64 x2 - Questions

sitting in my class here, i realize i want to make a new box over winter break in a month or two... and i want to make the jump to 64 bit and dual core at the same time, hence a 64 x2 =D

i plan to run

- a 64x2 @ 2.2 due to the already high cost of the chip.
- 2 gb (4x512) pc3200
- some decent sli board <-- NF4
- onboard sound
- 2x 6800 GT
- two optical drives, prolly gona go plextor
- up to 4 HDD's - one raptor & a 250 from hitachi to start with
- XP 90-C w/ panflo 92mm
- hehe, a 3.5in floppy from an older comp to make bios flashing easier.

beyond the mods i may do to the case... i need to know some things about the PSU.

i like the Fortron 530, but do i need to think of something from another maker? like pc&c?

this may be royaly stupid, but... how many pins do the nf4 boards normaly need to have?

I would suggest the DFI SLR board. I don't remember the name but its the SLI SFI board. I like it.

Your PSU sounds ok but I don't like Fortron. I like Antec and Enermaz personally.

And what do you mean pins? Are you talking about the socket? Its 939 pins.

Sleepy_Steve said:

sitting in my class here, i realize i want to make a new box over winter break in a month or two... and i want to make the jump to 64 bit and dual core at the same time, hence a 64 x2 =D

i plan to run

- a 64x2 @ 2.2 due to the already high cost of the chip.
- 2 gb (4x512) pc3200
- some decent sli board <-- NF4
- onboard sound
- 2x 6800 GT
- two optical drives, prolly gona go plextor
- up to 4 HDD's - one raptor & a 250 from hitachi to start with
- XP 90-C w/ panflo 92mm
- hehe, a 3.5in floppy from an older comp to make bios flashing easier.

beyond the mods i may do to the case... i need to know some things about the PSU.

i like the Fortron 530, but do i need to think of something from another maker? like pc&c?

this may be royaly stupid, but... how many pins do the nf4 boards normaly need to have?

Click to expand...

Ok for the X2 get a 3800+, cheapest of the bunch and they OC crazily too

As for RAM, something cheap but good is in order, like some cheap PC4000 or if budget is a lil more widespread some Geil One BH-5 or TCCD.

As for the mobo, nothing can touch a DFI LP UT SLI-D\DR (Skt939)

Pick up a good soundcard (Prodigy 192, HDA Digital X-Mystique 7.1 Gold), the karajan audio really is kinda flat unless you know what your doing when adjusting the equalizer.

For graphics you might want to consider 2x 7800GT or 1x 7800GTX until u can afford a 2nd one, that way your not throing any money away its all as current as you can get

Opticals are.....well opticals, but personally i like lite-on, always found their drives solid, fast and reliable.

HDDs, doesnt really matter, go with what tickles your fancy, Western Digital are one of my favorites along with Maxtor.

Cooling & floppy is fine, in fact the soul purpose of flashing your BIOS makes a floppy worthwhile still IMO.

Lastly the PSU, you will want a PSU that is 24pin NOT 20pin (converters arent recommended either) in this area my favorites are Hipers R Type series, Tagans TG580-U15 or OCZs PowerStream 520w

GL on the build m8

lol, fast responses as always... didnt even make it all the way back to the dorm =D

i need to do more thinking on the video cards... esp cause by the time i buy -mid december- prices are sure to drop a bit.

thanks for the info on the PSU... anyone have any idea as to the wattage this rig is gona munch through?

P.S. - on an asside i dont use maxtor drives anymore, had one have a minor problem, gave to a friend of mine to test on his comp...
...long story short he kept it atop his anchient CRT and degaused it a couple times before testing it to see he'd fried the thing...
lucky for him i was already used to not having it... and we had a good laugh about his stupidity.

Sleepy_Steve said:

lol, fast responses as always... didnt even make it all the way back to the dorm =D

i need to do more thinking on the video cards... esp cause by the time i buy -mid december- prices are sure to drop a bit.

thanks for the info on the PSU... anyone have any idea as to the wattage this rig is gona munch through?

P.S. - on an asside i dont use maxtor drives anymore, had one have a minor problem, gave to a friend of mine to test on his comp...
...long story short he kept it atop his anchient CRT and degaused it a couple times before testing it to see he'd fried the thing...
lucky for him i was already used to not having it... and we had a good laugh about his stupidity.

Click to expand...

I don't use maxtor either. Good for you. For the PSU, i would recomend the one I have. The Seasonic 500w. Its a 24/20 puin connector and has a wicked cable system. Their connectors are incredible.

To be safe You want a power supply rated at 500+. All the major manufactures make good power supplies so brand becomes more of a personal preference. IMO Pro Power & Cooling is the best and is what I recommend.

I've been doing the same basic build, and parts are now on the way.

I selected the X2 4400+. You'll find a heated debate here on which processor is better for the money; the 4400+ or the 3800+. I wanted the extra cache, and with multithread gaming and PPU technology around the corner, I'm hesitant to buy a processor that is on the bottom end of dual cores. Anyone who bought the Voodoo 5 5500 instead of a GeForce 1 back in the day and was kicking themself for a few months after will understand that logic.

You'll go far with 1-2 GB of Corsair Platinum, but any hope of 3GHZ on the OC is lost. For the same price, go to www.digi4me.com and get G.Skill (not Geil) PC4000 Memory. It's actually labeled in the part number in a way that makes it seem like it might really be PC3200, but it's indeed PC4000 per the G.Skill website. It costs 10 USD less to buy that and ship it than it does to order the Corsair from ZipZoomFly. Since it's stock at 250MHZ (500DDR) instead of 200MHZ (400DDR), it's an easier overclock. If you can pull it to 275MHZ (550DDR) with a 1:1 divider and get both your CPU cores to take a multi of 11 on the 4400+, you just got yourself into the 3GHZ club. G.Skill clocks to 275 pretty easily. The 3800+ should be able to reach at least 2.6ghz easily on this stuff.

PSU is an issue. The OCZ 520 is great if you are running one video card, but I'd go with the Enermax 600w if you plan to go SLI. The 520 with an X2, two video cards, at least 1 CD/DVD drive, and at least 1 HDD is pushing the PSU to the limit; overhead is a good thing. Also, the PSU should be approved by AMD for SLI systems (both listed are), because otherwise the second rail gets less juice than the first and your SLI is a little gimped.

Video cards, I'll have to agree with the above post. Not only is 1 7800GTX cheaper than two 6800 GTs, it also tends to bench faster and game faster on its own than the 6800's in SLI. There's an Asus version already OC'd to ungodly speeds, but if you're on a budget I'd suggest the XFX brand. They overclock well and come with goodies, and are about 80 bucks cheaper. (Side note, I'm getting two 7800GTX's, will post OC results across my whole system when finished).

Your case needs good cooling. When you go SLI, you heat spike. You need at least all the fan ports in the rear of the case to be occupied, and at least one in front. I'd select a case with no less than 5 fan ports; two in the front, two in the back, one on the side. Put a fan in all of them. Go to www.amamax.com; they have several good cases, including one that I just ordered that has the two front fans in side-side configuration instead of tandem. Blowing back toward a tandem pair of fans and a side fan, you get a cyclone effect and that means only the coolest air over the processor and video cards. Amamax also offers free shipping and gives discounts on fans when ordered with the case, as well as having a cheap OEM price for WINXP PRO SP2 ($133).

Motherboard is hands-down the DFI LANPARTY UT SLI/DR. There's just nothing else that can match up. It has built-in power regulation to further correct any voltage issues with SLI configurations, great OC and management tools in the BIOS, and retails for $20 cheaper than its big brother, the SLI/DR that doesn't have "UT" in it. The difference is literally nothing; the more expensive of the two has an "X-Drive" that gives you front-mounted connections in your drive bays for nearly all your plug-ins and lights up pretty. It also generates heat, so just pass it up and go for the UT version.

CPU cooling can affect airflow, because if you want a good overclock on air, you're going to want a Zalman or Thermaltake heat sink/fan combo that has a 120mm fan. These require special mounting and are unwieldy, but will drop your temps by 15-20c in many cases: considering that AMD gives you a damn good HS/Fan to start with, that's saying a lot. It's worth the extra $50-$80 to get the massive fan, just make sure your case has good airflow. Otherwise, the HS and fan will actually obstruct cooling to the back end of the mobo. There are two units from Thermaltake (I'm particular to the brand) that carry 120mm fans and are worth having. One is the Tower: this ungodly unit is actually just an enormous heat sink with heatpipes that stands so tall it will nearly touch the glass on the other side of the case. It has mounts on each side for 90-120mm fans for further cooling and is on the high-end of the price bar. The second is the one I ordered; it retails for $50 and has a copper backplate and set of heatpipes leading up to an aluminum HS and a 120mm fan. It's made to run silent and is extremely light for its size, and probably the best price/performance of the 120mm units.

HDD should be SATA, all the way. The mobo listed is SATA ready and doesn't require mods for SLI. I'd suggest either the Western Digital Caviar 320GB SE 7200 RPM that retails on ZipZoomFly for $137, or pay around $190 and get a Western Digital "Raptor" 74GB 10,000 RPM drive. It's a tradeoff of space/speed; if you have tons of music and video, go for the 320GB, but it'll be your bottleneck on applications with large swapfiles. If you typically just game and/or plan on carrying over an old HDD from your current machine, get the Raptor.

AS5 is the thermal paste you will use, or you'll be drawn and quartered by the population of this website. The stuff that comes with the Thermaltake fan just doesn't compare; do yourself a favor and get some Arctic Silver 5. It cools better than their Ceramique, in my experience, and is cheaper. If you have some left over after you mount the CPU, and you will, take the HS off the video card(s), put on some AS5, remount the GPU HS(s) and enjoy a 5-10c drop in temperature per card.

After all that, if you have some extra cash, get one of those dual fan sets that mounts in a PCI slot and put it under your SLI-capable PCI-E slots. They're about $20 and any bit of cooling is a good thing.

Honestly looking at what you have got, i would upgrade your gfx card and maybe get some more storage. Save your $$ unless you already have a 939 board there is not much point in upgrading to it from you set up. I would wait until the next generation of AMD SKT M2 and DDR2. My reasoning is that your not going to see much of a performance improvement over what you already have, yes you would get a bump in highend video applications and other programs that are DESIGNED to use multiple cpus, but in terms of gaming what you have is decent. I dont see much reason to spend ~$500 on a new motherboard and cpu when your going to have to do the same in 6-12mths. Why not wait and do the full upgrade then go to DDR2 and a socket that was designed for Dual Core.

That being said, i just bought a 3800+, muskin Redline memory, and a X800GTO2 (plan to mod to X850XT) yesterday

Regarding RAM, I would recommend getting 2 sticks of 1GB, instead of 4 512MB sticks, 4 sticks will both hinder the RAM's overclocking potential and will also only let you run with 2T command setting, while two sticks will allow 1T!

Sleepy_Steve said:

lol, fast responses as always... didnt even make it all the way back to the dorm =D

i need to do more thinking on the video cards... esp cause by the time i buy -mid december- prices are sure to drop a bit.

thanks for the info on the PSU... anyone have any idea as to the wattage this rig is gona munch through?

P.S. - on an asside i dont use maxtor drives anymore, had one have a minor problem, gave to a friend of mine to test on his comp...
...long story short he kept it atop his anchient CRT and degaused it a couple times before testing it to see he'd fried the thing...
lucky for him i was already used to not having it... and we had a good laugh about his stupidity.

Click to expand...

Stick with the forton blue storm ax500 or the seasonic suggested, for the price they are best, the OCZ 520 is better but not worth the money unless you need the extra power and you don't, . Do some research in the power supply section and you will see why. I would skip the raptor as you seem to be on a budget, I skipped them and I am not on a budget. Most people will prolly disagree but i think raptors are a waste. I am first to load 98% of the time in BF2 and CS and I am useing a sata 2 seagate which is nothing special. I think You might see better performance with just a 7800gtx over two 6800gt's but frankly I don't know. I would go 2x1gig so you can run at 1t also.

Oh wow, man did i get n00b lectured =P

OK, im good at getting a good case and cpu temp with air... i used to live in the cooling section of this site.

I use AS5 and am quite used to heat sink instals

The reason the case cooling was not mentioned is mainly because i have a couple months to figure it out and dont even know mid or full tower....
I will likley use some 120mm case fans, but havent thought about a good case that has a good layout, easy to mod and not too expensive yet.
I like thermalright, and would be considering primarily 92mm heatsinks... the zalman or the xp90-c w/ panflow... although the subject is not totaly closed.

Good info on the PSU, Mobo, & RAM... ill have to do some reading on those.

As for software, i dont factor that into my budget... if i cant figure out how to get it for free i wont buy it - exception is games, i belive in supporting thier online servers
My budget, i am shooting for under 2000 US around mid december - between semesters - and yes this is a completly new box.
Im not simply upgrading the system in my sig, as that build has reached its end... and should have ended earlier imo.

I'll likley go for one 7800gtx, a 73gb raptor, and a 250+ drive for media, and 2x1GB sticks of memory... im not sure if i realy wana OC this rig yet,
I may want to do moderate OC's on it, but im not feeling like 3ghz is gona be its goal in life.

I'd go for the Seasonic SS12 500w or 600w. I had both an OCZ Powerstream 600 and a PCP&C 510 turbo and have swapped them both out in favour of the Seasonic. The Seasonic are just as stable, quieter and cooler.

OK, i guess its time to state some goals for the rig.


- oc a 2.2 dual to 2.4-2.5

- must be stable, i like to only restart once every 24 hours under OC at the max.

- its a media rig, encoding, and many many apps up at once... some that run overnight... hence the stability issue


.... i guess because the budget is only 2000... its gota sacrifice some power for future proofing.

so im droping to one sata2 HDD, one video card to start with, 2x1gb sticks of mem - not yet sure of the speed.