New Rig Advice

[robtotheb]

looking for some advice about my new rig...
This is what I was thinking so far:

Athlon 64 3500 Winchester (overclocked)
Asus A8V Deluxe
Enermax Coolergiant EG385AX - 380 Watt
x2 Kingston 512MB DDR PC3200 400MHz CL3
ASUS V9999 GT Geforce FX 6800 GT + (overclocked with ARCTIC COOLING VGA NV SILENCER 5)
200Gb Maxtor Plus 10 (7200rpm, 8MB) SATA

Any improvements I could make (with keeping around the same price!)?

oh yeah and what is a good case to get?

[MD]

give us your budget and it will allow us to better advise you....

m@

[rbarr777]

I would change the mobo and cpu to a DFI NF4 board and wait a week and get the new 3200+ Venice, there supposed to overclock very well and will probably outperform the winchester if your planning to do this ( which you do say you are) and the DFI is the board to do it in.

more or less the same price if not cheaper, (not sure on the price of the Asus board)

[skuzgib]

Possibly get some better RAM? It's quite cheap at the moment.

[YorkieBen]

that ram wont allow you to overclock easily, you can get TCCD ram for about £140 quid a gig at the moment

Asus graphics cards use a non-standard fan connector so unless you want to do some soldering/have an adaptor the arctic cooler fan wont fit.

[robuk23]

(this is robtotheb - cant log into that account for some reason...)

Thanks for the replies. I guess my budget is about £800 plus i already bought the Athlon 3500 Winchester, I didnt know about the venice core *I kick myself* Would it be worth selling the 3500 for a 3200venice?
The advice on the Asus card is very handy, i didn't know that!

[prehensile]

tccd? how much is his motherboard up to? . for 60 quid you can easily get RAM that clocks almost 250. whatever motherboard you get, look into getting a passive North Bridge heat sink and a low noise 70 (?) mm fan for the AMD heat sink. if you're mad like some you can superglue an 80 mm fan on with a bit of head scratching and a razor blade .

[robuk23]

tccd? how much is his motherboard up to? . for 60 quid you can easily get RAM that clocks almost 250. whatever motherboard you get, look into getting a passive North Bridge heat sink and a low noise 70 (?) mm fan for the AMD heat sink. if you're mad like some you can superglue an 80 mm fan on with a bit of head scratching and a razor blade .

What is a passive North Bridge heat sink?!


Any more suggesstions? Want to buy it all asap....

Athlon 64 3500 Winchester (bought already)
DFI NF4
Which RAM?
Geforce 6800 - good brands? (with ARCTIC COOLING VGA NV SILENCER 5)
200Gb Maxtor SATA
Enermax Coolergiant EG385AX - 380 Watt <--- this enough?
Good Case?

[Lee H]

Passive - No fan - just a big block of thermoconductive metal such as copper or aluminium with fins in to help airflow through it remove excess heat.

As for memory - it all depends but I would get some good quality memory thats able to run @ 5-2-2-2 timings as the AMD64 platform is much more responsive and gets better memory benchmarks in SANDRA with cas 2 as opposed to cas 3

[Firelord]

That PSU is not gonna cut the mustard at all by any stretch. look at the tagan 480w

[robuk23]

As for memory - it all depends but I would get some good quality memory thats able to run @ 5-2-2-2 timings as the AMD64 platform is much more responsive and gets better memory benchmarks in SANDRA with cas 2 as opposed to cas 3

I have no idea what any of that meant!

+ Tagan 480w sounds good will add it to the spec

[Lee H]

I have no idea what any of that meant!

Never fear - Corsairs guides are fairly straight forward and show the results in graphical form

http://www.corsairmemory.com/corsair...erformance.pdf

Hope this helps you understand a bit more

[nvening]

any update on the spec? Get a seagate HDD, much better. Case? Monitor? Its not at all worth changing to a 3200+ ven

[robuk23]

Athlon 64 3500 Winchester
DFI NF4 <--- not sure what make or where to buy it
Very confused about the RAM!
Geforce 6800 (with ARCTIC COOLING VGA NV SILENCER 5)
200Gb Seagate SATA
Tagan 480w
No idea on the Case
Will buy the Monitor later

[rbarr777]

DFI NF4 board can be found at either of the 2 following stores.

http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/acatalog/...ds_ATX_49.html

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/Socket_939.html

I would go for the Ultra-D model at £108 (unless you want SLI , which IMO is not really worth it yet) as its exactly the same as the more expensive one ( without SLI of course...)

out of the 2 stores above I would definitely buy off Kustom PCs as they have excellent customer service compared to overclockers.co.uk.

the 3200/3500 Venice chip? If money is no object then go for the 3500 , it has a multi of 11 as opposed to the 3200 which has 10. really depends on the ram you are going to get , if its TCCD or something with high FSB capabilities and money is an issue then go for the 3200. If you are overclocking then depending on your cooling both cpus should be just as capable of clocking to more or less the same speed.

[rbarr777]

but then again ive just read previous posts and you have already got the CPU , which isnt a bad one either... clock very well. so disregard my comments on the cpu!!