New box: *built*

Hi guys,

I’m about to put together a new box, and i thought i’d run the parts list by you guys if its okay, just incase i’ve missed some major issues or features.

AMD 64 3200+
A-Data 1GB PC3200 DDR
Gigabyte GA-K8N-SLI Socket 939 Motherboard, ATX, nVidia nForce4 chipset, 2000Mhz FSB, 4x184pin DDR slots, 2xPCI-Express 16x 2xPCI 2xPCI-Express 2xIDE ATA133 4xSerial ATA *4xUSB2 *Integrated 8 Channel Audio *Integrated Gigabit LAN *Integrated SATA RAID
250Gb SATA Seagate Barracuda
Gigabyte 256MB GeForce 6600GT (PCI Express)

Thanks for looking,

T

No not that I can see, but I will tell you one thing: THAT WILL BE ONE HELLUVA MONSTER WHEN IT’S FINISHED!!! 8) Great Choices!

Nope, sounds pretty sweet to me. :smiley: drools

I have a Giga-byte K8N-XP-SLI and it is perfect except for one issue, the noisy Northbridge fan, but they seem to have that sorted on this one, with a passive cooling system instead.

Seeing as you are going for near silence, I’d get a Giga-byte G-Power Pro CPU fan, as it is very quiet, and extremely efficient (keeps my dual core below 40 degrees C even under full load on the lowest fan speed setting!).

Alex

i would make one change on that,
get the asus a8n sli.
its what i have except i have
3200+ @ 2.6ghz
ocz platinum 2 2-2-2-5
7800gt

it may just be me but i think asus is a better brand, but i have heard nothing bad about gigabyte.

some things ive heard, the 6600gt’s fan is quite loud, but you can download rivatuner and change it up. my 7800gt fan is silent while im working at desktop but spins up automatically ingame.

imo, if you want silent, get a thermalright (or is it thermaltake) xp120 heatsink, then find a nice quiet 120mm fan and slap it on there. it will keep your cpu cold even if its overclocked.
stock heatsink im at 40-45c under load at 2.5ghz

Definitly go for the Asus, IMHO it’s a much better mobo, also VERY quiet.

Is that cpu dual core? If not, then go dual core. It will make everything so much faster, especially renders. (Literally twice as fast, with the new threaded code.)

Also, if you can afford it, go for 2gb of ram. It will make your box run soooo much more smoothly.

dm:
i also would have gone dual core if it werent so much more expensive. but i got my 3200+ for 200 and the cheapest dual core i found was in the range of 400. but, my next upgrade will be dual core.

also you should be able to get 2gb of ram for ~150 which will be nice because the processors have so much mbw

Yeah, dual core costs twice as much as that chip for entry level.

I have had both Asus and Giga-byte M/b, and I have no complaints with either of them. Choose by the feature set and price rather than the brand.

Also @ hydravien: That 6600GT is passive cooling, and thus has no fan.

Alex

At the moment it’s pretty much the optimal performance / price build where i am. Dual core is far too expensive, for the few apps that currently utilise it, its just not worth it at this stage.

I will definatley be looking into dual channel 2x 1gb sticks of RAM later on, thanks.

The Asus board does look a bit nicer, the only real downfall i can see with the Gigabyte board is the RAM slots are quite close together. As the Asus is considerably more expensive (1.8x the price) i think i’ll stick with the Gigabyte, it’s also got a passive cooled bridge, so case volumes wont be too high.

I’m really excited about the 6600GT, 256mb ram with heatpipe cooling, yessss :smiley:

Any tips on keeping the case quiet? obviously i might have to upgrade the CPU heatsink and fan combo, maybe to 120mm as suggested. I’ve also heard that insulating your harddrives against the side of your case can help, as well as putting blocks of foam?

thanks for your insight guys!

Well, not all apps can specificly use dual cores, but it’s just like having two processors instead of one. You can multitask on the seperate cores making it all much faster. But they are expensive, I think mine was around $650. (AMD64x2 4200+)

I just put together a similiar amd64 3200 system. I have had trouble with gigabyte mobo’s in the past and went with the asus and I couldn’t be happier.

I also bought a cooler master case and seperate power supply. The pc is so quiet I turn it off sometimes thinking I’m about to turn it on, seriously it is that quiet and teh asus mobo runs so cool…

Ahhh… anyway here is what I got (don’t skimp on your psu!)

mobo:
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16813131569
cpu:
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16819103535
ram:
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16820145450
case (not the most leet but so freakin’ quiet!)
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16811119068
psu (most overlooked aspect)
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16817182009

Okay, I finally put the order through today, I thought i’d celebrate my pay rise :stuck_out_tongue:

Next questionl; with windows XP 64 bit, is it possible to install programmes to another partition? 64 bit version comes with two “programme files” folders, each for 32 and 64 bit specific apps. Would this all mess up if i install to a different partition?

thanks,

T

same as my box.

cept i got the 256 6600 and not the GT (since i don’t play games, and i figure it will do blender fine)

Alltaken

why would you buy xp 64 bit itd hell. i reinstalled 6 times and then i went back to win 32.
but, since it seems too late.
yes. p[artition the drive:
windows = 20gb (c:/) dont go less. i made that mistake and its hard to fix.
rest = programs.
i had mine
c: windows
e: programs
f:mp3 & video
e: games
each partition had programs on it. just make sure during install you choose e:/program files (x86) or else it will be on c.

IMO you will be back to windows 32 in a few weeks.

I have my reasons for going to 64 bit, but thanks for your optimism %|

That aside, do you still need to segregate between 32 and 64 bit applications even on a seperate partition? Sureley the OS just searches for 32 / 64 bit libraries, which would remain in “c:/windows/programme files” or whatever, is the “/programme files” heirachy still necessary even on a different drive?

i dont think you would need to segregate them at all its just windows’ way of making it eaiser for you to find the x64 programs and the 32 ones.
when installing the programs it will just come up as a default directory as
x:/program files/program name for windows 64 programs and
x:/program files (x86)/program name for windows 32 programs.
afaik there is no reason to seperate them except for ‘organization’.

ps your 3200+ should overclock like mad, like mine. stock heatsink is stable at 2.53 ghz from 2.0.
massive speed boost

Hmmm, maybe. Personally I think theres a pretty good reason; i’m thinking it will need seperate instances of the same libraries though, one for 32 and one for 64 bit. Hopefully they will still look in the right places for them, though.

Although i know next to nothing about it, i am thinking of over-clocking: thats a massive boost! Is that just upping clock cycle, or is it voltage and fsb speed as well?

Thanks for your help.

depends overclocking is the best thing ever if you do it right.

one thing we need to set straight off the start - dont up voltage at all. you will be able to obtain a modest oc with stock voltage.

after that, its basically upping the fsb. you cant change multiplier up, but you can change down (more on why thats good later).

since your ram isnt top notch, lower your mem divider, from 1:1 to the next lowest available.(9:10 maybe?) then you can jump up your speed. probably do a 20 mhz boost up to 220 mhz for your first shot. your chip should do that.

then, if it boots and works fine, try 230mhz. then keep going up and up by 5mhz. once it stops, lower your ram diveder another notch, then repeat. once it stops, you have hit then end. should be around 245mhz to 260mhz. ram voltage can go up to 2.85v without any problems.
if you had high end ram (me! but i spent too much on it), you can lower multiplier and raise fsb.
currently my fsb is at 295 and my multi is at 8.5 for a ram speed of 250mhz. more memory bandwith.
pm me with questions and ill answer

The stability (bah!) of Win32 is better than 64 but then whats the point of having 64bit processing if the os doesnt use it? If you must use windoze, use 64 bit - but be warned its hideously unstable on most systems (Microsoft’s system engineers admit this - the MSNBC guys even made a video about how they had to reboot a server every 5 minutes) :slight_smile:

The best option at the moment is to use some flavour of Linux or even Solaris (its free now but that’s probably overkill) for your 64bit needs (you can compile any app you like to take advantage of 64bit computing then). And switch to windows when you absolutely have to use it.

Blender (and Yafray), compiled on that system, using Linux, would be massively cool. You’d be render heaven.

Well, here i am, away and running!!

And let me tell you, this is faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaast!!

had pretty much no troubles at all touch wood with anything, but no doubt i’ll run into something sooner or later.

I’ll post some pics for you guys later on.