Thai3g_Eclipse

Congratulations on the excellent CPU, you just bought yourself a FX-57 in disguise. Seriously, the CABYE Opteron 14x are the exact same as the FX-57 except its multipliers are locked. If you're planning to overclock, you may want to ditch the Kingston RAM and go with something from OCZ, Mushkin, Geil, Crucial or Corsair. I look forward to seeing your overclocking results.

It shouldn't really matter how long you take to build a computer, whether it is half an hour to 5 hours. I tend to assemble my computer slowly, and make sure every connection is correct and secure, and organize the wires to make it look clean. But regardless, building a computer is no big task; just do it during a lazy Sunday afternoon or night. I attend college also and am busy, but that doesn't interfere with my computer building.

Not much. There are some benchmarks floating around on the web that shows the 1MB cache only yields a very small performance increase for the dual core Athlons.

Chaintech AV-710: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16829120103 This soundcard has excellent audio reproduction, unlike the Creative Audigy's muddy and somewhat distorted music quality.

Depending on what model Opterons you are looking at, they're about the same as an Athlon 64. The only thing people get them for is the overclocking potential and reliability. The PC4000 RAM simply refers to the RAM being able to operate at a normal rate of 250 MHz FSB, which is considerably higher than the standard 200MHz being used as a default on AMD processors. Another words, just more overclocking potential. If you really only have IDE interface hard drives, I strongly recommend getting an SATA otherwise you will regret it. My system's biggest bottleneck is the hard drive itself, since I screwed up by not going SATA on my previous upgrade. I have a fast processor, good RAM, but am hindered by the slow transfer rate of the hard drive. I can tell this by playing games that require file swapping, such as F.E.A.R. and Battlefield 2. The CPU and RAM has to wait for the information from the hard drive in order to continue the process, which slows the system down marginally, whereas if I had SATA drives, the gameplay would be a lot smoother.

For the 512MB 7800GTX, Nvidia recommends at least a 400 watt power supply with 24A on the +12V rail, which another words means a high end power supply is necessary. No more cutting corners with cheapo $50 power supplies. I would recommend looking at the OCZ Powerstream 520W, Antec TruPowerII 550, Seasonic S12 600W, and whatever else that has Nividia's SLI certification on the box will be fine.

It's a toss-up between the X1800XT and the 256MB 7800GTX, but the recently released 512MB 7800GTX pretty much kills them both. Read here: http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2607 The problem if you haven't figured it out by now is that the 512MB 7800GTX is a real power hog (A high-end power supply is recommended, no exceptions) and it'll cost you an arm and a leg for one.

Okay, maybe I should have added 'In some people's preference'. I still prefer CRTs for gaming because for some strange reason LCDs will tend to make my eye hurt and give me a headache after an hour of continuous gameplay. Otherwise LCD screens of today are very nice.

1. Opterons are essentially Athlon 64's that have met the rigorous requirement of being a server processor. They are known to be great overclockers and much more tolerant at heavy processing loads 24/7. Otherwise, there is no difference in terms of architecture and design between it and the regular Athlon 64. 2. I will somwhat agree there. I had a KT600-AL motherboard back in the day when I had an Athlon XP system and it was a piece of...well, you get the point. That particular Ultra-D model is "supposedly" the best for overclocking, but the board is extremely picky. The board seems to be fond of certain settings, and there is no tolerance in changes. You'll have to play a long game of trial and error in order to really bring the most out of that board. 3. That one's decent, don't know what you're talking about. 4. How do you know? Have you ever tried it or had any experience with it? I've never heard of it, but you shouldn't be putting down something that you've never tried. I don't listen to what others say, I like to try things out for myself and then I'll decide if it's good or bad.

CRTs are still preferred for graphical applications such as gaming, video editing or photo-related work because they display a more 'true' color and isn't prone to problems that LCD screens have with moving graphics such as ghosting, tearing and bleeding colors.

It's necessary to use ECC Registered RAM for Socket 940 platforms, so yeah he's got to. Why not wait for Socket M2 so you can use DDR2?

If you have to have theoretically the best image quality, the Samsung would be the better choice. It supports higher resolution (2048x1536 versus NEC's 1920x1440) and the dot pitch of the Samsung is 0.2mm opposed to the NEC's 0.24mm.

I played a little bit of the demo, and personally I'm disappointed with it. For some reason I get that "Been there, done that" feeling before. I guess I'm just getting tired of racing games or something.

The Asus P5WD2 will support 2x Nividia cards for SLI. I believe it has the Intel 955x Chipset that will need to have its BIOS re-flashed and using the latest driver from Intel to enable SLI however, so don't expect it to work right away until you get your updates (If I'm not mistaken, the 955x chipset even supports ATI's crossfire setup). For your concern of temperature, your main worries would be the CPU, as the Prescott is commonly known to run up to 80C at full load with a normal heatsink. Upgrade the heatsink to a Thermalright XP-90 or XP-120 and a decent 80/120mm fan with a decent CFM displacement and it should stay under 60C with a good thermal compound such as Artic Silver 5. I've never heard of the Vaporchill cooling solution, so that's a toss-up if you think that works. Operating System: Windows XP Pro 32 bit. The 64 bit jump is not worth it right now, as the performance difference isn't nominal as most companies still code with 32 bit. You will also have problems attaining certain drivers, as I have found out the hard way. Professional also has better memory and multi-CPU core management, so I would stay with it until Vista comes out. Your system looks good otherwise, but I would recommend a more reliable power supply, as the Thermaltake ones aren't usually the best for a system with heavy power load. I would look at the OCZ Powerstream 520W or Antec TruPowerII 550W as an effective solution. Intel CPUs consumes moderately high power, and so will the Nvidia SLI setup, and you don't want the lack of power to hold back the system.

It'll work, but beware that the desktop processors consume significantly more power than their mobile counterparts. The desktop socket 754 do not have any kind of throttle control function like the mobile ones do so it'll be running at full speed the whole time, whereas the mobile ones will lower their speeds unless it is needed to conserve power.

http://img313.imageshack.us/img313/2203/untitled17oz.jpg

Yeah, you're going to be running 2T with that configuration. I believe if you lose one of those 512MB sticks, you can avoid running in 2T and keep the 200MHz FSB. I would set it up like this: 2x 1GB module 1x 512MB module That should work. If you have the time to mess around, you can try runnning all 4 sticks in single channel mode and see if you can avoid the 2T and 166 FSB limit, but I doubt it.

I wouldn't worry about the X2 series supporting 4 sticks of RAM. What your real concern should be is the motherboard itself. Some motherboards may require a BIOS upgrade in order to be compatible wiht X2 processors, so have another computer and a floppy drive ready. By the way, you will be forced to run the memory at 2T command rate and your bus speed will drop to 166 MHz for running 4 memory slots.

eVGA's also comes with a 'Step-up' program that allows you to trade your eVGA card in for a better one and you only have to pay the difference, along with a lifetime warranty. You don't necessarily need a 600 watt power supply, but rather one that can stablize its voltage rails. An Antec TruPowerII 550, OCZ PowerStream 520W, and the Fortron Blue Storm 500 is fine, but I would not trust your current 350 watt power supply to run an Athlon64 system with a 7800GT. For such a system, the +12V rail is the most important, and I recommend a power supply with at least 24A on the +12V rail.

Wow, that has to be the first non-biased and not fanboy-ish post I've read. I applaud you sir for making a great post without swaying to either sides. Plus I do also fully agree with you.

I usually hate participating in a thread that is turning into a fanboy war, but I just thought that was pretty funny. Carry on.

Here's a very in-depth explanation of air cooling: http://www.ocforums.com/showpost.php?p=557007&postcount=1

The preferred fan placements for optimal cooling would be to have fans to draw cool air in from the front and side, and have one in the back to expell all the circulated warm air out. If you only have one spot to put the fan at the rear of the case, you would want to use it as an exhaust fan, to displace all the hot air generated from the CPU heatsink out of the case.

Yep, the 6600GT sure fits the bill, whether it be AGP or PCI-e.

What slot interface you have? AGP or PCI-e? Current PC specs?