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[kbear]

1. Case already has a power supply.
2. For that price you can get a 320, look for the Maxtor 300gbs w/ "extra 20g"
3. Spend some more and upgrade to the 3850
4. Get another brand. For that price, Cooler Master works.
5. Looks good
6. I think you can get an Abit ip35-e for cheaper
7. Looks good
8. Looks good

Tweak it a little and you'll have a solid rig at $700. $800 gets you that 8800gt in there which will let you run anything.

Thanks
Yep I think I can get cheaper if I don't buy everything from Newegg... by searching various sites and fatwallet for deals and get only some of it, like half, from Newegg.

 

[Davidion]

Thanks
Yep I think I can get cheaper if I don't buy everything from Newegg... by searching various sites and fatwallet for deals and get only some of it, like half, from Newegg.

Yes, doing your work researching saves you dough. Try sites like techbargain and see if you can avoid the mail-in rebates. Although, Newegg is always a great site for reviews on a product as well as a place for some solid deals.

Good luck!

 

[Masta_Killah]

Normally I'd recommend the x1950 Pro, but with the new cards coming out later this year, it's better to just invest in a Dx10 card, especially with the 38XX series.

3850 would be ideal, but kbear isn't getting a new monitor that will have a higher res to really make the 3850 worthwhile. Considering kbear is only maxing out at 1366x768, 3850 is overkill, especially if kbear is going to upgrade the gpu in a year or so. 1950pro is a much more solid buy.

Oh and to see how the x1950pro looks at running current games:

The Witcher(x1950pro 256MB)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=fv8-boyaudY

COD4(x1950pro 256MB)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=0GT8Q0Hv07E

Crysis(x1950pro 256MB)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=9SxjagpVwQ8

 

[BolognaOni]

x1950 is not a bad card for the time being. If I was going to spend a little bit more on anything, I'd up the PSU speed, especially if you want to upgrade the GPU and such later on. I put in E6750 in my system a couple of months ago, and I really think this is still the best value out there.

I would hardly call a tube amplifier and class D amplifier the same, but I get your point. Still, headroom is headroom when it comes to power, switch based or otherwise. Push ANY power source to its limits and bad things happen. By all means, get the smallest power supply you need, I'm just saying you'll be better off in the long run with some room to spare.

The idea that you get "cleaner" power with more headroom is just plain wrong though. You seem to think that if the nameplate is bigger, the voltages are more stable, and this is not true.

In a modern switching supply you get pretty much the same performance at 40% output as you do at 80%. You may get longer life, but as long as you are not buying the Chinese special, other components are going to poop out well before a good PSU, even if it's running close to its rated output. There really is no performance advantage from sizing the PSU 2x or 3x as big as peak system power draw.

 

[HokieJoe]

OK, I'm going to bite here, and maybe a few of us can learn something... I'll do my best to put things in layman's terms.

For DC, Power = Voltage * Current. Period. Unless you have a crap ton of harmonics (better how you don't in your computer PSU!).

Computer components want a STEADY voltage- they will draw more or less current depending on how much power they want at a given moment. Under computational loads, they need more power, they draw more current. Voltage is constant, current changes depending on power needs. Having more current rating on a PSU just means it can produce more power.

You can't, as far as I know, buy a PSU with more than 18A per 12V rail rated, at least not if you want to have Intel give it their stamp of approval. You also can't get a UL (safety organization) certification if you put more than 20A on a 12V line, and no UL cert means pretty much no one in the US is going to sell it.

Back in the bad old days of yore, the circuits used to produce voltages for computers were not very "smart", or efficient. So, if you wanted better performance, you just put in a bigger PSU, and if you didn't get close to the rating, you were good, you got cleaner voltages because the system wasn't operating near its limit, and components lasted longer because they weren't being stressed near their capacity.

Enter the 21st century. Power converters get "smarter", they use more active devices, allowing for more precise control of the circuit function. This makes it possible to design a circuit that can operate at rated power like a champ. Why? Because it's actually being controlled, instead of just running free. These PSUs are also much more efficient, because they control more closely the flow of energy in the circuit, and are able to minimize waste.

The end conclusion for a system builder, is that a more modern, more efficient PSU can be pused closer to its ratings without detriment to system performance. In fact, some of these circuits actually run BETTER (peak efficiency, etc) near rated load! So, you don't have to put in twice your peak power draw anymore. Of course, if you want to anyway, they are more than happy to sell you a more expensive PSU...

Not disagreeing with your dissertation on DC fundamentals, but I agree with JoeMartin's basic premise of buying a quality PSU. Know what you're buying, and that it will actually deliver what it's rated to deliver.

 

[bounchfx]

I'm trying to build a rig currently at around 1200$ and run into a few confusions myself...

first.. is it worth getting a quad core at this time? any good ones worth the price that aren't overly expensive? is there any real performance boost vs dual? also, what dual is rockin' at this time?

and wtf is PCI Express X16 vs PCI Express 2... what do I go for? are they compatable with each other?

my biggest fear is getting a mobo that nothing works with.. I've been picking parts out of a lot of these threads that I like so far and I've never built one from scratch before but I have changed many parts myself (cd/dvd drive/hd/vid cards, etc)

 

[MadOdorMachine]

To avoid unneeded complaints I'll try posting in this thread and see how the responses go before I go starting a new PC thread. Now that that's out of the way, onto business. I'm actually just looking to upgrade my PC, not build a new one from the ground up. My current specs are below and the bolded parts are what I would like to replace:

Specs:
Dell Dimension E510
- Intel Pentium D @ 2.66GHz w/2 cores
- Intel motherboard based on 945G express chipset...more details below...
- 2GB Corsair DDR2 ram (not sure of the clock rate)
- 8800GT 512MB (superclocked - forgot clock rate)
- 80GB HDD (only of which 70GB can be used)
-- Windows Vista Home Premium
-- Microsoft Office 2007
-- Crysis

Most importantly, I need a new hard drive. I've only got about 10GBs left to use. Vista, Office and Crysis all take up a lot of space, so I'm looking to upgrade to a 500GB HDD. I don't really need help there, but I am having problems running Crysis. I think I'm about half way through the game

Spoiler

the ice level

and it keeps locking up at check points. It's impossible to play. I was told by a co-worker that it's because I have so little HDD space. Even before the game started locking up though, the framerate would stutter pretty badly when there was a lot of commotion on screen. I'm thinking my CPU is a bottleneck as well although my co-worker tells me I will see very little performance increase in upgrading my CPU.

So here's my question. I'm going to order a HDD from New Egg and I'm thinking of upgrading my CPU as well, but I'm new to PC gaming so I'm not sure it's worth it. Not only that, but I really don't want to spend too much money on a CPU being that every game I've played (Bioshock, COD4, etc.) runs fine except Crysis. I should note that I'm even having framerate problems with Crysis when running the game @ 1280X720 on my TV. I suppose it could be my settings, the Shaders are set to Very High, Textures to High, Water to High, Volumetric Effects to Medium and everything else is set to Low. I figured it should run smoothly at those settings and resolution, but I've been wrong before.

I'm also not sure I can go up to a CPU w/a 1066MHz FSB, but I would like to if I will see significant performance gains. When I called Dell, I was told I have an Intel 4 layer BTX compatible board. I have no idea what that means. He did say my board is based on the Intel 945G express chipset called "Lakeport." He also said it was based off the Prescott chip and that it has a LGA 775 socket and an 800MHz FSB. All of the 945G boards I looked up on New Egg had the option for 1066/800MHz FSB, but I noticed some other differences as well. The boards on New Egg all had 4 USB ports, PS/2 ports and onboard graphics. My motherboard has 5 USB ports, no PS/2 ports and no on board graphics card. It came with a cheap ATI PCI express GPU installed. So on one hand my motherboard sounds like it is better than the ones listed on New Egg, and you would think it could support a 1066MHz FSB. On the other hand, the tech didn't mention a 1066MHz FSB, he said 800MHz, so to play it safe I would have to go with that.

What does GAF think I should do? The two CPU's I'm debating between are:

Intel Core 2 Duo E4600 Allendale 2.4GHz 2MB L2 Cache

or

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Conroe 2.4GHz 4M shared L2 Cache

 

[DeadTrees]

Specs:
Dell Dimension E510

Doesn't support Core2Duos, per the Dell forums.