My customized pc

[JackTheCruel]

So I'm gonna costumize a PC, now I've never done this before so I'd appreciate any help you can offer. Here are the components I've come up with. Please let me know if you see something that should be replaced...

CPU: AMD BARTON 2500+ O/C
MEMORY: TwinMOS PC3200 DDR-DIMM 2x 512
VIDEO CARD: Sapphire Radeon 9800 Atlantis PRO 128MB
POWER SUPPLY: Q-tec 550W
MOTHERBOARD: Abit NF7-S nForce2 ver 2
HDD : Was thinking of using one from my old pc. Will that affect performance alot?
CPU cooling: I'm not sure, hope you can help me with this one. I'm planning on overclocking so I guess the cooling should be pretty good.

again any comment is appreciated...
thanks
/Emil -- I apologize for me english (swedish)

[Russ]

cpu cooling, get the jet 7
hdd, get a couple of matched drives, 2xseagate 80gb for example, and run them on raid 0.

and burn ur q-tec PSU and buy anything else to replace it.

[dgr]

[QUOTE=Russ]hdd, get a couple of matched drives, 2xseagate 80gb for example, and run them on raid 0./QUOTE]

have to say: ignore this advice completely.

raid0 gives a slight increase in performance at the expense of losing ALL your data should one of the drives in the array go.

maybe a seasoned pc user who backs up over network daily/more but please, advising a newbie to?

BADBADBAD idea.

my advice - get a quick SATA drive.

dgr

[Alex]

How about this power supply:

http://web6.scan.co.uk/Products/Info.asp?WPID=59491

This CPU cooler:

The Coolermaster Aero 7+ from here:

http://www.aria.co.uk/DisplayProduct...age=4&orderby=

My mate has just got a Coolermaster Jet 7, its great, but more expensive and maybe a bit OTT, but more annoyingly it has a constantly flashing LED, which is very annoying if you have a window case. Great if you can afford it though.

As for your hard disk, are you finding that you're running out of space? Or that its too loud? What have you currently got? If you do decide you want a new one then theres a 120GB Maxtor available on special offer here:

http://www.komplett.co.uk/k/ki.asp?a...&CatID=&GrpID=

Or an 80GB avaialable on offer here (another Maxtor):

http://www.aria.co.uk/specials.asp#710

Both are quite decent hard disks.

Hope this helps!

Alex

[CrapshoT]

change the psu m8 keep well away from Q-tec get yourself an antec psu dont buy cheap rubbish !!
as for cooling a sk-7 is cheap and put a decent fan on top and you got a great cooler
get a couple of 80mm fans for the front and back of your case and you should be alright
make sure your 2500xp is a pre week 40 if you can best clockers
good luck with it m8

[SilentDeath]

CWT = rebaged antec. get the 550w if you can afford it, its one of the best psus available atm. if you want to save a bit of money the 450w is plenty. getting an antec branded one would cost £10-30 more!
sk-7 should be a good cpu cooler, anything thats made compleatly of copper will be, and bigger = better, usually. get a near silent fan for it though, 20cfm is enuf airflow. or get a thermaltake smartfan2 (about £7) or other fan that has adjustable RPM.
all pre-week 40 means is that the cpus are unlocked, infact i would expect the better cpus to be the most recent... there are wyas to unlock cpus but it takes some effort, but if you get yourself some decent ram (any pc3200 should goto pc3500/3700) you shouldnt have any need to unlock it
have a look at the other nforrce2 mobos aswell, i like my nf7-s's, but next time i think i would definalty try a diff board (one that clocks further, maybe..), if this one died.

[funnelhead]

I'm with SilentDeath on the psu - you can pick these up from www.scan.co.uk
450W bout £30.

The only other thing is to consider getting the DFI infinity motherboard. Generally regarded as the best board now, and a consensus that it is the best overclocker, reaching fsb's of 250..(even seen some nut get it to 280). It's best feature is the 4 S-ATA ports though, which is a great deal more future proof than other boards. If you're personally attached to getting the abit - still a great board.

dfi infinity can be had from cpucity.co.yk for £69

Easy now, F

[JackTheCruel]

Thanks for all your quick respones...
Almost everyone suggested that I buy better PSU. I realise that the q-tec is not top notch but isn't OK from the tests I've read it seems to be pretty good:
http://users.fmg.uva.nl/rstoter/550watt/
http://www.frostytech.com/articleview.cfm?ArticleID=409

Well if you still insist that I buy another PSU then do you guys think the Enermax 431W will get the job done?

thanks again
/Emil -- SWEDEN

[Alex]

Short answer, yes. Enermax are a good make.

[Knoxville]

Volcano 11 HSF and a quick sata boot drive with a large ide one for storage would be my reccomendation. other than that the spec is fine.

[SilentDeath]

hdd- what size is your old one? hdd's havent changed much recently, so for performance your old one is probably fine if your happy witht he size.
hdds are getting cheap though, if you were getting another one id go for a sata version, there is no measureable performance increase from it, but they dont cost that much more and the cables are nicer, aswell as being future proof...

[Stewart]

Fast SATA drive, Volcano 12 HSF, Antec 350w or above.

Jet7 looks great,doesn't give you £30 worth of cooling though. My Volcano 12 cost £16 and head-to-head, comes out on top.

Just don't buy a Q-Tec, never use a dodgy power supply with things like 9800pro's and decent motherboards attached to it.

[JackTheCruel]

Ok thank you very much, three questions:

1. Most of the PSUs you guys have suggested are probably to expensive for me. Around 100 $ is my current PSU budget, any suggestions?

2. On other forums alot of guys have opinions about the TwinMos memory, that it'll be to slow and not on par with my other gear etc. Do you agree with that and if so what do you suggest. I could of course buy 2x 256 corsair for about the same price but I'd loose 512mb.

3. When you suggest cooling options then must of you suggest a good heat sink. It seems that it's better to have a very good heat sink and a fan thats OK or just a very good fan?

[SilentDeath]

JackTheCruel - where abouts are you? i assume not in the UK due to $.. assuming US$, the 450w psu i recommned (CWT450w) is about $60. if in the US you should find better psus than that for about same price..

mem - firslty, mem bandwidth = freq*16 minus the loss from the timing settings. your using a nf7-s motherboard, ive had two of these. the first was a rev1.1 and did about 225fsb with volt mods. the second will do 230fsb without volt mod, before it has problems. so mem faster than pc3500 for you, will be a waste, if my mobos are anything to go by.
if your not bothered about how much money you spend, get corsair pc3500 c2cp, which is what i have, im runing at 220fsb at 2-2-2-6 timings at 2.8v, which is quite good, with more voltage, it could probably get to 240fsb at same timings.
there is no benifit of having ram that does faster than pc3500 on loose timings, you will get worse bandwidth.
will you be overclocking your cpu or doing chipset volt mods?
this may help you chose, my tests with diff ram timings and cpu speed:
3dm2k1 = 17412 - 2.2ghz cpu 200fsb cl2.5-3-3-7
3dm2k1 = 17677 - 2.3ghz cpu 209fsb cl2.5-3-3-7
3dm2k1 = 17744 - 2.2ghz cpu 200fsb cl2-2-2-12
the test with 2.2ghz cpu 220fsb cl2-2-2-12 was about 17900 iirc.

a good heatsink means you dont need a powerfull fan. the quality of the fan is not relevant (assuming ball bearings are used as they are quieter). with an slk800 i was able to use about 10cfm 80mm fan, that means the heatsink had a large surface area, and most of the air blown onto it is taking away lots of heat. make sure your heatsink is compleatly copper as lower thermal resistance helps a lot, and more fins the better.
a powerfull fan, pushes more air, and will mean more niose, unless the fan is bigger. if the fan is bigger, then the extra air it pushes, will be wasted, unless the heatsink is big enuf. for normal axial fans, most of the air is blown at the edges, and not much at all in the middle. also, the middle is usully the source of the heat, as the cpu die is quite small, and is in the center. blower fans are probably good, like those used in aero7 and jet 7 coolers, as the air is blown in the center..
also note coolers for pc hardware are muchly overpriced. materials dont cost that much for copper, the rest is made up of labour costs, machine costs, and delivery, as well as profit. i could easly make a slk800 beating heatsink for less than £20, i just cant be arsed.

[JackTheCruel]

Thanks SilentDeath for your long response...
Actually I'm in Sweden (if anbody has wondered why my english is kinda strange thats why) so my possibilties are kind of limited. I'm looking at the price levels and I think pc3500 is probably too expensive but I could instead of geting TwinMos pc3200 2x 512 (dual) get corsair pc3200 1 x 512 or corsair 2x 256 (dual) they're within the same price range. Your thoughts guys?

[Merlin]

Enermax power supplies are great. My 350w enermax runs the PC in my sig and is nice and quiet to boot.

It's one of the adjustable fan speed models and it runs fine with the fan running at its slowest speed, so its nice and quiet. My advice is to get an Enermax.