or rip something while burning something, or rip two somethings at the same time.

Double Post:
This is the best I can do for a widescreen monitor
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16824014105

Too bad my total is damn near $1200 now. Maybe I can make it work.

How ya doing, buddy?

One more question; is cooling important? I do intend to overclock if I can (never done it before). I've read reports of Conroe E660 running at 3.5, so if I could manage that, I'm all for it. But should I be buying any extra fans or even water cooling?

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Heh, I wouldn't jump in and overclock a new 1000 dollar computer if you have never done it before. Do you know anyone that can physically guide you or maybe even take the responsibility of overclocking your machine?

With that little warning out of the way I very much recommend getting a aftermarket heatsink-fan and some artic silver thermal grease. Thermaltake's Big Typhoon (their blue orb II is nice as well), Zalman 9500, and Artic Cooling's freezer7 are some of your best choices for the LGA775 socket.
As for watercooling, I can't help you there. Never done it myself, they're just too expensive for me ._.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

No, I really don't know anyone.

Another user told me that there wasn't too much to worry about and that the system will cut off sooner than it has a stroke. I don't know. Trying to get the most out of the system, I guess. Told me some confusing stuff about how I'd need faster RAM and etc etc, I don't really get it.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Yes, just about all the new motherboards out there have a fail-safe mode (incase of thermal runaway, over-voltage, and etc.) But there's still a chance of playing with the CPU too much will cause something to uh, pop or burn. Yeah, I really recommend having someone with you that can supervise you in tweaking your computer.

That other user is right I suppose. In order to actually overclock the CPU it helps lots to have flexible (yet expensive) ram. Afterall its all about voltage tolerance and increasing your front side bus speed .

How ya doing, buddy?

Well I went ahead and got DDR2 1000. Added the cheapest fan you linked to; I sincerely hope it's adequate because I'm at $1260 which is more than I should be.

I was told that in order to utilize the ram I also need a 10K RPM hard drive. After looking at those prices I said, fuck it. They will be cheaper in the future; hard drives come and go. Right now it doesn't represent a bottleneck, I don't think, for encoding video, because from what I've seen the hard drive only gets hit every other second for data with my current PC. I'd hope any game would preload data, and I'd hope without virtual memory.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Well I'd just like to chime in and say that while the Intell Core Duo is great right now, it's not going to have a very long shelf life. It's optimized for a 32 bitt OS, so as soon as you decide to go to a 64 bit one you wont be so happy about your purchase.

You may want to ask yourself how long it'll be before you go to a 64 bit OS before you jump on the Core Duo bandwagon.

edit: Oh I also looked at your HD setup. I'd suggest getting a smaller drive 40-80 as a dedicated OS drive. What this will allow you to do is format your computer at any time without giving much worry to what you have in storage. Basically you set up the smaller one as C: and the other two as D: and E:. You keep all downloads and everything on D: and E: and only install stuff to C. I have this setup and I love it. Anytime my computer isn't performing exactly as I like I can format my system which takes not much more than 30 minutes from start to finish. If you're really efficient you can keep an image of your startup on one of these drives so as soon as you boot to a fresh OS you cue up this file and you're ready to go.

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by Eleo

I was told that in order to utilize the ram I also need a 10K RPM hard drive.

Not necessary. I mean, yes, seek times on HD's can make a difference, but if you are using SATA2 drives @ 7200, you should be fine, especially if you keep your drive well defragmented.

Since you are interested in overclocking, I thought I'd link you this article -> Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6 <- Really good overclocking results with this board. Basically the best OC'ing yet for Core 2 Duo. I think this Mobo is in the same price range as the other you were looking at.

The G965-DQ6 is the board tested there and runs $239. There is a G965-DS3 on newegg that is similar (not sure what is changed besides PCI slots) that runs at $154.

Anyway might be options to explore when overclocking.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by Hotobu

Well I'd just like to chime in and say that while the Intell Core Duo is great right now, it's not going to have a very long shelf life. It's optimized for a 32 bitt OS, so as soon as you decide to go to a 64 bit one you wont be so happy about your purchase.

Well how many 32 bit OS's are there; how many of them don't have a 64 bit counterpart?

Originally Posted by Hotobu

edit: Oh I also looked at your HD setup. I'd suggest getting a smaller drive 40-80 as a dedicated OS drive. What this will allow you to do is format your computer at any time without giving much worry to what you have in storage. Basically you set up the smaller one as C: and the other two as D: and E:. You keep all downloads and everything on D: and E: and only install stuff to C. I have this setup and I love it. Anytime my computer isn't performing exactly as I like I can format my system which takes not much more than 30 minutes from start to finish. If you're really efficient you can keep an image of your startup on one of these drives so as soon as you boot to a fresh OS you cue up this file and you're ready to go.

That would be ideal, except the problem is that smaller hard drives aren't as cheap as they should be. For example a 200GB is $70, a 320GB is $100, yet a 40GB is $40. ??? It almost seems like I'm better off buying larger capacity drives than I am trying to buy small ones. It's really kind of ridiculous. Maybe I can find an extra cheap one somewhere. And yes, this is my typical setup; I have a 60GB C:\ drive right now and three 300GB external drives. X:\,Y:\,Z:\. It's definitely my prefered way of doing things but I'm hurting for money right now at $1260 when my target was $1000.

Double Post:

Originally Posted by Dayvon

Not necessary. I mean, yes, seek times on HD's can make a difference, but if you are using SATA2 drives @ 7200, you should be fine, especially if you keep your drive well defragmented.

Since you are interested in overclocking, I thought I'd link you this article -> Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6 <- Really good overclocking results with this board. Basically the best OC'ing yet for Core 2 Duo. I think this Mobo is in the same price range as the other you were looking at.

The G965-DQ6 is the board tested there and runs $239. There is a G965-DS3 on newegg that is similar (not sure what is changed besides PCI slots) that runs at $154.

Anyway might be options to explore when overclocking.

I don't get why a motherboard is advertised at say, 1066/800MHz FSB, and similarly so is my Conroe, but when I read people talking about overclocking, they're stating how they increased the FSB to a rate much slower than advertised. Am I misinterpreting something?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Eleo

I don't get why a motherboard is advertised at say, 1066/800MHz FSB, and similarly so is my Conroe, but when I read people talking about overclocking, they're stating how they increased the FSB to a rate much slower than advertised. Am I misinterpreting something?

It has to do with the multipliers. As you can see in this pic, the bus speed is set to 1296 while the FSB is set to 324. Don't ask me exactly how this works, but I know that 324x4=1296 and that there is a multiplier of 4 that applies to the FSB to get the overall bus speed. If I know correctly, you adjust the FSB in your BIOS to get the bus speed up.

(I ain't an OC'er, so you'd better read up on it all, but that should be the general jist of it)

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Eleo

Well how many 32 bit OS's are there; how many of them don't have a 64 bit counterpart?

I don't understand what you're saying here are you saying you do or don't want to eventually get a 64 bit OS?

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

What I want is directly proportional to what people want. If 64bit would be highly recommended to me by people, then fine. If not then I see no reason to fuss over it right now. You say "as soon as I want to go 64bit I won't be happy about my choices." The question is: will I want to go 64bit while this computer is still in its heydays? And that brings up the question: why would I want to go 64 bit? Is that where mainstream PC use is headed?

I mean it seems like every time I want to make a technology upgrade there's someone who tells me to not do it because something better will be out eventually. Well, duh. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate input that is opposite of what I'm thinking, but at the same time I don't get why I should just put off building my computer just because one day there's going to be something better Please fill me in on what I'd be missing out on with a 32bit versus 64bit system, besides a slightly different build of the Windows XP/Vista operating system.

The question is, what is my alternative? I'm choosing from the processors to have right about now. I don't know what I should be doing instead to help myself.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I think you misunderstand. There's a difference between waiting for technology and futureproofing.

You see AMD has had 64-bit processors out for quite a while now. I'm saying it may be worth it to just go that route and then upgrade to a 64-bit OS.

Quite honestly I haven't kept up with the latest Vista news so I can't tell you if it'd be worth upgrading to. Hopefully someone will come along and be able to fill you in.

You have to weigh your options. By getting a Core Duo you're capping yourself. Sure it's the best 32-bit processor out now, but should you ever chose to upgrade your OS you may regret going that route. On the other hand the Athlon 64 will still serve you very well now, and when and if you decide to go with a 64 bit platform it would out-perform an equivalent system powered by a Core Duo.

If it were me I'd chose the AMD because if for any reason I did decide to go with a 64 bit OS I've got the 64 bit processor and I don't have to worry about any missed decisions.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by Hotobu

I think you misunderstand. There's a difference between waiting for technology and futureproofing.

You see AMD has had 64-bit processors out for quite a while now. I'm saying it may be worth it to just go that route and then upgrade to a 64-bit OS.

Quite honestly I haven't kept up with the latest Vista news so I can't tell you if it'd be worth upgrading to. Hopefully someone will come along and be able to fill you in.

You have to weigh your options. By getting a Core Duo you're capping yourself. Sure it's the best 32-bit processor out now, but should you ever chose to upgrade your OS you may regret going that route. On the other hand the Athlon 64 will still serve you very well now, and when and if you decide to go with a 64 bit platform it would out-perform an equivalent system powered by a Core Duo.

If it were me I'd chose the AMD because if for any reason I did decide to go with a 64 bit OS I've got the 64 bit processor and I don't have to worry about any missed decisions.

You could go with AMD, you'd hit an even worse cap. All of AMDs current sockets are already dead. S754 was a quick death, S939 was a kick in the face, and AM2's successor has been announced for Spring 07. Meanwhile, Intel has their full lineup of processors for LGA775 with new stuff on the way. Not to mention, that there are no AMDs currently capable of touching the wimpiest Core 2 Duo.

And really, who even cares about 64-bit right now. Unless you have 4GB + of RAM, there's no point. Later, maybe, but by then, a new processor will be ot to outshine it. I would seriously doubt that the Core 2 would perform worse than anything other than the FX-62, anyways. I've heard of a marginal 5% difference in 64-bit processing when compared to AMDs Opterons. High-end, expensive server products.

You can choose AMD, but it's cheap price is all it has going for it right now.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Well the sockets may be dead, is that really going to matter if you don't plan on upgrading the processor? And generally when people do upgrade their processors they wait for a period of time such that they'd be getting a new board anyway.

Most amazing jew boots

Originally Posted by Hotobu

Well the sockets may be dead, is that really going to matter if you don't plan on upgrading the processor? And generally when people do upgrade their processors they wait for a period of time such that they'd be getting a new board anyway.

Which Eleo (remember the guy we're giving advice to?) is doing. He's changing everything. Why would he choose a platform that is dead, much slower, not as cost-effective and has no future? Future compatibility is one thing, and raw processing speed is another. Intel has both at a decent price. Nuff said.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Render,

I understand that AMD is coming out with a new socket, what? Could you link some info so I could read up on this?

Double Post:

@Eleo

Is this an article you've been looking for or what?

Jam it back in, in the dark.