[UnAlternate]

hi guys. i'd like to get some feedback on the following computer parts. i have already gone through the entire process of deciding what i want, so i'm not intrested in replys like; "you should get a quadro instead of the 6800", or "intel sucks, get and AMD cuz it's cheaper".

just wondering about compatibility issues and such. if these parts will make a stable system, or if you can see any possible conflicts coming. anything i havn't thought of etc..

cheers.




Chassis: Antec SONATA Silent Piano-Black 380W ATX

Board: ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe i875P SATA RAID Audio GB-LAN Firewire Socket478 ATX

Procesoor: Intel Pentium 4 Northwood 3.0GHz -C Hyperthreading 512Kb 800MHz Boxed (with cpu-cooler!) Socket 478

Ram: 2 x Kingston KVR400X72C3A/512 512Mb DDR PC3200 ECC Unbuffered 184pin 400MHz

Drive: Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 ST3200822AS 200Gb 7200rpm 8Mb cache S-ATA

DVD Writer: ASUS DRW-0804P/BLK DVD +RW/R -RW/R 8X DVD+R 4X DVD+RW 8X DVD-R 2X DVD-RW 40X CDR 24X CDRW IDE black RETAIL IDE

Video: Asus V9999Ultra Deluxe GeForce 6800Ultra 256Mb DDR3 TV-out DVI RETAIL AGP
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> jsalvador.net

[math]

this thread is a joke right? its jsut meant for posing isnt it? unless you dont use any exotic hardware components which are not well known there will never ever be hardware conflicts. and u know why i really think this is a joke? cuz ur also posting the computer case. u seriously wanna tell u believe that the power supply of your computer can cause a conflict with lets say ur graphics card?

...

you dont wanna hear this but i can tell u the power supply is very little with 380W. the 6800 consumes over 100W or maybe even 150W if u play hardware intensive games.

p.s. cpu boxed always means with cooler.
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quit pro quo

[B0b]

LOL saying a 380W PSU is too little is just a joke!

you'll be able to run that system on a 300W 380W is plenty

the Antec Sonata is a damn fine case, looking @ purchasing that case myself.. been using the same case for my past 4 systems (upgraded the PSU to 300W tho')

i'd dump the 1 x 200 and get a couple of 120's and RAID 0 them

a 2.4 northwood can be clocked to 3Ghz on Air btw..

[Testament]

Hey UnAlternate, seems like you got your stuff set up. All looks fine ^^

Best of luck with your new rig.

[math]

OMG!!! I GOT REALLY.....



!!!!!!!
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quit pro quo

[UnAlternate]

thanx for the replys guys! some more thoughts from me;


* what about the ECC memory? i heard it was slow. what's type of ram do you reccomend? i was told that my processor of choice only worked with 400mhz PC3200.

* any more opinions on the PSU? i have people all over the internet telling me different things here. will it be enough, or should i buy a better one?

* the reason i want the 6800 is because of it's dual dvi-out's. and i really need these. the cheapest quadro witl dual dvi's seem to be the 1100 but i can't afford that. any alternatives here?

thanx again!
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> jsalvador.net

[weaselball2]

the ram: ECC is a big waste of money. I have never had a problem with non ECC. All ECC is for is to correct bad sectors in ram anyways, if you get good ram you won't have that problem. besides-even non ECC has parity correction which is more than good enough. If your ram does have errors they will probably be picked up by the memory test at boot time and the motherboard will complain or refuse to boot anyways. They are right about the pc3200 though, the ram clock on DDR ram has to be half the front side bus clock(800 mhz). You can actually get faster ram and it should automatically downclock. If you get slower ram the computer probably wont boot. Ram from any major company is usually pretty good. I personally suggest crucial and kingston becuase I have/know people who have bought ram from them before.

the PSU: Both sides of the arguement are half right . A cheaply made 400 watt psu is about as good as a nice 300 watt. The case you are getting is fairly nice, so it should come with a nice PSU. 380 watts should be enough-but you'de be safer with something like 450. My suggestion is to go ahead with the 380 and then do some tests to make sure the supply can handle it. Get motherboard Monitor(free off internet) and use it to make sure power voltages stay stable while you run something very intensive for a while(like 3dmark and Prime95 at the same time). If they don't you'll have to fork out like 30-40 bucks for a nice 450 watt psu.

another suggestion I have to make sure that case comes with a fan. High performance parts like that are gonna generate like 150 watts of heat. Relying soley on the psu fan to cool something like that is a bad idea.

Also don't forget to get some thermal compound for the cpu/heatsink(arctic silver is the best). If it comes with thermal tape instead of compound it would be very wise to clean that tape off and use arctic silver instead. If you use thermal tape on a cpu that fast you will risk overheating it.

If you want to save money you should know that there is no point to getting retail harddrives, ram, or processors. You can usually get the same warranty on an OEM harddrive, processor, and ram as the retail. There is no other reason unless you really want the (quite) bad cpu fan the retail cpu's come with, or the 5 page install manuals that come with the hard drive and the ram. The video card and cd writer are better retail becuase then you get the software with them. If you switch to an OEM cpu you willl need to buy a cpu fan though. I wouldn't think of this as a disadvantage becuase the fans only cost ~10 bucks and they usually work much better. You should also know that you can usually download the same manuals that retail parts come with in PDF form from the vendors web site.

as for the card, I don't know much about dual DVI cards. If you want a good deal and don't need uber l33t gaming performance I would go for the radeon 9600 dual dvi http://www.tweaknews.net/reviews/dualdvi/ . It seems to only cost about 150 bucks.

[UnAlternate]

thank you so much weaselball, just what i needed to know! .D

you're a great man! ,P
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> jsalvador.net

[weaselball2]

thanks

I figure I might as well make up for some of the horrible art I post on these forums anyways. I actually used to be a regular on computer forums a few years ago...but eventually I got bored of it cuz most of the posts involved spending money.

[stacy]

All those pieces will make a very nice system.

My PERSONAL picks and the reasons would be:
Corsair memory sticks (always used them, NEVER had a problem with them)

Plextor PX-708A DVD R/WR (currently have one on my VideoToaster box and it runs perfectly)

Abit VI7 Motherboard (EXCELLENT features, low cost)

Then put the money you save on the motherboard toward a second BARRACUDA and stripe them in RAID-0.

I agree completely on the video card.

[stacy]

P.S.

This is a great resource for quality parts at low cost.
www.pricewatch.com


Stick with the dealers like:

ZipZoomFly,
Monarch,
NewEgg,
Spartan,
Axion,
BZBoys,
eXcaliberPC,
Aberdeen,
Computerbrain,
...etc.

(in roughly that order... Like for instance, Aberdeen used to be a great source but they're prices have been creeping up a little lately.)

Be aware that some prices are too low. Some companies, bait and switch or try to sell refurbished parts, are fly by night, etc. If you buy from anyone not on the list, check them out first.

[weaselball2]

I would buy parts mainly from newegg.com
a lot of computer geeks live by this site. It sells part for cheap and has a good reputation. Pricewatch is the place to go if you want the best deal though, but make sure you get parts from a good merchant.

I can't recommend any parts becuase I got out of that kind of stuff a few years ago, and all the parts I know about are wayyy outdated by now.

ill second most of stacys choices because i've heard about all those companies.
Corsair: good memory company, known for their overclockers sticks(or used to be?)

plextor: makes expensive but very high quality drives. Watch out though, we have one of their drives that wont let you burn copy protected cd's to make "backups". They hardwired the protection in the firmware . I don't know about their new drives though, maybe they relaxed their labido.

Abit: good company

the hard drive: I don't know if these are still a big thing, but western digital caviar drives used to be dah bomb. Maybe stacy knows something about their new ones...

the raid 0: I don't know if this is worth it, it only ups performance by ~20% and makes it so you lose all your data if one of the two drives fails. Doubling the chance of data loss for 20% increase might not be worth it.

if you don't know what raid 0 is, its when you combine two drives together into one and it gets a bit faster.

[B0b]

some motherboards (mainly Dual CPU) require you to purchase ECC RAM if you're going above 1GB of RAM

20% increase?? i get an 90% increase with my RAID 0 .. 63MB/Sec instead of 35..

$30-40 = cheap PSU
$80-120 = good PSU

the Antec comes with a 120mm Fan @ the back and has the option for a 2nd 120mm fan @ the front.. its a fantastic case, i know alot of ppl who have this case

Western Digital make the fastest SATA drive called a Raptor spinning at an impressive 10,000 RPM

my choice in drive manufacture are in this order:
Western Digital
Maxtor
Seagate

Drive i wouldn't touch with a barge pole:
Fujitsu

dual DVI out 3Dlabs Wildcat VP560 is a dual DVI professional card (shite @ games) and has 10bit RAM DAC for outstanding colour quality is pretty cheap as well

[stacy]

I just suggested a second Barracuda because the Weez already seemed to have his heart set on it. But on third thought and ya'all's prompting, yeah...ideally I'd go for a large WD for OS and storage and two WD 10k Raptors sata's in RAID-0 for the work and video drive.

I also agree that there's much more than a 20% jump in a RAID-0.
I brought up the subject of a RAID because I'm assuming as a working graphic artist you may, or more likely, probably will be asked to work in video as a medium sooner or later. The VideoToaster we have trippled the sustained write speed with 3 160 SCSI's in RAID-0 and the new SATA's should do at least as well. (3 or 4 will run faster than 2) If you run a Toaster you HAVE to use RAID and if you use Premiere or VegasVideo you probably SHOULD use a RAID.

Stay away from IBM drives too. If you go over to newtek.com and checkout the hardware threads you'll find MANY stories of IBM, Quantum and Fujitsu drives going south at the worst possible moments.

Even if you don't end up doing any videom, PhotoShop will still be thrilled to death with the RAID for the scratch or cache or work disk (or whatever Adobe's calling it now.) ...And after work you can run you games on it at breakneck speeds.

P.S. ... a video secret I learned the hard way... If you set up a RAID for video use the SOFTWARE RAID, do NOt use any cards or hardware RAID functionallity. The hardware RAID uses BURST techniques and it plays havok with the video writes. Video should be as fast as possible but also as smooth as possible.

P.S.-P.S. ... If you ever make the jump from a really good graphics box that can run Premiere or VegasVideo and want to do VideoToaster or Avid, you'll need a dual Xeon motherboard with an Intel e7505 or e7525 chipset.
The new Athlon64's with full SSE2 opcodes are looking promising too.

As a professional graphics workstation you're going to have a knock-out box!!!

[weaselball2]

raid: B0bs right, I looked it up again. Raid helps a lot, like 70%-90% increase. I guess me brain cellz arn't as sharp as they used to be . Still gotta think about that data loss risk though. I was actually gonna put raid in my comp, but I reconsidered becuase I didn't like the thought of one of the drives going bad.

psu: I got my 400 watt psu and case together for 30 bucks, you can't tell me a 400 watt psu alone for 30 bucks wouldn't be pretty nice.
computer nerds seem to overbuy the psu, you don't need an 80 dollar power supply. I have 3 computers all running fine for years on cheap psus that came with 30 dollar cases.

of course I also have this horror story of one of my older comps frying cuz we tried to put a new video card on a 140 watt power supply...

the psu with an antec case should be fine. Antec is known to make very nice cases(psu included).

[UnAlternate]

thank you so much guys for your replys, i'm really greatful!


i'm slowly starting to know everything i need to know, but if anyone has some more insight on any the following three decisions i have to make it would be great!


* ECC vs non-ECC memory?

* 380W Antec Sonata vs 430W Antec Plus 1080AMG?

* Intel retail cooler vs Zalman 7000a (cu or alcu) cooler?


any thoughts greatly appreciated! thanx.
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[stacy]

Weez... the way around the data loss issue is: Put you Operating System, software and storage on one big drive (200GB WD) and use a couple of smaller drives (2 80GB WD [they don't even have to be Raptors]) for your work disks.

In the case of Photoshop, the stripped drives would be you scratch disk, etc.. When your project is finished move it to a partition on your big OS drive to archive.

I've been in the Newtek forum for a long time now, and I've yet to see ANY one complain about loosing a WD drive. ...in RAID or otherwise, although I'm sure they must go bad once in awhile.

If one does go bad, since the RAID is just a temporary high speed work space and not used for permanant storage, just toss it add a new mate to the good one an move you work files back to the stripped set and go to work.




Re:
* ECC vs non-ECC memory?
--- Depends on the motherboard some require it and some don't. I know of people running a full-tilt, full-boogie VT3 with SCSI array on SuperMicro - X5DAL-TG2s (that don't requre ECC) and doing three or four streams of real-time switching using non-ECC with zero problems. Check the motherboard specs! ---

* 380W Antec Sonata vs 430W Antec Plus 1080AMG?
--- More power is always better, especially if you intend to add extra DVD R/RWs, Chip readers, USB devices, lots of fans and harddrives, etc. If it were strictly my choice, I'd use the 430W.

* Intel retail cooler vs Zalman 7000a (cu or alcu) cooler?
--- I've never used one myself, but I'd pick the Zalman copper over the Intel just on the reviews I've read alone. ---

[B0b]

when working on a major project i always back up the data every night (on a seperate HDD, usually my Laptop - then once the project is finished it gets put on either 2x DVD or 2xCD (so i have 2 copies of the finished article - 1 i keep the other get put into storage off site)

[Surfbum072]

I am a little late jumping on the wagon here, but I missed this thread when it wa active.

You DO NOT need pc3200/400MHz RAM for that CPU. I have a P4 3.0 and I used 512k of pc2100 temporarily until I got my Corsair XMS 3200 in the mail.
You would probably WANT 3200, but you don't need it to run the computer.

[stacy]

Yep that's right Surf...
Another interesting thing about memory speed:
The current motherboard of choice for the VideoToaster[3] is the SuperMicro X5DA8 http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=242032

If you'll notice, all that this advanced motherboard requires is DDR266 !

This motherboard and good PC2100 memory can run and entire TV studio with multiple camera feeds and switching while switching DVE's AND generating full blown graphics in the background and foreground, CG titling, and a whole lot more, all in real-time.

Also keep in mind all the memory XP or 2000 will let any one application use is just at 2GB. To get more memory per running application, you'd have to use MS Advanced Server that starts at about $4,000.