$3,700 to build the best Gaming PC I can, in the Next 2 days. HELP.

[new_novice]

if you are going to spend that much on a system get a pentium 4 w/ 1066 rdram.

most people who get AMD's get it because they have much better price/performance and overclock pretty well also.

just get top of the line everything intel
3ghz
1.5gig 1066rdram
Whatever intel mobo there is (sorry dont really know intel that well)
Radeon 9700 Pro
2x200gig Western Digita in Raid 0
Whatever the fastest DVD Burner is
Whatever the fastest CDRW is
Whatever the fastest DVD drive is
zip 700mb drive
Sound blaster audigy platinum
550w PSU
Coolermaster or Lian Li tower case
21" or greater monitor


i dont even know if that is 3700 but it is up therel

btw since he isnt gonna overclock whats the point of gettin all of this elaborate coolin? just get a Alpha Pal8045(the p4 equivilant sorry forgot name) with a 20cfm pabst fan which produces 12dba of noise only. then for case fans use vantec stealths or a bunch of the pabsts.

a SILENT super fast computer right there

ditto this, I TOTALLY agree, hey, if money is no object. INTEL andPC1066 would be good for him..

3.06 Ghz chip
1 gig 1066 RAMBUS
.....etc

edit: just saw your post, what about AMD 2800??

 

[Henry Rollins II]

5300 bucks for a gaming/porno system? Did I get that right?

Well, If money was no object I would build this:

Motherboard: MSI 860D pro(8 rdram slots, SCSI ultra320, lan)
CPU: 2 x Xeon 2.8 Ghz (P4 in dual)
Memory: At least 1 Gb PC800 ECC (max 4 Gb)
VGA: ATI Radeon 9700
System harddrive: Seagate Cheetah 15K 36.7 Gb(SCSI ultra320, 15000 rpm)
Storage controller: Promise SX4000 (raid 5)
Storage controller RAM: 256 Mb PC133
Storage Array: 4 x Maxtor DiamondMax 160Gb(ATA 133, 8Mb cache, 7200rpm)
Case: Lian-Li PC-70/71/75/76
PSU: Enermax 550 watt
CD/DVD: Pioneer DVD-RW

Dunnow how much that will be. A lot for sure.

Basic data:
*Dual Xeons, total 5600 Mhz computing power
*At least 1 Gb RAM
*radeon 9700
*Ultra fast boot drive
*0.64 Terabyte storage array (=lots of porn!)
*Make ur own DVDs while you playing UT at 1600x1200

 

[Lumen]

Even though this guy is loaded, dont waste his money on pax.mate. I bought some of this stuff, and you can barely tell the difference between when its installed and when its not. Waste of money IMHO

 

[ManOfKnight]

the new Z's are NICE!!! i like them...but i also like the older ones

I am glad they redid them though

 

[SpaceRangerJoe]

(PS. why buy SCSI when WD is so close in performance for alot more space????

100gigs on SCSI would cost 500$ vs's

(3) WD's for 348$ that gives you 240 gigs of space....i seriously doubt there is much differance if any between 4SCSI and 3WD

whats the theoretical max of PCI ????????

a pci slot has plenty of bandwidth. no ide drive is anywhere near the speed of scsi. if you are worried about the pci slot though, you can always get a board with a 64bit pci card, and i know you can get 64bit pci scsi raid cards, that run on 66mhz, instead of the normal 33. in summary: scsi = much much > than ide. check out storagereview.com if you want more info. if i had that kinda budget, i know i would have a scsi raid. but in favor of ides, yes, scsi is way expensive. 36.7gigs is about $370 from newegg. but if i could afford it, i would have it.


*edit* yes, those new z's are really sweet.

 

[Valk]

-Athlon xp 2800+ with SLK 800 and sunon 80mm
-Msi Kt4 ultra SR (kt 400, serial raid, agp 8x, usb 2.0)
-Geil 512 mb pc 3500U 433 mhz ddr
-2x Seagate Barracuda 80 gb ata 4 sripe raid
-Pioneer 16x dvd/cdrw combo drive, slot load

-Ati Radeon 9700pro Retail
-Creative Soundblaster Audigy2 platinum
-10,100 intel NIC

-450 watt enermax ps
-Elite 21" alluminum full tower case.
-2 120mm case fans.

-Sony 21" flat trinitron display (lcd for games is just stupid)

not sure what this comes to. but It would be my build.

 

[cloudkat]

I have my own business, "Kat's PC", building custom computers for home and/or office use.
If you were my client I would advise the following system (if AMD is what you want, but a P4 would be better):

Athlon XP2700+ ( or 2800+ if you can get it )

Chaintech Zenith series CT-7NJS motherboard
(*NOTE: the reason for this choice is that when compared to the Asus A7N8X board, the only benifit of the Asus is OC'ing. And the Chaintech board is only slightly below the Asus in that area. The Chaintech offers much more in other areas. Both have the nForce2 chipset, 8X AGP, and both clock AMD CPU's the same. But, Chaintech offers a northbridge fan, an ACR slot, optical digital in/out, a 5.5 front bay mounted com unit(sound, mic, usb, firewire, ect.), and comes with round IDE & floppy cables. For a very comprehensive review/comparison of the Asus & Chaintech boards, check out "tomshardware.com")

As much DDR400 as you feel you want (1 gig =good, 2 gig=better)(see also the "tomshardware.com" guide mentioned above for performance tests/comparisons of DDR400 and other types of memory)

A 1394 (firewire) ACR card

Creative Labs Audigy 2 Platinum

While the ATI Radeon 9700 Pro is a great card, because of the need for "porn use", I would suggest the All In Wonder 9700 Pro. It's the same card, but with much more multimedia uses (check out "ati.com" for more info. Then go to "pricegrabber.com" to find the best place to buy it.)

Since you don't want to use SCSI, I would suggest using 2 or 3 Maxtor ATA133 harddrives at 120 gig each(or even go to 160 or 200 gig ATA133 DRIVES). Using these drives will not only give you 7200rpm's, but will also get you the ATA133 interface!!!!

I have to agree with Valk that a CRT is much better than a LCD monitor if space is not a concern, and not just for games, but for the all important porn as well, whereas a CRT will give you much better color, clairity, and resoulution for watching movies. But if you are smart, you will take advantage of the All In Wonder 9700's TV out, and hook the PC straight to a TV for viewing the movies. Anyways, my advice is to take the LCD you have bought back to where you got it and get a good CRT instead.

I would also return the power supply you have and get at least a 500 watt ps.

Anyways, that covers my opinion on the major parts of your best setup.

Good luck, and be sure to let us all know what you deside and how it turns out.

Peace, Kat

 

[Crash893]

personly if it was me

i would stay away from overclocking and raid and scsi

its all nice if your going to be there when it breaks but since its not yours i would go with stabler items ( not that raid isnt stable but if he does manage to screw it up guess who hell call)


i would go with mabey a second hdd put the os on one and put his porn on the other it will allow for faster viewing

defantly more ram ( i would just drop a gig in it and never worry about it again)

mabey a wireless keyboard and mouse combo ( mabey not i think you all ready got one)

if you have money to burn get him a second monitor or soemthing so he can watch two flicks at a time

also mabey a tv in and out card would be nice prefrably with some sort of RF remote control

i think nvida has some TIVO sort of thing going on that you can buy for about 100-150

then i would do a dvd r and a cd-r drive they make a combo dvd r and cdr i think but its mucho expensive and if your going to have bays free anyway

the rest i would spend on trimmings

like a front usb port something and makeing it quite as humanly possible i wouldnt dump alot into case mods like lights and windows

get the best heat sink money can buy and tell him never to touch anything in side ever or the computer will blow up

 

[Crash893]

oh also

a good set of speakers wouldnt be to bad and a bad @$$ sound card


another thing i do is i get one of thouse fedex self adhisive pouchs and stick it inside the comptuer and put a cd with all the drivers and all the manuals and warrinteys and what not in there

kinda of incase of falure break glass thing

 

[Wicked Klown]

See if he can wait til the Barton's come out. Also Sony will be making a DVD that can do DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R and DVD+RW. For hard drives you could set him up with a set of 120 gigs or 160 gigs.

 

[TheOneDonRamon]

give the man at least a radeon 9700 or ti 4600 with at least 1gig of ram with windows pro top of the line sound blaster dual processors if u want or the 2800+ DVD-r etc..With what u listed u would have an assload for urself left over dont rip him off

 

[Henry Rollins II]

PS. why buy SCSI when WD is so close in performance for alot more space????

LOL! Only if you never tried SCSI drives could you say something like that. SCSI drives have ½ or less the seek time and 2-4 times the transfer speed. And they also have lot less CPU load. No IDE setup, raid or not, could come even close to the performance of a single Ultra 160 or Ultra 320 drive.

 

[Crash893]

yea but is the price for preformance woth it

i mean the guy is just looking at porn all day

ive always considered scsi kinda propritary its hard to run down to a store and grab a scsi drive or card that is compatable with what you have

every one has ide

 

[Goo Kenson]

Since it has to be AMD...

A7V8X
XP 2800 or Barton if you can wait long enough
1 gig Corsair pc3200
radeon 9700 pro, all in wonder I guess like that one guy said
2x WD special edition, the highest # of gig. I think 160 is out now, so 320 gigs of WD SE should be fine.
Some silent fan, just enough to keep the cpu below 50c, be sure to have plenty of case fans, too, for airflow. My 5 80mm case fans are almost completely silent.
Biggest CRT monitor you can find, defenitely flat screen too
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Platinum
Logitech z680 or klipsch 5.1?
DVDrom, dvdr, dvdrw drive and cdrom, cdr, and cdrw drive.
And, you know, the rest. Good network card...

 

[Deathknight]

WFT Emericana are you blind??????

Dude CHILL. No need to go crazy with the flame job cuz someone breezed over your post.

Most of the gear being thrown around here is pretty good stuff. Only thing I would not have done (which is a bit late seeing that you already bought it) is getting an lcd. IMHO most people are so hyped on the lcd and have no idea why they want it. Several family members of mine that have recently been buying pcs just "have to have em". If you are willing to dump alot into a monitor a real nice 21" is the better way to spend your cash. For the budget of this system if you can't fit the monitor on your desk then buy a new desk!

 

[RnPgrosz]

I would go with more RAM to start with. Just my 2 cents.

I agree, if you cant overclock just get a gig of ram. If your not overclocking I don't see why you would need anything better than PC2700(to go with a 33 FSB chip).

 

[Goo Kenson]

I agree, if you cant overclock just get a gig of ram. If your not overclocking I don't see why you would need anything better than PC2700(to go with a 33 FSB chip).

Since he'll have a Radeon 9700, he'll want AGP 8x. A7V8X is the winner.

It supports DDR400, so he should get DDR400 and set the cpu/mem ratio to 4:5.

 

[Mr. $T$]

Motherboard: A MSI K7D Master-L MP

Processors: 2x 2200+ 1.8 Ghz

Memory: 2x 512Mb Corsair XMS 2700

System Storage: 2x IBM SCSI 18GB 15,000RPM RAID

Main Storage: 4x Maxtor Diamondmax 160Gb 8mb Cache 7200 RAID

DVD Drive: Aopen 16x Front loader

DVD Burner: Sony DVD Recorder DRU500A

Video: ATI 9700pro

Sound: Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum eX

Speeakers: Klipsch ProMedia 5.1 THX Certified

Some Big CRT monitor Flat Pannels are not good for gaming.

Wireless Keyboard and mouse combo.


3.6 Ghz of power
1gig of ram
356 Gigabytes of storage

 

[heezer7]

beat me to it with the suggestion of a dual. I just lost one processor and i am dieing!!! it is so much slower.

 

[Crash893]

well he has already bought one ( lcd)

i always get the biggest monitor i can afford thats no the place to skimp since its does do 90% of the output for the computer