new rig

Infinity Dose · Post by **Infinity Dose** » Sat May 19, 2007 1:17 am

enclave's rig

Urizen · Post by **Urizen** » Sat May 19, 2007 1:20 am

the motherboard is also a priority for me. is asus any good? i'm not sure if i want one or two graphic cards, but i definately want to be able to get an extra one later if i just choose one, and that means i need a pretty good motherboard.

SuperH · Post by **SuperH** » Sat May 19, 2007 1:24 am

I use asus in my desktop, I've had decent luck with it.

I built myself and I don't know the first thing about air-flow and heat dynamics so the few problems I've had I blame on that.

Thor Kaufman · Post by **Thor Kaufman** » Sat May 19, 2007 5:48 am

atoga wrote:creative's stuff is still quite good. i've heard that their x-fi series is a bitchin' gaming soundcard, you might try that.

and yes, i agree with splatterpope about the hd space issue, though at the same time i'd say anything over 200 gb or so is overrated, you're only going to use the space over that for storage of things that have no practical value. so external drives are probably a better solution, just get them as you need them (unless 500gb harddrives are suddenly cheap now).

just bought a bulk HD 400GB for 80euros a few days ago.

500GB should cost like 100euros or so, not too expensive. HDs with fewer GB aren't much cheaper, anyway.

johnnygothisgun · Post by **johnnygothisgun** » Sat May 19, 2007 6:30 am

i did the same as superh, and i too use an asus

i bought an m2n-e sli. its really a nice motherboard, and supports two videocards. i put an athlon xp 64 x2 4600+ dual cpu on it and it runs really purty. i got two gigs of ddr2 ram and an nvidia xfx 7800 gt, as well as a new power supply to carry it all, and it didnt cost me over 700 dollars american. i just reused the cd drive, hard drive and case from the last machine.

if cant even imagine what you would spend 3000 american dollars on with computer parts. i dont think ill be upgrading this computer for a long time, if you custom built a computer with 3000 dollars worth of parts, i would think that youd have to be wasting lots of money on silly expensive things like a watercool system and laser light effects. perhaps a nintendo 64 rumblepak in your keyboard

Thor Kaufman · Post by **Thor Kaufman** » Sat May 19, 2007 10:42 am

If he wants decent sound he could start at 1000euros for one speaker or so, so he might put all the money into sound

PiP · Post by **PiP** » Sat May 19, 2007 10:50 am

Urizen wrote:the motherboard is also a priority for me. is asus any good? i'm not sure if i want one or two graphic cards, but i definately want to be able to get an extra one later if i just choose one, and that means i need a pretty good motherboard.

I guess Gigabyte gets the opinion of best quality (components, workmanship) here and there. When I used to own an Athlon XP 1700+ rig, it had a Gigabyte board. When my power supply fucked up, 2 capacitors on the board got swollen and the board stopped working. I took it to a service centre (not Gigabyte's; they dealt with computers generally) and the guy (he seemed professional) said its the first Gigabyte he'd ever seen to need servicing/fixing.

Whenever I read reliable MB comparisons, Gbytes and Asuses are the best, taking the first place in turns. Here and there you'll find some exotic stuff like Chainsaw to win a prize, but such brands don't have a long history of making top quality product.

Now I'm using a Barton 2600 rig, and for this kinda CPUs the best motherboard was Asus A7N8X (e) Deluxe (rich features, stable operation, great performance, awesome onboard sound)

So personally I'm somewhat biased in favour of Asus, tho some people (Kashluk) had some (compatibility?) issues with these boards so maybe go for Gigabyte since everyone agrees it kicks ass.

Just read some reliable comparisons/tests of motherboards that support the kinda processor you choose.

Splatterpope · Post by **Splatterpope** » Sat May 19, 2007 11:12 am

And I'm biased in favor of Gigabyte, because I've personally had three motherboards made by them smoke themselves, and three of my friends have had about the same amount of trouble.

Even if they didn't destroy themselves, the incredibly poor documentation and driver support would have driven me away from them anyway.(The driver CD included a sound driver that plain old didn't work. On any of the motherboards it was supposed to be used for. Methinks their quality control department is up-farked.)

I suppose it could have just been a bad supplier causing the hardware failures, but it's ruined my faith in them forever.

Oh, and because Gigabyte have higher quality components on their motherboard than Asus. Yeah.

Anyway, my two bob for opinion forming.

PiP · Post by **PiP** » Sat May 19, 2007 11:40 am

ok I found a con of Gigabyte: my Gigabyte's northbridge's fan kept seizing/jamming so I had to oil it every now and again, and it was damn loud. There ya go

btw if you hardware geeks are curious, this was my Gigabyte and this is my Asus (tho not for long, I'm selling the whole rig in a month or so)

Urizen · Post by **Urizen** » Sat May 19, 2007 4:04 pm

this is what i'm looking at right now. it's from this site (http://www.komplett.no/k/config.aspx?Co ... emId=10238), which is in norwegian, so i translated some of the words for you. do you see any bottlenecks?

Steelpad 4D Gaming Mousepad
Cooler Master Centurion 534, Sort,
Hiper Power Supply ATX 530W Black,
Asus P5N-E SLI, nForce-650i
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4GHz Socket
XFX GeForce 8800GTX 600M 768MB XT GDDR3
Corsair TWIN2X 5400 DDR2, 2048MB PC5400
Samsung SpinPoint T166 400GB SATA2
Samsung DVD-burner SH-S182D IDE
Creative SB Audigy SE
Logitech Deluxe 250 Keyboard NO
Creative Gigaworks S750 , 7.1 THX
Creative Webcam Live!Vista IM
Samsung 20" LCD Syncmaster 205BW TCO03

PiP wrote: btw if you hardware geeks are curious, this was my Gigabyte and this is my Asus (tho not for long, I'm selling the whole rig in a month or so)

that asus looks pretty, and i think they are the best value, so i'm probably going with that.

johnnygothisgun wrote: if cant even imagine what you would spend 3000 american dollars on with computer parts. i dont think ill be upgrading this computer for a long time, if you custom built a computer with 3000 dollars worth of parts, i would think that youd have to be wasting lots of money on silly expensive things like a watercool system and laser light effects. perhaps a nintendo 64 rumblepak in your keyboard

that's because the dollar is worth squat right now. i wish i could order my new rig from the us, but then i'd have to pay 25% VAT to norwegian customs.

Post by **King of Creation** » Sat May 19, 2007 4:45 pm

If you're getting new speakers too, I recommend going for the Logitech Z-5500 set.

http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/produ ... ENTID=9486

They're a bit pricey, but you can usually find them onsale somewhere on the internet. I've got them, and they're absolutely amazing. And Logitech is excellent when it comes to replacing them if they break and/or you fuck them up.

Urizen · Post by **Urizen** » Sat May 19, 2007 5:33 pm

they do look good, if a bit pricey. i've got some cambridge soundworks (creative) speakers that have lasted for 5 years and they still give me great sound. didn't cost much, either.

Mandalorian FaLLouT GoD · Sat May 19, 2007 5:36 pm

Urizen wrote:they do look good, if a bit pricey. i've got some cambridge soundworks (creative) speakers that have lasted for 5 years and they still give me great sound. didn't cost much, either.

I've got a set of creative speakers that are 4 years old.
5.1 surround sound and all the bells and whistles.
Cost a total of 30 Canadian at initial purchase.

PiP · Post by **PiP** » Sat May 19, 2007 6:59 pm

Urizen wrote:do you see any bottlenecks?

I don't know the brand of your PSU. Make sure it's reliable (check at hardware forums in Norwegian maybe). I found this model you chose at my fav shop. It's got active PFC, which is good, but it also looks not-very-expensive, and since you've got enough cash maybe try something like this (or if you want more power, this - especially desgined for SLI systems).
These Topowers have unpluggable cables, golden sticks, more protection systems than Hiper; they are quiet and reliable.

Spazmo · Post by **Spazmo** » Sat May 19, 2007 8:50 pm

Don't bother with a sound card. Any halfway decent mobo these days has integrated 5.1 audio so there's no particularly good reason to drop another hundred bucks on a sound card.

And absolutely go 64-bit. Actually, you'd have trouble not going 64 bit anyways, it's not hard to find IA_64 chips these days. Hell, I got my current processor about two years ago and even then it was a no brainer to go 64 bit dual core.

In general, I've always found ASUS makes good components at a good price, so check them out for motherboard and video card.

SuperH · Post by **SuperH** » Sat May 19, 2007 8:58 pm

Urizen wrote:do you see any bottlenecks?

Steelpad 4D Gaming Mousepad

I think it will be difficult to play next-gen games well if your mouse travels through time during use.

atoga · Post by **atoga** » Sat May 19, 2007 9:26 pm

don't listen to spazmo, soundcards are quite important, especially if you listen to a lot of music on your pc. many soundcards (including most creatives) will resample audio from the source, which leads to popping and general shittiness. a 24-bit soundcard wif good d/a is pretty crucial if you care about quality in either audio playback or game sound (though i think 24-bit is pretty common now?)

also don't get computer speakers, i'd recommend cheapish bookshelf speakers or something.

Urizen · Post by **Urizen** » Sat May 19, 2007 9:40 pm

when it comes to the soundcard, that's the one area where i'm not going to compromise. but i don't subscribe to the this "the more speakers, the better" fad.

NATIK · Post by **NATIK** » Sun May 20, 2007 1:18 am

Urizen wrote:when it comes to the soundcard, that's the one area where i'm not going to compromise. but i don't subscribe to the this "the more speakers, the better" fad.

Same, I have a subwoofer and 2 speakers for stereo atm, yet I got one of the expensive soundcards (the speakers and subwoofer arent bad either). I would rather have good stereo then crappy surroundsound.