New PC Advice about some components (big post)

New PC - Advice about some components

Hi all, i just registered because i need some advice on compenents for a new PC and brands.

About me

I need it for Games mainly and surfing the net
I live in the UK
I wont be overclocking
I dont really want SLI
Every $1 i save will be good news

I want to get everything from my local component place but the choice is a bit limited. I would rather get stuff with mediocre brand than go elsewhere. I could get anything i wanted with any brand by shopping somewhere else but I dont trust most places and heard alot of bad things about most of them too. Atleast with my local place i can return stuff easy and I have bought from them before and they rock.


What i want

CPU = AMD 64 939 3500+


What im not sure about

Motherboard

I have 2 choices really:

Soltek, Skt 939, ATX, SL-K890Pro-939, FSB1GB/DDR400/S-ATA/ATA133, S & LAN

or

ECS Skt939, ATX, NFORCE4-A939, FSB2000/DDR400/S-ATA/ATA133, NFORCE4, S& GBLAN

This last one is a bit cheaper but has a FSB of 2000 instead of 1GB. I have no idea if that is necessary or better or what. So i need some advice on that

Graphics Card

Id like a PCI-E 6800 GT or Ultra. Im leaning towards the GT because the Ultra is so much more expensive and the clock speeds look like they are only a bit faster. Is the Ultra really worth all that extra money? Or would the GT be good enough?

Also the brand available to me is INNO3d (InnoVISION Multimedia Limited). They have a nice website but i dont know anything about them. Like i said i dont want to buy from anywhere else so unless this brand totally sucks and is useless id like to give it a shot. Anyone know about them?

RAM

I was originally going to get that fancy Corsair stuff with 2-2-2-5 timings but someone on another forum told me to save money and just get cheaper RAM because it doesnt really make much difference. So on my local place's price list i found some super cheap stuff, and then some slightly more expensive but with CL2.5 which im assuming is better.

512MB DDR400 Apacer DIMM 184pin PC3200 CL2.5

I would be getting 2 chips so 1GIG total and hopefully have them dual channel. Would they be OK for this PC? I dont want to bottleneck it or something but id love to save the money by just getting this stuff.

Hard Drive

I really wanted a 160gig drive but there is only 2 brands available.

160GB (SATA) Hitachi Deskstar 7K250 3.5" 7200rpm Serial ATA150 with 8MB
or
160GB (SATA) Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9, 3.5" 7200rpm Serial ATA150 Hard drive

My current disk is Maxtor and is great but runs a bit hot. But maybe all modern big fast disks run hot.. i dont know.

I researched the Hitachi on google and it said its very fast but alot of people complained that it makes a noise every 20 seconds or so like there is a cat inside it. Im not fussy about having a silent PC but i would not want a noise that stands out and could distract me or annoy me or keep me awake.

I am mainly interested in it being reliable and keeping my data safe and not breaking down or corrupting or anything.

If i went with 120 gig there is a 3rd option which is the Seagate Barracuda.

Power Supply

There is only 1 brand available and the prices are all so close for different volts that i just picked the 525W version cause its not much more expensive. But im not sure about the brand. Is it ok?

HEC 525VD-AT 525W Power Supply ATX 12v, Pentium 4, Pentium III, Athlon & Duron


Monitor

This is my last question

I currently have a 17" ADI CRT Monitor that i use at 1024x768 at 85HZ. I think its perfect but alot of people have told me that it would be a waste to get a new PC with good graphics card and stuff and use a crappy monitor.

Is this a crappy monitor?

I did some research and found that flat ones where a bit too expensive for me. So i looked at 19" CRTs. (i want to spend around £200 which is approx $400 USD)

There was some good choices but they all seemed to have a downside.

19" Iiyama VM Pro 454 (HM903DTB), Diamondtron, 2 x 15pin D-sub, USB, Speakers, 0.24dp, 2048 x 1536

That was my first choice and i thought it would be amazing but i read reviews about it and heard some negative things. Firstly some people said the high brightness gave them headaches and the colour black was not dark enough. And if they turned the brightness down it lost contrast and didnt look too good.

And the worst part was everyone says is has 2 Horizontal lines on the screen that can be really distracting and are most visable when you view something with a white background. I wouldnt want to spend all that money and have 2 lines that annoy me - especially when im not even sure i want to upgrade my monitor :/

There was a few other brands that looked good but alot of them had the same issue with the horizontal lines because of the technology used to make the flat screen etc... I looked at Philips and a few other big brands.

One other suggestion i heard was good is:

Samsung SyncMaster 955DF monitor

But i researched that on google too, and some reviews said it might have a bleeding problem on the right side of the screen. And i could not find proof that it did 1600x1024 (or1200 i forget) at atleast 85hz. I need atleast 85hz or i get headaches.

So any suggestions on good monitors, or if i even need one, will be very welcome

(i didnt look at Sony yet because i was scared about their prices hehe)

Thanks in advance

Welcome to the forums, sorry no one is replying.

I don't know too much about monitors, but that's right, don't buy a brand new computer if you are unhappy with the quality of it. I wouldn't buy an LCD if you are into gaming. My Envision flat screen CRT works very nicely, I run it at 120hz.

I wouldn't waste the money on the Ultra version and just go with the GT. There is more to it than just the clocks of the card, but I won't get into it.

Since you are not overclocking you don't need any special RAM, just simple stuff that can run at 200FSB(PC3200). You'll be happy with a 1gb of it.

CL 2.5 is not better than CL2. CL = Cas Latency. Latency is the delay between things, in this case measured in clocks. The CAS delay in clocks is 2, compared to 2.5. You want 2 instead of 2.5 or 3. There are many other memory timings, I mean MANY of them. Normally you'll see 3 or 4 of them. The best is 2-2-2, the worse is 3-4-4, this only applies to DDR1 memory, not DDR2. DDR2's latencies can go higher, but they run at a lot more than 200FSB. You will not notice the difference between 2 and 2.5, even in benchmarks it's hardly noticeable.

You mentioned you wanted to save money. I am not upto date on AMD's prices, but from what I've seen the 3500 goes for $250+, while the 3200 goes for about $120, atleast used, the 3500 might be cheaper now. I would go with the 3200. Take the money saved and put it on a motherboard.

I would not use Soltek or ECS for a computer of mine, both are very low quality manufacturers. Asus, Abit, now DFI, maybe Epox, but not ECS or Solktek.

I'd never use a Hitachi either, I trust Maxtor a lot and they have never let me down. Seagate is good, but not really better than Maxtor, and you are getting 40gb more with the Maxtor.

What power supply? Just because it says 500watts doesn't mean it puts out 500 watts or anywhere even close to it. The voltages will also fluctuate a lot probably. A quality power supply is a good thing, but your system will probably do fine with a low end power supply.

By the way, I've owned an Inno3D GF4 TI 4400, it was ok, it overclocked to IT4600 speeds just fine. It's a good standard card, but definately not a super high quality company.

Hopes this helps you.

I'd take a Soltek over an ECS any day. A couple years ago they made some decent boards, I haven't heard anythoing lately.

edit: review links:
the soltek:
http://www.viperlair.com/reviews/cpu_mobo/other/s939/slk890p/
http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/slk890pro939/

the ecs:
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/ecs_kn1_extreme/
http://www.nforcershq.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2519

Welcome to the Forums!

I would pick the Seagate over the Hitachi or Maxtor hard drives. I have owned all 3 and the Seagate is my best so far. I have owned several Maxtors and have had nothing but trouble with them, but others swear by them. I also think Western Digital makes very good drives, but again this is my opinion for what it's worth.

Thanks all, that was some good advice

About the ram, i think i could only see CL3.0 and then i saw that stuff i mentioned which was CL2.5. So is that gunna be ok? It was only about $10 more than the CL3.0 stuff so i figured i should just get that. There was no CL2 stuff on the list

Also, whats the deal with those motherboards FSB? One said 1GB and the other one was 2000. Is that important? What would a 3500+ run at ideally?

Thx =)

1GB is probably an incorrect listing (since GB is not a unit that could measure FSB). Firstly, on K8 cpus, we're not talking straight FSB. The memory controller is on the CPU and communicates directly with the memory. The CPU communicates with the rest of the system over a Hypertransport bus. The bus runs off a multiplier of 200MHz (usually either x4 or x5) and has a width of 16 bits in each dirrection. So it looks like both boards support the same hyper transport speed. The first one is probably a typo of 1GHz (200x5) while the second simply adds the up-speed and the down-speed (1000MHz + 1000MHz).

Ahhh cool thanks. So i could go with that Soltek