Building a system for HL2

[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 3800+ / AMD FX-53

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

[mike_w]

CPU - Unless you have piles of money, I would probably opt for the 3800+. As you said, it is much cheaper with little performance hit.

RAM - I would go with the Crucial Ballistix out of those three. It has tight timings, and its from Crucial, meaning you can expect good service from them, and good reliability.

Floppy drive - Get one. It's not exactly expensive, and you'll need it for things like BIOS flashing. I believe that you need to use a floppy to install Windows with SATA anyway.

Graphics card - Again, unless you have plenty of money, I'd advise the 6800GT since its a fair bit cheaper with little performance loss.

PSU - For that setup you'll want plenty of power, so those sort of PSUs are the ones you want to be looking at.

[-mb-]

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 3800+ / AMD FX-53

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

1. Yeah the 3800+ is fine, the extra L2 cache isn't worth, and probably won't make much difference now or in the future, especially as regards gaming.

2. The price difference is due to the different chipsets used, and different equipment bundled or provided by additional chips onboard. The Asus and Abit both use the inferior Via K8T800, which is slower (in terms of Hypertransport) and lacks a few other features, inclduing a decent AGP/PCI lock, which is required for overclocking, not that overclocking is very worthwhile with Athlon 64s anyway. The MSI and the Gigabyte use the favoured nVidia nForce3 250Gb. Asus and Abit are great manufaturers, and will inevitably launch Socket 939 motherboards using the nForce3.

3. 10,000rpm drives are definitely noisier, and two will really be rather noisy! Does this bother you? Also, with Raid 0, if one drive goes, then the contents of the whole array are lost, but presumably this would be an installation, rather than storage drive?

4. All these memories are good, although the Crucial stuff is a new unproven range, though already well thought of. Corsair is the best, but also the priciest. My GeiL stuff is great though!

5. Gainward are the best, but really very pricey; why not just get a standard 6800GT (e.g. XFX) and put a nice Arctic Cooling VGA cooler on? The Ultra probably isn't worth the extra money, whereas a GT provides a good cost/prformance balance.

6. Antecs are the best, but Tagan are also excellent value. I've never heard of OCZ power supplies though...
You are right to be looking at 480W power supplies, you will need at least that for an Athlon 64 with a 6800!

a - Changing CPU heatsink won't invalidate it's warranty, so long as it is a manufacturer approved one. The Zalman 7000 one I have is truly peaceful and performs well. It's also quite easy to fit.

b - If you have good headphones, then you might still benefit from an Audigy. Neither the K8T800 or nForce3 250Gb include great sound (only the nForce 2 did), and it's nice to remove some load from the CPU.

c - I consider LiteON to be the best value drives (they also manufacture for Sony). Make sure you get a reasonably future-proof DVD burner that can burn dual-layer DVDs ("DVD9" standard). I'm sure those two drives are fine, I think NEC are a bit better than LG though.
The real question is what you want the LG for at all? - the NEC burns CDs and reads DVDs too.

d - With the case, also look at what is bundled in terms of fans, and look at how big the fan mounts are (bigger = slower = quieter). 120mm is the best. Also decide whether you want a removable motherboard tray.

e - Floppys are still handy...why not, it's only £5! But get a USB pen drive too, they're so handy.

There are great package deals around, howver; don't rule out MESH, Evesham, Savrow, Alienware etc. If you're not confident and want the support, think of the money you're spending....

Hope this helps.

[MAS]

In no particular order:

1) I'd go with Nvidia - I think their cards are better value at the moment. However, I'd go for a BFG 6800 GT - lifetime warranty, cheapest GT on the market at the moment, overclocked out the box and supposedly clock really well. Tbh I wouldnt touch Gainward at the moment, IMO they've seriously damaged their reputation with the batches of duff cards they've released. If you're looking at overclocking, the beauty of the BFG is that you can clock it up to ultra speeds safe in the knowledge that you've got a lifetime warranty behind it. I think the top end cards are poor value - e.g. an ultra costs £380, a BFG GT costs £250. The ultra costs over 50% more, and yet the performance increase is about 20%. This difference disappears when you consider that a lot of GTs will happily clock to ultra speeds (or close).

2) Like you say, s939 boards are still coming along at the moment. The next few months will probably see the platform settle, but I dont know how soon you want to build. The problem with PCs is that you can always just wait another few months because something bigger and better will come along. There comes a point where you just have to make a decision and go with it

3) I'd go for the NECND3500 DVD-RW . Fantastic pieces of kit.

4) 480w might be a bit more than you need but you should never underestimate the importance of a quality power supply. It's usually worth the extra money, especially as your system will probably change over time.

5) I'm not sure who told you that using a different heatsink invalidates the warranty. AFAIK if you're using the correct heatsink (i.e. one rated by AMD to deal with that speed processor) there shouldnt be an issue. When you RMA a faulty CPU you only send the CPU back anyway, so they have no idea what heatsink you've been using.

6) If you're spending all that money and you want a quiet system, yes, it's worth considering some quiet fans for your case. One thing to bear in mind (and this links into the PSU point above) is that your PSU also has fans in and these can also affect the noise level. Try to go for quietish PSU.

7) Aside from visual appeal, check to see that the case has plenty of room, and good options for cooling it.

8) You could buy an Audigy. I cant speak for other chipsets but if you have a motherboard with the nForce chipset, dont bother. The Nforce comes with Soundstorm, which is excellent quality.

9) I'd go for the 3800+. As you say, in terms of price vs performance, it comes out on top. It's not worth another £100 IMO for the FX53.

As for your question about buying a pre-built system, that's interesting. The three main reasons I build my own PCs are 1) price - okay, building your own doesnt save you tons of money, but I generally find that it is cheaper, 2) choice - you can choose the exact parts you want, nothing more, nothing less (which can also help with price), 3) satisfaction - cos I do quite like tinkering. If you can find manufacturers that are offering the system you want at a price that's less than what you can build it for, either they're doing something very right, or you're doing something wrong. Can we have an example? I dont look at prebuilt systems anymore but when I do I usually find that they're a little more expensive than the sum of their parts. As I've said, you dont save a ton of money by doing it yourself. Big companies obviously obtain bulk discounts, but then they also have overheads to cover.

It's worth considering all options. If I could find exactly what I wanted and it was cheaper than building it myself, I think I'd be a bit silly not to just buy the pre-made system. Like you say, you also get the warranty, which means that if anything goes wrong, someone else has to deal with the problem, not you. And that's the only thing I'd say about building your own PC - you might have to deal with the odd problem, and it can be frustrating sometimes. But thanks to places like Hexus, you have a massive amount of expertise which can solve any problem.

Sorry I cant answer all the questions - some I dont know enough about, some I dont have time to look up all the parts in question.

[SwiftEdge]

Thanks for the replies.

You've definitely raised a few points that I had not thought of.

I think if I were to get a 6800 GT then I would prefer one that is already overclocked, I doubt I would be able to manage anything quite as stable as that from the manufactures myself. I had not heard about the faulty cards from Gainward.
Do you know any retailers in the UK that stock the BFG GT OC, I can't seem to spot it. Also how come it is only clocked at 375mhz while the Gainward one is up to 400mhz, does this really matter?

I'd picked both the NEC and LG drives so that I have the ability to do a direct DVD/CD copy (not that I have any plans to, just nice to know it's there if I need it)

I had not even considered the idea that the motherboard running the audio would effect performance, just like how motherboards had to take the video load before graphics cards eh. Perhaps I should get one of the cheaper Audigys, seems silly to spend so much on everything else then be slowed down by sound.

The Overclockers.co.uk complete Ultima system is almost exactly what I want and comes at a good price, although it does not appear to have any addition extras thrown in or have an overall warranty (they probably still cover the individual parts).

Any idea how much better RAID0 performance is on two HDs with it than without? Would having a 10,000 RPM HD noticeably speed things up, it currently takes like 3-6mins to load a Doom3 map on my current system.

[Mblaster]

I have the BFG 6800GT OC and purchased mine from PCW Component Store (yes that is PC World )

http://www.pcwcomponentcentre.co.uk/...fgr68256gtocuk

Running audio on the motherboard make so little difference that it's not noticeable (1-2%).

I have never used a PC with a RAID setup, but from what I have read it seem although it only makes a minimal difference for a desktop PC's and the big benefits are seen when used on a server. I got a S-ATA Maxtor 80gb HDD and i get no more than 30sec loading times in Doom. Check this article at AnandTech for info on the performance benefits of RAID and Raptor HDDs.

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/sho...spx?i=2101&p=1

[MAS]

Onboard audio really isnt going to put much of a strain on the kind of system you're building.

Dont get me wrong, the Gainward looks like a good card on paper. 25mhz isnt that much difference; the BFG will easily clock to that, and just look at the price difference - the BFG is £260 and the Gainward is £340. £340 for a GT is just ridiculous; it may be clocked to ultra speeds, but they're charging ultra prices. May as well just buy a proper ultra if you want to spend that kind of money.

The only place in the UK that does the BFG is PCW - www.pcwcomponentcentre.com .
I dont think they have any in stock at the mo.

[pre]

1: Extra Cache does give a sizeable boost in performance but the way most applications are compiled you wouldnt necessarily notice it. If you have the cash go for it.

2: Asus A8V Deluxe / Abit AV8 3RD Eye / MSI K8N Neo2-G / Gigabyte GA-K8NSNXP
Depends on whether you want to overclock. At stock the Asus is the fastest but the Nforce 250 boards are likely to overclock better (working PCI/AGP locks) but have worse build quality and touchier compatibility with different memory types than KT8800 boards. The Abit has a working PCI/lock but the 3rd Eye is a new revision of a good but buggy KT880 board (mostly uGuru issues with the non-3rd Eye version).

3: No idea.
4: OCZ 1GB (2x512MB) PC3700 Dual Chan. PE is most compatible and best for ramping HTT/FSB speeds. Crucial is cheaper and nearly as good but compatibility with Nforce 250 is a bit iffy on some boards. Corsair 1GB DDR XMS3200XL (Pro or Plat.) TwinX for stock speed operation.

5: No idea.

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

I'd consider going for a higher wattage PSU than you need. The Antec range are better for overclocking and rail/voltage stability on the 12v rail (important as A64s draw a significant amount of amps on it) than the Tagan in my experience. The Powerstream is getting quite good reviews and is popular because of its adjustable pots. If your budget can stretch I'd consider getting a Antec TrueControl 550w, TTGI Superflower or even the King a PC Power & Cooling 510 Deluxe.



1- Depends on application design. SuperPi is influenced by dual-channel, 3Dmark more by cache. Same would apply to future games.

2- The Asus is a VIA KT880 chipset. The Gigabyte a NForce3 250 board. The Gigabyte has integrated features (potentially giving better performance in these areas) such as GBit lan, firewall, usb, sata and firewire that do not push data through a 133Mb/s PCI bus. If you can wait the DFI 939 board looks exceptional although it may be anything upto a month away.

3- Minimal in most desktop applications.

4- You should consider a) compatibility b) overclocking and c) timing (performance). Tighter timings + higher FSB = better performance. For the A64's efficient memory controller FSB is more significant than timings.

5- Your choice. Performance on both branches is likely to improve - ATi via more efficient drivers and NVidia via superior features.

6- Not really. All new PSUs seem to ram up the amount of amps supplied on 3.3v/5v rails but hitting 40amps for 24/7 operation (rather than peak) on the 12v seems to be out of range of this year. A significant amount of things run off the 12v so having enough here is important if you want to overclock.

Misc.-

a- AMD has a HSF weight limit (300g iirc) which would make most aftermarket solutions a warranty breaker. Then again just using arctic silver invalidates your warranty but as long as you do things right then no one will know...

b- An Audigy is on par if not better than Soundstorm (only available on NForce 2 boards) - which is just about the only respectable solution for hardware 3d acceleration in gaming. For £35 for an Audigy 2 is pretty irresistable.

c- No idea.

Prebuilt systems often skimp in critical areas necessary for getting maximum performance and upgradeability. Options you find in a motherboard like a Abit and even a Gigabyte will be totally absent (eg FSB/HTT, vdimm, vcore adjust) because it costs money to test these features. PSUs and cooling are often basic and will meet or slightly undermeet power requirements giving you no room to upgrade without a separate purchase.

7.1 speakers might be generic with a poor construction and frequency operating range. A 19" TFT might have poor refresh rate (24ms) resulting in ghosting in fps games or have a poor colour/dot pitch giving bad image representation.

You can save money with pre-built systems but are you really saving money in long run?

[spazman]

If your builting a system for Half Life 2 you will want an ATi graphics card as they are faster with the Source engine.

[SwiftEdge]

It's strange what PC World decides to sell and not sell. The BFG 6800GT OC looks fantastic value. Overclocking it to base Ultra speeds should not be a problem even with the supplied fan right? I've seen some people going up to 50Mhz more than the Ultra and still running stable.

I'm not too keen on the idea of manually adjusting PSU wattage (at least I think thats what the TrueControl allows). How come it's needed anyway, doesn't the system just draw what power it needs anyway?

Since I don't want to overclock anything other than the GT to Ultra speeds would the best memory be the Corsair?

I had thought to get a Zalman CNPS7000B Cu, but the weight is over 700g (the AlCu still over 400). If I'm not OCing the CPU is it worth bothering with? Maybe better to get something that runs quieter and under weight allowance.

How come some cases have like 5x80mm fans while others have just the one 120mm fan. I know that the airflow is more than double but wouldn't having 5 fans directed at key system points be better than just the one large fan?
I think those with 2x120mm, one front the other rear, seem to be a good bet. Is the extra airflow between 92mm and 120mm worth 8 more dBs (looking at the Vantec Stealth)?

Since an order 6800 GT is a couple of weeks away, and HL2 may not be released in september anyway, perhaps I am better off waiting for the DFI 939 motherboard.
If you had the £120 or whatever, would you go for the Ultra over GT or the Fx-53 over 3800+. Where is that money better spent?

I'm hoping that upon HL2's release Nvidia should come out with better drivers, and then match the performance of the ATI. I believe ATI only has the advantage at the moment since they have been working with Valve to optimise performance. Considering the Nvidia cards are so close in benchmarks anyway I don't think that choosing ATI just for one game would be sensible.

[mike_w]

How come some cases have like 5x80mm fans while others have just the one 120mm fan. I know that the airflow is more than double but wouldn't having 5 fans directed at key system points be better than just the one large fan?

Since 120mm fans can push more air at slower speeds, they can be run more slowly, making them quieter.

Since an order 6800 GT is a couple of weeks away, and HL2 may not be released in september anyway, perhaps I am better off waiting for the DFI 939 motherboard.
If you had the £120 or whatever, would you go for the Ultra over GT or the Fx-53 over 3800+. Where is that money better spent?

If you're going to be waiting anyway, then you might want to wait for PCI Express. But I wouldn't spend £120 more on an FX, or Ultra uless I was rich! The performance gains are small, for a fair amount more money. I don't think it's worth it, especially considering the gains can be easily made up with some overclocking.

As for Geforces Vs Radeons, I'd go for the Geforces right now. At the moment, performance seems pretty even in current games, and the Geforce should be more future proof since it has the greater features.

[MAS]

Not to turn this into an ATI v Geforce thread

ATI are slightly ahead in the Source benchmarks. It's nothing that major. The bottom line is you can have a GT for £260 and clock it to ultra speeds. Or you can buy an X800 for ~ £300 which, even if you overclock it, is never going to be a X800XT because it's missing pipelines.

So I look at it like this: you can have an 'ultra' for £260, or a slower card, the X800, for £40 more. When you look at it like that, I dont see how you could favour ATI.

Dont get me wrong, I like ATI's equipment, I have an ATI card myself. I just think that the X800s are overpriced at the moment.

As far as the RAM goes - if you're not going to overclock it, just get the cheapest reliable brand you can.

[pre]

Correct on PCWorld weirdness. Perhaps they have buying power and got a good deal from BFG as the official UK outlet. Yes you can clock a GT to Ultra but you dont have the slightly better cooling on some Ultras or the second molex to give a cleaner voltage line to the card which is why Ultras tend to clock into the 450+ range with more ease than GTs on average. That said is the extra MHz worth the cash? Thats up to you.

You dont really adjust the voltage you just tweak to give an optimal signal really. Theoretically you want the voltage on a particular device to be either on or off. Since electical signals are in practice analogue its not a square wave and tend to droop like a wave. Depending on clock frequencies you might hit a point on a signal where something is neither on (1) or off (0). By adjusting pots you reduce resistance and adjust the signal slightly so its "cleaner". It's like setting your scales to give an accurate 0 point. Some motherboards use different phase power solutions, some capacitors might not be as efficient as they could be. These all contribute to why you might want to adjust a pot.

The Corsair XL would be fine if you dont want to overclock CPU much. 2-2-2-5 is as fast as you can get.

The weight on a Zalman may be 700g but it has a solid fitting method iirc which means it'll be perfectly safe unless you want to move your PC around a lot. Don't know how loud it is though - I thought Zalmans were generally quiet. You might want to consider a Thermalright SLK-948U which is slightly lighter iirc if it worries you and which allows you to fit a fan size of your choice.

Fans - someones already mentioned this. In general - larger fans drone rather than pitch. You want to look for fans around 20-26db for case fans if you have more fans. If you have fewer then 27-32db is fine for most people.

Since an order 6800 GT is a couple of weeks away, and HL2 may not be released in september anyway, perhaps I am better off waiting for the DFI 939 motherboard.
If you had the £120 or whatever, would you go for the Ultra over GT or the Fx-53 over 3800+. Where is that money better spent?

I would say an FX-53 is a better purchase than an Ultra. It would also allow you to adjust the multiplier off the CPU upwards (unlike the 3800+ which you can only lower multiplier) should you change your mind and decide to overclock just CPU at a later date.

I would still call both a luxury for running HL2 since a 3800+/GT would probably run 16x12 with some sort of AA/AF fine unless you only call 100fps constant playable. A dedicated sound card would definitely give a few frames since onboard solutions still use some CPU cycles.

Nforce 4 will may turn up after New Year and any move to that will almost certainly mean needing a PCI-X GFX card. When you buy is upto you.

[SwiftEdge]

Thanks again for the replies, they have all been really helpful.

Of course this is not intended to be some kind of dedicated HL2 machine, its just something that I, like many others, have been looking forward to for a long time and I really wanna make the most of it. I felt that since I can afford top spec I might as well go for it, staying a bit away from the very extreme which is always crazy expensive. Plus my current PC can only run Doom 3 at 640*480 comfortably, amazing just how good it looks even at this resolution, so I thought I was in need of a change.

I just keep thinking, 'oh well the next one up is only a couple more weeks worth of earning, and I'll get a few more months life out of it so why not' which has led to greater and greater amounts of spending.

I'll give it a couple more weeks before making any final decisions, hopefully september will see a few prices drops and I can spend that difference on a slightly faster somethingorother
Sure I will be back to ask for jumper / memory configuration settings.

[SwiftEdge]

Just looking around and saw this topic about choosing a prebuilt gaming pc:
http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=26393

The top mesh system is, in particular, the one that I was refering to for having extras. It has all the high end stuff listed so far, plus a 19" SONY TFT Flat Panel Monitor and Creative Inspire T7700 - 7.1 Surround Speakers. I believe the speakers are pretty decent ones, they don't give any other specific details about the Monitor.
What annoys me most about many of the prebuilt PCs is that they don't specify exactly what components they will be using. Which 6800 U is included, what type of Corsair memory and what make of HD. The difference between the 6800 Us, Corsair DDR 400 memory's' and 150Mb/s SATA HDs is probably very small, I guess thats the advantage of self-build.
Still, you would think that anyone spending £2000 on a system would quite like to know these details (unless they have unlimited money). Why would Mesh not make them clear, unless they have something to hide.

Even if the monitor is not the best in its class it would be nice to have just as a 2ndary display. The 7.1 speakers sweeten the deal, and having 3yrs back to base warranty can't hurt. Oh, and there's even another 250GBs worth of HD in there, yesh.

[MAS]

Just looking around and saw this topic about choosing a prebuilt gaming pc:
http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=26393

What annoys me most about many of the prebuilt PCs is that they don't specify exactly what components they will be using. Which 6800 U is included, what type of Corsair memory and what make of HD... Why would Mesh not make them clear, unless they have something to hide.

Well, exactly. They dont advertise all the various components because they probably wont be anything that special. It's not so much that they have anything to hide, they just dont have anything to shout about either.

I think you'll also find they refrain from giving too many details because it might just add to the confusion of buying a pre-built system. A lot of people who buy pre-built systems dont necessarily know or care about who manufactured the individual components - if they did, they'd probably be building their own PC. For your average consumer, I'm sure computer specs are detailed enough, e.g. '512mb DDR RAM' is going to be easier to digest than 'Corsair Value 3200 RAM DDR CAS 2.5 etc etc'. And I'm sure the companies would rather just be selling PCs than spending hours explaining the intricacies of components and what every detail means. That's only my theory, but I think it makes sense.

I would have thought that most decent PC companies will give you a full spec if you ask them for it. If you're spending that kind of money I'm sure they'd understand your desire to know, and they probably do get enthusiasts asking for more details.