Time to upgrade! ^_^

Hiya! I been reading these fourms for some time now and doing my own research on a system I am going to build within a few months. My pc just cant handle these new games coming out and I gave up on 3D Animation because it takes forever for my computer to redender scenes and such. My intents on building this new system is of course to keep up with the latest games, HL2 and Doom3 and continue with 3D animation (Maya). Any suggestions are welcome to help me put together a leet computer. Price? I am willing to caught up some cash, the casino is my friend (craps ^_^)

My current system:

Case: Standard Mid Tower - ATX
Mobo: Asus K7V Slot A
PSU: Enermax 430 watt w/ Fan control
CPU: AMD Athlon 650Mhz Slot A
Ram: Samsung PC133 512MB x 3 (1.5Ghz total)
GFX: Radeon 7000
Sound: Creative Sound Blaster Live! Value
Hard Drives(s): Western Digital 7200RPM 160GB 8MB/cache, 2 x Western Digital 7200RPM 80GB 2MB/cache ( 320GB total)
DVD-R: Toshiba 16x SD-1502 (region free)
CD-RW: HL-DT-ST 16x 10x 40x GCB-8160B
Floopy : Standard 1.44MB Floppy Disk Drive
Network Adaptor(s): AcerLAN ALN-201 PCI, D-Link DE-530+ PCI
SCSI and RAID Controllers: Promise Technology Inc. Ultra IDE Controller
Monitor: TTX 17"
Keyboard: Stanard Microsoft Internet Keyboard
Mouse: Microsoft Intelli Optical Explorer
OS: Windows 2000 SP4

Future System?:

Case: Lian-Li PC-65B
PSU: Enermax 550W (EG651P-VE FMA)
Mobo: MSI K8N Neo Platinum
CPU: Athlon 64 3400+
RAM: Corsair TWINX2048-3200PRO
Video: ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition
Hard Drive: WD Raptor 74 GB ESATA
Monitor: BenQ 19" LCD FP951
DVD-RW: Plextor PX-712SA
Mouse: Microsoft IntelliMouse Explorer
Keyboard: Scythe USA CK-006 Standard Black Keyboard USB 107keys


I do plan on overclocking my new system. Cooling method? Phase change

Your components seem to be well chosen except for the motherboard; i would personally go with the gigabyte k8ns pro. Everything else is good. Really good. You'll probably have the best setup on the forums if you have phase change on it.

Everything looks good except i don't know anything about the motherboard you chose...

Also, make sure the monitor has real low refresh (<=20 ms) if you want to play games....why don't you just get a 21" or something if you got the money? If i had the money, I'd get a 22" or larger - of course that's IF i had a LOT more money....

hrhrhrFOOT said:

Your components seem to be well chosen except for the motherboard; i would personally go with the gigabyte k8ns pro. Everything else is good. Really good. You'll probably have the best setup on the forums if you have phase change on it.

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Thanks. I will look more into that motherboard. I dont think I have read any reviews on that board as of yet.

TombKeeper said:

Everything looks good except i don't know anything about the motherboard you chose...

Also, make sure the monitor has real low refresh (<=20 ms) if you want to play games....why don't you just get a 21" or something if you got the money? If i had the money, I'd get a 22" or larger - of course that's IF i had a LOT more money....

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I wanted to stick to the 19" lcd because 19" is big enough for my liking. If I were to get a larger LCD monitor, what would you suggest and would perferbly be good for gaming with little or no ghosting at all?

DAAAAAAAAANG you're building a heck of a system. Have fun, I'm researching a new rig too. But from what people have said here, A64 overclocking doesn't really do much, only small performance gains. Just to letchu know

What's a good LCD? ........hhmmmm.. don't know..... make sure though it has 20ms or less - the smaller the better (no ghosting at under 20 ms)....

Also pay attention resolution, cdm (?), contrast (better than 500:1 is good), and if you also like looking at the screen from different angles other than head on, check the viewable angle. The most important is the resolution and dot pitch (i think they use dot pitch on LCDs.....), followed by cdm (brightness) and contrast......

Try Viewsonic, NEC (make real nice 21" crt monitors)..don't know any others.... Try LG - they make monitors for some of the other companies.

Don't buy a LCD monitor over the net without seeing one in person at a store or something..... everyone has different perpectives about which they like better...

A warning though: companies only honor the warranties on their lcd monitors once a certain amount of pixels are 'dead' PER SQUARE INCH.....! This is why i stick to crt - you can get higher res, larger size screen and smaller dot pitch for a lot less than LCD. The only downside to crt is that their colors are not as good as LCD.....

Here's some examples....

Samsung 241MP 24" - 1920x1200 with 25 ms...kind of high response time and VERY expensive

Viewsonic VP201S 20" - 1600x1200 with 16ms and is HDTV ready (doubles as a TV...)

Other than that don't know....but, there's new ones coming out sometime soon that go as low as 10ms!

wow.. that is a pretty nice looking system.. dang.. i wish the casino was my friend

about the mobo... i was looking at some mobos for A64s and my personal preference is the Gigabyte "GA-K8NS PRO" nForce3 250

thats what i probably will be getting if i get an A64 soon (hopefully i can talk my parents into it)

Just noticed some things in your post:

a) 3D animation...??? do you mean games? Or you doing them... if option 2, i think you need pro quality video card (hope you don't though)

b) building in a couple of months..... Good...new monitors are coming out with lower response times; Sata-300 might be out by then; and something else is coming out that might be good or bad - BIOS is getting replaced.....plus some other cool things...

TombKeeper said:

Just noticed some things in your post:

a) 3D animation...??? do you mean games? Or you doing them... if option 2, i think you need pro quality video card (hope you don't though)

b) building in a couple of months..... Good...new monitors are coming out with lower response times; Sata-300 might be out by then; and something else is coming out that might be good or bad - BIOS is getting replaced.....plus some other cool things...

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Option 2. I never looked into professional 3d cards, and im not even sure how they do for gaming. I am not a professional just an amature that takes 3D animation up as a hobbie. The way I look at it is, why pay for a formal education when you can teach yourself; Just takes time/dedication/disiplane. I guess I must do some research on some professional cards, but I am more of a gamer than an animator so I am leaning more towards just buying a graphics card for some intense gaming. Yes I am building the system say around the beginning of Q4. I am in no rush to build this system, for I have other expensenes to look after first.

fatccrunner said:

wow.. that is a pretty nice looking system.. dang.. i wish the casino was my friend

about the mobo... i was looking at some mobos for A64s and my personal preference is the Gigabyte "GA-K8NS PRO" nForce3 250

thats what i probably will be getting if i get an A64 soon (hopefully i can talk my parents into it)

Click to expand...

I been reading reviews on that board, looks pretty promising. My friend is most liking going to build the same system I am, for he just won 15G's a month or so ago from the race tracks. He some how fluked out and guessed the number 1, 2, 3 houses finishing order. $5 dollars go along way hehe.

If you just do 3-d stuff for yourself and things that aren't very graphic intense, just stick with the one you mentioned above... pro video cards are very expensive....

You might also want to consider getting a 2nd hd along with that raptor (something like 160GB+) if you store a lot of pictures/images/3d stuff.... no need to fill up the raptor with that stuff....

Yeah I plan to just stick with the graphic card I mentioned above. I will be popping in my HDs on this computer to my new system whenever it is built.

Re-ask your original question again about 2-3 weeks before you actually buy....chances are some of the hardware 'preferability' will change by then.....especially since you said about 4 months from now.... who knows....

Anyways, hopefully some of us actually helped you out somehow.....

If I'm not mistaken the new ASUS K8N-E Deluxe mobo just came out and you may want to check out reviews on that. I'm not a 64 man yet but it looks good .