Time For a New Rig!

[Mike]

So I finally got tired of my old machine for the following reasons:

1. Dual Athlon MP 2800+'s with stock cooling = hot & loud
2. Athlon MP's are limited to a single channel of 266MHz DDR = horrible memory performance.
3. My AGP 6800 GT is getting a little old, and I want dual dvi, dammit.
4. For some reason, my motherboard eats high-end plextor dvd burners. I'm on my third $120+ plextor drive in as many years, and it can't burn a damn thing, they just quit after 6 months or so.
5. Having 6 hard drives in one machine for ~1.5TB of storage is nice, when it's not next to your desk.
6. USB2 is not natively supported, so I have to use a card.
7. No onboard sound = another card.
8. No SATA support
9. Onboard ethernet is only 100Mbit = slow for moving dvd images

So yeah, it was time to upgrade. So what did I get? I got sort of an odd mix between price/performance parts, silent parts, and overclocking parts:

CPU: Core2 Duo E6400, more power than I had before, all using maybe a quarter of the electricity. And it overclocks like a mother fucker. And yeah, I said mother fucker, it's my forum I'll say whatever I want...:)

Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-965P-DS3, pretty standard Core2 Duo board, but it also overclocks like crazy.

Memory: 2Gigs of Corsair XMS2, $300, but awesome for overclocking (you might recognize these parts from the recent [H] article.)

Video Card: No brainer, 7900GT, specifically, the Gigabyte GV-NX79T256DP-RH-ED. It's factory overclocked to 525Mhz and sports a Zalman VF700 fan so it's extremely quiet.

Power Supply: Nexus NX-5000, a solid 500W power supply built from the ground up to be as silent as possible. This is the only part I didn't get from newegg, I could only find it at www.endpcnoise.com (http://www.endpcnoise.com)

Case: Antec Performance I P180B Black, also designed from the ground up for silence, and good thermals.

Optical Drive: Plextor PX-750A (I'm a hardcore plextor fan)

Hard Drive: I have too many as it is, so I'm just going to use whatever I have laying around, and whenever a good deal pops up for something fast, I'll grab it.

Rounding out the deal are all the parts from my old machine that I'm keeping:

Monitors: Dual Dell 2001FP 20.1" LCDs

Keyboard/Mouse: Microsoft Wireless Natural Multimedia Keyboard and a Wireless Intellimouse Explorer 2.0 (with a USB Intellimouse Explorer 3.0 when wireless won't cut it)

Speakers: Klipsch Promedia 2.1s and Sennheiser HDR 140 wireless headphones (my big 5.1 system is hooked up to the media center)

[Crash]

what about 7950GT?

[Mike]

I wanted something really quiet, something with a custom cooler. The 7950s aren't out for another couple weeks, and likely to all be reference designs for a bit. Plus, the 7950 is just an overclocked 7900, so I got an overclocked 7900 and I'm happy.

[Seoman]

Sounds like you should have gone with the XFX 7950 GT fanless. :)

http://www.xfxforce.com/web/product/listConfigurations.jspa?seriesId=185563&productId=638284#

[Mike]

Sounds like you should have gone with the XFX 7950 GT fanless. :)

http://www.xfxforce.com/web/product/listConfigurations.jspa?seriesId=185563&productId=638284#

Wow, didn't know they made those. But honestly, I didn't want to spend that much on a video card with dx10 just around the corner. I'll probably be upgrading in 6 months.

[Track]

CPU: Core2 Duo E6400, more power than I had before, all using maybe a quarter of the electricity. And it overclocks like a mother fucker. And yeah, I said mother fucker, it's my forum I'll say whatever I want...:)



Core 2 Duo is a must for gaming. FX-62 dosent come close, in terms of performance unless ur talking abt using it with a Quadro.
E6400 has abt the same performance in some games though as the 800$+ FX-62, for only 225$, so u cant go wrong with it. The E6300 costs only a little less, around 190$ for 266Mhz less, wich isnt worth the price cut.

Except that the E6600 costs only a little bit more, around 300$ has a clock speed of 2.4Ghz and overclocks even better. But the best thing abt it, is the ammount of cache it has - 4Mb other then the 2Mb that the E6400 and E6300 have, meaning that u will not have to overclock it higher then the X6800 in order to get it's level of performance.
The extra cache is what makes many games want to buy the E6600. Its a mid-range Core 2 Duo for only 1/3 of the price of the most powerfull X6800.
Right after it, u can see how the E6700, even though has only a small performance gain, costs 200$ more.

So, just like the X1900XT, its the best value PC harware item that i have known.




Video Card: No brainer, 7900GT, specifically, the Gigabyte GV-NX79T256DP-RH-ED. It's factory overclocked to 525Mhz and sports a Zalman VF700 fan so it's extremely quiet.



At this point, with the X1900XT costing only 50$ more then the 7900 GT, i would reccomand it, or maybe the 256Mb version of it, wich costs around 30$ less then the 7900 GT and has much more performance. You dont need the extra 256Mb of RAM unless u can see the difference beetween Ultra-hgih and Very-high on Doom 3 or look into the future with DX10.

If ur waiting for DX10 i would suggest buying the X1900XT 256Mb then, and selling it around spring when the DX10 cards come out. I wouldnt get the 7950 GT for price reasons but the 7900 GTO wich is supposedly a 7900 GTX with a lesser memory clock for the price of a 7900 GT, seems interesting. Of course ATI's better IQ and the ability to do HDR+AA because of it's flexibal and intelligent design, gives it the win in this generation for just abt anything now tha the new Catalyst drivers take away Nvidia's OpenGL edge in games wich use the Doom 3 engine.

On another note, the VF700 dosent perform quite as well as the VF900 or the Accelero X2, and costs the same. Thats why i would recommand u get either one for the best performance in noise reduction and heat.

You have always said that noise is a big problem for u when it comes to graphics cards, so much so that u would rather buy a worse price/performance card just because of it's quiter fan, well with the VF900 u dont have to care abt that anymore, and ive seen some tests say that the Accelero X2/X1 is sometimes even better at a lower price, not to mention it has a fan and heatsink for the RAM as well as the core.

[Jason]

Haha, it is about time you upgraded. I remember you saying you were going to. :)

-Jason

[Phosphate]

So I finally got tired of my old machine for the following reasons:

1. Dual Athlon MP 2800+'s with stock cooling = hot & loud
2. Athlon MP's are limited to a single channel of 266MHz DDR = horrible memory performance.
3. My AGP 6800 GT is getting a little old, and I want dual dvi, dammit.
4. For some reason, my motherboard eats high-end plextor dvd burners. I'm on my third $120+ plextor drive in as many years, and it can't burn a damn thing, they just quit after 6 months or so.
5. Having 6 hard drives in one machine for ~1.5TB of storage is nice, when it's not next to your desk.
6. USB2 is not natively supported, so I have to use a card.
7. No onboard sound = another card.
8. No SATA support
9. Onboard ethernet is only 100Mbit = slow for moving dvd images

So yeah, it was time to upgrade. So what did I get? I got sort of an odd mix between price/performance parts, silent parts, and overclocking parts:

CPU: Core2 Duo E6400, more power than I had before, all using maybe a quarter of the electricity. And it overclocks like a mother fucker. And yeah, I said mother fucker, it's my forum I'll say whatever I want...:)

Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-965P-DS3, pretty standard Core2 Duo board, but it also overclocks like crazy.

Memory: 2Gigs of Corsair XMS2, $300, but awesome for overclocking (you might recognize these parts from the recent [H] article.)

Video Card: No brainer, 7900GT, specifically, the Gigabyte GV-NX79T256DP-RH-ED. It's factory overclocked to 525Mhz and sports a Zalman VF700 fan so it's extremely quiet.

Power Supply: Nexus NX-5000, a solid 500W power supply built from the ground up to be as silent as possible. This is the only part I didn't get from newegg, I could only find it at www.endpcnoise.com (http://www.endpcnoise.com)

Case: Antec Performance I P180B Black, also designed from the ground up for silence, and good thermals.

Optical Drive: Plextor PX-750A (I'm a hardcore plextor fan)

Hard Drive: I have too many as it is, so I'm just going to use whatever I have laying around, and whenever a good deal pops up for something fast, I'll grab it.

Rounding out the deal are all the parts from my old machine that I'm keeping:

Monitors: Dual Dell 2001FP 20.1" LCDs

Keyboard/Mouse: Microsoft Wireless Natural Multimedia Keyboard and a Wireless Intellimouse Explorer 2.0 (with a USB Intellimouse Explorer 3.0 when wireless won't cut it)

Speakers: Klipsch Promedia 2.1s and Sennheiser HDR 140 wireless headphones (my big 5.1 system is hooked up to the media center)


I have the DS3 but am running a celeron at the moment. It has done well with all the reviews I have seen over at XS.

The corsair memory kit also appears to do well with the DS3 according to a thread regarding the DS3 and various memory kits.

You might want to check out the ASUS P5B deluxe too although it is a little bit more pricey ($80 more).

For cooling I'm going to get the Big Typhoon VX because it mounts like a stock HSF with the oush pins and it has adjustable fan speed. It just isn't available retail just yet.

P.S. Interestingly, DS3 + E6400 + XMS is very similiar to what I'll probably end up with. Right now I'm using a 1 GB kit of OCZ platinum (rev. 1) but when I step up to 2 GBs I'll either get that or the Crucial Ballistix DDR2 800 kit (which seems to be on sale lately)

[Mike]

I have the DS3 but am running a celeron at the moment. It has done well with all the reviews I have seen over at XS.

The corsair memory kit also appears to do well with the DS3 according to a thread regarding the DS3 and various memory kits.

You might want to check out the ASUS P5B deluxe too although it is a little bit more pricey ($80 more).

For cooling I'm going to get the Big Typhoon VX because it mounts like a stock HSF with the oush pins and it has adjustable fan speed. It just isn't available retail just yet.

P.S. Interestingly, DS3 + E6400 + XMS is very similiar to what I'll probably end up with. Right now I'm using a 1 GB kit of OCZ platinum (rev. 1) but when I step up to 2 GBs I'll either get that or the Crucial Ballistix DDR2 800 kit (which seems to be on sale lately)

Right now I think the loudest thing in my system is the stock HSF. I want to get a huge heatsink on there and get rid of some noise, but I'm not too up on that stuff lately, so let me know what you end up doing.

[Phosphate]

Right now I think the loudest thing in my system is the stock HSF. I want to get a huge heatsink on there and get rid of some noise, but I'm not too up on that stuff lately, so let me know what you end up doing.

I'll have to look into that Video card you are getting because something in my case makes this intermittent whining noise.

It could be either the stock HSF or the X800 GTO.

I'm pretty sure the Big Typhoon is quiet because it runs a 120mm fan at slow speed (on the VX speed is adjustable)

My Antec P160 has two 120mm fans and they seem pretty quiet so I doubt its those.

[Phosphate]

Have you checked out the new F6 Bios?

The description is "improved E6300/e6400 OCing" and it seems like it really is working http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?p=1739197&posted=1#post1739197

If this really pans out then definitely DS3 will be the best OCing value in mobos currently.

[bucdan]

what happened to your old comp Mike??? lol.....some free stuff yes?
You think you can hook me up with that 6800 gt?? i can use a old card for some comps im working with cause they get horrible video quality and maybe a lil gaming =)..........im pretty intrested in it Mike! Man you got dual monitors lol........your turning into a business workstation man. Working with two different screens or stretch thats cool there!

Just want to play around with it a bit thats all

[Mike]

what happened to your old comp Mike??? lol.....some free stuff yes?
You think you can hook me up with that 6800 gt?? i can use a old card for some comps im working with cause they get horrible video quality and maybe a lil gaming =)..........im pretty intrested in it Mike! Man you got dual monitors lol........your turning into a business workstation man. Working with two different screens or stretch thats cool there!

Just want to play around with it a bit thats all

I'm using the old system as a multi-media server for now, and sorry, I already promised the 6800 GT to a friend...:)