Building Dream Gaming Machine

[MuntaroTheGreat1]

Here is my current situation and i would like any assistance you fine people could offer me.

I am building a new computer this summer and doing the research needed and getting funds needed to make the investment into my machine. In doing so I have a purposed system off of whats available now and would like you advise on the equipment i am selecting and would like some help and advise on things you feel i could do better.

Also i would like to add my current system is an AMD 1.2 gig i purchased from gateway (ACK!) 2 years ago, i spent 3000 dollars on a piece of garbage machine that can barely handle the load i am using it for now, when WOW and everquest 2 releases, among other fps i play, i don't feel my system will be stable enough to handle the load. BTW i would just like to add that anyone thinking about purchasing from gateway, please rethink, i have had to replace over 16 pieces of hardware in my machine, 3 hard drives, 2 motherboards, being some of the main things, some of which were ships to me faulty to begin with. I am currently in a battle with gateway right now to get some type of refund or replacement since my computer is obviously faulty.

Anyways back to the system
______________________

CPU - p4 3.0 800 mhz
Motherboard - Asus P4C800 Deluxe
RAM - Corsair DDR SDRAM 512 MB x2
Video - ATI Radeon 256 MB
Sound Card - Creative SB Live 5.1
Monitor - Sony CPD G520 21"
Case - Thermaltake Xaser III ( black or silver )
Hard Drive - Maxtor Atlas 73.4 GB
DVD - Toshiba SD M1612
Power Supply - 450 + watts was thinking about Thermaltake but will probably go with something a little more reviewed

......

Here are some concerns i have that maybe you guys can assist me with on this set up.

1. I will most likely be building this in August and am just getting a base of what i want with the cost now that way when i get the cash i will have the money it takes to get top of the line then or get this with some extra addy's.

- how does the 3.0 p4 hold up under testing, is this chip going to be something that will carry me with no upgrades for 2 years or would it be better to buy the 3.2 p4 in august, of course both of these will be taking a big price cut.

-I have concerns with the motherboard, Altho its by far the best in testing so far, many complain because of the board build itself and not having all the options the other boards are coming with these days, is there anything i should be concerned with and would this board be able to be upgraded for years to come or is this a 1 shot deal i will regret.

- I am new to building computers so I know very little about RAID, Would it be better for someone of my knowledge to buy a single stable drive, or purchase 2 of the new raptors and RAID them together with a large backup of the 120 gig range.

- Any suggestions on the monitor, is this a good choice for the price ($630) range, and will it be the best monitor i can get for gaming, or is there another route i should take ( ie.. smaller/lcd/flat ? )

- I am assuming this RAM is the best under the setup i have ?

- I have always been a big fan of Nvidia, I was getting into gaming heavy in the days of duel voodoo's and things of that nature, Nvidia hit the scene running and really took things to a new level IMO. However these days the rave is ATI's and i hear in the top performance, ATI runs the game now. I am wanting to go with the new ATI rad 9800 pro 256 .. altho price is outrageous atm, around august that tag should be quite lower, is this a good choice for heavy gaming.

- Thermaltake cases / all good or all show ?

- I want a simple DVD player that can read cd's and dvd's, i am not using this to copy dvd's or to play movies atm, so its purely for gaming, is toshiba the best bang for your buck ?


Any additional information would be of great help, if you could please respond and give me some feedback.

Thank you for your Time,
Muntaro

 

[MuntaroTheGreat1]

I would also just like to add, there isn't anything that i am not willing to learn and study, i have a few months before constructing this machine, so expert advise would be appreciated to make this invest be a very sound one.

Thanks,
Muntaro

 

[DaveSimmons]

Welcome to the forums!

- read the main AT site review of the nvidia nv35 chipset, it looks like they will be back to having a good high-end card by then.

- for games, P4 3.0 + $400 3D card will give better performance than P4 3.2 + $150 3D card. The 3.2 will probably still be way overpriced in August. Of course the video card is easy to upgrade later so you could buy 3.0 + $300 card now then another $300 card next year (which will be faster than today's $500 card).

 

[EglsFly]

ASUS makes great motherboards, I would highly recommend them. The P4C800 is a good motherboard, although too expensive for my taste. As an option, you could go with the new P4P800 (Springdale 865PE chipset), its about $40 cheaper. It supports Dual DDR, HT, and SATA.

If your are new to building PC's, you might want to skip the raid setup for now and go with the single hard drive.
The Western Digital "Special Edition" 8MB EIDE drives are good, or you could go with the new SATA drives. I do not have any experience with the new SATA drives, so someone with experience with SATA drives, please comment.

I would not recommend the SB Live for a high end system like this. Go with a better sound card like the SB Audigy2 or a TB Santa Cruz.

Lite-On makes good and inexpensive DVD and CDRW drives, I highly recommend them!

Get the Corsair XMS CAS 2 PC3200 RAM. If you read the reviews lately, most sites are using this RAM lately for their tests on motherboards, etc.

For the video card, I would recommend the ATI Radeon 9700 or 9800 series (as you have listed).

Cases, come down to particular tastes and what you want and what looks good to you. The important thing is to make sure its got a good Power Supply like an Enermax or Antec true power. Pay attention to the amps rating on the power rails, especially the 12V (as mentioned on Intel's web site). Higher the better of course.

Enjoy!

 

[teckmaster]

If your building a high-end system then dump the SB Live and go with audigy. I have had a slew of Creative Labs cards and the audigy is by far the best I've had yet. I've had the Audigy 1 for about 9 months now and love it. Audigy 2 is even cooler if you have the funds to get it. Stick with the ThermalTake powersupply. I just bought the 480w Xaser edtion PSU and it is NICE!!!!! Does the Maxtor Atlas have an 8mb cache? If not, I would go with a Western Digital that does. You'll notice a difference.

 

[MuntaroTheGreat1]

- As far as the motherboard goes, i don't mind spending a reasonable ammount as long as it offers ability to upgrade and the best i could get at the time of purchase as far as options for the gaming system.

The audio can always be upgraded, of course i will probably go with audigy, but that was my least important piece atm.

I don't believe this board supports that atlas now that i actually think about it, what would you guys suggest for blazing speeds for both games and loading/boot times.

 

[teckmaster]

I suggest a Western Digital 120GB 8mb cache or something serial ATA if the motherboard has it and you can afford the drive.

 

[MuntaroTheGreat1]

If you were building the ultimate gaming machine based around p4 3.0 ... What motherboard / HD system would you use.

 

[JeffreyLebowski]

why the Atlas, thats a SCSI drive, or did they change the name over to a serial ata drive? A single SCSI disk won't net you much improvement, if any, over a IDE drive. Plus you can get 3x the space by going IDE compared to SCSI.

 

[MuntaroTheGreat1]

yah i have no clue why i listed a scsi drive haha

 

[teckmaster]

Here are my specs. They are a little different than yours because I refuse to use any Intel products.

AMD XP2700+ on a MSI KT3 - Ultra with BlueTooth wireless and IDE Raid
1GB PC2700 DDR
(2) Maxtor 120GB ATA 100 Harddisks
16X DVD
Sony 48X Cd-Burner
MSI GeForce 4 Ti4400
Creative SoundBlaster Audigy
19" Envision monitor
Altec Lansing Enhanced 5100 5.1 surround sound
Cheiftec server case - Black with a ThermalTake Xaser edition 480w black PSU
ThermalTake Volcano 11 CPU Cooler

 

[Electric Amish]

Change the soundcard to the Hercules Fortissimo 7.1.

Ditch the SCSI and go with IDE.

RAID will slow you down in access time unless you just Stripe. Then you're not fault tolerant.

amish

 

[WarCon]

I recommend the IC7, the one I built was a dream to use and a bit cheaper than the P4C800 (~$150 plus free shipping at googlegear) and I don't think there are any major differences between the features on the board. If loading time is important to you then you need to go RAID (either a regular Raid card with ATA drives) or go SATA Raid which is built into the mobo.

When picking a case, find one your happy with because it will be an item that can endure. I have my same case through about 4-5 different systems now. (Too cheap to buy a new one) The coolermasters look nice and lot of people are happy building in them.

A couple items that you need to not overlook and you may want to research are your keyboard and mouse. They are what you interface with to control your computer (games) and should be what will suit you best.


Edit: and like Amish said above, raid (striped for speed) will be at least twice as likely to have a problem that will mean loss of your data (that isn't backed up). The WD Raptor SATA drive by itself should be more than fast enough.

 

[maluckey]

I'm a gaming enthusiast, mainly UT2K3, and let me give you the scoop..............Hard drives are for installing and loading. They have to be kept out of the gameplay at all costs. Buy a couple of good 8mb cache drives, either Maxtor or Western Digital, as they are both good, and be done with it.

You have to have RAM, fast RAM, and lots of it. In fact, overkill isn't a word to used here as 512mb is minimum. Find the fastest memory you can afford, and then buy lots of it. It's imposssible to have too much, so long as you have it occupying the fewest number of MOBO slots.

You will need a fast video card, with lots of RAM, 128mb minimum by the time you are building yours. Fast video cards are great! Three month old cards, mildy overclocked, are faster, and cheaper, allowing you to get a better cooling system, like an entry level liquid cooling setup. The systems are quieter, and less irritating, than listening to the fans when you are trying to hear footsteps and such.

Soundblaster Audigy cards are great, and take abuse very well.

 

[dguy6789]

that will last you quite well, if you want to go for raid, go for it, there is no need to if you dont mind a few more seconds load time, but otherwise go for it. thermal take xaser cases are great. They look really cool, the usb port,s firewire, and temp moniters are very useful. And the ambient temp in one of those things is lower then any case ive seen, and they run very quiet. I currently am using a xaser A6000A + case. the silver ones are aluminum. When i upgrade, i build a new system everytime something is 4 times as fast. my system is
athlon xp 2000
512 PC2700 DDR
radeon 9000 pro 128MB
60 GB harddrive
xaser 6000
a7n8x deluxe

this system will be good untill 8GHz cpus come out, then i will build a new one, but untill then this system will play all games at high speed, and do media encoding and zipping and whatever i do for a while. your ssytem will be even faster so it will last longer.

 

[MegaCharger]

For the RAM, you might want to consider getting the PC3500 or PC3700. At the moment the Canterwood boards are having major problem with PC3200, even the Corsair guy recommended those.

If you are buying those in August you might want to give the GF FX5900 a look. So far it has beaten the R9800 Pro 256MB in almost every category. Although nVidia could be cheating.

For the case I would go with one of the Antec PLUS series. I think they have a server tower that comes with a 500 or 550 TruePower.

Go with Sony on your DVD drive, a few bucks difference isn't that steep an investment. Sony makes perhaps the best out there.

 

[MuntaroTheGreat1]

So what i gather, don't go with RAID, go with a good IDE with high cache, should i go double drives or a single large drive, which would be faster all around for both boot and load times.

How hard is it to set-up and maintain a water cooled system. I am not very knowledgable about those things, but if it is a worthwhile investment, then its something i will definatly look into.

As far as AMD/Intel Issue, i have had amd and intel, AMD altho very good, is becoming garbage faster and faster, intel is beating them with a rubber hose, i have always been a strong support of amd, but they aren't impressing me with thier new chips and seem to be struggling with design and top end market chips.

 

[teckmaster]

theres not much in the way of maintenance of the water-cooled machines. Setup can be a little tedious. The only thing I've seen with water cooled is that it is more quiet than fans. I have 3 case fans and the cpu fan in my machine at home and it runs as cool a water-cooled of the same specs. Not worth the extra dough IMHO.

 

[DT4K]

I'm not sure, but the Athlon 64 (clawhammer) may be out by August. Or you may want to consider an Opteron system. The performance improvements look pretty impressive so far, even running 32-bit software. I disagree that Intel has been dominating lately. The Athlon XP's have pretty much kept up with each new Pentium release. And recent price cuts by AMD, along with the quality of the NForce2 and the upcoming NForce 3 release(not sure when) have once again made AMD a very strong competitor to Intel. I wouldn't rule either out yet for an August build.

For mobos, I like Epox, Abit, and Asus.

The monitor seems pretty spendy. I know there are some very good 21's that are quite a bit less expensive.

I would definitely skip the RAID. For gaming, as long as you get lots of RAM, the HD won't make much performance difference. I'd stick with one big drive.

Thermaltake makes cool cases, but I think Antec provides the best combination of high quality case and PSU with moderate prices.

ATI has definitely been kicking NVidia's butt for the last 9 months. But the newest GF (5900?) competes very well and is at least worth a look. The way the graphics market is, who knows which one will be on top in August. Definitely keep an open mind. In fact, for pretty much the whole system, the top choices now may not be the top choices in August.

 

[MuntaroTheGreat1]

thanks for all the advise, mainly what i was wanting to get a grasp on is the price area i am looking at when building this machine, a good estimate would be 2500.00 US dollars, for that i should be able to build a beast that will handle for atleast 2 years, with minor upgrades here and there.

 

[Tavoc]

If you have the money, I would suggest getting 2 WD raptors and putting them in a RAID 0 for your OS, apps, and page file. In addition, you should buy a seperate drive for all your important data since RAID 0 has a greater chance of failure. The RAID wont help you that much while actually playing games, but it will help you dramatically on loading games, and booting up your comp.

Sound: I would suggest an Audigy 2 for sound if money is no object. If not, just use the onboard sound, its plenty good.

Case: The Xaser III is a good choice, go coolermaster or Lian li if you want something less tacky.

Power Supply: Any Antec PS between 380 and 550 would be good for this system. I would reccomend a 430w Truepower.

Vid Card: The Price on the 5900 Ultra 128 or 256 will probably have come down significantly by august and it would be a good choice.

 

[EglsFly]

Speaking of PC Cases...
A friend of mine built his P4 system with the:
Cooler Master Model# ATC-200C-MX2 (Silver/Black) All Aluminum Mid-Tower Case

This case is phenomenal. Click on the link, and then click the SEE IT link to see the pictures.
The construction is top notch! Aluminum. Has a really nice Power Supply support bracket design. Excellent cooling setup, note that the rear fan vent is not stamped in the case material (these usually are quite restrictive to airflow), but has an appropriate fan grill. (you could also easily replace this grill with a laser cut grill if you like) The case also includes a slide out motherboard tray. It also has a really nice professional look to it.

I like the COOLER MASTER Model# ATC-201B-SXT better though, as it has the same quality construction, but also includes front mounted USB ports and a side Window.

 

[mrzed]

Originally posted by: MuntaroTheGreat1


2 years ago, i spent 3000 dollars on a piece of garbage machine that can barely handle the load i am using it for now
. . .

LOL, any time you spend $3000 on a computer, you will be saying the same thing in another 2 years. I never spent more than $2000 canadian, but it still stings, and feels stupid now. The good thing is, each time I buy a new computer it's cheaper (and lots faster). I'm also getting older, and IMNSHO harder to fool into making stupid consumer purchases.