Building a new rig

[Floyd]

As my M/B is a fairly outdated Asus P4C800E-Deluxe (AGP only ), I'm beginning to put some thought into building another computer.

My son's current computer has an Asus A8N-SLI Premium board. His was the first AMD based comp that I built. He has had no problems from it, but I'm still partial to Intel myself.

Though money is not a deciding factor on choice, I've chased the late$t and greate$t train enough to know how un-cost effective that can be Therefore, I'm looking for newer but expandable technology that isn't cutting edge, but also won't be obsolete by years end.

I don't imagine that anything in my current system will make it into this new one (other than perhaps a hard drive or two). SLI, SATA (with RAID options), 4GB memory capability and on-board LAN are a few must haves.

Any suggestions or advise for anything from M/B's to video cards?

Should I wait for a month or two, or should I start putting the pieces together now?

tia,

Floyd

 

[Nagels]

Hi Floyd, ltns

I'm currently after upgrading and very happy with the setup, although the child in me wants more.....lol

Intel seems to be the flavour of the month right now with quad processors etc.

However I'm currently running AMD, I've considered Intel but given that RO runs very well on my current setup I'm staying put for another while.

I've taken the advice of various pc experts and my current situ is very right and cost effective (I'm running XP and apparently quads prefer Vista)

My current specs are

Grf. Card Gainward GeForce 8800GTX 768MB GDDR3,
PCI-Express, "BP8800GTX-768-TV-DD"
Soundcard Creative SB X-FI Xtreme Gamer

Case Thermaltake Armor Silver Aluminium Front
25 cm Fan, Super tower (Without PSU)

Drives Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 250GB SATA2
16MB 7200RPM
Western Digital Raptor 74GB SATA
16MB 10000RPM
NEC DVD

 

[bloodypotato]

Keep in mind that AMD just released their new Server processors and should have their desktop versions out relatively shortly.

 

[Floyd]

Hi, nagels. Good to see you.

I looked at that board a little while ago. I'll go back and revisit it. Asus M/B's are my brand of choice. Overclocking it should be a breeze. The BIOS setup should have some default O/C settings.
Thats the basically the same video card I've got my eye on, too.

More than likely, I will use my trusty and humongous Sunflower case. Everything will get yanked out except perhaps the hard drives.

Thanks for the input.

Floyd

 

[Colt .45 killer]

look up the asus p5 series, all of them have ddr2 1066mhz support, 8gigs max memory, some come with up to 6 sata connectors, sata on the go, 8 channel sound. il stop nattering, heres a linky, look at them yourself. if you want a truly upgradable go with the one that can handle ddr2 or ddr3. all of them are 775, quad or duo core support.

http://ca.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3&l2=11&l3=534&l4=0&model=1646&modelmenu=1

they range in the 150$ for base model up to 350 for the one that comes with the 7.1 surround sound card.

 

[Mormegil]

Since you're building a new system, there's a good chance you'll end up with Vista.

If so, I suggest setting up a dual boot with XP for certain older games.

Right now, I've got a Sound Blaster X-Fi and the sound drivers are still flaky in Vista. Probably because MS got rid of DirectSound to appease the DRM folks.

 

[Colt .45 killer]

cant wait for a way to turn DRM off, doubt microsoft boys would ever do that though, its rather harsh what DRM does to a video if all parts arent HDCP.

 

[Mormegil]

Turning DRM off won't reimplement DirectSound into DirectX 10.

So we have to wait until Creative Labs can find a stable way to handle the sound.

 

[BuddyLee]

You might want to stay away from ASUS, my old box was a P5GD1 board. Every time I installed a new piece of hardware, it would not boot... some sort of security feature in case your pc was stolen... I have been told.


Now I have an evga 680i A1 board, and it is the pwn. I picked it up at Fry's as a combo with an e6850 C2D for just over $400.

Stay away from the Intel P35 Chipsets, they do not support SLI, and the abit IP35Pro only supports Crossfire with the second PCI-E Slot running at 8x instead of a full 16x.

I would buy the best 680i Chipset board you can afford, and a good 775 socket C2D to match. Maybe even one of those super-thrifty $80. Pentium Dual Cores.

I bought some OCZ Reaper SLI ready memory that automatically optimizes itself for my chipset. Kinda neat. You will have to go into BIOS to enable SLI ready feature.

 

[Floyd]

Sadly, I've never had any luck with anything associated with Creative Labs . It seems that every time I give one of their products a try I spend days finding a "work around" for some obscure problem. Seldom have I had any first time success on any install. Perhaps its the gremlins that live under my desk.

Vista <shudder>. I guess at some point that is another bridge I'll have to cross. Dual boot will definitely be the order of the day if Vista gets installed.

Thanks for the ideas and input. Keep 'em coming.

Floyd

 

[SiFi]

There are still places that sell XP. TigerDirect, for one.