Personal computing discussed

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Cova
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Thu Mar 09, 2006 7:14 pm

Ok, been thinking and researching and stuff for most of the day today, and I think I'm gonna do the full new system sometime in the next few days to week. I think we're currently in a pretty good time for value, overclockability, and stability/maturity of products to build a high-end system that will go 2+ years without touching. Here's the revised spec I'm looking at after considering all the comments earlier in the thread...

Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe Link
AMD Opteron 165 Dual-Core Processor Link
Mushkin XP4000 Xtreme Performance Black Series Link
2x Seagate 500GB Barracuda 7200.9 Link
ATI Radeon X1900 XTX 512MB Link
Zalman CNPS7700-Cu Link
Thermaltake VA8000BWS Link
OCZ 520W ModStream Power Supply Link

Which is sitting at just over $3000 Can w/ tax. There is the potential for the X1900 to change between the XT and XTX, and the CPU to change between the 165 and the 170 - all 4 of those components tend to go in and out of stock and I'll likely end up with whatever they have when I drive down there - so I priced out one expensive one and one cheap one. I'll just keep my LG optical drives from my current system.

I've backed off a lot on the bling for what I think will be more functional, and should still keep a fairly cool look - pretty much everything in there is black, the few things that have lights are mostly blue, and I have a decent selection of blue LED's and cathodes around from previous projects that I can toss in too. So black and blue is the theme now.

So now the question comes down to this specific build. Any problems? Anything I missed? I've already incorporated most of the suggestions in this thread, so the build should be pretty stable at this point.
 
Flying Fox
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Thu Mar 09, 2006 8:12 pm

I still think the Zalman 9500 is better.

Not gonna look at the new nVidia's? Not sure about Canadian availability, but they are already for sale on newegg.
 
Cova
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Thu Mar 09, 2006 9:15 pm

The 9500 probably is better - but is it 2x the cost better? Then again, it does have a blue-led fan in it and I'm going with the black'n'blue theme. I'll probably make a impulse-upgrade to it when I actually go to pick up the parts.

And no - not interested in the 7900's, or any other video card nVidia makes.
 
Flying Fox
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Thu Mar 09, 2006 11:02 pm

Well, why don't you head over to Dissonance's article and find out? :wink:

Dissonance wrote:
Unfortunately, the CNPS9500 doesn't come cheap. The cooler is currently selling for between $62 and $80 online, which is significantly more expensive than Zalman's CNPS7700 series. Of course, the CNPS7700 series weighs more, is a little louder, and has some compatibility issues with a number of motherboards. You get what you pay for.

So paying a bit more give you may be a degree less of cooling power, but in return you get a quieter and lighter HSF. And then, you can get the bling bling RAM. I don't see why not.

ATi has announced new pricing to counter the 7900 onslaught. Whether you want to wait a bit for that to materialize will be your choice. As Damage noted in the article, last time ATi's price cut never materialized, so it is up to you for a bit of a gamble.
 
Cova
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Fri Mar 10, 2006 9:02 pm

Well I went and spent a bunch of cash on my way home from work today. Made a few changes to the config... even their supplier is currently out-of-stock on 165's with no idea when they'll be getting more, so I went for the Opteron 170 instead. I did end up going with the 9500 cooler on it as well. And the final change - I dropped the 2 500GB HDs, and went with 4 300GB ones instead - 200GB more space for almost $200 less, and a 4-spindle RAID-0 should be nice and fast as well.

Unfortunately they were out of stock on a few parts, but it should all be here within a week. I'm currently waiting on the CPU, vid-card, MB and case. I'll let ya all know how it goes and how well it OCs when I finally have everything. I'm not sure on the policies around here - you want me to keep this thread going for OC results, or start a new one elsewhere?
 
LicketySplit
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Fri Mar 10, 2006 10:05 pm

Cool..glad you got all your stuff together..be happy you got the 170..its got a 10x instead of the 9 on the 165 :wink: Just post your results back here..now the wait begins :lol:
Just an old sheepdog waiting for some nasty wolves to show...ive got more than enough teeth left.
 
rogue426
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Fri Mar 10, 2006 10:14 pm

Cova wrote:
Well I went and spent a bunch of cash on my way home from work today. Made a few changes to the config... even their supplier is currently out-of-stock on 165's with no idea when they'll be getting more, so I went for the Opteron 170 instead. I did end up going with the 9500 cooler on it as well. And the final change - I dropped the 2 500GB HDs, and went with 4 300GB ones instead - 200GB more space for almost $200 less, and a 4-spindle RAID-0 should be nice and fast as well.

Unfortunately they were out of stock on a few parts, but it should all be here within a week. I'm currently waiting on the CPU, vid-card, MB and case. I'll let ya all know how it goes and how well it OCs when I finally have everything. I'm not sure on the policies around here - you want me to keep this thread going for OC results, or start a new one elsewhere?



Nothing worse than waiting for parts to arrive.Enjoy the new system when it's together,it sounds kickazz.
ASUS P5B-E,ConroeE6400,2GB Mushkin DDR2 800,
EVGA 8800GTS,Corsair 520HX,Antec 900,WD320 GB,Samsung 204B
 
Usacomp2k3
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Fri Mar 10, 2006 10:23 pm

Raid-0 :o Put those 4 drives in raid5.
 
Flying Fox
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Sat Mar 11, 2006 2:02 am

He's been running RAID0, so I suppose he knows what he's doing. :)

Remember to Fold after the build.
 
Fighterpilot
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Sat Mar 11, 2006 2:32 am

Usacomp2k3 wrote:
Raid-0 :o Put those 4 drives in raid5.

Why would you wanna go for Raid 5...its way slow.
Id get the Caviar SE 16 drives personally.
 
Cova
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Sat Mar 11, 2006 2:34 am

Usacomp2k3 wrote:
Raid-0 :o Put those 4 drives in raid5.


Oh god - there's no way I'd ever put my system drive on a raid-5, especially on a cheap integrated raid controller with no cache memory or processor for parity calculations. Redundancy is nice and all (see back in the thread - I have a 1.1TB RAID-5 file server in my basement), but write performance on RAID-5 sucks. RAID-0, pure performance, is all I need on this system.
 
FubbHead
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Sat Mar 11, 2006 6:55 am

If you ask me, I'd buy a cheaper Socket 478 board with PCIe and better graphics today, and do the system makeover later. But that's just me. :)
Amiga 1200, 68020@28MHz, 4MB+2MB RAM, Conner 80MB harddrive
 
Flying Fox
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Sat Mar 11, 2006 10:38 am

FubbHead wrote:
If you ask me, I'd buy a cheaper Socket 478 board with PCIe and better graphics today, and do the system makeover later. But that's just me. :)
If you ask me, then I will not even sink more money in an old platform, unless of course the old platform is going to become an extra Folding box later. :P
 
FubbHead
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Sat Mar 11, 2006 11:39 am

Flying Fox wrote:
FubbHead wrote:
If you ask me, I'd buy a cheaper Socket 478 board with PCIe and better graphics today, and do the system makeover later. But that's just me. :)
If you ask me, then I will not even sink more money in an old platform, unless of course the old platform is going to become an extra Folding box later. :P

Well, the question was if he should upgrade now, or wait for next gen AMD/Intel. The only money actually "sunk" into the old platform would be the cheap motherboard, to accomodate the new PCIe graphics. And those $30-$40 bucks might be worth it, given that a 3GHz P4 is still decent enough for most tasks today.
Amiga 1200, 68020@28MHz, 4MB+2MB RAM, Conner 80MB harddrive
 
Flying Fox
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Sat Mar 11, 2006 11:51 am

Socket 478 with PCIe boards are rare.
 
JustAnEngineer
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Sat Mar 11, 2006 12:02 pm

Flying Fox wrote:
Socket 478 with PCIe boards are rare.
No luck farming hydras for them either:
No matches.
 
Flying Fox
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Sat Mar 11, 2006 12:16 pm

JustAnEngineer wrote:
Flying Fox wrote:
Socket 478 with PCIe boards are rare.
No luck farming hydras for them either:
No matches.

This board seems to have been discontinued.
 
FubbHead
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Sat Mar 11, 2006 12:43 pm

http://www.asrock.com/product/P4Dual-880Pro.htm

No idea where to get it in the US though..
Amiga 1200, 68020@28MHz, 4MB+2MB RAM, Conner 80MB harddrive

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