Building gaming machine - suggestions?

[MechD]

Greetings all,

I'm looking to upgrade the core of my gaming machine fairly soon, after an unfortunate brownout during a bios flash left my old Abit NF7-S2 un bootable. I have browsed the forum here, and several review sites to get a list of components to use, but would like to get some of the resident experts here to take a look and see if I missed any clearly superior component/obvious incompatibility, or if I have a solid system. I will mostly be gaming on this machine (HL2, WoW, BF2 etc). I generally try to shoot for 1280x1024, with most, if not all options turned on. I also plan to do some overclocking to gain extra speed...

So how does the below look for a gaming rig?

Extra gig of Corsair ram

Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 250GB SATA 150 hard drive

Epox EP-9NPA+Ultra motherboard

Antec TPII 480W power supply

AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice cpu

Leadtek 6800 GT TDH video card

I have already purchased the hard drive and the first gig of memory as upgrades for the original machine, so they will stay in the new build. I also plan to keep my old case (3Dcool Tornado 1000, CD-rom drive, and CD burner).


I also have two questions:

1) For the games I mostly play, would you suggest the 6800 GT over a X800XL? I have heard good things about the overclock ability of the Leadtek card, and combining it with the CPU drops the price on the card by 20 dollars at Newegg, putting it closer in price to the ATI card.

2) Any suggestions on a solid UPS to protect my new system? Having just learned my lesson the hard way, no more simple surge protector...

Thanks for your assistance guys!

 

[KoolDrew]

I would pick a different PSU. The fan choice and moutning on the Antecs with 120mm fans are just not good. You may not run into problems depending on how are you cooling is set up, but for the price of that PSU there are better options. There is a whole topic about the PSU here. I would suggest a Fortron AX500-A which is $78 at actbuy. As for the CPU I would suggest getting a 3000+. All venices basically OC the same.

 

[imported_Kensai]

APC makes some reliable UPS's. Go with one of theirs.
Stick with the 3200+, The 10X multiplier is quite useful for mild overclocking. You could go with the 3000+ to save a few pennies.

As KoolDrew said, try and get the Fortron 500W Blue Storm. It's a very reliable PSU and probably one of the best in it's price range.

I will always recommend the 6800GT over the x800XL for it's performance, but I will recommend the x800XL over the 6800GT to save money.

 

[Gloryfieldzi]

i would get a x800xl for 250 bucks, for 350 bucks you can get a sweet x850xt plat edition retail package from tigerdirect (no rebates though, it expired on aug 1st) with rebate it was 275

 

[amplemind]

X800XL, and Gloryfieldzi, you def should have put that x850xt on hot deals!!!!!

 

[mOeeOm]

Half-Life 2 /CS:S= x800xl eats those games up...

UT2004 = x800xl/6800GT runs the same, I might be off but x800xl got 68.2 and 6800GT got 68.4

BF2 = x800xl/6800GT same, maybe 6800GT gets a 5-10 FPS more, not worh the +$100 more in price.

Doom 3 = 6800GT eats this game up...x800xl sucks so much at this game.

So, if you are playing HF2/BF2/UT2004/CS:S then the x800xl is the obvious choice, I can play those games at max resolution on my rig with everything turned up with 0 lag. The only game that brings me down is doom 3...the doom 3 engine just doesnt run well on the x800xl. ...meh doom 3 sucks anyways I stopped playing it, got boring .

 

[mOeeOm]

Ahh didn't read you want to overclock, if so then the 6800GT, x800xl is a horrible overclocker, the most you will get is a 10% boost.

 

[MechD]

Hey guys,

Thanks for you assistance! After reading that article, the Antec PS is out, and I will be looking for a Blue Storm 500W PS, thanks again for the catch on that!

For a UPS, would the APC 750 be a good choice for protecting my new rig? I also have a 19 inch monitor and my cable modem/router that will be running with it.

Thanks again guys, hopefully be ordering very soon