Hardware upgrade

[EchoDown]

This is gonna be good....Nice case,great cooling system,good ventilation,fancy lighting for lights off gaming....
Nice Mike....

 

[Vox Populi Vox Dei]

Yeah, really nice PC there, although you should consider rather getting a normal SATA drive than a SATA2 drive [negligable difference]. I'm not sure what the price difference is though.

 

[mikef]

Thanks again for the help guys. My current thoughts on the system I have ordered from Computersonly:

MB - DFI Lanparty SLI DR = R1950
R450 more than the DFI LanParty UT NF4 SLI-D but bundled extras worth at least that plus provides support for additional sata2 and raid 5. Also more suitable than Asus for overclocking
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=1768&page=16

CPU - AMD 3500+ = R1499
AFAIK allows more room for overclocking than the 3800+ and is cheaper. I think dualcore will currently only show much improvement if multitasking and not for the games currently available. Can possibly be upgraded later.

RAM - 2 * Corsair 1GB DDR400 = R1800
Been told is cooler than 4 * 512MB DDR400 and board needs ram in twos

Graphics - Gainword 7800GT 256MB = R3400
IMO best value for money

Harddisk - Hitachi 250GB SATA2 = R960
?

Case - Thermaltake XaserV Wingo V8000A = R820
Looks good (good reviews)on bargain bin sale from Digital Planet for R912 less 10% discount voucher

(Total R10429)

Still considering upgrading psu

 

[swordfish1]

...
MB - DFI Lanparty SLI DR = R1950
R450 more than the DFI LanParty UT NF4 SLI-D but bundled extras worth at least that plus provides support for additional sata2 and raid 5. Also more suitable than Asus for overclocking
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=1768&page=16

is that win nForce 4 chipset? did you check the RAID 5 reviews? they are terrible at best!

 

[mikef]

is that win nForce 4 chipset? did you check the RAID 5 reviews? they are terrible at best!

I havent done much research but raid 5 is not with the nforce 4 chipset (I think)
Four Serial ATA ports supported by the Silicon Image Sil 3114 chip - SATA speed up to 1.5Gb/s
- RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1 and RAID 5

 

[BTTB]

Still considering upgrading psu

Try the Antec True Power 2.

 

[Claymore]

hehe
Ok,I would prefer quicker load times personally,the difference is notable.
Yes A64
The thing is going for a dual core AMD cpu would not be right at the moment,it's overkill,games havent barely begun to be made to support them Properly...you would see points increase in benchmarks yes,but this is a kid and he obviously wants cool looking graphics in his games,so that is what I would focus on.
The venice core is more than capable.
Besides AMD is coming with quad core etc late 2006 early 2007,now that is future proofing.

I'm running a dual-core Athlon 62 X2 3800+. Very nice indeed, when you run lots of things at the same time. When you want to play single game though, it's far better to get a cheaper and faster single-core CPU.

 

[Scooby_Doo]

Sorr, the only reason i would go duel core would be to be future proof... No other reason.

So when games or apps start to be made for duel core u gonna see some mighty diff.

 

[mikef]

System up and running.

After some initial problems requiring the mb's bios to be updated to the latest version everything seems in great shape. As part of troubleshooting before flashing bios upgraded psu to thermaltake 430w

pcmark2005 before any overclocking over 7600
Edit: 3dmark2005 not pcmark

Thanks again for all the comments guys

 

[EchoDown]

Good stuff Mike.
I just got a Thermaltake Soprano today,formally known as Tsunami,very happy about it.....got some other little goodies ie lighting,sleeving kit etc....
Going to shop for a PSU next week!
PS what I said about quad cores was a bit lol-ish,musta been tired.