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as affordably possible but at the same time I wanted it to be fairly versatile come 1-2 years now and not be totally outdated.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?

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

There's nowhere I can't reach.

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.

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

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?

I was speaking idiomatically.

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.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

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.

FELIPE NO

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?

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

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.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Dayvon

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?

Thanks for this. This suggests I may be going overboard with a E6400. I will toy around with their Intel system idea and see what I can do. Their power supply is pretty hefty but if it's what's needed for overclocking, maybe it's worth it.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Well I took their advice on the motherboard and also went with E6300. If it overclocks to ~3.0 with the stock fan as I read it does, I'm sold, I guess. I still would like ATAx2 on the board but I actually had trouble finding motherboards that had it, even expensive motherboards only had ATAx1; I guess it's a dying technology that is only needed for optical drives these days. (I've been wondering; how come I don't see any SATA optical drives?)

I also did pick the suggested power supply Another hundred bucks.

I got my 2GB of RAM here. I don't know why gaming system RAM would have cost me $300 in the same respect if the specs are the same. Can anyone explain that?

Almost went and got an expensive ass video card. But I still think a good video card costs the average joe too much money.

What's really holding me back right now is a monitor. I want widescreen, but 19in widescreen is short, vertically. 20(.1)in widescreen is almost as tall as 19in standard, but 20in is expensive. Plus I'm having a hell of a time finding a decent monitor with height adjustment - I always find that the relationship between my body height, the comfortable height of my chair, and the height of my desk always provides a challenge. Me being tall, my chair is adjusted high and likewise it must be for me to comfortably reach the keyboard. But then my head is nowhere near level with the monitor. Frustrating. And putting it on top of phone books is just tacky. Now that I think about it, maybe there are some generic stands upon which to place a monitor...

Without a monitor, I'm at $881 (including shipping [some items shipping costs are needlessly high]), I'm trying to stay under $1200, so what do I do?


I've updated my wishlist. Feel free to tell me what you think at this point.

Most amazing jew boots

I said I almost got an expensive video card and decided against it.

I don't know how I missed those two monitors

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

As far as memory, here's the question.

Given a limit of ~$200, is it smarter to:
1. Get two 1GB sticks of cheap DDR2 800 RAM
2. Get one 1GB stick of not-cheap DDR2 800 RAM like Corsair and maybe even throw in a 512MB just because I can
3. Get two 1GB sticks of DDR2 675 RAM made by Corsair or somesuch

I was speaking idiomatically.

So many variables

Is this even the same computer I started off with? lol

Double Post:

Originally Posted by Rakka

I'm a bit confused, because I thought that the Core 2 processors were 64-bit too. Intel says that they support EM64T...isn't that the same as the Athlon 64, except for the naming?

Actually I just did research and they are 64bit. I didn't even know. I usually just associate Intel with 32bitness.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?