Hi folks, I am a long time follower (Not much of a poster) of Bit-Tech... My 24/7 main PC recently decided to fail on me (AthlonXP 3000+, SoYo KT400 Platinum MoBo, 1Gb OCZ PC3500 in a PC-7 Case), it won't boot unless I set it to 12x 133 (Usually 16x if I remember correctly)... As it's my birthday soon, the GF has pledge me up to £500 for system upgrades, I want reliability, stability and quietness in the whole (PC is in living room). I would love to go with water cooling but think this will have to wait (XMas maybe ). I have four ATA drives that I would like to use and three optical drives that are not AS vital to the system (Not all anyway), would also like SATA as a future upgrade. I am not a gamer really but like to have power on hand when needed and think I am going to have to upgrade the GF3 Ti500 that is still doing all I want it to (AGP boards don't seem to offer as much choice). Onboard sound is fine, need plenty of USB ports, not bothered about firewire and at least one COM port would be required. Could any of you PC Guru's out there perhaps recommend me a CPU/MoBo/GPU combo that would give me a noticable jump in peformance but not go over my budget? BIG thanks in advance for any advice offered...D-an-W
Here's a bit of a list I came up with... DFI LANPARTY UT NF4 SLI-DR Expert or... Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe S939 NF4 SLI ATX AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ / 2.2 GHz Dual-Core - Socket 939 - L2 2 MB (2 x 1 MB) GFX Card, still unsure (256MB, but nothing fancy) Look ok?
Can you psu take all that? So you're only upgrading the mobo/cpu and gpu and sell the other things? X2 3800+ (i doubt that 200mhz cost the price of the 4400+) actually the same when oc'ed A8N-SLI Deluxe BFG GeForce 7600 GT 256mb OcUK Value 2GB (2x1GB) PC3200 - from what i heard its high-quallity ram to that point the price is around 465 euro and its still a pretty high-end system and will run anything you throw at it.For the rest of the money you can get a decent tagan psu if yours is not gonna take the system.If you're gonna sell your own system then you can get some 2x 320GB hdd's,new shiny case and wc stuff maybe.
My PSU is the ANTEC Neo Power 480W I chose the 4400+ for it's bigger cache (2x 1MB) instead of the "AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ / 2 GHz Dual-Core - Socket 939 - L2 1 MB (2 x 512 KB)" I wasn't really wanting to overclock as the main aim is stability, quietness & speed...Thus choosing a faster CPU...Not a good idea? Thanks again...
well if you can pay then getting a better cpu is by no means bad. The system that dustin put together is good, only i would not recommend any DFi board for beginners, as they can be fiddely and hard to use. A 7600GT should do you fine (about £100). Make sure that you go for branded RAM, none of the generic stuff.
OcValue ram is surely a branded ram,quite good actually.If you wont be getting case,hdd and some other bits then get x2 4400+ if you want,you wouldnt find a difference tho.Antec should take 7600 with ease. I thought you might want to get 3800+ becouse its a valuable purchase and overclocking it,that's why you're getting DFi,if not get the A8N-SLi.
I have 2x 512MB OCZ PC3500 ram I was hoping to use, when you say fiddly and hard to use do you mean physically or BIOS settings etc?
pretty much,yeah.You wont bother going deep in bios i assume.I thought you wanted stable system,well 2gigs wont hurt you as games now draw more and more memory from everything.Are you going to sell your current pc and when are you going to buy your new one?You might be happy waiting for Conroe with me
Won't be selling it no as the CPU is faulty, will probably use the motherboard in my second machine upstairs. Hopefully will be ordering the parts this week or next. I have experience of building and setting up systems, just not for a while as this last one I built for myself has lasted quite a while (Would probably have kept it another 12 months if the fault hadn't occured) so I wasn't really upto date with current hardware etc
ASUS A8N-SLI Premium S939 nForce4 Gigabit Ethernet Firewire 8channel audio Or... Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe S939 NF4 SLI ATX - Sound 2xgln 1394 USB2 SATA Seem good choices, the fanless one is an attractive thought but does it perform as well as the other?
Cheers Dustin, it performs as well with similar features I assume (They seem to give the same things different descriptions on the Asustek website)?
I told you,premium is quite the same,they fixed some bugs around it and got a passive-cooling so it does perform better. I'll let you know what i would chose for that money Asus M2N-SLi Deluxe X2 Dual Core 3800+ AM2 BFG GeForce 7600 GT OC G.Skill 2GB DDR2 LA PC2-5300 It gets around 500 euro...
Asus A8N-SLi Premium is the motherboard I have decided on (From reading plenty of positive things on here about them) as I can use my current RAM with this board. AMD Athlon 64 (ADA4400CDBOX) X2 4400+ socket 939 Dual Core 2.2Ghz 1Mb and 1Mb Cache is going to be my CPU of choice. I am still undecided on the GPU, but are looking into your recommendations Dustin thanks The 7600GS range seem a good idea as my research so far says they are passive cooled As for cooling, I want it as quiet as possible (Can't afford WC yet ), the Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro looks a good choice...Any thoughts?
the arctic cooling is THE best cooler for priceerformance ratio. Its only £17, and you get good thermal paste with it! The best air cooler overall has to be the Thermaltake Big Typhoon, although it is like double the price.
ASUS 7600GS Silent 512MB DDR2 PCI-E - £80.80 ASUS A8N-SLI Premium Skt939 nForce4 Gigabit Ethernet Firewire 8 Channel Audio - £81.17 AMD Athlon 64 (ADA4400CDBOX) X2 4400+ socket 939 Dual Core 2.2Ghz 1Mb and 1Mb Cache - £252.87 Total: £414.84 (+VAT) The Zalman CNPS8000 looks quiet a decent cooler, anyone have experience of them or would something from the Arctic range be more suitable (Not planning to overclock, want it quiet)? The other components I will be keeping are... Lian-Li PC7 Case ANTEC NEO Power 480w PSU (Also controlling 3x ANTEC Case Fans) 2x 512MB OCZ PC3500 DDR Ram 3x 300GB Maxtor IDE HDD's (Upgrading to SATA in future) 1x 160GB Samsung Spinpoint (Upgrading to SATA in future) 1x Plextor Plexwriter Premium 2x Pioneer DVD-109 (Might not be using both) Looking ok...
I'm using an all Arctic Cooling setup and I'm really impressed tbh. CPU (3500+ Athlon 64): Freezer 64 Pro GFX (X1800XT 512Mb): Accelero X2 Both are whipser quiet and push good air. I have the same case as you (PC 7 Plus) and they only thing I would suggest you get extra is a decent fan for the front of the case, so it provides enough cool air for the coolers.
can i ask why 939? we are sooo close to conroe and also AM2 is out....you might aswell invest in newer stuff as 939 will be dead by early '07
