Building a system for HL2

[blandthaman]

[QUOTE=SwiftEdge]I'm hoping to piece together a new system in time for HL2. I've put together a list of some of the bits that I like the look of and have heard 'good things' about. Unfortunately I'm not all that knowledgeable on the technical side of what will work well together or has the best price/performance ratio.

Please look over my list and say what you think about it. I've listed the components in each section from least to most expensive.

1: AMD 4800 X2 Dual Core

2: Asus A8V Deluxe / Abit AV8 3RD Eye / MSI K8N Neo2-G / Gigabyte GA-K8NSNXP

3: 1x WD Raptor 74GB / 2x Maxtor 120GB in RAID0 / 2x WD Raptor 36.7 in RAID0

4: 2x Crucial Ballistix PC-3200 BL6464Z402 / OCZ 1GB (2x512MB) PC3700 Dual Chan. PE / Corsair 1GB DDR XMS3200XL (Pro or Plat.) TwinX

5: http://www.gainward.de/new/products/...omparison.html where the 'Golden Sample' cards are overclocked versions / Other brand of 6800 Ultra or overclocked 6800 GT

6: OCZ Powerstram 470W / Antec Truepower/Trueblue/Neopower 480W PSU / Tagan 480W ATX



1- Think I will go for the 3800+ . Benchmarks have the 3800+ and FX-53 running similar to one another, certainly no £100+ difference between them. What kind of difference does the increased L2 cache actually have, will there be any greater performance increase with future software?

2- They all seem to near identical features to me. Why is there a £50 price difference between the Asus and the Gigabyte? I've heard some people saying that better socket 939 motherboards will be along soon, are they worth waiting for? What should I be looking for in a motherboard, I quite like the ones with included WiFi.

3- I already have 240GB of storage space in my current PC so not too desperate for lots more. Is the performance difference from having 10,000RPM over 7,200RPM worth the money? What kind of gain does RAID0 offer, I'm not too fussed about potential loss as anything important I will back up on my old drive.

4- Having looked over various FAQs and Guides on RAM I still don't really understand what is best. The ones I have listed here are those that other people have recommended to go with socket 939 CPUs and/or one of the motherboards; even then I am not sure if they are compatible. Are these the best around and what kind of differences are there between them?

5- I've just about decided on getting an Nvidia card over an ATI one. Although the primary motivation for getting this PC is HL2, which so far favors ATI over Nvidia supposedly, so I'm not quite sure why I reached this decision. The Nvidia in my mind appears to be more 'future proof' than the ATI, even if it may lose a few FPS in HL2. While I don't intend to overclock anything myself, lacking in confidence really, I'm quite happy to buy an overclocked card if it's still under warranty. So if the only difference between the Ultra and GT is clock speed, and that can be fixed, then perhaps I should go for the slightly cheaper option.

6- Maybe 480Ws is much more than I need, only picked these because the prices seemed about right and I had heard the names mentioned before. Any suggestions?



Misc.-

a- Should I consider buying different fans/heatsinks to change those that come with the case/CPU. Like most people I would prefer a quieter system, but if changing the heatsink invalidates the CPU's warranty then I would be less keen to do this. I guess that on a non-overclocked system heat should not be a problem, and all the standard parts should be sufficient, right?

b- Lots of motherboards now have supposedly decent onboard soundcards/audio chips. In my current location there is not really room to set up 5+ speakers so I have always used headphones. Would there be any benefit in buying a soundcard (most likely an Audigy) if I am not even going to be using speakers. In fact even if I was to use speakers, is the Audigy worth buying?

c- Pretty sure I want to get the NECND3500 DVD-RW as well as the LG GCC-4521BB CD-RW/DVDR, any other ideas about these? They have some good reviews in many places.

Is there anything else I need to consider. What should I look for in a case other than its visual appeal? Is it still worth bothering with a floppy disk driver (can you make a boot-'disk' from a USB memory stick?).

Finally, I've seen a number of prebuilt systems from well regarded manufacturers that contain just about all the things I want. These are often being sold for less than the sum of their parts with extras such as a 19" TFT and 7.1 speakers. While they may not contain exactly the parts that I want they do appear to be fantastic deals. While I have wanted to build by own PC for the last few years these deals are hard to overlook. The majority of people on this forum have probably built their own. What made you reach that decision when you could have potentially saved a few pounds and received a number of year’s service and warranty? Personally I would like to at least have the experience once and get exactly what I want. Previously I don't think the performance I have gotten from pre-built computers is as good as it could be had I hand picked everything.

Thanks for any advise you can provide[/QUOTE]

[Agent]

Please dont bump threads from 2004!
Create a new thread for this please