My new PC has been ordered!

[toadlife]

We got a nice tax return this year, so I finally was able to get a brand new PC. Check it out...it should scream with the x64 version of FreeBSD, and yeah, it should run Windows pretty good too.

CASE: ANTEC SLK3800B (BLACK)
MB: ASUS A8N32-SLI DELUXE (Dual 16x PCI-E)
CPU: AMD ATHLON 64  X2 4400+ - TOLEDO
MEMORY: 2GB CORSAIR VALUE SELECT (2x1024MB) PC3200
HD CONTROLLER: Areca ARC-1210 8xPCI-E 4 Port SATA RAID (works with FreeBSD!)
HD: 2x SEAGATE 300GB SATA2 7200RPM 16MB
GFX CARD: GIGABYTE GEFORCE 7800GT 256MB PCI EXPRESS DDR3
MONITOR: XEROX 17" XA7-172I LCD
DVD: PLEXTOR PX-716SA/SW 16x8x16x/DVD+-RW SATA INTERNAL
MISC: 20-in-1 MULTI CARD READER

[adiment]

nice rig. but where the hell is the PSU! other than that, looks good!

[toadlife]

nice rig. but where the hell is the PSU! other than that, looks good!

It comes with the case. An Antec 400W Smart power.

[adiment]

400w is probebly just enough to run all that. Remember PSU's are usually 70% - 80% efficiant at loads. What are the rail amps like on that PSU? Also why get the value ram, if you're going to go all out (especially that sexy mobo) get some CL2 ram, even if you don't want to overclock.

edit: it's +12V1@10A, +12V2@15A, 25amps total should be enough for 7800GT! I myself got the 500w modular model.  :thumbup:

[piratePenguin]

That'll run Word pretty daym fast :p

[Aloone_Jonez]

it should run Windows pretty good too.

You might struggle with Vista though, anyway what do you need such a powerful PC for?

[toadlife]

400w is probebly just enough to run all that. Remember PSU's are usually 70% - 80% efficiant at loads. What are the rail amps like on that PSU? Also why get the value ram, if you're going to go all out (especially that sexy mobo) get some CL2 ram, even if you don't want to overclock.

edit: it's +12V1@10A, +12V2@15A, 25amps total should be enough for 7800GT! I myself got the 500w modular model.  :thumbup:

The biggest concern with PSUs is that they deliver stable power. The Antec PSU's are very nice in this regard. I use a Antec Smart Power 350W for my current rig which includes everything in this new one except is has three hard drives instead of two. Even high end systems (link) don't really draw that much power. Shitty 600W PSUs will cause system instability before a quality 400W PSU will.

As for the memory, I don't overclock, and paying double the price for nominal perfornmance gain is stupid IMO.

[toadlife]

You might struggle with Vista though, anyway what do you need such a powerful PC for?

I've run the Vista previews on my laptop (Alienware P4 3.0Ghz) and our standard Sempron desktops at work and it works fine. A little sluggish, but XP was slow on low end PC's when it came out too. This machine should handle Vista ok.

As for why I need such a fast machine. I don't. :p

[H_TeXMeX_H]

Run Vista on it ... it'll slow it down to just right.

[Pathos]

17inch with that gfx card? ... the 19s are cheap as nuts these days.

If I had that cash I would be getting a 20-21 and wheres the sounds? remember whose are all that display the final result of your cool hardware so don't skimp.

[toadlife]

17inch with that gfx card? ... the 19s are cheap as nuts these days.

If I had that cash I would be getting a 20-21 and wheres the sounds? remember whose are all that display the final result of your cool hardware so don't skimp.

19 inch LCDs are not "cheap as nuts" - at least not NICE 19 inch LCDs. Anyhow, a 17" LCD has  avieable area of 17" whereas my old 19" CRT has a vieable area of 18", so it's not that big of a difference.

BTW - I'm typing on my new rig now. Getting ready to set up the old machine for my wife.

PS: The sounds are in my headphones.

[Lead Head]

You should have gotten a 7900GT or x1900XL,  they both would have been a better investment, but that is just my opinion

[WMD]

Also why get the value ram, if you're going to go all out (especially that sexy mobo) get some CL2 ram, even if you don't want to overclock.

CL2 RAM is about 3% faster than CL3 if you don't change anything.  You're retarded if you buy that stuff and don't overclock.

Besides, "Value RAM" is an awesome deal for money right now.  You can buy 1GB of it for about $20 less than I bought 512MB for two years ago (going by Newegg prices).

So, nice system there toadlife...I'm building a similar system for somebody soon (but without SLI or dual core).  Makes my PC look pretty dated...it's two years old.  Although, it still serves me fine, ever since I gave up on PC gaming...

[toadlife]

Thanks WMD.

If I took all of your suggestions guys and went "all out", I would have spent and extra $450-$550 - way over $3,000 instead of $2,600 (The $2,600 inlcuded an LCD for my wife's computer too), for what would probably amount to a 10% performance gain under optimal conditions.

An Athlon64 4800 instead of a 4400 would be an extra $180
Two 19" LCDs instead of two 17" LCDs would be an extra $100.00 or more
2GB CAS2 RAM instead of CAS3 RAM would be an extra $100.00 or more
A GeForce 7900 instead of 7800 would be an extra $60 or maybe more (prices vary wildly on these cards).

Anyhow, I said "I had a nice tax return" - not "I won the lottery". After paying off the credit cards, my budget for everything was $2,600. I ended up spending around $2,680. That's still way too much money to spend on a computer, but hey, if your going to burn your money, you may as well burn it on something you are going to enjoy.

I did a few benchmarks.

My 3dmark06 score was ~4600. This was with Windows X64 (I installed a version of it from work for kicks - I got it with regular XP since driver support for x64 isn't there yet)
 With this areca SATA RAID card, the hard drives are insanely fast. My hard drives scored an index of 87 in sisoft sandra, and did seqential read and write operations at 118/115 MB/s respectively.
Memory badnwidth was something like 4.8GB/s - off the comparative scale in sisoft sandra.
I installed Far Cry and turned every setting up as far as it could go and I can't get it to go below 70FPS

FreeBSD installed with no problem on it. I did a quick package install of X/KDE and the nvidia driver and GLXgears runs at 16,000FPS. My old system with a GeForce4 did around 4000FPS in glx gears.

I compiled a new kernel in BSD :bsd: and it was almost done before I released the enter key.

[Pathos]

fair enough

still think a 19inch would have been worth every penny.