Critique My ULTIMATE GAMING MACHINE

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Ok Dopers, being fed up with my video games playing at 1 FPS I’ve decided that it is time to get a new computer. Not liking what I see at such places as Best Buy and CompUSA and finding the prices at AlienWare out of my range I’ve decided to undertake the ambitious project of building my own ULTIMATE GAMING MACHINE. Said gaming machine will be a combination of beauty and power, OK forget beauty. As long as the thing can run DOOM III with no slow downs when it comes out next year I’ll be freakin’ ecstatic.

With that in mind I’ve put together the basics said computer would need. I have come up with the following:
[ul]
[li]Mother Board[/li][li]CPU[/li][li]RAM[/li][li]Hard Drive[/li][li]3.5” Diskette Drive[/li][li]DVD-ROM Drive[/li][li]Video Card[/li][li]Sound Card[/li][li]Case[/li][li]Power Supply[/li][/ul]
So far so good. After researching for about 2 weeks I have been able to virtually gather the components that will run my ULTIMATE GAMING MACHINE. They are as follows:
[ul]
[li]Soyo SY-KT333 Dragon Ultra Mother Board[/li][li]AMD Athalon XP 2000+ 1.66 GHz CPU[/li][li]Kingston 512 MB PC2700 333MHz DDR Memory[/li][li]Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 80 GB ULTRA/133 7200 RPM HD[/li][li]ATI Radeon 8500 128 MB DDR Video Card.[/li][/ul]
For the sound card, I am just going to go with the onboard sound chip that comes with the motherboard. I hear it is pretty good. Everything else, diskette drive, DVD-Rom, case, and power supply I figure I can pick up at a decent price at CompUSA or a local mom and pop shop.

I don’t have very many geek friends IRL and want some opinions from knowledgeable people so, go ahead and critique. Am I missing anything important? Did I leave anything out? I don’t know anything about video cards and I want to make sure I get a good one. If the one I chose isn’t great please give your opinions on what a good one is. Also, I’m ordering everything through www.googlegear.com. Anyone ever deal with them? They seem to be reputable. Thanks in advance for all your help.

2

Psst, computers run better with electricity. From what I hear (I’m building my ultimate [sub]budget[/sub] gaming machine), the Antec TruPower series of power supplies is best, in that it’s supposedly whisper-quiet, and the 330 or 380 ought to do quite nicely. The usual suspects (directron, googlegear, newegg) should be the cheapest.

Regarding a case, if you want anything cool (especially if you go LAN gaming), shop online. Newegg, colorcases.com, and so-trickcomputers.com have some really nice ones. Keep in mind that some already have power supplies (cheaper, but not as high quality) and some don’t.

As far as the mobo, I’m not familiar w/ the one you picked, but the AMD KG7-RAID, arguably the best AMD 760 board, is on sale for about $55 shipped at compgeeks.com. (I ordered mine, it should be here shortly.)

For your hard drive, I recommend the Western Digital 120BBJR (or something like that) - it’s a 120GB 7200 RPM drive with a 8 MB cache. Might be overkill, but if this is your Ultimate machine, it’s a must have. (And it’s fairly cheap from Dell.)

You also need a CD-RW. Games ain’t cheap, and they scratch easy, y’know. The LiteOn 40x rewritable is the best drive out there (even better than the Plextors at certain things).

Also overkill, but necessary for the ULTIMATE machine is the SoundBlaster Audigy Platinum. No ultimate machine is using onboard sound, after all. :wink:

You also need a NIC (for broadband).

From what I hear, the SamSung RAM (with SS PCB, not just the chips) overclocks better than anything out there.

Similarly, you’ll want a heat sink and a fan for your CPU since, you know, all ULTIMATE gaming rigs have to be overclocked. :rolleyes:

Also, I’m curious why you picked the Radeon 8500 over a nice Asus GeForce 4 Ti8600 board. I’m not in the market for a video card (which, if I didn’t go all out, could cost more than my mobo, RAM, and CPU put together) so I really didn’t do my homework here.

3

Yep, I know about the power supply. I was just going to pick one up when I headed out to CompUSA for the case and stuff. I was figuring around 350 watts.

As for cases, I’m not a fancy man. Plus my CPU never goes anywhere so beige box for me it is.

I chose the motherboard because I don’t think I’ll have to upgrade it anytime soon. Here’s a link to the specs, http://www.soyousa.com/products/proddesc.php?id=107 .

As for the HD, the WD1200JB is the exact same one I order for my IT dept. when they need to replace HD’s at work so I know how good it is. I was looking into it but the price was to steep. I guess my ULTIMATE GAMING MACHINE wont be so ultimate.

CD-RW will come later.

As I said, the on board CMI 8738 audio chip provides 5.1 dolby along with optical and SPDIF output. I think that’ll do for now. Plus it saves me money.

NIC is already built in to the mobo.

I’ll have to look into the RAM again.

Heatsink and fan come bundled with the chip I’m buying and while I know I have mad EET skills I don’t think I’ll be overclocking anytime soon.

As for the video card, I don’t know crap about video cards. I thought the Radeon was the best out there. Guess it is back to researching for me.

4

Definately get a GeForce4 Ti card. If you can’t afford this, get a Geforce 3 Ti, stay away from the GeForce4MX.
I would get a 400w power supply with that level of hardware, better safe than sorry.

DO NOT USE ONBOARD SOUND!!!..get the Soundblaster Audigy. At the least, spend 35 bucks on a SB Live.

5

Now, now, the Platinum isn’t necessary for the Ultimate GAMING Machine. Just an Audigy Mp3/Gamer will do. Or, as Jax says, at least get an SBLive.

Amp…

Definitely go with a GeForce-4 4600. And stick with a basic, beige case. We Beige people are a rare breed, but we have to keep our traditions alive. Down with fancy cases! Burn them! Smash them! Call them names!

6

Just to stir things up a bit. How about the MSI K7T366 PRO2-RU main board and 2 fast 40gig drives in RAID 0 configuration.

I also recomend the GeForce 4 and at least the SB live.

And get the BEST 400 watt power supply you can.

7

ummm, not to be a dick, but a MONITOR would be good too. Nothing spoils a good game or a fast system quicker than a shitty monitor.

Also, a must for me when gaming is a wireless keyboard and my optical (ball-less) mouse. I’ve never seen the appeal of joysticks, I can work much better with a kb and mouse. Wireless lets me pick it up and turn it when I need to.

8

Well, after much soul searching I’ve decided to go with the Asus V8460 ULTRA/DELUXE GeForce TI 4600 128MB DDR Video Card. Its $200 more than the one I originally chose but heck, the ULTIMATE GAMING MACHINE can’t skimp on the video card.

9

Woah, no more Mountain Dew for you.

10

Good move- that’s the card to go with. Also the Soundblaster Audigy is a worthwile investment for a gaming machine. Don’t need the top of the line one though.

11

::drools::

You know, you’ll need a new video card (when it comes out) if your machine is going to stay ultimate. Just send that Asus card over here when you’re done with it. :wink:

12

That’s why I love this place. You tell people here that you’re buying a $400 video card and they drool all over the place. You tell people IRL you’re buying a $400 video card and they look at you like you’re crazy. Priorities man, priorities. I’ve got to get me some geekier real world friends.

VenusProbe, I couldn’t find the specs for the mobo you mentioned. Got a link?

//\etalhea|), already got a good 20" monitor and the wireless keyboard and optical mouse. I’ve slowly been upgrading the cheaper peripherals while saving money for the actual box. And I’m with you when it comes to joysticks, never seen the appeal. Give me the mouse/keyboard combo any day.

13

Sorry about that, it looks like they re-named K7T366 PRO2-RU.

14

After reading the reviews at Toms Hardware I have to say stick with the Dragon mainboard, and buy a promise RAID controller. I’ll be getting a Dragon for my next UGM™

15

Well, I started building my UGM. Picked up the power supply, an ANTEC TruePower 430 Watt PS, and the case, a Lian-Li Aluminum case. I’m now waiting for the rest of the components to come in from www.googlegear.com . I shouldn’t have bought the case so soon. All I’ve been doing all day long is staring at it imagining what’s to come. Oh, why did I choose UPS ground? Why didn’t I pay the extra cash for FedEx 2 day?

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Huh, makes my buying the motherboard first look almost insightful. Well, almost.

And you probably didn’t pay for the 2 day since it would, what, another 5-10% to the price of the UGM?

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Yeah, I figured I was already spending a considerable amount, at least by my standards, of money on this rig, and that I should try to save money where I could but still, that 5 to 8 day shipping time is killing me. Plus, I know the UPS guy is just going to dump the packages next to the front door like always. I hope nothing gets stolen.

Oh well, at least I could use this time to figure out the wires on the power supply. The manual has them marked on a diagram but they forgot to mark the actual wires. This is going to be fun. I can’t wait. :slight_smile:

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Well, FWIW, I’m pretty sure that Googlegear ships via FedEx. Or maybe I got lucky.

Don’t stress the power supply wires - they’re easy. The big blocky one goes to the mobo, all the billion other four wire ones go to hard drives and the like. If you’re talking about the actual wire wires, well, you really can’t attach them backwards or anything, IIRC.

19

Plug the wires into where they fit… that’s all that matters. The things you need to be careful with are the motherboard ribbons… make sure you plug things in to the right master and/or slave slots, and such.

20

You should consider SCSI160 for your system. Use only SCSI HDDs, CD-ROM/RW, and DVD-ROM.

Why not the new AMD Thoroughbred? XP2200+ to be exact.

P.S. You want to get a case with lots of fans and a big cooler for the CPU.