PSU 550w
MB asus a8n sli premium
CPU AMD Athlon 64 3800+ Venice Socket 939 Processor 2.4GHz athlon64 Socket939
RAM 2x 1024MB DDR2 400 PC2-3200 CL3 128x8 1.181 240-Pin DIMM
Video NVidia GeForce 6600 512MB PCI Express Video Card w/DVI/TVOut
sound integral MB
networking integral MB
hdd WD360GD WesternDigital Hard Drive Serial ATA 36GB 10000RPM
floppy none
CD CD/DVD combo
os win xp x64 pro
A buddy asked me to assemble him a gaming system on about $1000 He wanted speed over flexibility so I went for a smaller 10,000RPM drive. Just curious if any doper geeks could spot any horrific errors on my part to pick compatible parts before i start ordering. Or if there is a trade you feel might be a better choice for a machine that is basically going to be a World of Warcraft terminal and not do much else ever. I am kinda up in the air over dual 256M PCI-E cards over a single 512 but the 512 “feels” more impressive to me.
To those that may be confused about the HD, it is a 10,000 rpm drive which is way faster at hard drive intensive tasks like gaming than your typical 7200 rpm drive.
The system sounds great and I see where you are going with the hard drive. However, it really is too small. I saw a 70-something GB 10,000 rpm for sale in a couple of place in the last week. They were less than $150 dollars. I think that is an essential pre-upgrade. Everything else should make for a screamer.
I don’t have time to look but try newegg.com for a hard drive twice the size. It would be nice to have an even larger 7200 rpm secondary hard drive to go with it for everyday storage. The added cost for both of those things is pretty small.
It doesn’t even have to be that much bigger if it’s a primary gaming PC. I say get a 7200 hard drive just to load the OS and other files on, and then the other hard drive for games. If you can find one bigger than 36G, though, I’d go with that. That’s only going to be able to fit a handful of games at a time.
The only nitpick I would question would be the video card. I think the 6600 GT version is minimum for a good gaming machine these days plus it will drive an HDTV very well if needed in the future.
Like I said, its probably going to be little more than a MMORPG platform and only 1-2 of those at a time. Since the OS is rather intimately linked with any heavy file handling and such I would prefer to keep it and anything it might do on the main drive with if anything things like document storage and other less intensive apps can live on a secondary drive if desired.
Even with all the stuff I have on my machine I am only using 23GB of a 100GB drive myself.
Personally, I’d go with dual video cards running in SLI. In theory, the performance would be better. It’s comparable to a dual core CPU. Not neccesarily faster, but more effecient.
Hm, I didn’t realize they made them in that small of a size. Going with the speed makes sense if its just a gaming machine. But if its a gaming machine that he wants to have his music and photos on then it might not be a bad idea to pick up a cheap low RPM second HD. 36 GB is going to go pretty quick if he is installing games on it. BTW, you know they have 15k RPM drives right?
Brand name is more important than wattage. Even your power hugriest machine is hard put to go over 300W peak.
MB asus a8n sli premium
Why are you getting SLI? Do you plan on aing in a 2nd video card later down the line? IMHO, a SLI mobo is not worth it unless your getting SLI right this instant.
Decent choice, doesn’t the A64 need something a bit higher clocked though?
Video NVidia GeForce 6600 512MB PCI Express Video Card w/DVI/TVOut
512MB is a waste of money on current games. Better to go for a 256MB 7800GT.
sound integral MB
networking integral MB
hdd WD360GD WesternDigital Hard Drive Serial ATA 36GB 10000RPM
Drive prices are only going to get cheaper, I would say, wait until the 36GB is filled, and then go out and buy a cheap 1TB drive and dump whatever you want onto that.
floppy none
CD CD/DVD combo
Burner? I always like 2 drives so you can do a drive-to-drive copy. Either a DVD-R and a DVD or a DVD-R and a CD-R
os win xp x64 pro
Be aware that certain hardware doesn’t have drivers for x64 and will not work. Make sure all current and future periphrials have x64 support now.
I’d second the suggestion for an additional high-capacity hard drive; maybe just an ATA/IDE one - in fact that might be better, because it’s less likely to drag the bus speed of the fast drive down with it (to be honest, I’m not sure what happens with multiple SATA drives of different speeds etc).
XP64 Pro is very new, and there are bound to be some unforseen difficulties with it (such as the lack of drivers mentioned above). I would go with regular ole XP Home for the time being. Wait for XP64 Home, and for games designed with XP64 in mind.
If he knows which one or two games, find out which and see if there’d truly be benefitted by a faster hard drive. I can’t fathom a gamer with a 36Gb hard drive… The Sims 2 takes up more than 10GB on my hard drive and only a few hundred MB of that is in downloads. Not to mention the new expansion comes out the last day of feb
I agree with Shalmanese on just about everything. I would go with a bigger 7200 rpm hard drive over a 36 gig 10,000 rpm drive, though. For game performance, your video card, cpu and ram are all far more important than hard drive speed. A faster drive may slightly cut down on load times, but I’m pretty sure game play itself will be exactly the same. Plus, it’s a hassle having to restrict what you can keep on the drive – better to just get a 200 gig 7200 rpm drive and not worry about it.
Wow currently occupies around 5.5GB, person in question is no power user, just a Wow junkie. even if it goes to 10 GB there is still 15GB for other basic apps and personal files. If space becomes an issue I will happily add in a second drive later.
Right now, there aren’t any games which can take advantage of the dual cores, so you wouldn’t see any speedup. It may be a little while before dual-core games are available, at which point you can get a far faster dual-core chip for less money.
The x64 does have me a teeny bit worried and I am alot more secure with working in XPhome/pro if I was going to make a cost sacrifice to trade for a better CPU I would rather drop to XP home and spend the difference there on a hotter CPU.
I’m using power magic’s that i stock for my shop, so far they have served well haven’t had one come back yet in the 5 months i have been in business.
This is part of why I am bouncing this setup off the dopers, I have this nagging little voice in my head saying go with the dual cards, late last night I was reading a little more and found that there are alot of problems with dual cards unless you buy a matched pair right out the starting gate and that even different video bios revisions on the cards can cause some ugly conflicts. So Dual 256’s its gonna be. Probably going to take opening the gates of hell to get the framerate below 90 .
from asus’s page on the board
4 x 184-pin DIMM Sockets support max. 4GB DDR400/DDR333/DDR266 ECC/ non-ECC un-buffered DDR SDRAM memory
Agreed here
It will be a burner, but two is a little over the top. I have dual burners and rarely use them, so saving a few bucks on second drive for meatier stuff on the mobo
.