Building a PC, any comments.

[illuminati11_13]

Hey, I'm building myself a new PC, and these are the main components I'm planning on:

COOLER MASTER Centurion 5 CAC-T05-WW Black/Silver Aluminum Bezel, SECC Chassis ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail $49.99
ENERMAX EG565AX-VEFMA2.0-SLI ATX12V Ver.2.0 535W Power Supply - Retail $89.99

Western Digital Caviar RE WD3200YS 320GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM $94.99

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+ Brisbane 2.1GHz Socket AM2 Processor Model ADO4000DDBOX - Retail $99.99

XFX PVT84JUDD3 GeForce 8600GT 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail $149.99

MSI K9N SLI Platinum Socket AM2 NVIDIA nForce 570 SLI MCP ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail $124.99

A-DATA 1GB (2 x 512MB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model ADQVE1908K - Retail $49.99

LITE-ON LightScribe Black 20X DVD±R Burner with 12X DVD-RAM write Black IDE Model LH-20A1H-186 - Retail $37.99


total: $730.74 (shipping included)

My design goals are something that will require little maintenance and be easy to upgrade and keep current for at least three years.

I'd like it be able to play some games, but not necessarily the latest and greatest as the years come. My interest in them has definitely waned in the past 4 years or so and will probably continue to do so.

My main interest is experimenting with servers and setting an efficient development environment for my hobbyist programming. I may be interested in a mythTVesque media center as well.

 

[[SC]Ceasar]

I dont like the videocard, rather get an 8800gts 320mb version, the rest seems 'oke' sort of...

You might take a look at C2D's, that will give you better hardware for about the same amount of money. Also depends on your budget ofxourse..

 

[jivetrky]

For what you'll be using it, it should be just fine!

 

[illuminati11_13]

I dont like the videocard, rather get an 8800gts 320mb version, the rest seems 'oke' sort of...

You might take a look at C2D's, that will give you better hardware for about the same amount of money. Also depends on your budget ofxourse..

The videocard I can improve down the road, IF I need to. I went on the cheep end because I was considering a triple monitor setup down the road which would mean I would have to buy another card anyway.

As for C2D, is that the general consensus or just your opinion/experience? If there was a general consensus on the issue I'd definitely look into it.

 

[jivetrky]

The videocard I can improve down the road, IF I need to. I went on the cheep end because I was considering a triple monitor setup down the road which would mean I would have to buy another card anyway.

As for C2D, is that the general consensus or just your opinion/experience? If there was a general consensus on the issue I'd definitely look into it.

The C2D's are definitely better performers than anything AMD has right now. They are pretty cheap now and overclock very well.

You could get an E4300 and Gigabyte DS3 motherboard for about the same price as what you have there and get some better performance out of it. I'm not sure how the 2 would match up at stock speeds, but the E4300 should hit 3Ghz pretty easily and perform better than the 4000+ could.

 

[illuminati11_13]

The C2D's are definitely better performers than anything AMD has right now. They are pretty cheap now and overclock very well.

You could get an E4300 and Gigabyte DS3 motherboard for about the same price as what you have there and get some better performance out of it. I'm not sure how the 2 would match up at stock speeds, but the E4300 should hit 3Ghz pretty easily and perform better than the 4000+ could.

I checked on egghead, and the cheapest C2D (E4300) processor was $14 more than the 4000+ and was reported at 1.6Ghz. I wasn't planning on overclocking right off the bat and you mention that this is only the current match-up. I'm trying to think down the road, so is it likely that the AMD will catchup with Intel, or will it remain behind?

If it's the latter, I'll definitely make the switch-up.

 

[jivetrky]

The E4300's are actually clocked at 1.8Ghz stock vs the 2.1Ghz stock of the 4000+. But the E4300 will still beat the 4000+ in just about every benchmark. With different architecture you cannot compare clock speeds alone. Check out some bechmarks that have results of both chips in them. Just a quick google found me this benchmark which shows the E4300 to be close to the 5000+ in performance. I didn't really look around for more sites to compare, but I'm pretty sure this is about average for results.

But overclock it to 3Ghz or 3.2Ghz and in most cases you can't really beat it with an AMD CPU.

I'm definitely not a fan one way or the other, just a fan of the best performance versus price. And right now that seems to be Intel.

It's hard to say how long AMD will be behind...but it'll probably be a fair while longer before they can come back out on top. when dealing with computers, you really have to look at the present (and perhaps a couple of months into the future). Trying to look further will only make you want to wait forever because new tech is always coming around.

 

[[SC]Ceasar]

Oh well, i was about to post but jivetrky summed about everything up for you.

It is general consensus and my personal experience with the C2D.