New Hardware Setup

[brudney]

looks like a great rig to me...but:

- I guess you need a more powerful PSU. 500-550 Watts shoud be fine. I recommend Tagan and Antec. Rock-stable, powerful, very reliable.

- what's the point of getting a 40GB HDD if you can have 80gigs for literally almost the same price.. plus you may consider getting a WD Raptor 74 GB for the OS/apps and have the maxtor for everything else.

- yeah, 7800gtx cards are very pricey. get 7800gt or even something from the 6800 series(gt,gs) or wait for 7800gs (should hit the stores soon)

- as for the motherboard, get something based on a nforce 4 sli chip (msi k8n diamond, asus a8n sli, abit an8 sli etc. besides, there are different versions of these mbs with some additional features depending on what you need and how much money you have)

[A-Catcher]

Concerning the motherboard I have read that some Asus mobos take issue with more than 2gigs of RAM, can anyone back this up? So is it a good idea to keep storage and programmes on a seperate drive?

I feel I should also mention my most used apps which are:

Lightwave 8.2
XSI 5 Fnd
Zbrush 2
Vue
Photoshop

[RPG2006]

I have exactly that ram in my A8N-SLI premium (Asus). Work's a treat. The issues with these boards apparently, are when you use all 4 slots, with say 4 sticks of 512mb. 2x1gb is fine. If you can get your hands on the new A8N32-Sli deluxe, it would be well worth looking into.

DFI boards, are the most popular for overclockers, but I have read that people experience problems with corsair ram and these boards. or that there is a lot of setting up to get them working right. The corsair ram you have, according to the marketing was developed in conjunction with the Asus A8N32 sli deluxe.

Agree you should be looking for a more powerful PSU.

RPG

ps. If you are looking to save money, rather than cut back on the graphics card, I believe the general consensus is that you would be better off buying a 4400+ with same cache as the 4800+ and overclocking it to the same spec.

[daraeill]

i'd also point out that the newer sata drives would be a much better choice than the old ata...smaller cables=better airflow throughout the case, faster transfer rates...get one of the drives that has NCQ (native command queuing) as this should help your drive determine a better, more efficient way of retrieving data that is spread across the drive...which makes it a bit faster, and should also reduce the wear and tear a bit


as for the motherboard question...i'd say the asus A8N-SLI Premium would be a very good choice...just stick with thier QVL as far as ram and you shouldn't have any problems with using 4 sticks...try this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820208125 this is a 1GB stick that is rated by ASUS to be used in ALL 4 slots (if you want to go with a total of 4GB now or later) actually its rated to be used in any slot, in any combintaion...not to mention that samsung makes some really good memory chips

in the case of watercooling---unless you are planning on overclocking the hell out of that processor...it's not neccessary...even if you're only planning on OC'ing it a bit standard colling will be fine...though you may want to spend $15 and get a better aftermarket heatsink and fan for it


for the psu i'd have to agree with dirty...try this...it's better quality, higher sustained wattage, and the same price as that zalman one http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817103932

[A-Catcher]

Right, having taken some of your advice on board I am now posting the revised specs and this looks like its going to be a litte easier on my pocket.

Case: Coolermaster Centurion 530

HS: Zalaman CNPS9500

Proc: AMD Athlon 64 x2 4400+ 1MB L2 Cache

Mobo: ASUS A8N-VM CSM Micro ATX

PSU: Antec Truepower 2.0 550W PSU

RAM: Transcend 1GB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM Unbuffered DDR 400 x4

HD: Maxtor DiamondMax Plus10 250GB 6L250Ro ATA-133

HD2: Western Digital Cavalier Special Edition 80GB

GC: BFG Geforce 7800 GT OC 256MB GDDR3

DVD: LG GSA 2166D 16x16 DVD+RW

CD:Liteon SOHC-5232K

Sound: Creative SBA SE 7.1



I looked at that other mobo that was suggested but it did not look like it had enough RAM slots for my 4 gigs....So how is this looking so far?

I have heard that the GeForce cards are not great for 3D work, is this correct?
:thumbsup:BTW all your help thus far is greatly appriciated:thumbsup:

[daraeill]

micro atx?? are you going for a more portable solution?

[A-Catcher]

No but it was the only one on overclockers.uk that I could find with 4 RAM slots! If have got a better suggestion please do tell cause I need the advice, everything is changable at this stage.

[daraeill]

i just took a look oon overclockers.uk...try this one Asus A8N-SLi Premium nForce4 SLi (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-111-AS) <STRONG><FONT face=Arial>Price: £114.95 (£135.07 Including VAT at 17.5%)

it looks to be a bit more expnsive, but has the ability to go SLI (which i'm sure will eventually be supported by 3d apps) and is much more feature-rich...also the ram i suggested was for this board, not the micro atx version

[lots]

I have not seen an Athlon64 board with less than 4 RAM slots. Odd. Well if we exclude the ones found in SFF cases...

[MadMax]

Mobo: ASUS A8N-VM CSM Micro ATX


Complete crap. VIA chipsets are to be avoided at all costs.



I have heard that the GeForce cards are not great for 3D work, is this correct?


nope.

[A-Catcher]

My bad, I just wasnt looking close enough at the motherboards :D. Ok so here is where I am at so far:

Coolermaster Centurion 520
Zalman CNPS9500-LED Aero Flower
AMD Athlon64 x2 DC 4400+ 1MB
ASUS Premium nForce4 A8N-SLI
Antec NeoHE 500W Modular ATX2.0 PSU
Transcend 1GB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM Unbuffered DDR 400 (x4)
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 10 250GB 6L250RO ATA-133
Western Digital Raptor 74GB SATA
BFG Geforce 7800 GTX OC 256MB GDDR3
LG GSA 2166D 16x16 DVD+RW
Liteon SOHC-5232 52x
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy SE 7.1

For the extra hard drive I decided that I should go for the WD Raptor, does the faster transfer rate on this drive mean that programmes and my OS will load quicker, thanks for bearing with me this far BTW.

[leif3d]

You should be booting off of the Raptor Drive and archiving to your maxtor 250g

[MadMax]

why go for the maxtor (lots of compliants by people) 250gb, when you can get a WD 250gb, SATA 3GB/s drive for just over 100.00?

[A-Catcher]

Because to be honest I know no better when it comes to these things, your help is appriciated btw. Not gonna go for the one you reccomended but gonna get one of the cheaper WD drives as I am hitting my budget roof already. approx £1200 - £1400.

[MadMax]

Because to be honest I know no better when it comes to these things, your help is appriciated btw. Not gonna go for the one you reccomended but gonna get one of the cheaper WD drives as I am hitting my budget roof already. approx £1200 - £1400.


Budget is always a good thing to keep an eye on.

[A-Catcher]

Could I overclock my 4400 to run like a 4800 with my current Zalman cooling solution or would that be a bad idea all together?

[dactilardesign]

It's a good cooling for overclocking. It will be enough, but watercooling would be perfect :)

I recommend not to go for a 7800GTX, just GT would be fine. If you considere important the gap in performance of the GT, just overclock it, shouldn't be hard to do, as with the 6800GT @ ultra.

And I don't agree that the 3D Apps will support SLI, its only for 3d-gaming freaks, an expensive and nearly useless architecture (must be supported by software). But the right question is: are the profesional cards like quadro ready for SLI??

[A-Catcher]

I am not going to go down the watercooling route quite yet as I need to learn a lot more about PC architecture before I start doing things that might go horribly wrong.

I have decided to drop the GC down to a 6800GS. Would I see a massive drop in performance over the 7800?

I changed the processor as well was this a wise move?

How easy is it to overclock your graphics card and would it require additional cooling?

Here is my setup as it stands today. I am a little worried about the RAM as it seems mighty cheap for RAM compared to some of the other brands:
Coolermaster Centurion 530
Zalman CNPS9500 Aero Flower
AMD Athlon 64 x2 4400+ 2MB TOLEDO
ASUS A8N-SLI Premium
Antec NeoHE 500W ATX2.0
Transcend 1GB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM (X4)
Caviar 250GB 8MB Cache SATA150
74GB SATA WD Raptor
Leadtek GeForce 6800GS 256MB


Overall it is coming to £1170 minus the VAT so that ain't too bad on my wallet. Thanks for everyones help so far.

[RPG2006]

A-Catcher,

That's not a big overclock. The 4400 runs at 2.2 ghz and the 4800 at 2.4 ghz. You should be able to do that quite easily and maybe even on stock voltage. When you overclock your cpu, it also overclocks your memory so you will have to take that into account, and whether to use a divider(Divider is terminology not hardware). If your memory will happily run at 220 mhz, you could for instance use (FSB)220*11(Multiplier)=2420mhz.

Good advice though is to read up on O'cing over on the many overclocking forums like dfi-street, extremeoverclocking.com etc, before you try. There's a good way of doing it and a bad way, and they have various stickys for you to read. In addition it's a good idea to download prime95. You will need to run two instances of this for each cpu core, and this will thoroughly test the stabilty of your overclock.

Regards cooling, ambient temperature seems to be a big factor. So air cooling in the UK, is going to be more of a viable option than it is here. The cpu idle should ideally be no more than 39/40, preferably less, and at full load should be no more than 50. It can go as high as 60, but 61/62 and the machine is likely to crash. That's what I found anyway, which is why I'm now on watercooling. It's damn hot here though.

Hope this helps.

RPG

[RPG2006]

I had a similar question regarding ram, when I first dabbled with this. Here's the thread

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=271997

I was able to have my 4200+ run at 2.64 (240x11) with kingston value ram, loose timings and a divider. Not a world beating overclock, but it does show that you can get by without very expensive ram.

I have since upgrade to corsair though 2048x3500LL pro. That came to about 200 pound sterling, and runs well in the asus boards.

RPG

[lots]

And I don't agree that the 3D Apps will support SLI, its only for 3d-gaming freaks, an expensive and nearly useless architecture (must be supported by software). But the right question is: are the profesional cards like quadro ready for SLI??

Quadros on PCIe have the SLI connector. And are capable of using SLI. I would guess that Nvidia would try and push SLI with the big 3D apps out there, just to get a more wide spread adoption of the technology. Plus, I think 3D apps stand to benifit from such setups, if they have good support. To bad thing is we'll be reduced to a single display, and for alot of people that's rather annoying :) I enjoy my 2 monitors, and have thought of expanding passed that to larger numbers... :P

[A-Catcher]

Regards cooling, ambient temperature seems to be a big factor. So air cooling in the UK, is going to be more of a viable option than it is here.
RPG

If thats the case then I probably don't even need a heatsink at the moment! It's bloody freezing over here!

So do you reckon droping the specs of my graphics card will handicap my system in terms of power?

RPG: Yeah I am going to study OCing a lot before I even attempt to do such things as I can not afford to damage my components in any way, shape or form. Thanks fot the links as well I will be checking them out shortly.

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