My New Pc Configuration tell me your opinions

[odomike 0]

I decided to make a lota upgrade in my desktop. which will comprise changing everything practically. Below is the configuration I came up with for the PC:

 

Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz 2 x 4MB L2 Cache LGA 775 Processor - OEM

Mobo: ASUS P5N32-E SLI LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard - OEM

RAM: WINTEC 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Memory (x2) making it 4GB total.

Hard Disks: SAMSUNG SpinPoint T Series HD403LJ 400GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM) x2 (800GB) total

VGA: SAPPHIRE 100195L Radeon X1650 512MB 128-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16 CrossFire Supported) x2 'cos I wanna use it on ATI crossfire.

CD/DVD: LITE-ON 20X DVD?R DVD Burner With 12X DVD-RAM Write Black SATA Model (x2)

Monitor: Niko NIKO-2017MAAW Black 20" 16ms DVI Widescreen LCD Monitor

Case+PSU: RAIDMAX SMILODON ATX-612WBP Black SECC STEEL ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 500W Power Supply

 

I wanna know what you feel about this my config. Another thing is, the mobo is using an nVIDIA nFORCE 680i SLI. Which means that it is definitely supporting the NVIDIA SLI tech. Would it also suport ATI CrossFire as it is using an nVIDIA Northbridge and southbridge chipsets. I hope it aint gonna be giving me any problems with the ATI graphics cards.

 

You opinions are highly needed here.

Edited September 6, 2007 by odomike (see edit history)

[delivi 0]

Wow ! this is a superb PC configuration. You've got a configuration for me to envy . :Pthis configuration is excellent for playing games with full graphics settings and also enjoy a great multimedia experience.We both only have the DVD Writer in common everything else is superior than mine :Denjoy a lot:)

[odomike 0]

Oh well, I wanted this to be a one time configuration and I am just gonna forget about any personal desktop and focus on getting a better laptop for myself.I wanted a computer that will play all the games you CAN EVER THINK OF while not using a very high tech video card. 1GB of video ram aint no joke and I am gonna stick to it.ATM, I am using a HP Compaq nx6310 with an Intel CoreDuo T2400 with 1GB or DDR2 667 and a DVD-RAM Drive. Thinking of going up to the T7000 series in my next laptop upgrade.Thanks for the compliment delivi.

[Saint_Michael 3]

Nice set up, but I could see a potential problem and thats your power supply; 500 seems not enough I would bump it up to about 600 watts since you have 2 hard drive, 4 gigs of RAM, and everything else. Now is the VGA built in or is it a card? If its a card then I would look into adding a bit more juice to it for safe keeping, and I just answered my own question so if possible bump up the power supply to 600 watts.As for hte video card you might have some capability issues since the mobo supports SLI and your VGA is ATI, but of course I am right now helping you out on yahoo so my post ends here.

[dre 0]

Buy the 256 mb version of the video card. A radeon 1650 with 512 mb is TOTAL OVERKILL. If that card were to just use 256 mb of ram, then you would probably have unspeakable lag...If you were to try 512 mb, you will be enjoying 1-2 frames per second (fast, I know). And do not buy another one of these cards and use them in Crossfire. Seriously, save yourself the money. You're much better off just buying a single nVIDIA 7900 GS video card (Newegg product here:) that'll cost $119.99. In many cases, the single 7900 GS video card approaches the speed of a Crossfire X1650 XT dual-video card setup (it's about 6 fps away, gets closer as quality and resolution increase, benchmarks from TechReport benchmark page, a very reliable source). So you have one video card beating two video cards, which are even slightly faster than your model...I think the answer here is simple. Please save yourself money and gain yourself speed, buy the nVIDIA 7900 GS, you wont be disappointed.

Edited September 7, 2007 by dre (see edit history)

[Watermonkey 0]

Nice set up, but I could see a potential problem and thats your power supply; 500 seems not enough I would bump it up to about 600 watts since you have 2 hard drive, 4 gigs of RAM, and everything else. Now is the VGA built in or is it a card? If its a card then I would look into adding a bit more juice to it for safe keeping, and I just answered my own question so if possible bump up the power supply to 600 watts.

That's the first thing I was thinking too. I'd even consider going higher yet, to 700W if it's not formidably expensive. I've no idea what the price difference would be but I'm guessing, not much. Also, buy a battery backup (UPS) from Costco to protect your investment in case of a power problem.

[csp4.0 1]

the computer I'm building has similar specs, but from what i've learned that power supply isn't even near what you need, I recommend this power supply

http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

the wattage may seem small but can support 2x 8800GTSs' and has got good reviews.

Now about using a ATI card on a nVidia chipset is not a good idea, it might work but there could be serious concequences.

Worst case scenario: you turn on your computer and the graphics card and mobo burn out, but if the have the time to know then i recommend asking a professional near you (and please PM me the results since all the nVidia GPUs are so expensive, but the only mobo i could find that suited my needs was an ASUS nForce 680i SLI MOBO).

Good luck on building that PC of yours.

PS if I were you I'd just go for a case with no PSU

[benzkids 0]

cool it looks like a pretty cool setup. hoe much it cost? what operating system will you be running on it? what are you going to do a sweet set-up? games? well what ever you do with it, it will be fast. lol hope you have fun with you computer.

[Saint_Michael 3]

Well with talking to odo online, better make sure to get a hold of him later. we were looking at ATI motherboards and the ones that I found were pretty crappy, and thanks dre for the big reminder as I can't believe I forgot about just switching out the Crossfire with the Nvidia gfx card.

[odomike 0]

Well with talking to odo online, better make sure to get a hold of him later. we were looking at ATI motherboards and the ones that I found were pretty crappy, and thanks dre for the big reminder as I can't believe I forgot about just switching out the Crossfire with the Nvidia gfx card.

Sorry Saint. I got disconnected and the connection never came back till the next morning. I was later able to find an ASUS motherboard that supports Crossfire with an Intel P35 Northbridge and Intel ICH9R Southbridge. Supports DDR2 1066MHz and DDR3 1333MHz and running on FSB 1333. It is an ASUS P5K-V LGA 775 Intel G33 ATX Intel Motherboard. I am still deciding which one to take between these two: Open Box: ASUS P5K-V LGA 775 Intel G33 ATX Intel Motherboard - OEM and Open Box: ASUS P5K LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard - OEM. As you guys can see, one is using a G33 intel chipset while the other uses a P35. I am thinking the P35 would be better though.

 

Apart from that, talking abou tthe NVIDIA GFX card and the ATI x1650PRO card, what exactly are the differences here? I have tried to make some comparisms with my old GeForce FX 5200 Ultra (128MB DDR) and I found out that this card n GPU is a much better option than what I previously had. It supports a lota nice features (judging from what I read at the sapphire website). You can go there and have a look for yourself.

 

Yea, I am really considering going for a case without a PSU and then buy the PSU separately. I know its gonna be more expensive than buying one with an inbuilt PSU but it would most likely come with a higher quality PSU. here is the link to the PSU I selected for the configuration APEVIA ATX-AS600W-BL 600W Power Supply - Retail.

 

And oh before I forget, I decided to add an additional 400GB SATA II HDD to the previous 2x 400GB SATA II HDDs. Making it total of 1.2TB (1200GB) of Hard Drive memory. Wel, I dont wanna trouble myself about space in my PC at any time at all no matter what I have to pack in there.

 

left to me, I dont think my configuration is bad, but i am still very open to advice from you guys.

 

Still waiting for more of your opinions.

Edited September 7, 2007 by odomike (see edit history)

[faund 0]

LITE-ON DVD Burner give me very good impression, it's really a good DVD burner to write some poor quality DVD+-R disk that can't be written by other burner.Can you image what Configuration I have.Intel Celeron 1.1GHz512M SDRam40G HDDCDROM17" CRT:P

[rayzoredge 2]

I decided to make a lota upgrade in my desktop. which will comprise changing everything practically. Below is the configuration I came up with for the PC:

 

Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz 2 x 4MB L2 Cache LGA 775 Processor - OEM

Mobo: ASUS P5N32-E SLI LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard - OEM

RAM: WINTEC 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Memory (x2) making it 4GB total.

Hard Disks: SAMSUNG SpinPoint T Series HD403LJ 400GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM) x2 (800GB) total

VGA: SAPPHIRE 100195L Radeon X1650 512MB 128-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16 CrossFire Supported) x2 'cos I wanna use it on ATI crossfire.

CD/DVD: LITE-ON 20X DVDąR DVD Burner With 12X DVD-RAM Write Black SATA Model (x2)

Monitor: Niko NIKO-2017MAAW Black 20" 16ms DVI Widescreen LCD Monitor

Case+PSU: RAIDMAX SMILODON ATX-612WBP Black SECC STEEL ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 500W Power Supply

 

I wanna know what you feel about this my config. Another thing is, the mobo is using an nVIDIA nFORCE 680i SLI. Which means that it is definitely supporting the NVIDIA SLI tech. Would it also suport ATI CrossFire as it is using an nVIDIA Northbridge and southbridge chipsets. I hope it aint gonna be giving me any problems with the ATI graphics cards.

 

You opinions are highly needed here.

How much is this entire setup going to cost you?

 

You're probably going for the best bang for the buck, but I would suggest that since this machine is already rather superpowered with everything you're putting into it, you might as well throw in a good sound card (SoundBlaster Fatality?), speakers (Creative/Logitech?), and a larger monitor/LCD to boot. The monitor could also use a faster response time to prevent any glitches you may see in fast-paced gaming.

 

I haven't looked at any of the products specifically, but from what it looks like, you will be having a spectacular machine.

 

Can anyone answer that question regarding ATI video cards on a mobo with an NVIDIA chipset? Because I had that question before but never got an answer.

 

The quad-core (and total VRAM) seems like a little bit of overkill... I'd understand if you want to future-proof this as much as possible, but I'm sure you could actually do with just dual-core or even a single, just because most games out there don't even utilize the potential of having more than one processor. Then again, it would make sense to future-proof...

 

To pick out the best video cards to dual, I suggest that you look at specifications and designs aside from the amount of VRAM that it will have onboard (GPU specs: pipelines, shaders, and all that good stuff that I'm still a newbie at). It also looks like the cards you've chosen don't support DX10. If you're going to future-proof with quad-core, you might as well throw in some more for DX10-compatible cards. I'm sure you've see the world of difference that DX10 has to offer compared to DX9.0c.

 

I don't know your computer background but you do seem like you know what you're talking about, so I'll leave you with that.

[fffanatics 0]

Good configuration but you will want a Nvidia graphics card instead of ATI. Since your motherboard supports the newest 680i chipset, you will see a huge increase in performance of two cards in SLi. Plus, Nvidia has started to blow ATI out of the water with the performance of their cards. I am a graphical programmer (write gaming graphics, research rendering techniques, etc.) i have plenty of experience with both and have talked to people in both companies and really look at the properties of the cards. Nvidia is way better at any sort of vertex and pixel operations because of their layout, chipsets, chip speeds, and most importantly the number of pipelines they allow a programmer to access. Plus, nvidia has certain tools and protocols that only work with their cards that really increase performance of many operations that developers use all the time.

[odomike 0]

You got a very good point there rayzoredge. I am definitely gonna add a very good sound card in the qeue. And also the speakers too.

I am making some changes to the whole configurations. I am changing the 1650XT GPU to an ATI RADEON™ HD 2600XT GPU this time and I also gonna retain the same video memory (1GB). I know that this would sound very outrageous to anyone that hears it but thats the way I want it so wont have to bother myself about graphics processing power anytime.

And yea, I am still waiting for my question to be answered about the nVIDIA mobo and ATI GPUs and crossfire.

Good configuration but you will want a Nvidia graphics card instead of ATI. Since your motherboard supports the newest 680i chipset, you will see a huge increase in performance of two cards in SLi. Plus, Nvidia has started to blow ATI out of the water with the performance of their cards. I am a graphical programmer (write gaming graphics, research rendering techniques, etc.) i have plenty of experience with both and have talked to people in both companies and really look at the properties of the cards. Nvidia is way better at any sort of vertex and pixel operations because of their layout, chipsets, chip speeds, and most importantly the number of pipelines they allow a programmer to access. Plus, nvidia has certain tools and protocols that only work with their cards that really increase performance of many operations that developers use all the time

Well, I aint going for the 680i SLI mobo again 'cos I wanna make a change this time and use ATI. I've been an nVIDIA fan for more than 5 years now. I am actually comparing some mobos from ASUS and Gigabyte and I think I am most likely gonna go for the Gigabyte after the whole comparisms.

I have used a number of Gigabyte mobos and one feature I love about these mobos is the fact that your CPU really stays cool even after O'Cing. That is one thing that is good about them using the Motherboard Intelligent Tweaker.
Edited September 7, 2007 by odomike (see edit history)

[rayzoredge 2]

You might also want to consider what fffanatics said about NVIDIA possibly (or factually, I can't say for myself) again.Realistically-speaking, I'm not sure if you would notice a difference or not unless you benchmark the two brands against each other. (Who really sees a difference between 160 fps as opposed to 180? Or those minute differences on how vectors are drawn and pixels handled? And even if you could... would it matter that much to warrant the change?) You COULD go back to your mobo with NVIDIA chipset and throw in a SLI configuration instead of a Crossfire one, but I suppose you could give ATI a try.It IS an expensive trial though...Good to see that the 2600XT is a nice choice... DX10 support AND PCIe.I can't recommend from experience what sound cards or speakers (or anything else, really) you should buy, since I'm still running and will remain running my HP Pavilion zd8000, which is great for most things that I want to do anyway. But I'm buying the hype from Creative with their XFi line. There are also a handful of non-Creative sound cards that I hear from time to time that may be worth looking at. Speakers are the same... I trust Creative, Logitech, and now Altec Lansing. Then again, unless you were an audiophile, you may not even notice the difference between sound cards (unless you were comparing a SoundBlaster Live! to its Audigy 2 counterpart, or something like that).

Edited September 7, 2007 by rayzoredge (see edit history)