Price no object PC upgrade

[MIGhunter]

I ordered everything yesterday. Too bad I didn't see the case recomendation earlier. Oh well. Here is what I did.

CPU: Intel 2.8 GHz P4 from atacom.com
MB: Asus Tek P4T5333-C from atacom.com
$725.07

Memory: Samsung 1066 256 MB x4 from buymaster.com
$464

Case: Cooler Master ATC210AX1 and Enermax 431 watt power supply from newegg.com
$292

Video Card: Radeon 9700 pro from gamestop.com
331.23

HDD: Western Digital 100 Gb special addition 9700 RPM with 8 MB Cache from NeutronUSA.com
146.95

I don't know if I plan on overclocking or not. I guess I will have to wait and see.

Thanks for all the help

In my current computer I have:
10/100 ethernet card plus the 56k fax modem
5400 rpm 12 Gb and 7 Gb HDD
Pioneer DVD Rom
Iomega internal zip drive
5.25" floppy disk drive

I will use most of this. Except for the case (non-atx-stupid compaq), memory (96Mb-not supporte by the new MB), and I may not use the HDD. I was thinking about using them for low cost stuff like MP3s but with 100Mb on the western digital, I don't know if I will need it.

 

[babah]

you should see where you buy the component from.
for example:
-atacom has 5.98 rating
-neutron has 4.75
-buymaster i couldn't find it

and are you gamestop has radeon 9700 pro, it seems i couldn't find it??

Thanks

 

[MIGhunter]

I didn't really look at their ratings. I did investigate them with the BBB. I have had pretty good luck with online purchases and if this proves to be the exception, that is why I use credit card to buy.

As for gamestop. Just goto the search and type in Radeon and it will bring it right up.

 

[babah]

ohh ok that's good
umm, i just contacte gamestop, and they didn't have radeon 9700pro.

Thanks

 

[MIGhunter]

I am in no real rush but I hope that isn't the case. I called them and they told me that if they didn't have it, it would specifically say pre-order on the web page. Either way, I have to wait until my P4 2.8 CPU arrives and it won't be shipped until after the 1st of Sept.

 

[mchammer187]

Originally posted by: MIGhunter
I ordered everything yesterday. Too bad I didn't see the case recomendation earlier. Oh well. Here is what I did.

CPU: Intel 2.8 GHz P4 from atacom.com
MB: Asus Tek P4T5333-C from atacom.com
$725.07

Memory: Samsung 1066 256 MB x4 from buymaster.com
$464

Case: Cooler Master ATC210AX1 and Enermax 431 watt power supply from newegg.com
$292

Video Card: Radeon 9700 pro from gamestop.com
331.23

HDD: Western Digital 100 Gb special addition 9700 RPM with 8 MB Cache from NeutronUSA.com
146.95

I don't know if I plan on overclocking or not. I guess I will have to wait and see.

Thanks for all the help

In my current computer I have:
10/100 ethernet card plus the 56k fax modem
5400 rpm 12 Gb and 7 Gb HDD
Pioneer DVD Rom
Iomega internal zip drive
5.25" floppy disk drive

I will use most of this. Except for the case (non-atx-stupid compaq), memory (96Mb-not supporte by the new MB), and I may not use the HDD. I was thinking about using them for low cost stuff like MP3s but with 100Mb on the western digital, I don't know if I will need it.

are u sure you bought 32 bit 232 Pin RIMM 3200/4200 otherwise it will not fit into an Asus P4T 533-C it will however fit in a non-C version

32 bit RIMM =232 pins

16 bit RIMM = something else

 

[FishTankX]

hey, MC, not to diss you, but you've got some wires crossed.

P4T-533C=16 bit RIMMS, or PC1066 RIMMS
P4T-533=32 bit RIMMs, or RIMM4200

 

[MIGhunter]

The webpage that I ordered it from states that it is made specifically for the Asus P4T533-C MB. So it better work.

 

[mchammer187]

Originally posted by: MIGhunter
The webpage that I ordered it from states that it is made specifically for the Asus P4T533-C MB. So it better work.

yeah my bad

it was the P4T-533-R is what i was thinking of

what i was thinking in my head was P4T-533 uses PC1066 and the one with a suffix uses Rimm4200

but both the P4T-533 and P4T-533C use standard RDRAM

 

[Goi]

HDD: Western Digital 100 Gb special addition 9700 RPM with 8 MB Cache from NeutronUSA.com

Woah, since when were 9700RPM drives released?

 

[MIGhunter]

sorry sometimes my fingers type a little too fast. That would be 7900.

Although the 10000 rpm drives probably don't run that fast all the time. Maybe they slow to 9700 sometimes.

 

[Goi]

7900rpm? Don't you mean 7200rpm?

 

[babah]

ya, i think u mean 7200rpm mig??

 

[MIGhunter]

wow that is twice I messed it up. Staring at too many numbers all day.

Is there a difference between the 80 gb and 100 gb western digital drives. I notice that everyone here recommends the 80. I hope that there isn't a difference because I ordered the 100 gb 8mb cache special addition.

 

[babah]

there is no diffrence between those 2

 

[Goi]

Of course there is! There's a 20GB difference! Hell that's the size of my current HDD!

 

[XBoxLPU]

Check out this pc.....

Pfft and you thought AT's dream machine was a "dream machine"

 

[Goi]

Sorry, but the Athlon MP 2100+ is hardly the fastest processor. The P4 2.8GHz is the current top dog. Other than that, there are several flaws in your supposed dream system.
Why do you have 3 different kinds of thermal paste? There's AS, some new AS and the Shm-Etsu stuff.
He doesn't need the DVD-ROM so the Pioneer is redundant. Also, why have both IDE and SCSI? Why stick to PC2100 CL2.5 DDR-SDRAM? The Matrox RT2500 is kinda old too, and I don't think he needs to do any serious DV-editing anyway. The ATI Radeon 9700 Pro will also beat the GF4 Ti4600.

Seriously overpriced at $10,692.00 for the performance you'll be getting too.

 

[MIGhunter]

Goi
I have to agree with you. It looks like someone just put a bunch of stuff together to make it look cool. I mean there are 2 IDE HDD and 4 SCSI drives. With a raid set up that is still way more than you'd ever need. The only thing on that list I would really like is the monitor. But there is no way I would spend that much money when you could easily get a projector that is made for PC presentations cheaper.

 

[dszd0g]

Originally posted by: Goi
Sorry, but the Athlon MP 2100+ is hardly the fastest processor. The P4 2.8GHz is the current top dog. Other than that, there are several flaws in your supposed dream system.
Why do you have 3 different kinds of thermal paste? There's AS, some new AS and the Shm-Etsu stuff.
He doesn't need the DVD-ROM so the Pioneer is redundant. Also, why have both IDE and SCSI? Why stick to PC2100 CL2.5 DDR-SDRAM? The Matrox RT2500 is kinda old too, and I don't think he needs to do any serious DV-editing anyway. The ATI Radeon 9700 Pro will also beat the GF4 Ti4600.

Seriously overpriced at $10,692.00 for the performance you'll be getting too.

If you noticed, he picked a dual processor AMD set-up. He picked the 760MPX chipset. If you are going all out I don't know why XBoxLPU wouldn't pick the more standard Tyan over Iwill. The MP and MPX chipset are limited to PC2100, but I would choose CL2 over CL2.5. I do agree that the Radeon 9700 Pro is the better choice unless you plan on running under WineX.

I would go with Seagate 15K drives over the Quantum Atlas III.

I don't know why XBoxLPU went both SCSI and IDE drives and stuck with a slower SCSI CD burner. As I recall the Plextor 1210 drives don't live up to the normal Plextor reputation either.

If the IDE drives are their just for disk space, add a bunch of larger capacity SCSI drives if cost is not important and RAID 5 them, or better yet RAID 0+1 them. Get a nice RAID controller instead of the Iwill 3160, maybe an HP(Compaq/Digital) Smart Array 5304 ($900) or a Mylex eXtremeRAID 2000 ($1300).

Just get one tube of Artic Silver III.
Get two Thermalright AX7s with the YS/Tech rheostat 48.7cfm fan so that you can get some quiet and good cooling.

The person obviously knows nothing about printing as HP printers are crap (An ex-HP employee probably shouldn't say that ). Maybe a nice Lexmark Color Laser would fit the bill here. How about something that will fit on the desk, the Optra C710n with a duplex unit ($2200)? Duplexed color laser printing at 1200x1200dpi sounds good to me.

 

[dszd0g]

Or how about a Supermicro Super P4QH6 with four Xeon MP 2.2GHz processors and 32GB registered ECC DDR-200 memory. It uses four way memory interleaving [Edit: four DDR200 channels] and five memory controllers (so that DDR200 is going to kiss your Rambus or DDR333/400 goodbye). I don't know what the latency of the memory system is, but it is most likely better than Rambus.
[Edit: Oops, this board doesn't have an AGP slot. That kind of eliminates it as a viable option for any 3D graphics.]

[Edit: I found it is rated as having 6.4GB/s of memory bandwidth and 5GB/s of I/O bandwidth using 6 PCI-X segments and 1 PCI segment using 3 PCI controllers. It has 3.2GB/s of processor bus bandwidth. The chipset supports 64GB of memory, but the motherboards based on it are only supporting 32GB for some reason.
Also interesting is that the system uses memory redundancy so that one can hot swap DIMMs while the system is running.
The choice in DDR200 also appears to be because it runs sychronous to the FSB (100 * 2, 100 * 4).
For reference PC 1066 RDRAM dual channel offers 4.2GB/s of meory bandwidth.
]

Oh and and you would want to make sure to get hot-swappable drive bays for those RAID controllers.

One can spend way too much money on a PC if one tries.

 

[Goi]

Yes I did notice that it was a dual processor system, but still, a single P4 2.8 would probably be more sensible coz not a lot of programs can take advantage of SMP, hence the dual Athlon MP 2100+ system wouldn't neccessarily be faster, but would probably be more expensive. Other than that, the rest of his chosen system seems randomly chosen too.

 

[dszd0g]

I guess it depends on what you are doing with the system. If it is a gaming only system, then agreed the P4 2.8 system will be faster. For just about any workstation style usage the dual processor system is better. I don't have any dual processor home systems, because they aren't worth the higher costs. However, every time I have had a multi-processor machine at work I have loved it. I especially love it when a program starts eating up 100% CPU and my usage of the machine does not slow down, because it is only eating up one of the CPUs. That alone makes a dual processor machine worth it for some people. If you are only doing one thing at a time it won't make any difference, but that is not how I work.