Tweak my rig

[Cfour]

Well after reading through some threads and stuff I've decided to got he s939 route, so let's try to not debate that and stuff here, the horse is dead already. So, here's what I'm looking at:

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 Venice 3000+ - $147.99 (Will try to OC)

Motherboard: Looking for suggestions here, will be going RAID 0 SATA-150. DFI Lanparty?

Memory: Thinking I will go with 512 here.

Video Card: Will I be cheaping out by going with a 6600GT? I'm trying to get bang for the buck in this department, I don't play a lot of graphics heavy games, my old Ti4200 w/ P4 @ 2.4ghz ran Half-Life 2 and CS: Source just fine to me. Are they any particular brands that people prefer? I do want dual DVI, and probably TV-Out, but it looks like most of the cards fit that criteria.

Hard Drives: My thinking is that I want to go RAID 0 here, probably about 80GB on each drive to total 160GB. The drives I selected were the Seagate Barracude 7200.7 80GB, SATA-150 drives for $62 each.. do you guys think these will be fine? Or is there a much better drive out there for around the same price.

Power Supply: I currently have a 350W Enhance power supply, but I'm wondering if that will hold up or not.. so if any of you guys think that I should goto the 450-500 range, let me know.

Thanks in advance for the advice.

 

[theMan]

what exactly do you plan to do on that rig??

for the mobo, get a dfi ultra-d. for the video card, yes, a 6600gt is great, in fact, for you its almost too much. but thats ok. you will definately want 1gb of ram. just get value ram. but i did hear some bad things about the dfi and corsair value select ram, so im not sure what brand of value you want. hard drives look good. can i have the model on the psu? i wanna look it up and see the specs, but a good quality 350w will be fine. as long as it is, REALLY good.

 

[imported_Kensai]

What happened to Pimp my Rig?

Anyhow, that 350W should be enough depending on how many amps it can provide on the 12V line.
The 6600GT is one of the sweetspots but if you can fit an x800XL, go for it, it'll have better performance in CS : Source.
If you can, squeeze in a little more money and get 1GB of Corsair Value select, you can pick some up on the forums for something around 75$ USD shipped to anywhere in the lower USA.
Of course the DFI board wins hands down for an overclocker's S939 board. Also, consider the MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum if you're not going all-out.
For hard drives, try and get the 7200.8 if you can.

 

[Cfour]

Originally posted by: theman
what exactly do you plan to do on that rig??

for the mobo, get a dfi ultra-d. for the video card, yes, a 6600gt is great, in fact, for you its almost too much. but thats ok. you will definately want 1gb of ram. just get value ram. but i did hear some bad things about the dfi and corsair value select ram, so im not sure what brand of value you want. hard drives look good. can i have the model on the psu? i wanna look it up and see the specs, but a good quality 350w will be fine. as long as it is, REALLY good.

Thanks for the suggestions, the rig will be used for everything basically, from mild to heavy gaming, but I do get into new games from time to time.. like Battlefield 2, or the new Quake when it is out, etc... so I do want it to handle some graphic heavy stuff, which is why I want to go the AMD route. I won't be doing any video editing or sound stuff or anything like that, thought. And ya about the ram, I'm thinking I should just go for another 512 too, its really not that expensive anyways.

 

[Cfour]

Originally posted by: Kensai
What happened to Pimp my Rig?

Anyhow, that 350W should be enough depending on how many amps it can provide on the 12V line.
The 6600GT is one of the sweetspots but if you can fit an x800XL, go for it, it'll have better performance in CS : Source.
If you can, squeeze in a little more money and get 1GB of Corsair Value select, you can pick some up on the forums for something around 75$ USD shipped to anywhere in the lower USA.
Of course the DFI board wins hands down for an overclocker's S939 board. Also, consider the MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum if you're not going all-out.
For hard drives, try and get the 7200.8 if you can.

I'll have to wait til I'm back from work to post the info about the power supply. Also, I'm only seeing the 7200.8 in like 120 GB + applications, is the performance a big leap over 7200.7? The price difference for the cheapest 7200.8 on Newegg is like $40.

 

[imported_Kensai]

Well, if possible and cheap, get the 7200.8 since it's a newer revision. A 7200.7 is fine otherwise.

 

[Cfour]

Hey guys I noticed taht the DFI is SATA-2, so I should probably get a hard drive that can take advantage of that? How is the Hitachi?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822145082

I'm kinda out of the loop on the HD stuff but SATA 2 is faster than SATA 150 right? Will RAID 0 be that much faster or should I just opt for a bigger sized single drive in either the SATA150 or SATA2 flavor, depending on which is faster? Any drive suggestiosn would be great too

 

[RollWave]

you need a gig if you're getting BF2. The demo is a Ram hog

 

[imported_Kensai]

There's no major point to get SATA2 right now unless there's a massive number of I/O going on in your system.
It's still a good drive though. Either is good.

 

[MobiusPizza]

1GB of Ram should be standard now, since they are so cheap nowadays

 

[Cheezeit]

sata 2 is just a marketing gimmik. modern drives can't even top ata133, let alone sata1.
Why don't you get a gig of ram? its so cheap now

 

[Cfour]

Okay I'm going with the 1 gig of ram for sure, and just gonna go SATA1 caus none of you seem to think SATA2 is worth it, and the Seagate warranty and past experience w/ them makes me more comfortable than going w/ Hitachi.

 

[Cheezeit]

The DFI ultra d is a good motherboard

 

[Cfour]

Alright guys I just got home and got the specs from my power supply so I need to know if this thing will handle the stuff I just ordered... so LMK ASAP if you can.

It is an Enhance 350W, and I don't know what specs you need but it goes acrossand list the V with A underneath, and where I see 12V, there is 18A underneath.

edit: Model on PSU is ATX-1140H

Tony

 

[Cheezeit]

i wouldn't trust it.

 

[Shlong]

1GB Ram (if you cheap out on it, looser timings & divider when overclocking), X800XL for $250 @ monarch, rest looks good.

 

[Cfour]

What about any other opinions on the PSU and if my current one will work still or not ^^^

 

[Shlong]

As for your Sparkle PS just keep it & see if it works or not. If not, then go buy a new one. But if it works you save some $.

 

[Cheezeit]

enhance and sparkle are the same?

i would try sparkle, and if it dosne't work, then I would get a fortron blue storm 500 for 75

 

[Cfour]

Originally posted by: Cheezeit
enhance and sparkle are the same?

i would try sparkle, and if it dosne't work, then I would get a fortron blue storm 500 for 75

No, I think I just forgot I had an enhace.. I've unfortunately been through a couple PSU's already in the last year or so.. Enermax, Sparkle, now on Enhance

 

[Cfour]

Alright guys all of my parts should be arriving this afternoon at work here as they are all ont he truck for delivery. And when I go home to install it all, if my current power supply does not provide enough juice, I'm going to have to run to a local computer store here and get one. And since I'm not a great power supply mind, here is a link to the store's webpage w/ their available power supplies. If you guys could pick one or two quality ones out that you know would be sufficient for the rig talked about above here, I'd appreciate that.

http://www.nanosys1.com/power-supply-protection-atx-power-supplies.html