pc system recommendations

[David Lewis]

Hi Guys,

This is my second post on the subject so perhaps what I'm looking for
doesn't exist??I'm looking for sites or resources that have recommendations
for computer systems i.e. Systems that folks have already
purpose built under certain criteria or categories and can be recommended.
You know,heres what I built,why I built it,and how it turned out.
Any help appreciated

 

[Strontium]

Not sure if something, like that, exists. Forums/NG's may be your only
resource, for that. Some threads can get fairly long and have lots of
info.

I'll start the ball rolling...

Why I built it:

Finally recovering from financial disaster caused by taking a 'sabbatical'
(read: I quit my job and moved to the beach). Last box, before I did
that, was a very outdated Duron 950/576MB PC100/GF3Ti200.

I like gaming. Never (not overly) did, before. But, recently, I'm
getting lots of games for free and I love the eye candy. I, also, love
the fact that it's a very good test of system stability/performance at
that fullest. Old box would run the games fine (the GF3Ti200 is o/c'd to
250/550). However, would get kinda choppy where heavy shading/lighting
was used (e.g. at night, in Mafia. snow, in Flytrap mission in Comanche4.
Postal2, period lol). And, anyway, it's my hobby. Just was broke for a
year and a half.

What I built:

Decided that AMD is just not my cup of tea, lately. Been loyal to them,
for 5yrs. Heard about 800MHz FSB, 400MHz memory bus, and Hyperthreading.
Decided to give it a whirl....

Intel D865GBF Motherboard (fried 3 CMOS chips in the Asus PC4800 board,
with the [ASUS!!!!] GF3Ti200...reason for getting the Intel board. Store
wasn't getting the 875 Intel board, until next day. After 3 boards, I was
pissed...not waiting Glad I did that. Only diff, as far as I know, is
Gigabyte LAN and $100 bucks more).

Intel P4 2.4C Processor
2x256MB Samsung PC3200 (CSL 3.0...it's all they had)
Allied 400W PSU
Sony CRX220E1 CD-RW

Left everything else intact [(generic 52x CDROM, floppy, case, GF3Ti200,
WD 40Gb 7200rpm HDD (ATA5/66), WD 20Gb 5400 HDD (ATA4/33)]

How it turned out:

After 4 weeks, I'm still very pleased. I can't think of one thing this
box can't do, except make my breakfast. In 3 weeks' time, I will be
slapping an ATI 9700 in. I can, already, enable all FSAA and VSync in
games. But, performance suffers. My GPU, for once, is my bottleneck.
Overall, I'm VERY impressed. Installing, defragging, burning/ripping,
anything CPU-intensive, anything memory-intensive.....it's all, still,
blowing my mind.

YMMV


-
David Lewis stood up, at show-n-tell, and said:

 

[Strontium]

Ooops, forgot to add that my transition was not as drastic as it seems.
My girlfriend has an XP 2100+ box that I've used quite a bit. I can't say
that I was 'wow-ed'. So, while it's definitely a 'leap', it's still
impressing me on lots of points.

-
Strontium stood up, at show-n-tell, and said:

<snip>

 

[bobb]

Hi Guys,

This is my second post on the subject so perhaps what I'm looking for
doesn't exist??I'm looking for sites or resources that have recommendations
for computer systems i.e. Systems that folks have already
purpose built under certain criteria or categories and can be recommended.
You know,heres what I built,why I built it,and how it turned out.
Any help appreciated

Why do you want a thing like that? Do you expect the info provided to
be objective - NOT. People will tend to only give you the goods and
skip the bads. If one spend enough time to write an objective
treatment to his built, frankly by the time he finishes, the hardware
is been outdated, and not something you would likely to purchase
anyways. Try another road to your destination.





-bobb

 

[Strontium]

-
bobb stood up, at show-n-tell, and said:

Why do you want a thing like that? Do you expect the info provided to
be objective - NOT. People will tend to only give you the goods and
skip the bads. If one spend enough time to write an objective
treatment to his built, frankly by the time he finishes, the hardware
is been outdated, and not something you would likely to purchase
anyways. Try another road to your destination.

What you are saying, is that discussion is futile? You lost me, on this
one, bobb.

 

[bobb]

What you are saying, is that discussion is futile? You lost me, on this
one, bobb.

Once again, how old are you kids???

I am saying open-ended, "I really don't know what I want" discussion
is useless. At least you should have an idea what kind of PC do you
want - small footprint? large capacity? overclocked? multimedia? a
Video composer machine? Email and Surfing only? a Gamer?

There are lots of sites with home built machines and I have never,
ever seen one where the author when into the logic why he did it ('cuz
it was fun?) and what kind of troubles he encountered. Basically they
all just post a couple of jpg's and go ta-da! that was fun.

Go here http://www.bluesmoke.net/viewGallery.php?id=case and look at
one-of-a-kind boxes. It's fun to look at, but don't try to understand
why they did it without consulting your psychologist.





-bobb

 

[David Lewis]

Hi Strontium, thanks for reply..see inline

Strontium wrote:

Intel D865GBF Motherboard (fried 3 CMOS chips in the Asus PC4800
board, with the [ASUS!!!!] GF3Ti200...reason for getting the Intel
board. Store wasn't getting the 875 Intel board, until next day.
After 3 boards, I was pissed...not waiting Glad I did that. Only
diff, as far as I know, is Gigabyte LAN and $100 bucks more).

Interesting.I was also looking at intel vs Asus motherboards.I wonder if
others had same problems with the Asus?

Intel P4 2.4C Processor
2x256MB Samsung PC3200 (CSL 3.0...it's all they had)
Allied 400W PSU
Sony CRX220E1 CD-RW
Left everything else intact [(generic 52x CDROM, floppy, case,
GF3Ti200, WD 40Gb 7200rpm HDD (ATA5/66), WD 20Gb 5400 HDD (ATA4/33)]

How it turned out:

After 4 weeks, I'm still very pleased. I can't think of one thing
this box can't do, except make my breakfast. In 3 weeks' time, I
will be slapping an ATI 9700 in. I can, already, enable all FSAA and
VSync in games. But, performance suffers. My GPU, for once, is my
bottleneck. Overall, I'm VERY impressed. Installing, defragging,
burning/ripping, anything CPU-intensive, anything
memory-intensive.....it's all, still, blowing my mind.

YMMV

OK Thanks.I will be including more RAM and faster processor,so nice to know
how the above worked out for you!

 

[David Lewis]

What you are saying, is that discussion is futile? You lost me, on
this one, bobb.

He lost me too.

 

[Strontium]

-
David Lewis stood up, at show-n-tell, and said:

Hi Strontium, thanks for reply..see inline

Strontium wrote:

Intel D865GBF Motherboard (fried 3 CMOS chips in the Asus PC4800
board, with the [ASUS!!!!] GF3Ti200...reason for getting the Intel
board. Store wasn't getting the 875 Intel board, until next day.
After 3 boards, I was pissed...not waiting Glad I did that. Only
diff, as far as I know, is Gigabyte LAN and $100 bucks more).

Interesting.I was also looking at intel vs Asus motherboards.I wonder
if others had same problems with the Asus?

I don't think so. The owner of the shop (I've used this place for about
4yrs, good people) said they've sold a lot of those boards, and have not
heard of any problems. I'm thinking it's my card's overclock /shrug.
Needless to say, I felt pretty damned foolish returning 3 boards in two
days! Ended up buying a cheap GF4 MX440SE just to be sure, with the Intel
board. Then, got tired of non-hardware support for gaming and tried my
luck with my GF3 The Intel board is nice and stable. But, if you want
to overclock, Asus is the way to go (more options in CMOS). However, I
don't see why anyone would even want to overclock such a fast system. I
o/c'd the GF3, purely to get more out of it. And, it's not proven to be
an unworthwile endeavor.

Intel P4 2.4C Processor
2x256MB Samsung PC3200 (CSL 3.0...it's all they had)
Allied 400W PSU
Sony CRX220E1 CD-RW
Left everything else intact [(generic 52x CDROM, floppy, case,
GF3Ti200, WD 40Gb 7200rpm HDD (ATA5/66), WD 20Gb 5400 HDD (ATA4/33)]

How it turned out:

After 4 weeks, I'm still very pleased. I can't think of one thing
this box can't do, except make my breakfast. In 3 weeks' time, I
will be slapping an ATI 9700 in. I can, already, enable all FSAA and
VSync in games. But, performance suffers. My GPU, for once, is my
bottleneck. Overall, I'm VERY impressed. Installing, defragging,
burning/ripping, anything CPU-intensive, anything
memory-intensive.....it's all, still, blowing my mind.

YMMV

OK Thanks.I will be including more RAM and faster processor,so nice
to know how the above worked out for you!

Yep, it's pretty sweet!

 

[David Lewis]

-
bobb wrote :

I'm a 34yr old kid. How about you?

I'm a 48 yr old kid and like most sensible people trying to resist the
pressures to grow up too quickly! <vbg>

"No man loves life like him that's growing old. " Sophocles (496 BC - 406
BC), Acrisius.Perhaps the trick is growing up without growing old!

Again, you lost me. OP was wanting some baselines. You could've
provided one. But, instead prefer to try and sound superior. Not
very helpful, IMO.

Maybe he was having a Bad day ? I must confess I've never really understood
the psychology of the "Rant". If Bobb thought my OP was ridiculous-and many
Newbie posts probably are-then why not reply in a helpful many instead?..You
know,"Hey buddy I think you're barking up the wrong tree here,maybe try this
approach instead..."

BTW I have come across a few sites with pc system recommendations so others
must find it useful also.Trouble is they are sometimes over a year
old...which is great if your shopping for formerly top stuff at now bargain
prices but not if you want the latest and greatest and willing to pay the
price premium.

 

[David Lewis]

David Lewis stood up, at show-n-tell, and said:

I don't think so. The owner of the shop (I've used this place for
about 4yrs, good people) said they've sold a lot of those boards, and
have not heard of any problems. I'm thinking it's my card's
overclock /shrug. Needless to say, I felt pretty damned foolish
returning 3 boards in two days! Ended up buying a cheap GF4 MX440SE
just to be sure, with the Intel board. Then, got tired of
non-hardware support for gaming and tried my luck with my GF3 The
Intel board is nice and stable. But, if you want to overclock, Asus
is the way to go (more options in CMOS). However, I don't see why
anyone would even want to overclock such a fast system. I o/c'd the
GF3, purely to get more out of it. And, it's not proven to be an
unworthwile endeavor.

Good to know,thanks.

 

[JK]

Going from a Duron 950 to a more modern processor is a major step.
You could have gotten a much better value by going with AMD though.
I suggest people choose an nForce2 motherboard and an Athlon
XP2600+ 333 retail box with heatsink.That combo can be purchased
for around $170 if one chooses a more basic nForce2 motherboard
like a Shuttle AN35N-ULTRA Nforce2-Ultra400 SKT A DDR400
w/ Audio / Lan / ATX MB - Retail ($68),or under $185 with an
EP-8RDA+, nforce2 ,SOCKET A,6PCI,AGP8X, DMA133,
3DDR333DIMM, AUDIO, LAN,USB2.0, 1394,RETAIL BOX($83).
For the price, these are awesome combinations.

Not sure if something, like that, exists. Forums/NG's may be your only
resource, for that. Some threads can get fairly long and have lots of
info.

I'll start the ball rolling...

Why I built it:

Finally recovering from financial disaster caused by taking a 'sabbatical'
(read: I quit my job and moved to the beach). Last box, before I did
that, was a very outdated Duron 950/576MB PC100/GF3Ti200.

I like gaming. Never (not overly) did, before. But, recently, I'm
getting lots of games for free and I love the eye candy. I, also, love
the fact that it's a very good test of system stability/performance at
that fullest. Old box would run the games fine (the GF3Ti200 is o/c'd to
250/550). However, would get kinda choppy where heavy shading/lighting
was used (e.g. at night, in Mafia. snow, in Flytrap mission in Comanche4.
Postal2, period lol). And, anyway, it's my hobby. Just was broke for a
year and a half.

What I built:

Decided that AMD is just not my cup of tea, lately. Been loyal to them,
for 5yrs. Heard about 800MHz FSB, 400MHz memory bus, and Hyperthreading.
Decided to give it a whirl....

Intel D865GBF Motherboard (fried 3 CMOS chips in the Asus PC4800 board,
with the [ASUS!!!!] GF3Ti200...reason for getting the Intel board. Store
wasn't getting the 875 Intel board, until next day. After 3 boards, I was
pissed...not waiting Glad I did that. Only diff, as far as I know, is
Gigabyte LAN and $100 bucks more).

Intel P4 2.4C Processor
2x256MB Samsung PC3200 (CSL 3.0...it's all they had)
Allied 400W PSU
Sony CRX220E1 CD-RW

Left everything else intact [(generic 52x CDROM, floppy, case, GF3Ti200,
WD 40Gb 7200rpm HDD (ATA5/66), WD 20Gb 5400 HDD (ATA4/33)]

How it turned out:

After 4 weeks, I'm still very pleased. I can't think of one thing this
box can't do, except make my breakfast. In 3 weeks' time, I will be
slapping an ATI 9700 in. I can, already, enable all FSAA and VSync in
games. But, performance suffers. My GPU, for once, is my bottleneck.
Overall, I'm VERY impressed. Installing, defragging, burning/ripping,
anything CPU-intensive, anything memory-intensive.....it's all, still,
blowing my mind.

YMMV

-
David Lewis stood up, at show-n-tell, and said:

Hi Guys,

This is my second post on the subject so perhaps what I'm looking for
doesn't exist??I'm looking for sites or resources that have
recommendations for computer systems i.e. Systems that folks have
already
purpose built under certain criteria or categories and can be
recommended. You know,heres what I built,why I built it,and how it
turned out.
Any help appreciated

--
Strontium

"Shortcuts are self-defeating. Mean. If you cannot do it,
clean, you'll never reach your reward..." - 311

 

[Chris A. Epler]

Not sure if something, like that, exists. Forums/NG's may be your only
resource, for that. Some threads can get fairly long and have lots of
info.

I'll start the ball rolling...

Why I built it:
...System description/experience

I just upgraded a few systems lately, two platforms:

2 ASUS A7N8X AMD w/ XP2600+ 333 FSB CPU and a gig of RAM
1 Gigabyte 8KNXP P4 w/ P4 2.8 GHz 800 FSB and a gig of RAM

It was a long night of rebuilding, got to bed around 4am tinkering
with things, didn't get a chance to actually have any 'FUN' yet
however.

Running into a problem reading my XP CD on the one ASUS system which I
believe is a problem with the CDROM drive in that one, it's quite old.

I ran into a problem with HyperThreading on my P4 System. With
HyperThreading enabled I could not use my Creative SoundBlaster Audigy
2 Platinum. It would hang the system any time it tried to do much
with the sound card (like update the drivers!) Once I disabled
HyperThreading I was able to update the drivers and then reenable the
HyperThreading and at a quick glance this morning at 9am (wee, 4 hrs
of sleep!) it looked like it was working...better.. More testing
tonight after yardwork.

The 2 ASUS systems were upgrading a P2-450 and a P3-500 which is a
pretty healthy jump. My P4 is taking the place of my Athlon
Thunderbird 900 MHz board, Abit KT7-RAID which I have hated with a
true passion. Stability and other problems galore with this board.
BEWARE ONLINE REVIEWS! They all extolled the virtues of this board
saying how great it is, well, it wasn't. Be VERY warry of online
reviews. After reading them for some years, they seem to mostly be
written by kids in their 20's that only seem to care about frames per
second. What ever happened to more in depth reviews with some
benchmarks on other parts of the system? What about disk
performance?? Stability of the USB ports to power webcams and provide
enough power without crapping out? (My ASUS P2B-DS wouldn't work
properly with webcams, I had to desolder a resistor and jumper a pad
to get it working!).

As I said, I've only had these things together for a few hours and
haven't had a chance to really experience them from an application
standpoint quite yet but I think they are both quite nice upgrades. A
lot of thought went into choosing these components, and it's quite a
nerve-racking affair since you'll be marrying the components for a
while. I still think that AMD is a decent bargain but sometimes you
can run into hassles that I never seemed to have on my past Intel
boards. This is why I have decided to boycott purchasing any VIA or
Abit hardware. The pain I suffered with the KT7-RAID was too great to
give them any more of my money any time soon. The ASUS nForce2 board
looks very promising, time will tell, not sure how the Gigabyte will
work out, we shall see!

Looking forward to getting some games on there to test out the
performance!

-- Chris - 32 (I think...*checks calendar*) yr old gamer for life
AKA: [CoFR]Mirlen