Budget & Performance AMD Athlon 64 3200+ system. Need tips.

[User Name]

I'm in the process of building a budget Athlon 64 3200+ system. It is a work in progress. I don't want to jump on it until many people review it and I know it is the best bang-for-the-buck overclock Athlon 64 system I can build. I need help with it: I am very unsure about the motherboard I should get. Also, I'm not quite sure about the RAM I should pick and I need help picking a PSU as well. I would apprecieate any help or pointers.

Here are the parts I'm pretty sure about getting (if anyone has a recommendation, please share it):

Already bought this a while back, can't change it
XBlade w/Crappy Generic 450 Watt PSU [18A on 12V] and LCD Controller
$75.00

Very quiet and high performance cooling
Thermaltake SILENT BOOST For AMD Opteron and Athlon 64 (All Copper) -RETAIL
$27.95

For rear case exaust (I have 3 other fans already for intake and stuff)
Thermaltake A2018 DC Fan Seires - Smart Case Blue LED 120mm Cooling Fan Retail
$17.95

Two of these babies for speed and diskspace. 400GB of space coupled with the performance boost of RAID0 (SATA to top it off) for $260 makes me moist.
2x Seagate 200GB 7200RPM Barracuda 7200.7 SATA Hard Drive, Model ST3200822AS, OEM Drive Only
$132.00 * 2 = $264.00

What else other than this awesome card? Gonna (try to) overclock it to Ultra speeds
BFG Technologies GeForce 6800 GT OC 256MB GDDR3 AGP Graphics Card
$399.99
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Total for Definite Parts: $784.99
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Now, for the stuff I'm unsure about... I need a PSU, a CPU, RAM, and a MotherBoard.

PSU: I currently have a generic 450 watt. I realize the PSU is an important component of the system. I know one guy whos PSU died and took a good chunk of his system with it, therefore I don't want to skimp on the PSU. Here are some questions I have:
How strong should my PSU be? An Athlon 64 3200+ with a GF6800GT both being overclocked seems very DEMANDING.
What company should I get it from? Antec? Enermax?
Should I get a PSU with two seperate 12V rails like this one (click on the picture of the sticker on the powersupply to see the PSU's actual stats)?

CPU: I want an AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Clawhamer, 2000MHZ core, 1MB L2 Cache, Revision CG (the C0 revision runs hot and doesn't overclock worth crap).
I plan to push the chip very far. If I can get my hands on a revision CG chip I will probably be able to get about 2400MHz-2500MHz considering that people with STOCK cooling have gotten those speeds stably. RAM and motherboard selection is of great concern to me as they have a lot to do with being able to get a good overclock.

RAM: I definately want 1GB. I was originally gonna go for Corsair TWINX1024-3200C2 1GB DDR400 XMS3200 and overclock it but I think it will be smarter to go with two Kingmax TSOP 184-Pin 512MB DDR PC-4000 and "underclock" it (to get 2400MHz, the CPU will be running at 240MHz "FSB" or DDR480: below the spec for the DDR500 Kingmax RAM). The ram has a CAS of 3 however I might be able to tighten it to 2.5 because I will be running it under spec.
What do you all think about going for faster RAM and clocking it down? Is it wiser to get higher speed RAM from a less established company and run it below its limit at or better than spec timings or is it wiser to get lower speed RAM from the "overclocking king" Corsair and push the RAM till it bleeds probably sacrificing timings? (The price of the Kingmax is lower than the corsair. Also, keep in mind that this isn't Corsair's ultimate preformance ram, that sutff is lik $320 for 1GB PC3200: way out of budget).

Motherboard: No Clue... I want the nVidia nForce 250Gb chipset though.
I read that the Epox Athlon 64 board is awesome for overclocking but it lacks firewire ports
I read that the Gigabyte board has some issues stability at rated specs and RAM being forced to run at 166MHz. I read also that it does not overclock as well as the Epox board, that it also lacks firewire ports, and it is based on the nForce 250 non-Gb version. It doesn't seem to be a good pick at all...
I read that the MSI Neo KN8 has SEVERE issues and has been an overall headache for everyone...
Asus boards are plauged with issues... 3 of my friends all got asus boards, one refused to work with an all-in-wonder card, one was extreemly unstable and shortly thereafter DIED, and the last was DOA and so was the second replacement board he got... so I don't trust Asus. Their customer support is sad too.

So I don't know what motherboard I should get. So far, the Epox looks the most promising... Haven't read about any issues with that board YET.

Thanks guys.


Side Note: My dilema. There is no way of knowing which revision of the Athlon 64 you will get. So if I get a C0 revision I'm TOTALLY screwed as far as overclocking goes. Anyone know of a store that is selling CG revision AMD Athlon 64 3200+? the CG revision model numbers end with AR, AX, or AW. The C0 revision ends with AP (SO THATS BADBADBADB). The crazy thing is some people order from places saying they are selling the old revision but they get the new one (which is very good) but I would like to eliminate this chance... Thanks

 

[shard]

dont get the 3200+ get the 3000+, cheaper and better

get the fortron 400w from Newegg, $65

ram, well it depends on how much yu want to spend... for the A64, the OCZ EB is the best

Im getting the Epox 8KDA3J, im getting it, and so should yu

and with the CG and Co verision,
well almost all newcastles are CG's so dont sweat it, and make sure yu get it from newegg


there yu go, if yu hae any more questions, post away!

 

[Aslan]

For the PSU, I suggest taking it up another notch and go for the Fortron 530W instead.

Also for the Hard Drives, if you're not looking for extremely quiet drives, then a pair of Hitachi 7k250 drives would be better performance-wise. Furthermore, you could even go for a 36 gig WD Raptor for your OS, and then use a large drive for storage.

If this system is for gaming and general tasks, keep in mind that RAID 0 will provide very little, if any, improvement in terms of performance, and also increases reliability problems with your drives as well.

Edit: On a completely unrelated note, I'm quite surprised that no one took the name "User Name" until now.

 

[User Name]

dont get the 3200+ get the 3000+, cheaper and better

get the fortron 400w from Newegg, $65

ram, well it depends on how much yu want to spend... for the A64, the OCZ EB is the best

Im getting the Epox 8KDA3J, im getting it, and so should yu

and with the CG and Co verision,
well almost all newcastles are CG's so dont sweat it, and make sure yu get it from newegg

So basically, I should get a 3000+ newcastle? I was going with the ClawHammer before because I haven't heard much about the newcastle and because it had twice the L2 Cache. I've seen the Clawhammer 3200+ rev. CG be pushed from 2000MHz to ~2400MHz with stock cooling. Will the newcastle 3000+ overclock well like the Clawhammer?

I definately want 1GB of RAM and the OCZ EB is insanely expensive even for just PC3200. Thats why I'm leaning toward getting higher rated ram and running it slower. It'll be about $100-$150 dollars cheaper then getting the OCZ EB. Am I right to take this path? Do you think it would still be better to get PC3200 OCZ ram and push it till it bleeds?

I agree. I want the Epox board as well. What do I do about the firewire ports though? The board has a firewire controller (because its the 250Gb chipset), just no firewire ports... I don't want to buy a firewire card.

 

[User Name]

For the PSU, I suggest taking it up another notch and go for the Fortron 530W instead.

Also for the Hard Drives, if you're not looking for extremely quiet drives, then a pair of Hitachi 7k250 drives would be better performance-wise. Furthermore, you could even go for a 36 gig WD Raptor for your OS, and then use a large drive for storage.

If this system is for gaming and general tasks, keep in mind that RAID 0 will provide very little, if any, improvement in terms of performance, and also increases reliability problems with your drives as well.

Edit: On a completely unrelated note, I'm quite surprised that no one took the name "User Name" until now

Hmm, are you sure about RAID0 not giving any extra performance? It seems highly dependant on the RAID controller. Maxximum PC got 47MB/sec singe drive and 95MB/sec 2 drive in RAID0... Yes, I am going for a quiet system. The 36GB raptor is very expensive for what little size if offers. Even if RAID0 doesn't give me any performance boost (there are two seperate SATA RAID controllers on the Epox board so i can try both) I really need the 400GB of space. If RAID0 is indeed slow then I wont use raid at all. On a side note, I can put each drive on a different SATA channel. That may be the key to get the performance out of RAID0.

Yeah 530W seems a bit more in the right area. Fortron eh? Haven't heard much about them. Will look into it.

Heh, yhea I was surprised my User Name wasn't taken either

Thanks for the tips guys! keep them coming, and remember argue with me I can be stupid at times.

 

[Aslan]

In concerning RAID 0, I suggest you check out articles at http://www.storagereview.com/ (Title is "Stop the RAID0 Insanity! Dated July 2, 2004) as well as a review done by Anandtech However, some people do feel that RAID 0 is faster for them, and it is basically up to you. Here from this very forum concerning both points of view, and I'm sure you can find more info here as well as the www.storagereview.com forums.


If you're not going for an extremely quiet system by meaning absolute, total silence, then I would recommend the 7k250 as mentioned. I have the 120gb version, and I don't even notice it at all.

 

[User Name]

Wow... RAID0... Nevermind

Ah I see... With sequential reading RAID0 is indeed faster. But, in a "real" desktop user situation, RAID0 does little to add to the performance especially as far as gaming goes. I see. Thank you, now I will definately not use RAID0. Originally I was gonna sacrifice reliability for performance but seeing there is no performance to attain, I don't wanna sacrifice reliability.

About the drive selection:
The raptor is indeed about 20MB-25MB/sec faster than the Seagate drives I have on my list but for the price I would rather stick with high storage rather than performance (Ow, the raptor is about $4.30 a GB). That was my plan from that start. I went around a bunch of websites, divded the cost by the size in GB and found these Seagate drives to be the cheapest drives per GB (actually $0.66 a GB) that have a 5-year warranty and are very silent. The RAID0 thing was kindof a "hey, I'll have 2 of the same drive, and a SATA RAID motherboard... lets make a RAID0!!! YAY!!" So the raptor is OUT but I will look into Hitachi drive (because its $0.68 a BG) to see just exactly how much faster it is than the Seagates. I may go with it if the speed difference is substantial enough. Is the warranty also 5 years? The Hitachi is only .5 bels louder, that doesn't seem too bad.

Thank you very much for pointing out the RAID0 mistake

Edit: Oops its $0.66/GB not 0.66 cents/GB

 

[Aslan]

The Hitachi warranty is only 3 years, but I've been hearing more reliability problems concerning Seagate as well, even though they raised their warranty to 5 years. From what I've seen and read, Samsung has overtaken Seagate with their Spinpoint drives, and they are just as quiet and perhaps faster as well.

As you can tell, I'm quite biased towards the new Hitachi drives (only because of my good experience with the 7k250), but the Samsung 8 meg drive would be a good choice as well; it appears to be slightly more expensive than the Hitachi, however.

 

[MiNdWaRp]

dont get the 3200+ get the 3000+, cheaper and better

You mean because it can be overclocked about the same as the 3200+ for less money?

Im getting the Epox 8KDA3J, im getting it, and so should yu

The only difference between that and the 8KDA3+ is Raid? How does the Epox board compare to an Asus K8N Deluxe or the ABit KV8 Pro?

For the PSU, I suggest taking it up another notch and go for the Fortron 530W instead.

I agree, only $10 more.

 

[User Name]

For the PSU, I suggest taking it up another notch and go for the Fortron 530W instead.

I agree, only $10 more.

Very nice PSU! It even has voltage pots. Im definately jumping on this one. Thanks. Does anyone know what the warraty on it is? Just curious

dont get the 3200+ get the 3000+, cheaper and better

So basically, I should get a 3000+ newcastle? I was going with the ClawHammer before because I haven't heard much about the newcastle and because it had twice the L2 Cache. I've seen the Clawhammer 3200+ rev. CG be pushed from 2000MHz to ~2400MHz with stock cooling. Will the newcastle 3000+ overclock well like the Clawhammer?

You mean because it can be overclocked about the same as the 3200+ for less money?

So do you also recommend I get the 3000+ newcastle? What is the difference (other than 512kb of L2 Cache) between the newcastle and the clawhammer?

The Hitachi warranty is only 3 years, but I've been hearing more reliability problems concerning Seagate as well, even though they raised their warranty to 5 years. From what I've seen and read, Samsung has overtaken Seagate with their Spinpoint drives, and they are just as quiet and perhaps faster as well.

As you can tell, I'm quite biased towards the new Hitachi drives (only because of my good experience with the 7k250), but the Samsung 8 meg drive would be a good choice as well; it appears to be slightly more expensive than the Hitachi, however.

Hmm. I will look into and compare the Hitachi drivers, the Samsung drives, and the Seagate drives.

 

[User Name]

I will be back in about 7 hours.

 

[shard]

sorry for not reaplying,

on teh 3000+ to the 3200+, i mean that it can oc for cheaper

the Clawhammer is also only 2.0ghz where teh newcastle is 2.2ghz, so they realy offset eachother. there is realy not that much performance differnce

becuase the extra cache gains about 5% increase to performance, but the higher clock speed gains about 10%, now remeber these are RELATIVE terms. so they are not exact

 

[User Name]

shard, can you post some numbers acheived with overclocking accosciated with specific (Clawhammer/Newcastle) chips? I've been finding an average of 2.13GHz-2.18GHz (from 2.0GHz) OC for the 3000+ Newcastle based on customer feedbacks at newegg and some other places I found with google. Also, have you ordered your parts already? I'm wondering what OC you will get, be sure to post it. Good luck with your compy.

the Clawhammer is also only 2.0ghz where teh newcastle is 2.2ghz, so they realy offset eachother

I think you already know this but, the 3000+ newcastle is 2.0GHz. And what do you mean "realy offset eachother"?

there is realy not that much performance differnce becuase the extra cache gains about 5% increase to performance, but the higher clock speed gains about 10%, now remeber these are RELATIVE terms. so they are not exact

Just wondering, where did you get these numbers (the 5% and the 10%)?

 

[shard]

well, i am not getting my parts until the end of the month

ok, an average OC with good ram, is around 2.4ghz on a 3000+ NC,

what i was talking about the clawhammer, is i was compareing it to the the 3200+ NC, not the 3000+

and the numbers, well i cant remember, i think i might have gotten them form hitechjb1's sticky, but im not sure

and if yu have any more questions, feel free to ask! hope i am helping!

 

[User Name]

OK, i've decided to go with the 3000+ after stumbling upon this [recent] review:
OCing the Athlon64 3000+: 2.45GHz for Cheap

Also, they got their CPU from newegg recently, further making me more comfortable buying that exact one.

About the drives: the Hitachi 7K250 250GB is indeed quite better performing, but does that remain true for the 160GB version?

 

[User Name]

Also, the Hitachi drives (the 160GB version, the 250GB seems not to have the problem) seem to be notorious for making a "metalic meowing cat" noise every ~10min. It is normal and seems to be very aggrivating from what I read on some other forums and revies.

 

[shard]

if that worries you then get the 180gb vesion

 

[User Name]

Well, I ordered the system. Here is it:
A64 3000+ Newcastle Retail + Silent Boost CPU cooler
Epox 8KDA3J
KingMax CAS3 PC4000 RAM
BFG GeForce OC 6800GT
Two Seagate 200GB Drives
Fortron 530W PSU
Two thermaltake 120mm Adjustable fans + One 80mm SLIM side fan
Lite-On 8x DVD Burner
Lite-On 52X CD Burner

I went with the Seagate drives because I read bad things about the Hitachi ones. The ones I got may not be as good performers but at least they aren't refered to as "death-stars" and they dont make a really loud metalic meowing sound. Also, I never did find out if the performance of the 160GB model is the same as the 250GB one mainly cause I got tired of waiting and wanted to order the thing ASAP.

 

[shard]

what case did yu get?

 

[User Name]

Im using a case I bought a while back: the XBlade