Building a New Machine And need some opinions

[KillaBkilled]

I am soon to be building a new Machine. And Im looking for some design Opinions. Im thinking an Abit KG7-Raid Mother board. And An overclocked AMD thunderbird Processor. ( prob. 1-1.4 ghz that I can hopefully overclock to 1.6) Any thoughts you might have for me on my first all custom machine WOULD ME MUCH APPRICIATED!!!! Also If anyone knows of a better config to get even faster clocks...Id be glad to listen

[Dokeman]

first off, i doubt youll ever see the day of a 1.4 at 2.0. That will never happen. If you really wanna overclock your gonna have to get some kinda of water cooling to get the best results. Next, you will need some rock stable memory. try here www.crucial.com Also

[Lord Sech]

Kill

You have alot of options on building your on machine. I will leave the motherboard up to someone-else so i dont give bad information.

As far as the proccessor goes i would buy a t-bird 1.4, prices are pretty low and a pretty stable overclock chip. MAKE SURE you get a good heatsink and fan(s) right away.
512 ddr ram, probably 2x256 is cheapest.
Get an IBM 45 gig (or 2) 7200 rpm hard-drive, the best around ive heard also.

Video, my favorite. I would definately suggest an elsa Ge-Force 3 TI200.http://www.elsa.com/international/europe/produkte/grafikkarten/gladiac721.htm . This chipset is a little faster than a normal ge-force 3 and with some newer features to.

And for your OS defiately run Windows 2000, far more stable than Me and faster also.

I know i left alot out but ill get back to you later.

-Sech

[earnie86]

Epox boards are very stable and very good at overclocking. I agree with lord sech especially on the hdd because when I try and get my 1.4 past 1.6 my hdd gives me trouble and seems to be the weak link. Check out the radeon 8500 video card also, the reviews I've read so far show it outperforming the gf3s'.:)

[Lord Sech]

Thanks Earnie,

Kill, i havent looked at any of the radeons in quite a while. I am preferably to nvidias chipset, just because their so good almost every company builds their product based on it. But take a look and see how it performs. Alos dont skim on the case. Get something along the longs of a Lian-Li aluminum case. Keeps your system EXREMELY cool and will last a very long time.

Worth every penny

-Sech

[Toolbox]

In my opnion, if you're going to get a case, get one from Elan Vital (www.elanvital.com.tw).

They are definitely the best quality cases I have ever used.

PS. I've never used Antec or Lian-Li so those might be better. :D

[ArtShapiro]

Read your recommendation for ElanVital, a firm completely unfamiliar to me.

I went to the web site via your link, and observed that every one of their PC cases, up to and including the full tower, only had one external 3.5" opening.

That certainly strikes me as questionable; assuming most folks still have floppies (Intel's opinions aside) the case is instantly maxed out, unless one kludges up an 5-->3 adaptor.

Art

[Lord Sech]

Art

I know your previous statement was for toolbox but...

Im sure we read about Intels plans to eliminate the floppy drive by the end of next year. They wont be able to do it that quick, i dony think so at least. But honestly, how often do you use a floppy drive anymore? Maybe for a couple word documents as i do to mive from school to home... Thats about it, EVER. With the increase of burners for cheap amounts on the market, the floppy drive will become obsolete only beacsue of its limited holding capcity.

Just my 2 cents on that.

-Sech

[Toolbox]

Very true... all of the cases only have a single 3½ inch external bay. I personally don't see a need for another one unless you have an internal Zip Drive, which I did. You guessed it right, I did have the 5¼" - 3½" adapter.

But thge most popular and affordable case of thiers, the Aegis T-10, has space for almost everything unless you use more than 3 CD-ROM Drives and 2 Hard Drives.

[ArtShapiro]

Thanks guys...I wasn't the original poster but find the topic interesting.

I may only use a floppy drive once in a while, but am not about to discard it. It sure was handy a few weeks ago when my corporate mail system was down for three days due to the major virus infestations, and I was able to take some small files back and forth to work when I couldn't email 'em.

I happen to also have a 3.5" tape drive, my backup medium.

Also went looking at the equally unfamiliar Lian Li - good looking stuff, although pricey, and with more 3.5" bays.

In the process, I stumbled on the following unfamiliar case on eBay (darn, I hate to shill for eBay) and it looks very interesting on the surface, although there are no details I can find anywhere on the web. But this looks like a real attempt to adequately cool the insides:

http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1285085671

I'm somewhat interested in case cooling, as I've found that when I put the skins on my system (Soyo K7VTA/TBird 1.2/ThermalRight SK6 + Delta) the cpu temp goes from an impressive 79-82F up to 86. Yeah, that's still excellent, but it proves that the case simply doesn't move enough air through the handful of pinholes in the front.

Art

[Maxout]

I am an Addtronics fan. High quality cases with great access and cooling features. I also own a T-15, it's nice but not in the same league as the Addtronics.


Pic is a link...


http://www.wco.com/~addtron/gif/7896A-icon.gif (http://www.addtronics.com/7896A.htm)

[LostBok]

My favourite mid-tower case by a LONG way is the Lian-Li PC68, especially when you get the extra 5 internal drive bays (all of them ventilated)... the only other case I've seen that comes close it is the CoolerMaster ATCS201, which is pretty good, but fairly ugly... that has two external 3.5's and four internal ventilated 3.5's, with decent speacing betwene the internal drives (for all those 7200-10,000 rpm drives :D

Personally I'd definitely go for somethign like the Lian-Li PC68 as I have a CDROM, DVD, CDRW/DVD, two IBM GXP60's, plus two data storage drives, a SCSI swap-file drive, a backup boot/testing drive and a removable drive bay for testing/trying out new discs... basically I've ditched the floppy so I can have a bit more space and still have two of my drives on my home-made "cradle"...

[Lord Sech]

There alot of great cases out there. The aluminum Lian-Li cases i mentioned early are good looking(i think) but also do to being all aluminum, keep your componenets relatively cool. There are also many a private companies tweaking these cases and arent charging a great amount more

-Sech

[Harshu]

Hi,
Well if you have a bugjet of $1500-2000 so money is not a problem. Here in INDIA i could not tell you the prices in $ as here Rupee is the curency and there is a 100% tax on computer product so RAM costing $15 there cost $30 here. So estimated cost of Rs 1500. But still i can tell you a good configuration: -
Go with the rule first select a good Moniter ast this is a only thing which cannot be upgraded frequently so a 19" flat screen Moniter will do you work go for Samsung.
er is the other onfiguration according to its importance: -

2) Geforce 3 (I know it features r not used today but you will play the games of future) of ASUS they may cost higher but driver support and quality cannot be neglected.
3) Go for atlest 384 MB or 512MB of DDR RAM. As RAM is never enough.
4) A HDD 0f 75GB IBM Deskstar 75GXP DTLA 307070 spindle speed of 10000 an 2MB buffer. (Bigger HDD as an average game takes 1GB of space)
5) AMD Athon 1400 MHz for its breathtaking performance. It may have a high price but you can ajust it with the product mentions below.
6) Motherboard of ASUS again quality does matters
7) Soundcard SB Live! Platinum 5.1 or for ajusting price SB Live! Player but it should be of SB Live Series.
8) Speakers Creative Soundworks any which suports 5.1 Dobbly.
9) Spend a good money for cooling as AMD Athlon creates lots of Heat as much as they r hot in Market!!!
10) 16x DVD of Poineer or TDK.
11) Keyboard from Logitect preferbly Cordless & same with mouse.
12) For gaming periperals go for microsoft gaming consoles.

I hope this may help you a bit. Happy Computing.

[Shinma]

Originally posted by ArtShapiro
Read your recommendation for ElanVital, a firm completely unfamiliar to me...

ElanVital is associated with Asus.
Their chassis T-10 was at one time considered the best and some still consider it as such.
Most of the time Elan Vital manufacture for the expensive customized server chassis.

I vote for the Antec Performance Series SX1030B though. :D

[LostBok]

In response to Harshu's:

4) A HDD 0f 75GB IBM Deskstar 75GXP DTLA 307070 spindle speed of 10000 an 2MB buffer. (Bigger HDD as an average game takes 1GB of space)

I had one of these 76.8gig IBM 75GXP, their max spindle speed is 7200rpm (and yes, a 2meg buffer), however they are NOT a good buy... they are exceptionally noisy and produce a LOT of heat... the 60GXP's are the same speed, also 7200rpm and 2meg cache, but they are quiet, cool and significantly more reliable! I now have six of these (4 x 40gig and 2 x 60gig) and don't have a bad word to say about any of them, unilke my 75GXP which I got rid off as SOON as the 60GXP's came out...

[r0l0e]

doughtful that MS will ever get rid of the floppy drive :mad:. well, not on the eastern part of the world that is and espesially in the next 5 years. one more thing i'd like to see someone boot off a bootable cdrom to flash their BIOS :D. i understand that one board manuf. (ASUS) has a bios downloader for windows and i might say that it just doesn't work. I mean what if i wanna flash to an earlier bios?

and speaking ElanVital, thanks to some guy named ToolBox, i got one. The T-15 server case, and might i add, one of the best i've ever owned :D.

http://www.mydestiny.net/~dgnetwork/html/system_profile.html