buying a new PC

[Thauzar]

First of all, here is the specs of what would be my new pc.

Case: COOLERMASTER Ammo 533 – ATX – NO PS (RC-533-SWN1)

Power Supply: ENERMAX NoiseTaker EG701AX-VE SFMA(24P) ATX 600W All-In-One

Motherboard: ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe/Wireless Edition: NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI MCP

Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ / 2.4GHz / AM2 / 512KB + 512KB

Memory: CORSAIR TWIN2X2048-6400C4 – DDR2-800 – 2 X 1GB – 4-4-4-12

GFX Card : 2 times ASUS GeForce EN7600GS SILENT/HTD/512M – 512MB – PCI-E – DVI/VGA

HDD : 4 times SEAGATE Barracuda 250GB / SATA II / 7200.10 / NCQ / 16MB Cache

DVD-burners : 2 times PIONEER DVR-111 BLACK 16X DUAL LAYER DVD+RW/-RW

1.44 Slot : Mistumi 7-in-1 Media Drive

Sound card : CREATIVE Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic 24bit 7.1 Black

Modem (it's still usefull sometimes) : GNET PCI 56k Modem V.90 V.92 Ready w/Fax & Voice

Waranty : limited 2 years waranty

All of this for more or less 2600$ CAD with taxes included.

I was wondering if seagate is a better choice than WD cause I never tried them but read a lot of positive feedbacks on them

Also, can anyone point me to a what-is-how-to on SATA 2? I don't know how to plug, how to configure, in fact I now nothing about SATA2. I'd like to have one main drive for the OS and progs, another one for the data, and 2 drives in mirror to host my large mp3 collection I just don't want to loose.

And of course, I'm interested in all your comments or suggestions from all of you!

Edited July 30, 2006 by Thauzar

[ripken204]

mobo-great mobo so far for am2, thats until dfi's board comes out

for psu get an enermax liberty or an ocz gamexstream

for cpu, you may want to go with a 4200 just to save money and then overclock it, unless u want the multiplier

sound card- what speakers do u have. i would suggest the auzentech xplosion or wait till september for the auzentech xpurity

dvd is good unless u want a nec 3550, very cheap now

hdd- get the 320gig perpendicular drives from seagate

ram is good

gpu-umm, why? just get a 7900gt/gtx, its pointless to get those cards, even if their silent. just get an arctic cooler 5 rev3, its pretty much silent too.

sata 2 is nothing. just plug it in and its fast

where u getting this from? ncix?

[Thauzar]

mobo-great mobo so far for am2, thats until dfi's board comes out

for psu get an enermax liberty or an ocz gamexstream

I kinda wanted the noisetaker power supply because my computer is always on and it's in my bedroom. Would there be a huge benefit to follow your advice on a OCZ gamextream?

for cpu, you may want to go with a 4200 just to save money and then overclock it, unless u want the multiplier

sound card- what speakers do u have. i would suggest the auzentech xplosion or wait till september for the auzentech xpurity

this brand is not availlable, and I got the XtremeMusic recommanded, I have logitech 5300e 5.1 speakers set.

dvd is good unless u want a nec 3550, very cheap now

hdd- get the 320gig perpendicular drives from seagate

there is no special mention of it being perpendicular in the pricelist, but I chose the 250 GB ones not to go over my buget and still get enough space... I mean I would have 250gb of system and progs, 250 gb of data and 250 mirrored of mp3

ram is good

gpu-umm, why? just get a 7900gt/gtx, its pointless to get those cards, even if their silent. just get an arctic cooler 5 rev3, its pretty much silent too.

Well I didn't want them cause they were silent, just thought I better get the 2 cards at the same time for greater compatibility, instead of buying one now and another one in a couple of months, that and the fact that the 512mb 7900GTX availlable are 33% more costly than 2 7600GS

sata 2 is nothing. just plug it in and its fast

where u getting this from? ncix?

www.cipc-info.com

Edited July 30, 2006 by Thauzar

[ripken204]

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku...facture=Seagate

this is that new seagate drive. i would highly recommend it, u dont need 4 of them...

get a 7900gt, it will be better than 7600's in sli.

any reason ur not using ncix?

for ur audio, do u plan on mostly gaming or mostly audio/movies?

[Thauzar]

the thing is there is no 512mb 7900GT availlable at this store, and the 7900GTX are too expensive ...

the seagate drive model 7200.10 are all perpendicular (based on seagate's website) so my 250GB choise is too. But maybe I dont need four... in fact I wanted four because with two of them mirrored I end up with the equivalent of 3. I also wanted a separate drive for my data so if anything happens to the system disk all my data is ok. But maybe I shoud stick with the old partitions, and buy one 320GB and 2 mirrored 250GB...

in fact, for the money I save pn one drive the 3 of them could be 320... I only wanted my data to be fullproof against anything affecting the system drive, but I guess I lived without distinct drives for 10 years and still managed not to lost too much data...

anyone else got an opinion on this?

and for ncix, I'm gonna check them out right now, but I had chose CIPC cause being in Montreal and prices in Canadian Money, it's easier for me to figure out how much it will cost, also there is no need for shipping cause I'll go and get it myself. But I see ncix offers cad pricing too so I'm definitely gonna compare pricings.

oh and for the audio, it's mostly gonna be music and games, some movies, I'm not that kind of guy that will complain if he does not hear the dirt moving around when he's walking slowly in a game though. I could have kept my soundblaster live 5.1 and not see the difference but I got a big recommandation for a XtremeMusic card, and since it's at a reasonnable price (compared to the higher XFi models and lower/older creative cards).

Edited July 30, 2006 by Thauzar

[Thauzar]

ncix seems a couple of bucks cheaper, but the warranty is also 1 year shorter, and I find it nice to have the possibility to go back to the store if there is a problem with the computer, not only send it in the mail and wait. The total cost difference between both stores is less than 20$ at the end.

I'm not insecure about buying pieces on the web, but a full computer I would be more confortable to buy it from a real person, talking to me, whom I can shake hand with, and come back and ask for more questions later... I think I'll still buy it from CIPC

[Scubar]

whys it so important that it has 512MB memory ? You were going to buy 2x7600GS which would have 512MB memory but that doesnt mean crap . A 256MB 7900GT with its faster clock and memory and more pipelines will totally obliterate the 2x7600GS at all resoloutions with and without AA/AF.

[ripken204]

ya, 512mb is not important at all. go for the 256mb 7900gt.

and for ur hdd, not all 7200.10 's are perpendicual

ST3250620AS this 250gig model is tho

i like ur new idea about ur hdds there, but raid1 is pretty usless for most ppl. when was the last time a hdd died on you? and u can just backup important data.

other than that ur looing fine.

[Thauzar]

I admit that the 2 drives in mirror are just a candy, it's because I got more than 100Gb of mp3, and still growing, and it takes a day to backup on a pack of DVD-RW, having them mirrored means no hassle thinking about needing to do backups. It's really not a necessity though but some candy that's it.

For the video card, you are saying that 2x 512MB 7600GS in SLI 16x won't be better than one 256MB 7900GT?

I mean... you know better than me, that's why I'm asking but I mean...

how much better can faster clock and memory and more pipelines do compared to 4 times the memory size? I tried to look for some benchmark comparison but didn't find something similar to my configuration choices.

Furthermore, having 2 cards give me option for 2 LCD screens (in the future), and since both cards are DVI/VGA I still can plug my old CRT screen if, say, my LCD breaks while the 7900 cards are only DVI.

For the HDD I settled on going with 3 x 320GB model ST3320620AS from Seagate

Edited July 30, 2006 by Thauzar

[ripken204]

most games dont even need most than 256mb of memory. i have a 7800gt and i can run all games at full settings and most games with 16xaa abd 8xaf.

http://www.motherboards.org/reviews/hardware/1597_6.html

this is the only review i could find that compared both of them. the 7900gt is slightly better than 2x7600gs. and that even gives you the option to go sli later on.

[Thauzar]

16xaa abd 8xaf..... that's chineese?

I just want my video card to last a f***ing long time, I mean I have a geforce2 400 on my desktop who could still run most games until last year, and on my laptop a nvidia5200go which is good but Dell does not update drivers so I can't play recent games.

I guess I'm gonna go for a 256mb 7900 since you know better than me lol

and in the case my lcd dies sometimes, I guess I could buy a VGA to DVI adapter meanwhile.

there is a 7900GT and a 7900GT TOP, while I guess TOP one is better is it worth spending 60$ more? The 7900GTX one is way off my budget though.

Edited July 30, 2006 by Thauzar

[ripken204]

the 7900gt comes with a dvi to vga adapter

and again, looking at those benchmarks, the 2 options are pretty much the same. but the 7900gt will look better due to it having more pipelines. and u can go sli in the future.

[Thauzar]

While looking at the benchmark, there is not a lot of difference between 7600 and 7900 but on the long run buying another 7900 when they get cheaper will add more longetivity to it, and until then my performances will be more than enough to play all recent games with everything on FULL

lol

now I only have to look on nvidia's website to know if spending 60$ more for a 7900GT TOP or for a 7900GT

on cipc the difference seems to be 2DHT, which is still chineese to me, if it means hyperthreading it could be worth

Edited July 30, 2006 by Thauzar

[ripken204]

the TOP is overclocked out of the box, so it will be faster, but u can just overclock the standard card if u care at all. but thats for asus

i prefer xfx over asus

[Thauzar]

is this only personnal preference or is there facts behind it?

I'm trying to get all my system parts to work together perfectly so I figured that by staying aroung the same brand it would help.

That's why I looked for nvidia video card instead of ati ones, and that's also why I chose asus's card instead of XFX (a brand I don't know and never heard of). But looking at the price list right now, the XFX 7900GT is also 60$ higher (same price as TOP asus one) than the ASUS 7900GT.

Is XFX already overclock or are they only better build, or is asus's production cost lower?

I also stumbled across a couple of forums from France and users where complaining with in games bugs appreaing with 7900GT cards, and some overheating problems. but it was dated from may, is there still problems with those cards? Anyway, if it's not overclocked I'm gonna minimise the heat.

In fact... I don't care at all about overclocking, i'm not into that

Edited July 30, 2006 by Thauzar