Building a system. Opininos?

I would like to build a system for my office PC:

Money is not an issue if something is really worth it. For example I
dont think it is worth the extra $300 to get the Athlon 64 3400 than
the AThlon 3200+.

The Pc will be for office use, however I would like it to be very good
at SETI@HOME. (8500+ units and going......)

CPU Athlon or Intel? AS stated above I dont want to spenfd the extra
$$$ If the percentage increase is small. The cpu must be great at
seti above all since I wont be playing any games on it. (and run
office but all modern pcs can do). Toms hardware doesnt have any last
tests on seti.

Motherboard: It has to be reliable but also support overcloaking.
For my home pc I have an ASUS motherboard p4c800 that overclocks my
pentium 3 g to 3.3 g. iT IS PRETTY STABLE AND i AM SATISFIED.

Ram: 1 gig is a must!

Graphics card? I guess any will do?? Office work mostly. I have an
eizo monitor so a dvi input is an option if it makes the screen
better!

Sound card: Simple, only to hear some videos

DVD writer??? Need a good one since it will there for a long time in
terms of speed.

HArd disk? I was thinking to get the raptor sata 36 Gig for the
system and another for everything else..

Lan card: A stable one? Any ok one will do.

Fan: I need a silent one, at home I have one zalman for cpu and one
for the power supply and it is quiet

ANy other ideas??

THZ!!!!!!!!!!

While still snuggled in a 'spider hole', am59@ath.forthnet.gr (Apostolos)
scribbled:

>The Pc will be for office use, however I would like it to be very good
>at SETI@HOME. (8500+ units and going......)

There's little 'real world' usage different between AMD and Intel.

A P4 with hyperthreading WILL process Seti units faster,
and be faster for most video and audio encoding, and a
similar-rating AMD will be slightly faster on most other things.

> Toms hardware doesnt have any last tests on seti.

It does, under 'application benchmarks', on some CPU
comparisons.

One recent one shows a P4C 3ghz at 1 hour 34 minutes,
vs an AMD XP3000 at 2:19.

Just for fun, it shows a dual-Opteron 1.8ghz at 1:08.

>Motherboard: It has to be reliable but also support overcloaking.
>For my home pc I have an ASUS motherboard p4c800 that overclocks my
>pentium 3 g to 3.3 g. iT IS PRETTY STABLE AND i AM SATISFIED.

Go with what you know.

>Ram: 1 gig is a must!
>
>Graphics card? I guess any will do?? Office work mostly. I have an
>eizo monitor so a dvi input is an option if it makes the screen
>better!

Any mid-range card should do fine.
Large amounts of memory are almost solely for gaming.

>Sound card: Simple, only to hear some videos

Any decent MB will have adequate built-in sound.

>DVD writer??? Need a good one since it will there for a long time in
>terms of speed.

Any number to choose from, 8X dual-format drives are selling for under $150.

>HArd disk? I was thinking to get the raptor sata 36 Gig for the
>system and another for everything else..

The Raptors will certainly give you top performance.

>Lan card: A stable one? Any ok one will do.

Built-in





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Never anonymous Bud wrote:
> While still snuggled in a 'spider hole', am59@ath.forthnet.gr (Apostolos)
> scribbled:
>
>
>>The Pc will be for office use, however I would like it to be very good
>>at SETI@HOME. (8500+ units and going......)
>
>
> There's little 'real world' usage different between AMD and Intel.
>
> A P4 with hyperthreading WILL process Seti units faster,
> and be faster for most video and audio encoding, and a
> similar-rating AMD will be slightly faster on most other things.
>
>
>>Toms hardware doesnt have any last tests on seti.
>
>
> It does, under 'application benchmarks', on some CPU
> comparisons.
>
> One recent one shows a P4C 3ghz at 1 hour 34 minutes,
> vs an AMD XP3000 at 2:19.
>
> Just for fun, it shows a dual-Opteron 1.8ghz at 1:08.

They must have screwed up. An Opty 240 dualie (1.4 GHz)
averages 1:08. (Tyan S2885 motherboard, 4 GB PC3200 ECC)
This machine is about to be upgraded to 2 GHz procs - it'll
will be interesting to see how that improves things.

The only Athlon 64 3000+ (2 GHz) machine I've seen takes 1:55.
(Asus K8V Deluxe, 1 GB PC3200)

Rob Stow <rob.stow@sasktel.net> wrote :

>> Just for fun, it shows a dual-Opteron 1.8ghz at 1:08.
>
> They must have screwed up. An Opty 240 dualie (1.4 GHz)
> averages 1:08. (Tyan S2885 motherboard, 4 GB PC3200 ECC)
> This machine is about to be upgraded to 2 GHz procs - it'll
> will be interesting to see how that improves things.
>
> The only Athlon 64 3000+ (2 GHz) machine I've seen takes 1:55.
> (Asus K8V Deluxe, 1 GB PC3200)

And you are aware that seti samples differ one from another ?


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Like ninjas, true hackers are shrouded in secrecy and mystery.
You may never know -- UNTIL IT'S TOO LATE.

On 18 Feb 2004 16:06:40 -0800, am59@ath.forthnet.gr (Apostolos) wrote:
>I would like to build a system for my office PC:
>
>Money is not an issue if something is really worth it. For example I
>dont think it is worth the extra $300 to get the Athlon 64 3400 than
>the AThlon 3200+.

For an office PC, it's not worth it.

>The Pc will be for office use, however I would like it to be very good
>at SETI@HOME. (8500+ units and going......)
>
>CPU Athlon or Intel?

Either one will do wonders as an office PC. AMD chips tend to be a
tiny bit faster, dollar for dollar there, but we're talking
differences of VERY small fractions of a second.

For Seti, Intel's P4 with hyperthreading is the way to go, it's a fair
bit faster than any of AMD's offerings last I checked.

> AS stated above I dont want to spenfd the extra
>$$$ If the percentage increase is small. The cpu must be great at
>seti above all since I wont be playing any games on it. (and run
>office but all modern pcs can do). Toms hardware doesnt have any last
>tests on seti.

Odd performance requirement, but to each his/her own I guess. Since
Seti performance is your main goal, go for an Intel P4 3.2GHz.

>Motherboard: It has to be reliable but also support overcloaking.
>For my home pc I have an ASUS motherboard p4c800 that overclocks my
>pentium 3 g to 3.3 g. iT IS PRETTY STABLE AND i AM SATISFIED.

Asus is always a good bet, I usually stick to either Asus or MSI when
buying boards. Normally I would recommend an i865-based board, since
it saves you about $75 over an i875 board and the performance
difference is small (~2-3%), but if you aren't too worried about cost
it might be worthwhile spending the extra for the small performance
boost.

>Ram: 1 gig is a must!

2 x 512MB decent quality DDR400 memory, fairly straight-forward. I
would recommend against getting the super-dooper-whiz-bang
blinky-lights memory that many companies are selling now, the
difference in performance between the top-end fastest memory and the
bog-standard brand-name stuff is usually less than 1%. My local
on-line vendor sells some Samsung modules for a good price, chances
are your local vendor has something similar.

>Graphics card? I guess any will do?? Office work mostly. I have an
>eizo monitor so a dvi input is an option if it makes the screen
>better!

Go for the DVI if you're monitor has it. Probably an ATI card would
do you well, any one of their Radeon cards. The higher-end models
really only improve 3D performance, so a low-end one would work well.

>Sound card: Simple, only to hear some videos

Integrated sound should do the trick then.

>DVD writer??? Need a good one since it will there for a long time in
>terms of speed.

Well, I've never used a DVD-burner myself (our wonderful Canadian
Recording Industry charges a nice $2 tax on blank DVDs because burning
a DVD obviously means that someone is stealing music right? grrrr!!),
but I've heard that Plextor has the best stuff here. Most DVD burners
seem to be pretty reliable from what I've heard though, even the
el-cheapo Lite On and LG models.

>HArd disk? I was thinking to get the raptor sata 36 Gig for the
>system and another for everything else..

There's a newer WD Raptor 74GB 10Krpm/SATA drive that has replaced the
older 36GB model. It's a bit faster and quieter and I don't think
that the price difference is very big.

>Lan card: A stable one? Any ok one will do.

Most boards these days have integrated LAN. All 10Mbit and 100Mbit
LAN cards should be up to the task. If you need gigabit lan, then you
might want to do a bit more digging, but otherwise just get a
motherboard with an integrated NIC.

>Fan: I need a silent one, at home I have one zalman for cpu and one
>for the power supply and it is quiet

I just picked up a ThermalTake PurePower 420W supply the other day,
and it's pretty darn quiet and was quite reasonably priced too (about
$30 less than the Zalman 400W supply I looked at). Anandtech did a
quick review of the power supplies a little while back. I'm not sure
that their reliability studies were super-dependant, but their noise
tests should be pretty good. Here's a link:

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1841

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla <underscore> 20 <at> yahoo <dot> ca

While still snuggled in a 'spider hole', Tony Hill <hilla_nospam_20@yahoo.ca>
scribbled:

>There's a newer WD Raptor 74GB 10Krpm/SATA drive that has replaced the
>older 36GB model. It's a bit faster and quieter and I don't think
>that the price difference is very big.

It's in addition to, not a replacement for. And the price IS quite a bit more,
here in San Diego, it's $125 for the smaller, $259 for the larger.






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