[LoN]

Case:
ANTEC Black Solution Series ATX Mid-Tower Case with 350W Power Supply - $89

CPU:
Intel Pentium 4/ 3.2E GHz (prescott) - $275

Mobo:
CHAINTECH "9CJS ZENITH" i875P - $159

Videocard:
Radeon X800 XT Platinum edition - ~$500(whenever the heck i can get ahold of one )

Soundcard:
Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS - $88

Primary HD:
Western Digital Raptor 36.7GB 10,000RPM SATA Hard Drive - $111

Secondary HD:
Western Digital 120GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive - $99

Optical drive:
Plextor Black 52x32x52 CD-RW Drive - $85

RAM:
4x Corsair XMS Extreme Memory Speed Series 184 Pin 512MB DDR PC-3200 - $528

FDD:
SONY Black 1.44MB 3.5inch Floppy Disk Drive - $15

Keyboard/mouse:
Microsoft Black Multimedia Keyboard & Wheel Mouse Optical Bundle

im photoshop fiend and a gamer and also enjoy downloading massive amounts of music and i love digital photography. ill be engaging in a smidge of overclocking, probably nothing crazy (nothing that requires crazy amounts of cooling).

Comments/suggestions/questions please! thanks guys

[termin@tor]

Hmmm... looks very nice.
You should definitly get a new power supply tho. You need AT LEAST 400W to run all that stuff... you might have no problems with 350W, but I don't think that a good idea... at all.

Maybe get another raptor and put them in RAID 0?
And maybe get a DVD drive?

Everything else looks awesome.

Btw, welcome to the forums.

[johan851]

Looks pretty good to me. DVD drive would be nice, like termin@tor said. Otherwise...go with it.

[LoN]

just found a dvd drive for 25 bucks so ill probably add that on.

i would do 2 raptors in raid 0 if it werent for the cost. i think a smaller yet ultra fast drive for my OS games and apps and a slower but larger drive for media is a decently cost effective way to go, would you guys agree?

good tip on the powersupply, i was worried about that myself. any suggestions? looks like i can get some fairly beefy ones on newegg for under 80 bucks, just dont know how accurately some of these are rated. what are some good PS brands?

thanks for the help and the welcome

[termin@tor]

For power supply, good brands are Antec, Forton, Sparkle, Enermax, and Thermaltake.

Personally, I think Antec is the best.

Here are 2 pretty good Antec ones:

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...103-914&depa=1

or, if you want cheaper:

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...103-908&depa=1

[ares350]

thats an expensive cdrw.

did you look into dvd-rw? for .raw images, mp3s, and whatever else. you can get a dvd rw for cheaper than that cdrw you listed.

I got a liteon dvd/cdrw for 51$.

nice PC otherwise. I learned my lesson 3 years ago about 2000$ PC's. after a year it was just slightly more advanced than a year old 1000$ PC.

[tom10167]

Two gigs of ram? Not needed AT ALL, one gig is enough, I promise, you will not use it all, there's $250 saved.

You're doing video editing, so I would not recommend RAID 0 AT ALL, I rather like your setup, but with the money you saved you can get a 250GB hard drive now, AND change out the 36gig Raptor for a 74 gig.

[termin@tor]

Two gigs of ram? Not needed AT ALL, one gig is enough, I promise, you will not use it all, there's $250 saved

My bro had 2 gigs in one of his rigs.
That PC runs smoother than anything I've ever seen in my life.
For the stuff he's doing, I think 2GB would be very nice.

[R0CK3TM4NN]

Originally posted by LoN


FDD:
SONY Black 1.44MB 3.5inch Floppy Disk Drive - $15

Floppy drive? People still use these things? I've never been in a situation where I've needed a floppy for almost 3 years now. If I'm not mistaken, that chaintech board comes with a media card reader...that would be enough, right? Save the $15 for some super-cool cables, I guess.

Other than that, you're system looks sweet. If you're not gonna overclock, then I think the ram would be fine. If you were going to o/c wouldn't it be better to get 1 GB of faster ram? (3500-3700)? Or if money is no object, 2 GB of the "good stuff?"

[LoN]

Thanks for all the comments and suggestions guys, im taking them all to heart and trying to finalize this thing

[t_biggs]

Have you looked at the Athlon 64 route? If you're a gamer (which I'm guessing by the fact there is a X800 XT Platinum) it should perform better. You'd be able to get a 3200+ and save $5 for the processor, and a Gigabyte GA-K8NS PRO and save $20. That kind of money is just a drop in the bucket if you're building a rig for $2,000, but hey, it's $25 you can put to buying another game, and almost every benchmark I see for gaming, Athlon 64s beat Pentium 4s.

But, if you're going to do a lot of video editing and media encoding, ignore me.

[tom10167]

In his first post he states that he does a lot of Photoshop as well, too "all-around" for AMD in my eyes. I still do not recommend two gigabytes of memory for a Photoshop system, has anyone ever used more than 1 gig?

[secretweapon]

You can easily use up 2 gig of ram if you do open a few projects with multiple layers in photoshop. For photo editing the more ram the better.

[Sophisticated]

with the MOBO you should go with Asus P4C800-E Deluxe for $179.....i wouldnt go with the prescott as it will be HOT mayb go with a regular 3.0c and do an EASY oc to 3.2 ..this will be faster then buying a stock 3.2 plus it's cheaper...you should also go with PC POWER & COOLING Turbo-Cool 510 Deluxe...this will be a bangin system!!

[LoN]

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.c...id=1535&page=1

pretty much convinced me to dump the 3.2 prescott in favor of an at least an athlon 64 3200+ if not the 3400.

i would say gaming performance is more important than photoshop performance. with 2 gigs of ram i dont think the cpu will make the real difference in photoshop performance.

would anyones suggestions change if this were viewed more as a pure gaming rig than an image/video editing rig?

again, thanks for all the attention, you guys are really helping me alot

[tom10167]

All right, if this is like a 75/25 or even a 60/40 don't bother with two gigs of ram, seriously, that's such a waste of cash, I don't know what type of Photoshop work you do, but one gigabyte is definitely enough, it just might not be the absolute amount you'd ever need, you know? The 3400+ is also a waste, the difference in performance between the 3400 and the 3200 is minimal, the price difference is not. Same can be said about the 3000 and the 3200, though I'd take the 3200 if I could afford it. I don't even think AMD boards support four sticks of ram.

[Agent_Mull]

I know my old GA-7N400 had 4 DIMM slots. I agree with Tom tho, 1 gig of ram is fine, and with that extra $200 you save, get another Raptor.

[termin@tor]

Originally posted by secretweapon
You can easily use up 2 gig of ram if you do open a few projects with multiple layers in photoshop. For photo editing the more ram the better.

Exactly!

And, if you're gonna go A64, get a chaintec nforce 3 250 mobo, you'de be really happy just like this -->

[LoN]

ill admit that 2 gigs of ram is overkill, but i dont think i can be talked out of it

now i need a good mobo for the athlon 64 3200+...
the chaintechs look very nice, but also very pricey (for the top model) and only 3 slots for ram which means i would have to change to 1 gig sticks which means even more money

anyone know of a nice athlon 64 mobo under 150, with 4 slots for ram and onboard ethernet?

[fatccrunner]

i like the gigabyte nforce 3 250 chipset personally... its about 135 on newegg but it only has 3 ram slots... and it does have onboard ethernet... ive been looking for a mobo with 4 ram slots myself but cant seem to find one