http://www.mwave.com/mwave/skusearch.hmx?SCriteria=BA30107&CartID=done&nextloc=
Heeheehe. No i'm not an MWAVE salesmen in disguize. But they did have the best prices on some things at a time when midrange budgitiing was all i could afford. I had a 10$ freebie first time buyer coupon so i nabbed the Antec Sonato II (with an extra 120mm fan 5$) at what will untimately cost me 86$ shipped. The "smartpower" version 2.0 series PSU covered what i needed well. Any, i had to settle on mid budgit.
Glad to here this rig scenario settles well with our Opty 144 at an overclock of 2.4ghz without acting queer. That won't happen until over 3.0 i'm told on a DFI Ultra board.
This Asrock/144 rig to me looks like alot of fun to learn overclocking on. I definitely will try to cap-off performance at 2.7ghz sometime in the future. After i get to know my rig better. Switching from a stock AMD cpu setup to a p-90 or whatever advanced cooler any higher than 2.5ghz. I think we can go 2.5 no problem stock if we have a Sonata II case. The airflow does look obstructed near the front 120mm fan so i might see about doing some case modding. I saw it ahead of time. I prefer having just one hardrive. And setting it up alone facing in front of that bottom front intake fan blowing over and under it.
Now i need to finalize what memory to get for this Asrock/144 rig. I've been checking prices alot and know the current price structure pretty good. I've got two options budgit wize.
...2 GIGZ of Corsair Value select (anything better??)
...1 Gig of high speed ram priced up to 160$ tops.
I'll need some advice here. I tend to believe a (2 x 1gb) "value" ram is the wiser choice. Since i do plane on doing alot of Far Cry, BF2 gaming, as well as multimedia stuff.
And i recognize going 2 x 1gb of any ram is alot better than filling up with (4 x 512) which slows down the memory clock to 3 cycles.
But if "value ram" limits our opty-144 overclock to 2.5 will i loose alot of overall power by not being able to ever achive 2.7ghz??
A dilema we all face on a budgit.
I guess i just would appreciate advice on what adds power best to a computer system used for gaming/multimedia.
Here's the ultimate configuration i'm considering as the goal...
Asrock939 duel (recieved)
Opty 144 (recieved) from MWAVE got a CAB2E 0545 MPMW - not the best but still good
Sonata II (enroute) (450 smartpower, duel 12v rail with combined 32A)
?? 155$ - Corsair Value select (2 x 1gb) memory
?? 200$ - ATI Sapphite GTO2 overclocked to 16 pixel pipes
I've got a AGP geforce 5500 i plan on installing while breaking in this system. Can run that awhile until i decide on the video card. Since i plan on playing FarCry which uses alot of "version 3.0 shaders", which the ATI GTO2 does not have, i am open to considering a Geforce 6800-series card for around 200$
Interesting discussion... heeheehe.
Also interesting is the prospect of installing a new M2 processor in around 18 months along with new DDR2 memory. Something to think about as an option. Though i'll probably keep this Opty-144 rig maybe 3 years if it's still fast enough to manage decent framerates in current games. I'm not into having the very latest ultimate performance as a hobby. Though i respect everyone who is. heeheehe. I can see the fun in it... Same thing with racecars or high fidelity music...
...about the sound on this Asrock939, ...i suspect it is not that bad at all. It's a decent recognized sound chip that and we know it's capabilities. I doubt Asrock went ahead and goofed it up. Anyhow, the money we saved on buying this board could be used on what really is a high end 80$ soundcard. If that's your wish. I plan on keeping an eye out next year for exactly such a sound deal. See you all on Ebay. heeheehe.
...merry christmas