I set Vcore to 1.3250 and overclock to 3 Ghz and in BIOS/CPU-Z/SpeedFan it only shows that the CPU is pulling around 1.27-1.28. Unless it's a power supply issue.
That's normal behavior.
Odd that you're having trouble though, I can do 3GHz fine @ 1.3V, and I know people have gone to 3.2-6GHz on air without a problem.
OK guys here I go again, I've gone taken a lot of what you guys said about my earlier build and I have revised it. I still stuck with the AMD build because I got a great deal on New egg for one of the nice AMD's + a 320 gig barracuda....anyways here is the build, plz tell me what you think...again
Well I ran out to Circuit City and grabbed some thermal paste and a Tricool fan, and I must say that Tricool fan beats the brains out of my stock 120mm. Anyway, I reseated my CPU's heatsink and did the thermal jig, and I'm showing 11*c better temps under load (TF2 at 1920x1280,everything maxed) so I think it's a success! My idle temps are down to around 40-41ish-c, which is just great.
Congrats! Glad everything worked out. As the thermal compound works its magic, those temps could still come down a few degrees, which should be even more peace for your mind.
Just a side note; games don't typically stress the CPU enough to be thought of as "load". If you're just gaming, then there's no real need to go any further, but if you do other more processor intensive things, or want to know how hot your CPU gets when it's taking a real beating, there's a program called Prime95 that's pretty much the gold standard for CPU stressing.
I actually have been using Prime95 before and after my ..."modification" and I noticed a huge benefit there. Before 45 seconds of Prime95 slammed my temps above 70 (and then I shut it off due to fear), but now, after 3 minutes I didn't even break 65*c. I'm glad to here that my temps may lower even further.
I gotta say though, I'm glad someone told me not to use a lot of that paste. I used almost nothing this time around (just a dot in the center and then slammed the heatsink down), but compared to how much Intel had on that thing it's insane. I was fully expecting to turn it on and see my temps skyrocket, but you really don't need a lot of that paste at all. I really hope these temps hold. Prime95 does still scare the living shit out of me though.
Edit: Now that it's all said and done (hopefully), building a desktop is one hell of an experience. My next one will go so much smoother.
Just one question: I got all my wires out of the way in the case, but they are more or less being jammed against the back of my DVD drives (still a bit of room back there though), should I realistically ever worry about my DVD drives overheating? I don't really use them much but it got me thinking with the way the wires are behind them.
I set Vcore to 1.3250 and overclock to 3 Ghz and in BIOS/CPU-Z/SpeedFan it only shows that the CPU is pulling around 1.27-1.28. Unless it's a power supply issue.
That's normal behavior.
Odd that you're having trouble though, I can do 3GHz fine @ 1.3V, and I know people have gone to 3.2-6GHz on air without a problem.
Yeah, I know. That's the odd part. Everything looks like its okay but then failure when I start pushing the hertz. And for some reason, core #2 really likes to fail, although it runs the coldest out of all of them. I'm gonna start pushing it a little more right now though. I'm at 1.34V and 3.126Ghz right now and it seems stable. Seems kinda high Vcore, but I'm going to try and hit the peak Ghz I can then adjust voltage. I've set the RAM to linked and synced, as people on the EVGA forums say it's the best way to overclock for these boards. Might update to P32 BIOS but people keep saying P31 or P30 is the best.
OK guys here I go again, I've gone taken a lot of what you guys said about my earlier build and I have revised it. I still stuck with the AMD build because I got a great deal on New egg for one of the nice AMD's + a 320 gig barracuda....anyways here is the build, plz tell me what you think...again
btw I got deals on the gfx card+RAM, CPU+HD, Case+PSU ... all to a grand total (tax included) of $548.92
I have the 2GB a stick version of that RAM. No complaints with it and I've been running some really tight settings with it, although its underclocked right now. For the rebates, you have to send in the UPC. So if you want to return it or anything like that...you can't. It turns into a big "go through the company that made it" thing. Also, do you have a CPU cooler? LightScribing on discs means you have to buy special discs if you want to make the fancy labels for em.
OK guys here I go again, I've gone taken a lot of what you guys said about my earlier build and I have revised it. I still stuck with the AMD build because I got a great deal on New egg for one of the nice AMD's + a 320 gig barracuda....anyways here is the build, plz tell me what you think...again
btw I got deals on the gfx card+RAM, CPU+HD, Case+PSU ... all to a grand total (tax included) of $548.92
I have the 2GB a stick version of that RAM. No complaints with it and I've been running some really tight settings with it, although its underclocked right now. For the rebates, you have to send in the UPC. So if you want to return it or anything like that...you can't. It turns into a big "go through the company that made it" thing. Also, do you have a CPU cooler? LightScribing on discs means you have to buy special discs if you want to make the fancy labels for em.
The deals I was talking about were the bundle deals that newegg has not the rebates. As far as the CPU cooling...I was just going to us stock ? Will stock work ?
Well I ran out to Circuit City and grabbed some thermal paste and a Tricool fan, and I must say that Tricool fan beats the brains out of my stock 120mm. Anyway, I reseated my CPU's heatsink and did the thermal jig, and I'm showing 11*c better temps under load (TF2 at 1920x1280,everything maxed) so I think it's a success! My idle temps are down to around 40-41ish-c, which is just great.
Congrats! Glad everything worked out. As the thermal compound works its magic, those temps could still come down a few degrees, which should be even more peace for your mind.
Just a side note; games don't typically stress the CPU enough to be thought of as "load". If you're just gaming, then there's no real need to go any further, but if you do other more processor intensive things, or want to know how hot your CPU gets when it's taking a real beating, there's a program called Prime95 that's pretty much the gold standard for CPU stressing.
I actually have been using Prime95 before and after my ..."modification" and I noticed a huge benefit there. Before 45 seconds of Prime95 slammed my temps above 70 (and then I shut it off due to fear), but now, after 3 minutes I didn't even break 65*c. I'm glad to here that my temps may lower even further.
I gotta say though, I'm glad someone told me not to use a lot of that paste. I used almost nothing this time around (just a dot in the center and then slammed the heatsink down), but compared to how much Intel had on that thing it's insane. I was fully expecting to turn it on and see my temps skyrocket, but you really don't need a lot of that paste at all. I really hope these temps hold. Prime95 does still scare the living shit out of me though.
Edit: Now that it's all said and done (hopefully), building a desktop is one hell of an experience. My next one will go so much smoother.
Just one question: I got all my wires out of the way in the case, but they are more or less being jammed against the back of my DVD drives (still a bit of room back there though), should I realistically ever worry about my DVD drives overheating? I don't really use them much but it got me thinking with the way the wires are behind them.
I didn't manually spread it around, but believe me after fighting and jamming the heatsink down and getting those pegs in correctly, it's spread. I saw many videos of people just putting a dot on and then using the pressure of the heatsink against the cpu to spread, and my temps are much better now.
I'm not liking the included PSU, only 380 watts...isn't that too low? I normally hear that 500 is usually safe
For the parts in it, it should be sufficient.
Yeah, but fuga should know that while he'll be perfectly able to slap in a quad core processor and a 4870 down the road if he wants to, his power supply won't be up to it. An Antec Sonata III is on sale for $99, so it's a much better choice if he's buying right now, for the same price.
If he's not considering convenient upgrades in the future AMD is the better choice in this price range.
I'm not liking the included PSU, only 380 watts...isn't that too low? I normally hear that 500 is usually safe
For the parts in it, it should be sufficient.
Yeah, but fuga should know that while he'll be perfectly able to slap in a quad core processor and a 4870 down the road if he wants to, his power supply won't be up to it. An Antec Sonata III is on sale for $99, so it's a much better choice if he's buying right now, for the same price.
If he's not considering convenient upgrades in the future AMD is the better choice in this price range.
Honestly, Intel is just as bad for upgrades now; they're launching a new socket soon. LGA775 is pretty much done.
So I'm planning on building a new computer and was going to just stick a 750gb HDD in there. Some of my friends have RAID configs in their newest builds and I know nothing about this.
Is a RAID setup that much more beneficial. If so, how many drives do you need/what do you need to do this?
So I'm planning on building a new computer and was going to just stick a 750gb HDD in there. Some of my friends have RAID configs in their newest builds and I know nothing about this.
Is a RAID setup that much more beneficial. If so, how many drives do you need/what do you need to do this?
Okay, quick guide to RAID.
RAID 0 is when you have two (or more) disks and data is striped between them. To your operating system, the disks appear as one large volume. This theoretically improves sequential read speed (how long it takes to read a big chunk of data that's all in a row). It does nothing for seek time (how long it takes to read some random piece somewhere on the disk). And if one of the drives dies, you lose all the data on the entire array. Basically, RAID 0 is worthless. The performance increase is imperceptible and you are twice as likely to lose all your data.
RAID 1 is when you have two (or, I guess more?) disks and data is mirrored across them. Both disks hold the same data and if one disk fails you have a backup immediately available. With a quality RAID controller it will have no effect on read or write times. RAID 1 is pretty useful if you can afford it.
RAID 2, 3, and 4 are useless and nobody uses them anymore. Pay no attention; pretend the numbers are skipped.
RAID 5 is awesome, but you need at least three disks. One disk is used for parity information and the other two are used for data. So, with three disks, you have room for data as if you had two disks, but if any one disk fails, the RAID controller can rebuild it with the two remaining disks. With a quality RAID controller you should have little or no slowdown, but bad RAID controllers can hurt read/write performance more easily here than with RAID 1.
edit: RAID 0+1 or 01 or 10 or the like means you have a RAID 0 array that is then mirrored in a RAID 1. This is stupid and you should use RAID 5 instead if your controller supports it.
I haven't built a PC in over 5 years so excuse this stupid question: do people still buy soundcards? I'm wondering if the integrated stuff causes a bottleneck or anything.
edit: also, last I heard, the Radeon 4850/4870 cards were in, but I don't see many people opting for them in the configs posted. Has anything happened on this front?
I haven't built a PC in over 5 years so excuse this stupid question: do people still buy soundcards? I'm wondering if the integrated stuff causes a bottleneck or anything.
edit: also, last I heard, the Radeon 4850/4870 cards were in, but I don't see many people opting for them in the configs posted. Has anything happened on this front?
some people buy sound cards, you dont really need to unless you for some reason get a crappy mobo with crappy sound.
the 4870 and 4850 are recommended in most real gaming builds, im betting you are looking at the past few budget builds or the one where Nvidia was the only option.
if you really want to spend some cash the 4870x2 beats out the 280
I haven't built a PC in over 5 years so excuse this stupid question: do people still buy soundcards? I'm wondering if the integrated stuff causes a bottleneck or anything.
edit: also, last I heard, the Radeon 4850/4870 cards were in, but I don't see many people opting for them in the configs posted. Has anything happened on this front?
If you want EAX, you need an X-Fi card. If you can live with software emulation of EAX and want better non-gaming performance (i.e. playing music) than a Creative card, you probably want a Xonar. If you write/record music on your PC, I have no idea what to tell you. I listen to a lot of music while working, and my old Audigy sounded better than my onboard sound does now, so I'm kinda poking around, trying to pick out a sound card, but it looks like the best way to go right now is to sit and wait for a couple months, see if anything interesting happens. Or at least some better drivers come out.
Re: video cards, you should note that most of the recent builds in this thread are not the cookie cutter bang-for-buck rigs that feature the radeons, the e8400s, and the p45 NB mobos. Rest assured, the vast majority of people building systems right now are picking up 4850s or 4870s. I've seen a few people on other boards opting to go with nvidia cards because of PhysX support, and one or two picking up a 9800 GTX+ because they don't want to spend $300, but they want a dual slot cooler. My guess is that those people were looking for an excuse to stick with nvidia, and found one in the "omg 4800 series radeons get so HOT" stories. Nevermind that the nvidia cards run pretty toasty themselves.
Okay, awesome. So I'll just try out the onboard sound and see how that goes. I think I'm just going for the 'standard' build in general (P45/E8400-8600, Radeon 4850/70, 2GB+ DDR2 RAM). Thanks for all the good tips.
Most onboard audio is excellent now. The new Realtek lines are pretty outstanding compared to their predecessors. There's no real need to go surround sound unless you plan to do some pro-audio stuff.
This is sort of a stupid question, but what will happen if I put DDR2-1000 memory in a board that says it supports 1200/1066/800/666 memory? Will it just run at 800?
Also, should I be buying the fastest RAM my motherboard can support? Or will speed differences between 1200 and 800 be pretty negligible?
This is sort of a stupid question, but what will happen if I put DDR2-1000 memory in a board that says it supports 1200/1066/800/666 memory? Will it just run at 800?
Also, should I be buying the fastest RAM my motherboard can support? Or will speed differences between 1200 and 800 be pretty negligible?
The rule of thumb is that "half the FSB speed" is a good minimum, i.e. if you have a Core 2 Duo with a listed FSB of 1066, you should get, at a minimum, DDR-533.
After reading the first page I realized it's computer parts so who knows how out of date it is. Anyway I'm excited for WAR coming out next month and getting it to run on my computer is an excuse for an overhaul so I was looking at getting this:
I don't need a top of the line system just something to play some of the newer games on. Thoughts?
Also would I have to replace my power supply? I think I have a 500 watt in it right now.
This is sort of a stupid question, but what will happen if I put DDR2-1000 memory in a board that says it supports 1200/1066/800/666 memory? Will it just run at 800?
Also, should I be buying the fastest RAM my motherboard can support? Or will speed differences between 1200 and 800 be pretty negligible?
the maximum supported memory for your mobo is 1200
After reading the first page I realized it's computer parts so who knows how out of date it is. Anyway I'm excited for WAR coming out next month and getting it to run on my computer is an excuse for an overhaul so I was looking at getting this:
I don't need a top of the line system just something to play some of the newer games on. Thoughts?
Also would I have to replace my power supply? I think I have a 500 watt in it right now.
all those parts look fine, and ur power supply should work however post the specs on it to make sure.
you should get a video card if you want to play recent games. specifically either a 4850 for 150 or an 8800GT for 120. those arent top of the line but will match ur system.
After reading the first page I realized it's computer parts so who knows how out of date it is. Anyway I'm excited for WAR coming out next month and getting it to run on my computer is an excuse for an overhaul so I was looking at getting this:
I don't need a top of the line system just something to play some of the newer games on. Thoughts?
Also would I have to replace my power supply? I think I have a 500 watt in it right now.
all those parts look fine, and ur power supply should work however post the specs on it to make sure.
you should get a video card if you want to play recent games. specifically either a 4850 for 150 or an 8800GT for 120. those arent top of the line but will match ur system.
haha I've been on a mac for 2 years so I'm really rusty at this but can I find the specs for my power supply through windows? Also I currently have a nvida 6600. Is that not going to be good enough?
After reading the first page I realized it's computer parts so who knows how out of date it is. Anyway I'm excited for WAR coming out next month and getting it to run on my computer is an excuse for an overhaul so I was looking at getting this:
I don't need a top of the line system just something to play some of the newer games on. Thoughts?
Also would I have to replace my power supply? I think I have a 500 watt in it right now.
all those parts look fine, and ur power supply should work however post the specs on it to make sure.
you should get a video card if you want to play recent games. specifically either a 4850 for 150 or an 8800GT for 120. those arent top of the line but will match ur system.
haha I've been on a mac for 2 years so I'm really rusty at this but can I find the specs for my power supply through windows? Also I currently have a nvida 6600. Is that not going to be good enough?
just open up the side and look at the label on the PSU, its the easiest way. or if you know what make/model PSU u have look it up online.
The site I'm buying my parts from (DirectCanada) lists the Q6600 at around the same price as the E8400 (around $205 for each of them) so I'm not exactly sure which one is a better choice.
I don't really intend to overclock anything so I'm thinking that E8400 would be what I want because I do intend to do quite a bit of gaming on it, however I am an also engineering student and sooner or later I will probably need something that will run CAD programs quite well, and I hear that a quad core would be better suited for that. Then again I think it might be a while before programs really start using the full potential of a quad core.
So what should I do? Should I just get a dual core for now and then upgrade to a quad core later on down the road or should I just pick up the Q6600 now?
The site I'm buying my parts from (DirectCanada) lists the Q6600 at around the same price as the E8400 (around $205 for each of them) so I'm not exactly sure which one is a better choice.
I don't really intend to overclock anything so I'm thinking that E8400 would be what I want because I do intend to do quite a bit of gaming on it, however I am an also engineering student and sooner or later I will probably need something that will run CAD programs quite well, and I hear that a quad core would be better suited for that. Then again I think it might be a while before programs really start using the full potential of a quad core.
So what should I do? Should I just get a dual core for now and then upgrade to a quad core later on down the road or should I just pick up the Q6600 now?
Q6600 is better at the intensive production software (audio/video) and multi-tasking. E8400 has more raw power for gaming and the such, and is far more overclockable. The thing about the Q6600 is it is a dying breed of quadcore tech and the Wolfdales are the new bad boys of the Core 2 Duo line. I think you'll see greater pull from the E8400 longer than the Q6600, and by the time you do need a Quadcore for your CAD programs, there will be far superior Quadcores than the Q6600 for similar prices.
My guess is that those people were looking for an excuse to stick with nvidia, and found one in the "omg 4800 series radeons get so HOT" stories. Nevermind that the nvidia cards run pretty toasty themselves.
Either that or they run a Unix/BSD flavour, where ATI's drivers could be best described as "complete shit."
PeregrineFalcon on
Looking for a DX:HR OnLive code for my kid brother.
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
My guess is that those people were looking for an excuse to stick with nvidia, and found one in the "omg 4800 series radeons get so HOT" stories. Nevermind that the nvidia cards run pretty toasty themselves.
Either that or they run a Unix/BSD flavour, where ATI's drivers could be best described as "complete shit."
Aftter the buyout, AMD's Radeon drivers improved to about the point that the nVidia drivers are at, i.e. still behind fucking intel, but decent.
Improving FGLRX and giving the specs of their cards to Novell to develop decent open source drivers is commendable (and needed to be done), but I think doing something about that bloated piece of shit Catalyst Control Center on Windows should be one of their priorities.
Posts
That's normal behavior.
Odd that you're having trouble though, I can do 3GHz fine @ 1.3V, and I know people have gone to 3.2-6GHz on air without a problem.
CPU - AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ Windsor 3.0GHz, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103773
Hard drive - Seagate Barracuda 320 GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0 Gb/s, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148140
Case - Antec 900, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129021
PSU - Antec BP550 plus 550W (modular), http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371016
Graphics card - EVGA GeForce 9600GT superclocked 512 mb, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130328
RAM - OCZ SLI-ready 2GB(2x 1GB) DDR2 800 (PCS 6400), http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227198
Mobo - ASUS M2N-E AM2 NVIDIA nForce 570 Ultra MCP ATX AMD Motherboard, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131022
Optical drive - LITE-ON 20X DVD±R DVD Burner with LightScribe Black SATA Model, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827106073
btw I got deals on the gfx card+RAM, CPU+HD, Case+PSU ... all to a grand total (tax included) of $548.92
I actually have been using Prime95 before and after my ..."modification" and I noticed a huge benefit there. Before 45 seconds of Prime95 slammed my temps above 70 (and then I shut it off due to fear), but now, after 3 minutes I didn't even break 65*c. I'm glad to here that my temps may lower even further.
I gotta say though, I'm glad someone told me not to use a lot of that paste. I used almost nothing this time around (just a dot in the center and then slammed the heatsink down), but compared to how much Intel had on that thing it's insane. I was fully expecting to turn it on and see my temps skyrocket, but you really don't need a lot of that paste at all. I really hope these temps hold. Prime95 does still scare the living shit out of me though.
Edit: Now that it's all said and done (hopefully), building a desktop is one hell of an experience. My next one will go so much smoother.
Just one question: I got all my wires out of the way in the case, but they are more or less being jammed against the back of my DVD drives (still a bit of room back there though), should I realistically ever worry about my DVD drives overheating? I don't really use them much but it got me thinking with the way the wires are behind them.
Yeah, I know. That's the odd part. Everything looks like its okay but then failure when I start pushing the hertz. And for some reason, core #2 really likes to fail, although it runs the coldest out of all of them. I'm gonna start pushing it a little more right now though. I'm at 1.34V and 3.126Ghz right now and it seems stable. Seems kinda high Vcore, but I'm going to try and hit the peak Ghz I can then adjust voltage. I've set the RAM to linked and synced, as people on the EVGA forums say it's the best way to overclock for these boards. Might update to P32 BIOS but people keep saying P31 or P30 is the best.
I have the 2GB a stick version of that RAM. No complaints with it and I've been running some really tight settings with it, although its underclocked right now. For the rebates, you have to send in the UPC. So if you want to return it or anything like that...you can't. It turns into a big "go through the company that made it" thing. Also, do you have a CPU cooler? LightScribing on discs means you have to buy special discs if you want to make the fancy labels for em.
The deals I was talking about were the bundle deals that newegg has not the rebates. As far as the CPU cooling...I was just going to us stock ? Will stock work ?
I'm not liking the included PSU, only 380 watts...isn't that too low? I normally hear that 500 is usually safe
For the parts in it, it should be sufficient.
wait wait....
you did spread the thermal compound around right?
The manual for Arctic Silver 5 says to use more of a line than a dot, but you don't have to spread it around before attaching your heatsink.
e: Reference - http://www.arcticsilver.com/ins_route_step2intelas5.html
I didn't manually spread it around, but believe me after fighting and jamming the heatsink down and getting those pegs in correctly, it's spread. I saw many videos of people just putting a dot on and then using the pressure of the heatsink against the cpu to spread, and my temps are much better now.
I think it will be alright.
CPU - AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ Windsor 3.0GHz, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103773
Hard drive - Seagate Barracuda 320 GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0 Gb/s, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148140
Case - Antec 900, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811129021
PSU - Antec BP550 plus 550W (modular), http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817371016
Graphics card - EVGA GeForce 9600GT superclocked 512 mb, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130328
RAM - OCZ SLI-ready 2GB(2x 1GB) DDR2 800 (PCS 6400), http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820227198
Mobo - ASUS M2N-E AM2 NVIDIA nForce 570 Ultra MCP ATX AMD Motherboard, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131022
Optical drive - LITE-ON 20X DVD±R DVD Burner with LightScribe Black SATA Model, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16827106073
btw I got deals on the gfx card+RAM, CPU+HD, Case+PSU ... all to a grand total (tax included) of $548.92
If he's not considering convenient upgrades in the future AMD is the better choice in this price range.
Honestly, Intel is just as bad for upgrades now; they're launching a new socket soon. LGA775 is pretty much done.
You can open your case and see if there's a PCIe slot there.
Is a RAID setup that much more beneficial. If so, how many drives do you need/what do you need to do this?
Okay, quick guide to RAID.
RAID 0 is when you have two (or more) disks and data is striped between them. To your operating system, the disks appear as one large volume. This theoretically improves sequential read speed (how long it takes to read a big chunk of data that's all in a row). It does nothing for seek time (how long it takes to read some random piece somewhere on the disk). And if one of the drives dies, you lose all the data on the entire array. Basically, RAID 0 is worthless. The performance increase is imperceptible and you are twice as likely to lose all your data.
RAID 1 is when you have two (or, I guess more?) disks and data is mirrored across them. Both disks hold the same data and if one disk fails you have a backup immediately available. With a quality RAID controller it will have no effect on read or write times. RAID 1 is pretty useful if you can afford it.
RAID 2, 3, and 4 are useless and nobody uses them anymore. Pay no attention; pretend the numbers are skipped.
RAID 5 is awesome, but you need at least three disks. One disk is used for parity information and the other two are used for data. So, with three disks, you have room for data as if you had two disks, but if any one disk fails, the RAID controller can rebuild it with the two remaining disks. With a quality RAID controller you should have little or no slowdown, but bad RAID controllers can hurt read/write performance more easily here than with RAID 1.
edit: RAID 0+1 or 01 or 10 or the like means you have a RAID 0 array that is then mirrored in a RAID 1. This is stupid and you should use RAID 5 instead if your controller supports it.
Good summary, thanks
edit: also, last I heard, the Radeon 4850/4870 cards were in, but I don't see many people opting for them in the configs posted. Has anything happened on this front?
some people buy sound cards, you dont really need to unless you for some reason get a crappy mobo with crappy sound.
the 4870 and 4850 are recommended in most real gaming builds, im betting you are looking at the past few budget builds or the one where Nvidia was the only option.
if you really want to spend some cash the 4870x2 beats out the 280
If you want EAX, you need an X-Fi card. If you can live with software emulation of EAX and want better non-gaming performance (i.e. playing music) than a Creative card, you probably want a Xonar. If you write/record music on your PC, I have no idea what to tell you. I listen to a lot of music while working, and my old Audigy sounded better than my onboard sound does now, so I'm kinda poking around, trying to pick out a sound card, but it looks like the best way to go right now is to sit and wait for a couple months, see if anything interesting happens. Or at least some better drivers come out.
Re: video cards, you should note that most of the recent builds in this thread are not the cookie cutter bang-for-buck rigs that feature the radeons, the e8400s, and the p45 NB mobos. Rest assured, the vast majority of people building systems right now are picking up 4850s or 4870s. I've seen a few people on other boards opting to go with nvidia cards because of PhysX support, and one or two picking up a 9800 GTX+ because they don't want to spend $300, but they want a dual slot cooler. My guess is that those people were looking for an excuse to stick with nvidia, and found one in the "omg 4800 series radeons get so HOT" stories. Nevermind that the nvidia cards run pretty toasty themselves.
Also, should I be buying the fastest RAM my motherboard can support? Or will speed differences between 1200 and 800 be pretty negligible?
The rule of thumb is that "half the FSB speed" is a good minimum, i.e. if you have a Core 2 Duo with a listed FSB of 1066, you should get, at a minimum, DDR-533.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145034
2gigs Corsair RAM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138122
motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115132
CPU
I don't need a top of the line system just something to play some of the newer games on. Thoughts?
Also would I have to replace my power supply? I think I have a 500 watt in it right now.
the maximum supported memory for your mobo is 1200
ddr2 1000 will run at 1000 mhz.
all those parts look fine, and ur power supply should work however post the specs on it to make sure.
you should get a video card if you want to play recent games. specifically either a 4850 for 150 or an 8800GT for 120. those arent top of the line but will match ur system.
haha I've been on a mac for 2 years so I'm really rusty at this but can I find the specs for my power supply through windows? Also I currently have a nvida 6600. Is that not going to be good enough?
just open up the side and look at the label on the PSU, its the easiest way. or if you know what make/model PSU u have look it up online.
no a 6600 will not be good enough.
The site I'm buying my parts from (DirectCanada) lists the Q6600 at around the same price as the E8400 (around $205 for each of them) so I'm not exactly sure which one is a better choice.
I don't really intend to overclock anything so I'm thinking that E8400 would be what I want because I do intend to do quite a bit of gaming on it, however I am an also engineering student and sooner or later I will probably need something that will run CAD programs quite well, and I hear that a quad core would be better suited for that. Then again I think it might be a while before programs really start using the full potential of a quad core.
So what should I do? Should I just get a dual core for now and then upgrade to a quad core later on down the road or should I just pick up the Q6600 now?
Q6600 is better at the intensive production software (audio/video) and multi-tasking. E8400 has more raw power for gaming and the such, and is far more overclockable. The thing about the Q6600 is it is a dying breed of quadcore tech and the Wolfdales are the new bad boys of the Core 2 Duo line. I think you'll see greater pull from the E8400 longer than the Q6600, and by the time you do need a Quadcore for your CAD programs, there will be far superior Quadcores than the Q6600 for similar prices.
Either that or they run a Unix/BSD flavour, where ATI's drivers could be best described as "complete shit."
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
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Aftter the buyout, AMD's Radeon drivers improved to about the point that the nVidia drivers are at, i.e. still behind fucking intel, but decent.