RLGaming.com

Well I'm looking to do a new PC build. here is what I am looking at so far....let me know if you see any glaring errors........

Antec Nine Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Case
ASUS CROSSHAIR Socket AM2 NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI MCP ATX AMD MoBo
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ Windsor 2.6GHz Socket AM2 Processor
CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel
BFG Tech BFGR7950512GTOCE GeForce 7950GT 512MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 OC
ZALMAN 9700 LED 110mm 2 Ball CPU Cooler
Western Digital Caviar 320GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
APEVIA ICEBERG ATX-680W Power Supply
Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound
LITE-ON Black ATAPI/E-IDE DVD-ROM Drive
LITE-ON Black SATA DVD Burner
Win XP Pro

All for approx $1,700.

I personally would take OCZ ram over the CORSAIR. there is nothing wrong with CORSAIR, but I have just had the best of luck with OCZ. Its whats in my desktop and now as of yesterday whats in my laptop.

also I would take the Seagate over Western Digital any day for hard drives. Any western Digital I have had has been flaky while Seagate you could drag through the mud and the dam things still work. Its personal preference here, but my experience is Seagate is just a more robust brand.

I am wondering hhy you are getitng a IDE DVD drive then the burner is SATA. the IDE well be slower the the SETA, so hey. Just curious as I don't think there would be to much of a difference in price.

Besides that looks smiler to what I would build. I personally am waiting on the 65nm AMD chips to hit the market, specifically there FX one, but besides that its about what I want. Well that and thge cache funds to get there to lol meaning I can wait. Looks good man

O and I am assuming the Windows XP is the OEM and not the box version like we discussed yestorday.

as near as I can tell they dont make SATA CD/DVD Roms...and games with shitty copy protection on them tend to no like being played/inserted/looking at any form of burner.

I use Corsair ram, always have. And ASUS/Corsiar certify that this ram/mobo combo is matched true and staggered special...that I can hold the the outside of turn 4....

yes the OEM pack of Win XP Pro

Toms rates the WD higher than the Seagate...who knows..I've always used maxtor myself.

Been a while since I looked at DVD drives, so hey maybe there is no SATA ones lol. But I was not questioning the fact of getting 2 drives, trust me all my main pc's have 2 drives, I always do that msyelf. I was jsut wondering on the slower DVD player but if there is no SATA dvd drive then its a non issue.

Like I said nothing wrong with Corsair, I have heard nothing of good things for them. Its a completely personal call. Its easlyy a equal to OCZ.

Generly I find Seagate is not the top for speed, they are nothing special. But they are like a ak-47, the dam thing just works and thats why I got for them. Western Digital, people tell me they have had the best of luck with them some tell me the opposite, and the same goes for Seagate, some just have bad luck and some good luck with a brand. I have just always found the Seagate superior in the end.


In the end I think you would be happy with the current setup. tho I wish I could have found a db rating on the fans that come with the case. Some fans that come stock in a case are louder then all hell even on low settings. Betting the info is in the reviews but eh I am not reading them lol.

The db's cant be more than I have now....with 7 case fans running

look up that mobo...I'm an nivida chipset fan, and that board looks damned cool with the cooper heatsinks for the northbridge and the blue backgrounder and poster, besides you know me, I have to look good

edit...funny i cant get the smileys to work

just for the love of god don't put a strobe light in the case.

O and you need a new pc to get the smilies to work, so looks like you are set

I am a big one for the nvidia chip sets as well. The board on my main pc is running the FIRSt nvidia chip set they released. It blew away everything else there was for amd at the time. They are maid for speed, not just to make the CPU work. I well defentlay be getting a asus nvidia board when I go for my next system. Tho dam you buff got me looking at this crap now, may end up sooner then I planed


O and um I may be dumb and do something like this
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813131146

VEGETA wrote:

Ah HA! so it not just me that cant get them to work....its a broken smile!

well poo...it works in the quote...just not in Veg's post

Veg look up an ASUS Striker Extream

oh hell I did it for you

http://usa.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3& ... odelmenu=1

well, we don't touch seagate here. we have had massive failures with seagate enterprise drives - scsi even - in the past. more than triple the industry average. they would not live up to it either, and our company has lost hundreds of thousands of dollars due to seagate.

we swear by WD when it comes to sata and pata drives. they created a new type of drive because of us - the RE and RE2 drives. enterprise class sata and pata drives. we sold so many pata drives that we had to do something about it (we are talking over 100K drives per year) and they helped.

oh - Buff are you sure you want a 7000 series gpu? and your cpu is going to be hotter than an intel e6700, therefore your cooling system will be louder... uness you are doing water cooling?

I've been hearing bad things about Seagate drives since the mid-90's so what Steel said does not surprise me one bit.

but that board only has 1 cpu not 2

Never dealt with segate when it comes to server market, only in the desktop market. And in desktop its my top choice, never had one fail yet, but have had issues with WD drives. Go figure.

Like I said tho, depends on the person, I got some friends who are Wd and some Seagate, its funny.

Also here is a artically on WD vs Segate 320 gig drives. Detailed and such.
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdo ... i=2803&p=1

to sum it up, in the end they where about a tie, only thing that they based there winner on was the face the Seagate drive has a 5 year warranty vs the 3 year of WD. In the end this artically helps out my point its relay personal preference. booth well do, I go for Seagate, others well do somethings else.


Steel, 8000 series is MININUM price on newegg is 400$ which are no name brand card makers using the nvidia chip set. 440 gets you a aces versions which is a brand I would buy. The late 7000 series are still dam good cards and can play anything in the market now and well play anything in the market for games for many years, especially the late 7000 series which is close to performance to the 8000 series cards out now. But the 7000 series is 250$ range. So hey even I would probably go this route myself.

And ya the AMD at 90nm are hot bastards. the heat sink that buff selected should easely handle it but could be loud. Water cooling buff may be a interesting option to follow. One I well probably do when I make my pc.

this is why I am asking questions.

Frankly, I have been looking at the mobo/chipsets for the Intel 2CD chips, I have not really seen one I like and trust. That and from the looks of the feed back on the latest 2CD boards, the bios's are really sucky and are causing a lot of headaches. So I think I'll go with a proven AMD setup. Besides, the socket for the AMD 65nm chips is some thing they are taking off their server boards and isnt even on the radar yet.

I just cant see shucking out the cash for a 1st gen 8000 series gpu. I've been burned twice now on 1st gen stuff, and heck I only recently picked up a 7600gts 512 for the current rig. So I'll stick with the 7950, and maybe go ahead and set up some SLI goodness and see how that tastes.

Cooling is a concern of mine, as I said in the current rig I have 7 case fans going. This new case has 2 120mm front fans, 1 rear 120mm fan, and one 140mm (!!!!!) fan mounted in thetop of the case to pull hot air out. The PSU is mounted on the bottom of this case. The cpu fan is a Zalman 9700, a giant chunk of copper goodness with 6 heatpipes...it is very highly rated all over the place, like Toms etc. The case fans may be loud, although the feedback donsent say that, but heck...if it muffles Veg.....bonus!

I think 680w on thePSU should feed this beast

Anyway...still open to suggestion

You basically have 2 choices for HDs now--Seagate (which bought Maxtor) and WD. There are other companies, but they're much smaller. Hitachi with its old IBM Deathstar line is there, but I'm no fan.

Samsung is also there, thats whats in my parents pc. Mainly as at that time segate did not have a 3 year warrenty on the drives, samsung did. Don't know why msot companeys for a year or so stoped the 3 year warrenty all of a sudden. but it quickealy came back and improved to 5 years on some.

A lot of them were looking to cut costs and saw that as a fast way. However, I think sales of drives with 3+ yr warranties was far higher and they reversed the decision.

i was not too suprised about your findings dealing with seagate drives Steel. i got a pair of SATA 120 gig drives, they do OK, but i have had some weird glitches off and on, more when they were newer then the last 8 months. i have a 40 gig WD that is great, no problems with that what so ever at this point. and faster, but then again, i got so much stuff on my drives that just simply becuse its smaller it works better too lol.
suprisingly Maxtor works good for me. i have a 80 gig that is around 4 yrs old still in my PC and a old 40 gig thats around 6 yrs old. however it is starting to get a bit flaky. ( but thats ok its in my wifes computer ) never messed with anything but eide CD/DVD burners. so have no clue there. the other stuff i havnt researched since last year. but im considering maybe trying intel. simply becuse of the cooler running issues. or water cooling too. looking forward to more imput on this thread. i might learn something.

I well tell you BlackHaw that AMD has released the 65nm chips tho don't expect to see them for anther month. The 65nm means cooler chips drawing less power. Intel has been 65nm for I think 2 years but amd was slow to move for some reason. So hey hte heat issues with AMD well decrease a lot SOON

thats good to hear veg, i thinking of waiting another year before i do any major upgrades anyhow. by then maybe the parts will be cheeper. im not realy playing any games that require anything more then i have anyhow.

my system specs are on my Xfire profile, just click my tag.

Buff,
if you d not want new gen gpu, maybe look at the 7950 gx2... if you want a reliable Intel based mainboard, look at the Intel 975xbx or xbx2... you might also consider the eVGA mainboard Gator selected...

Veg,
you might be wrong? - there are at least 3 games out this year what will need dx10? i might have that wrong though and they will 'dumb' down to dx9... ut2007 and others here know better...