Any thoughts on this rig?

[zaphox]

After a few questions here (many thanks for all the help!) I've come up with the following rig:

For the time being I'm using my old graphics card and CPU heatsink, which has influenced my decision on certain components.

- AMD AM2 Athlon 64 X2 5000+ , Brisbane Core, Dual Core 2.6GHz, 2x 512KB Cache, Retail £54.51
- Abit AX78, AMD 770, S AM2+, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 1066/667/800, SATA II, SATA RAID, ATX £49.62
- 4GB (2x2GB) Corsair TwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC2-6400 (800), 240 Pins, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 5-5-5-18 £57.15
- Antec Solo Quiet Mini Tower ATX Case without PSU - Piano Black/Silver £58.69
- 520W Corsair HX Series Modular PSU, ATX, EPS12V, whisper quiet, 5 year warranty £64.38
- 2 * 250 GB Western Digital WD2500AAKS Caviar SE16, SATA 300, 7200 rpm, 16MB Cache, 9 ms £35.96
- Sony DRU-190S 20x DVD±R, 8x DVD±DL, DVD+RW x8 / -RW x 6, DVD-RAM x12, SATA, Retail (Black/beige) £18.20
- Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium SP1* 32Bit 1Pk OEM (DVD) £60.50

and taken from my old system:

- ATI Radeon X800 PCI-e 256MB
- Zalman CNPS9500-AM2 AMD Aero Flower Cooler, AM2/939/754

Total Price: £434.97


So, are there any glaring errors here?! I would just like to know if it's all compatable, or if anyone has any suggestions to improve it (without really chaning the cost!)

Also, could someone suggest some good thermal paste please?

btw, I know Intel CPUs are currently a lot better than AMD but I already have the AM2 heatsink, and for £55 the 2.6GHz Brisbane looks good enough for what I need.

[staffsMike]

It's a great chip anyway, as I said in the other post I have the black edition 5000+ and it's fantastic

I might be tempted to go for a 500GB AAKS and save £20 or the new 640GB AAKS which £60 which is still a £10 saving and it's a pretty damn fast drive even if you were planing on raid 0 for the those drives. If you plan on Raid 1 then all is well.

Everything else looks good.

[zaphox]

Heh, I always get 2 HDs due to paranoia. I've had about 4 or 5 disks die on me over the last couple of years so I like to be able to back stuff up regularly with a quick and easy copy and paste over to the second disk. 250 gig is ample for me, anything I download that I want to keep gets stored on optical media.

[Noxvayl]

Why not get Vista Home Premium 64bit? Pointless getting 4Gb of memory when you can only use 3.2Gb of it in 32bit imo and its only £2.12 more expensive so there can't be the price to deter you. Its not like 64bit is the devil, I have it and have had far less problems than I had with 32bit XP!

Other than getting 64bit version of the OS its a very good system for that price

[zaphox]

I really am in two minds about Vista 64bit, some people say it's nothing but trouble and others claim everything works fine!

[staffsMike]

New programs tend to be fine, most games are as far as I have seen. Older software and hardware for that matter are the ones that get tricky.

So some people will have a great time with it and others will get very annoyed.

[Noxvayl]

Drivers are out for almost everything that work in 64bit Windows. The catalyst drivers for 64bit support your GFX(AMD GAME Drivers & Tools) so that's not a problem and everything else in your rig is perfectly fine for vista so in terms of hardware incompatibility you are fine.

Only thing to check would be applications you added to windows which you use often. Some old ones have problems but most of them have been resolved by microsoft now so its not nearly as bad as people think.

One thing you have to do on vista is turn UAC off, its the most annoying thing on vista EVER! The safety it brings is dwarfed by its annoyance, I mean who in their right mind is not annoyed about telling windows 3 times that you want to open something. But this UAC is for 32bit as well.

[Blitzen]

I really am in two minds about Vista 64bit, some people say it's nothing but trouble and others claim everything works fine!

Its beautiful and works very well now.
Remember, there are still people with issues with XP. If you take your time and get everything just right then the chances of an issue with Vista 64Bit are very slim indeed.

[Noxvayl]

Its beautiful and works very well now.
Remember, there are still people with issues with XP. If you take your time and get everything just right then the chances of an issue with Vista 64Bit are very slim indeed.

So true

It amazes me how much people complain about vista and 90% of the time its there fault for not getting familiar with the product.

When someone says vista is crap I reply with NO! The person using vista is crap. All you need is some simple knowledge of how it works and you can get everything to work just fine

[staffsMike]

So true

It amazes me how much people complain about vista and 90% of the time its there fault for not getting familiar with the product.

When someone says vista is crap I reply with NO! The person using vista is crap. All you need is some simple knowledge of how it works and you can get everything to work just fine

But when it comes to PC world buyers etc.. they just want it to work and the countless tweeks and nonsense that goes along with running vista bugs the hell out of me.

It's naff but it can be good you're right.

Mostly turning anything off that distinguishes it from xp helps

[FifthFreedom]

I just don't see any reasons to buy Vista.

What is it that Vista does better? (Other than being a 64 bit OS obviously..)

With a whole bunch of reasons why not and no reasons to, I just don't see the point.

[staffsMike]

With XP saved for the foreseeable future.. until I get my hands on a Windows 7 beta.. I'm inclined to agree. I've gone back to XP on everything but my laptop which I will at some point anyway.

Vista's OK on my desktop, nothing special though. Bogs the laptop down though which is thoroughly frustrating and I feel very sorry for people buying £300ish laptops with vista on.. they must be terrible (unless you do all the things to make vista better... turn everything new off )

[Noxvayl]

I just don't see any reasons to buy Vista.

What is it that Vista does better? (Other than being a 64 bit OS obviously..)

With a whole bunch of reasons why not and no reasons to, I just don't see the point.

Here are but a few reasons to buy vista:
1. Better use of memory
2. DX10
3. Switch between windows(thanks to dragon software)
4.1 Better organisation of files which leads to less fragmentation which gives you a better working system without having to fiddle with defrags and registry cleaners(which most users are un-aware of)
.2 Also helps anti virus software work more effectively
5. Better firewall for integrated protection, basically no need for 3rd party firewalls
6. Windows defender as standard to keep spyware and general crap off your PC
7. Better looking(if your into aesthetics of software)
8. Better processing of sound to make on board chips sound good and high end cards to sound even better

That good enough for you?

[zaphox]

Thanks for the Vista 64-bit input guys, I think I will try it after all the positive comments here.

I was just thinking, would 8GB of RAM be overkill?! I mean it's so cheap at the moment it's tempting to just fill up the mobo, but would it actually make any noticeable difference?

[staffsMike]

Thats probably a tad overkill lol

I'd certainly give 64bit a shot but 32bit.. Thats where I would stick with XP at the moment.