Time to upgrade....

[Pond Racer]

I've been running a P4 1.6 at 2.2 for several years but I would like to get back into flight sims now... and its time to build a new rig. I'd like to keep my system costs around $1800 or less as I need new controllers which are going to ding me for about $700. I haven't looked at hardware much for a while...... and things have changed. I would appreciate you guys looking my list over and checking for any obvious errors.

Asus P5WD2-E
Pentium D (775) 920 800 FSB
Thermaltake Big Typhoon
Asus EN7900GT
Patriot 2x1G DDR2 PC2 5600
WD Raptor 74G
PCP&C 510watt
$1777

I'm moving 2 optical drives (burner and a DVD player) over from the old case.

Monitor is a Compaq 19" CRT. I will probably stay CRT for quite a while... at least until LCD can get a comparable image at a reasonable price.

For the case I've decided to spring for the Lian Li, either a PC-1200B or a full tower of some kind. I looked at the Thermaltake cases.... but I always wanted a Lian Li so what the heck. I can't see dropping three large and change on a Tai Chi... but they are certainly cool.

The sim I play is Aces High. Other then that the machine is used for VS 2005 development, some Photoshop work and editing/burning video from my PVR to DVD. The house is networked with Cat5e to almost all the rooms, a passive Cisco hub and a PIX501 for the firewall. Dual AMD servers in the basement, one functions primarily as a PVR, the other for storage and SQL Server - so storage on the workstation is not really an issue.

As far as overclocking... its not a neccessity but I've overclocked everything I've ever built since the celery/BX board days so it would be nice to have the ability to do some tweaking. The problem I have with my current machine is that it sounds like a hair dryer when the fan controller kicks everything on. I would really like to cure that.

The controllers will be a TM Cougar HOTAS with a Hall sensor + Uber mod with a Hall sensor for the RCS pedals.

 

[Luckyboy1]

I really think you'd get more bang for your buck by going with an Opteron system.

 

[Maximilian]

The Pentium D 9xx's are the best that netburst architecture has to offer, theyre pretty decent chips. But netburst will be replaced in about 6 months? by the core architecture centred around the Pentium M, more efficient, more performance and its better overall than Intels current offerings.

If you cant wait that long, and i didnt, the i reccommend an opteron, theyre excellent overclocking chips, have the full 1mb of cache (makes minimal difference but its good to have) and a decent price. The opteron 165/170 are the current best choices, the 170 comes with a 10x multiplier so the FSB need not be as high, putting less strain on the board.

As for the rest of your system, if its based around an opteron you will want either a DFI board or the Epox 9NPA+, these are both really good overclocking mobos. Ive heard DFI's are picky with memory and have problems wih seasonic PSU's but are still the best overclocking board to go with, not sure which model tbh ive never looked at the since i have a seasonic PSU. You might wanna get a different PSU, somthing cheaper with the same wattage from fortron/seasonic would be good. Your not going SLI so theres no need for a PCP&C PSU.

 

[Pond Racer]

Thanks, I appreciate the advice. I'm more of an Intel guy though... I've done 3 AMD builds and every time they had "oddities" when I was working with MS development tools. They work fine as my servers, but I just can't commit to AMD for this workstation. Things may have changed, but I don't want to take the chance.

I hear you on waiting for Conroe. I thought about waiting till after the summer goes by and I'm spending more time indoors.... but I might end up in Hong Kong this winter and not get to enjoy it anyway.

I'm watching the Abit vs 7900 thread to see whats said -- if I was going to spend a little more money it would be on the video card.

 

[bamacre]

I'd dump the 74GB Raptor and snag a 250GB 7200rpm drive with a 16MB buffer.

 

[Pond Racer]

Ordered most of this today, except for the RAM....

Asus P5WD2-E
Pentium D (775) 920 800 FSB
Thermaltake Big Typhoon
2 ea Scythe 120mm fans
Sapphire ATI X1900XT 512 meg
Arctic Cooling Accelero X2 graphics card cooler
Kingston HyperX 2x1G DDR2 PC2 7200
WD Raptor 74G
PCP&C 510watt
Lian Li PC-1200A Plus