Building an AMD 64 system

[DemonCat]

Hello,

I'm going to build an Athlon 64 based system. Most likely the 3200, since its right below the ghastly expensive price for the newer chips. Any advice will be welcome

Athlon 64 3200
1gb RAM - What's the fastest that CPU can use? What brands are recommended, or to be avoided?
160gb SATA RAID - Western Digital is 1st choice. How reliable are Hitachi and Maxtor drives?
GeForce FX 5900 - already have it
CD burner, probably whatever matches the case and is fast

Motherboard - Chaintech VNF3-250 or MSI K8N Neo Platinum?

I don't need the faster ethernet in of the MSI. Feature-wise, they both have what I want. The Chaintech is much cheaper, but I don't know anything about Chaintech's quality and want to be sure it will be reliable. If not, I'll spring for the MSI.

How is the current itteration of AC97 sound? A few years ago when I built my last machine, I saw plenty of machines on which it had to be disabled to keep the system stable. Should I also bank on getting a nice sound card, or will on-board sound do it?

Thanks in advance for you help!

 

[somekid617]

For a mobo, Go msi, and get some muskin ram for it, very nice ram, cool looking too.. get an audigy 2 soundcar, and a nec drive...

 

[DemonCat]

Just though I should add:
I will not be putting this in a windowed case, so looks don't matter, only value and performance.

 

[somekid617]

why not? Its always fun to see the inside of ur case!!

 

[SniperWulf]

I have the MSI K8T Neo FIS2R and I love it so generally I would recommend the MSI board. However, for performance and value I'd prolly pick up the chaintech. As for ram, I'd try to find a special on some Corsair XMS, Kingston HyperX or Mushkin. As for hard drives, I recommend the Seagate, then Maxtor, then WD..

Another option is to get the 3000+ and the MSI K8N and OC it

 

[brunswickite]

you are getting 2 160 gig hds?

and gonna raid them?
for RAM

Brands that are good
Mushkin
Crucial
Corsair

Brands to avoid
Simpletech
PNY
Generic

I would buy a SB live (<30 bucks) or something, just so your not using integrated sound and using the CPU cycles

CD Burner:
Samsung is good
Lite on is good for the majority, well priced too

 

[DemonCat]

I'm going to get two 80gb drives

Windowed is cool - if you go to the trouble of getting things that look nice together and routing the cables to look tidy. I do not want to bother with it, and this thing is going to live under my desk anyway. The sides will barely be visible.

Thank you all for the quick replies keep 'em coming!

 

[DemonCat]

One more thing: What wattage power supply is recommended for such a system?

 

[brunswickite]

Originally posted by: DemonCat
One more thing: What wattage power supply is recommended for such a system?

I would get an Antec or Enermax power supply rated 330 watts. anything in the range of 300-400 should do

 

[Illissius]

Here's what I'd get:
Athlon 64 3000+ - $60-70 cheaper than the 3200+ and 0-5% slower depending on the application
RAM - 2x512MB ADATA Vitesta PC4000 - it's cheaper than most manufacturers' value line, is reliable, and overclocks excellently.
HDD - Two 80GB 8MB cache SATA drives from either WD or Seagate are fine.
Motherboard - MSI K8N Neo Platinum. Chaintech's quality is questionable. It may work perfectly, but you probably need some luck for it.
Sound - Onboard has no stability issues, and a somewhat significant but not extreme performance impact. Perhaps just try it out and buy an Audigy 2 ZS afterwards if you don't like it.
PSU - 350-400W should be fine. Antec, Fortron, Sparkle, ...

 

[moparmaga]

My Chaintech vnf3-250 worked fine for me right out of the box. This was the first complete rig i have ever built too. Looks like the MSI is quite a bit more expensive then the chaintech too. Here is the Chaintech for $69.00 on mwave http://www.mwave.com/mwave/viewspec.hmx?scriteria=BA20104 If you have the extra money to spend though, im sure the MSI will do a fine job.

 

[Ages120]

Well mobo I would go K8N Neo platinum Has a better RAID controller not just ethernet

ram OCZ EB 3500, or 3700

Hard drive are you going SATA or PATA? http://www.hardwarezone.com/ has some good reviews of hard drives.

I would also get an Audigy 2 zs not much more then the Audgiy 2 and way better features.

 

[fsstrike]

Originally posted by: brunswickite
you are getting 2 160 gig hds?

and gonna raid them?
for RAM

Brands that are good
Mushkin
Crucial
Corsair

Brands to avoid
Simpletech
PNY
Generic

I would buy a SB live (<30 bucks) or something, just so your not using integrated sound and using the CPU cycles

CD Burner:
Samsung is good
Lite on is good for the majority, well priced too

Too add to the list of good RAM brands:
Kingston Hyper X
OCZ

 

[Tostada]

If you want fast memory, you have to get CL2. Then the good brands are:

OCZ Enhanced Latency
Mushkin Level One
Kingston HyperX
Corsair XMS

Crucial doesn't make fast memory.

And if you want fast memory, you can't get any sticks bigger than 512MB.

If you're going to overclock, Corsair/Mushkin make DDR433 CL 2-3-3.

If you're not overclocking, OCZ has DDR400 CL 2-3-2 for $125, and Mushkin has DDR400 CL 2-2-2 for $173.

 

[sisooktom]

If you're value consious, I would suggest adding the ASRock K8S8X to your motherboard list. Cheap, fast and VERY stable. The Chaintech is nice, but has some quirks that may or may not be worked out by a BIOS update. The MSI has features you may not need, and despite all the hype over it, it is still a brand new board, and no one's had one for more than a week or 2. The SiS chipset in the ASRock board has mature drivers, and is a very underrated chipset overall. Power supply - get a quality brand first and foremost, and don't worry so much about wattage. Any respectable brand over about 350W will serve you well. As for RAM, Crucial is great for reliable, stable memory. And it can OC fairly well from what I've heard. But no, it doesn't offer the uber timings of say Mushkin or OCZ. But then again, the A64 doesn't really give a hoot about ultra low timings anyway.

 

[ath50]

I just built my first system similar to what you are thinking of 2 days ago.

I used an A64 3000+ The performance is very close to 3200+, and you save some money.

I got the Sonata case because I like the looks and it comes with a quality PSU at a great price for what you get

I ended up going with the Chaintech VNF3-250 to save some money. If you need firewire, gigabit ethernet, or an on-chip firewall, go with the MSI board. Also I hear raid can be difficult (especially SATA raid) to set up on the Chaintech, but I went with just one HD. The documentation with the motherboard was a little weak, but it got the job done.

Depends on if you're on a tighter budget or not. I opted to save money to put other places on the motherboard, but if you have some extra money or need the other features you can get the MSI. While some people said they had trouble with the Chaintech and it was bad, well every manufacturer gets some bad ones and you can always RMA.

For RAM, I went with the $89 Mushkin PC3200 retail stuff from newegg. I read getting the better timings only really gives an extra 1-5% increase in performance and the better RAM can cost twice as much. I'd rather save money for a nice video card. The RAM should arrive tomorrow or Tuesday, but I assume it will work fine.

Couldn't tell you about the onboard sound with the Chaintech, I just popped in my old SBLive because I was satisfied with that.