Opinions/advice on new system build please.

[~Rob]

Hey all.. Newbie Alert!

Its been a while since I've put a system together and after spending the last 2weeks trying to catch up, I think I have the makings of something pretty tasty?

Excuse the Ebuyer c&p.

• Asus A8N-E SKT 939 NFORCE 4 AUDIO LAN PCI-Express ATX
• AMD (Venice) Athlon 64 3500+ 939pin 512Kb L2 Cache 90nm Retail Boxed Processor With 3 Year Warranty and Fan Included.
• Corsair (TWINX1024-3200C2PT) 1024MB (2 x 512MB Matched Pair), DDR400 / PC3200, non-ECC, Unbuffered, CL2, Lifetime Warranty, Silver Heat Spreader
• XFX GEFORCE 6800GS XXX PV-T42G-UAD7 256MB DDR3 TV + DVI Extreme Gamer Ultra PCI-E (Is this worth the £50 price hyke over a 256MB 6800GT?)
• Seagate ST3200822AS Barracuda 200GB 7200RPM SATA/150 8MB Cache - OEM
• LG GSA-4167BAL 16x DVD±RW Dual Layer Internal IDE (Black) - OEM
• Antec SLK3000B Black Super Mid Tower Case - No PSU

Primarly a games machine and it'll eventually be hooked upto a 19inch TFT, so I want to be able to throw out high res at decent frame rates).
I'm too lazy to get into major overclocking, allthough I dont mind sqeeuzing a little extra out for free!

Total cost is gonna be £600. Sound about right? Any obvious bottlenecks I'm missing or a saving to be had somewhere(I'm cheap )

TIA.

 

[~Rob]

Anyone

 

[prosser13]

The 6800GS is worth the £50 over the 6800GT.

Rather than get that board, get the Asus A8N-SLI (Standard), or at least take a look at it. If you get the A8N-SLI, you can then get a SATA 2 hard drive, which has a peak transfer rate of twice that of SATA (300mbps).

For example, the Samsung SpinPoint P120S SP2504C, which is 250GB.

"The P120S is hard to fault in terms of speed and noise, and it's good value for money. The 250GB Western Digital' Caviar costs almost £15 more for the same capacity, so you're not paying a premium for the P120S's performance or quiet operation. It's a win-win situation. Unless you need a truly enormous disk, the 250GB Samsung SpinPoint P120S is a truly regal choice. All hail the new king of hard disks."

There is also a 200GB version, which is just as good.

Other than that, for overclocking you can just put a divider on the RAM, so no worries there.

Oh yeah, you forogt a power supply That's going to be an extra £50 - £60. I recommend a Tagan 480W, or an Antec TruePower. Take a look around

 

[~Rob]

Thanks for the reply, mate.

I was originally looking at the SLI version of that Asus board, but at the time I was also thinking a 6600GT now and one possibly in a years time. But TBH I'd rather have the performance now and I honestly dont see myself going the SLI route (I'd rather Ebay and upgrade ), thats compounded by the fact the 6800GS is a short term thing for Nvidia and they havent worked out the GPU standard for SLI yet, have they? so I can see myself paying a premium in 6-12months time just so the extra £40 wasnt wasted on the Mobo. LOL!

SATAII is of interest though, anyone reccomened a board as nice as the Asus but with that and maybe some firewire? (I get paid Friday, so no rush )

Oh and I'll be using the Powersupply I have at the moment. Nothing special, just a 120mm, 400watter. Kinda hoping I'll get away with that untill after Christmas.

 

[prosser13]

Everything seems fine. If I were you, buy a 6800GT, and with the £50 saved buy the A8N-SLI, and then when 6800GTs come down in price you can buy another....and you'll also get a fastest motherboard in the mean time!

 

[lhuser]

Everything looks cleared. Go ahead.

Oh and...is there a geforce 6800GS with an AGP 8X interface? Like, it is worth £50...well, tha'd be like $75 here or whatever

 

[~Rob]

Slight screw up on my part..LOL! The place that had the 6800GT for less than the GS was doing it on a pretty limited special offer and me being the idiot I am didnt bother to read that far! The GS is actually about £20 cheaper than a GT usually...oops. On the plus side though the XFX version of the 6800GS is clocked(memory & GPU) higher than Nvidia refference and from a few benchmarks I've seen it actually out performs a stock 6800GT. :|

May well go with the SLI board as a few googles are telling me Nvidia are working on letting you mix different cards with the same GPU, like a 6800GT and a 6800GS. Anyone enlighten me on that or have I miss understood what I've read?

Thanks all

 

[AOD]

dunno bout what nvidia are doing but that looks like a good system, umm what PS u getting tho? couldn't c one in that list

 

[~Rob]

dunno bout what nvidia are doing but that looks like a good system, umm what PS u getting tho? couldn't c one in that list

I'll have to crack open the case of the current desktop later and have a proper look. Off the top of my head its a 400W and nothing that special tbh. Biggest worry I have is because allthough its served me very well, its getting on for 2years old and so the whole 12V and 24pin ATX connector thing is worrying me a little.

To answer the earler question on AGP 6800's, have a glance at www.ebuyer.com not the best place to buy stuff from but they're cheap, seem to carry just about everything and I'm su8re I've seen a few 600series AGP cards on there.

oh and just one last question... I could save 40% on Ram by going with Kingston stuff at 3-4-4-6 timings. Is performance memory all its cracked upto be. I guess what I'm really asking is would you buy the SLI version of the Asus board or 'performance' memory.

Thanks all and sorry to about all the q's, just wanna get this right for once! (We shall never speak of the time I stuck a £140 3200+XP Barton on a £24.99 Sparkle MOBO.. lmao!)

 

[prosser13]

I'd buy the SLI Asus board over performance RAM. Your motherboard will last longer than your RAM anyway Going to value RAM will lose around 5% performance, but the better motherboard will add around that, so your not losing much