I hate computers

[Dr Unne]

oops double post

<a href="http://www.newegg.com/product/Product.asp?item=N82E16819103562">AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Manchester 2000MHz HT Socket 939 Dual Core Processor Model ADA3800BVBOX - Retail</a>
<a href="http://www.newegg.com/product/Product.asp?item=N82E16820145574">
CORSAIR XMS 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered Dual Channel Kit System Memory Model Twinx2048-3200c2 - Retail</a>

<a href="http://www.newegg.com/product/Product.asp?item=N82E16813131524">ASUS A8N-SLI Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail</a>

<a href="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16811119068">COOLER MASTER Centurion 5 CAC-T05-UW Black Aluminum Bezel, SECC Chassis ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail</a>

<a href="http://www.newegg.com/product/Product.asp?item=N82E16817712001">ASUS Atlas A-45GA ATX12V 2.0 450W Power Supply - Retail</a>

<a href="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16822148131">Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 ST3300822AS 300GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM</a>

<a href="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16814150130"> XFX PVT42EUDE3 Geforce 6800 XTreme 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail</a>

$921.95

Questions:
1. Does anything I've listed here appear to be extremely senseless?
2. I could get the X2 4400 for $150 more. So tempting... worth it?
3. Does the processor comes with the fan and heat sink and thermal sludge etc.? Will I need an extra fan or anything?
4. Do I need a 450W power supply? I just threw it in there. I understand video cards use a lot of power, but I only plan to have one video card. I could get a cheapo case and power supply instead.
5. I plan to use my old Creative Audigy2 PCI card. Am I dumb?

I bow to your collective wisdom and experience.

[Yamaneko]

SATA300 is overkill. You won't get a 300MB/s throughput anyway.

Do you value the extra 200MHz on each core? The 3800 you linked to has a 512kb L2 cache. I would look into a 1MB L2 cache instead. The Manchester core is getting old.

Heatsink and fan should come with the retail box, as well as thermal paste.

I would recommend an even more powerful PSU. Although many video card manufacturers state that a certain number, in the case of Nvidia's 6 series, around 350W, it is still a low wattage. The 6 series takes up a lot of power and runs hot. You also have to take into consideration running a dual core takes more power. You also have to look into a stable PSU that can have stable amperage over a single rail. If you have low amperage, wattage won't really matter because it won't be able to sustain power to all your computer components. Do not skimp out on a good PSU. Power systems thrive on them.

Audigy 2 is fine.

Something to add. With a proc as powerful as the one you listed, a 6800 would not really fit. A 7800GT (which runs cooler and with less power than the 6 series) would be a perfect match.

Here's also something to think about. AMD is soon to be releasing their new lineup of CPUs to battle Intel's new Conroe offering. The Socket M2 architecture of the yet-to-be-released AM2 will use a 940 pin socket as opposed to the 939 pin socket found in the Athlon 64/X2/FX/Opteron.

I hope this is not too much to think about. Do you really need all this for programming and light gaming? I doubt you're the FPS type that needs the most powerful gaming system all the time. Oh, and even if you are, you'd have to upgrade your video card at the beginning of next year to take advantage of DirectX 10.

[Cid]

Just for fun, here is what I bought a few months back:

<a href="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811129158">Antec PERFORMANCE TX TX1050B Black Steel Server Computer Case 500W ATX12V v2.0 Power Supply - Retail</a>


<a href="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813138272">BIOSTAR TForce4SLI Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail</a>

<a href="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814130256">eVGA 256-P2-N516 Geforce 7800GT CO SE 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail</a>

<a href="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103546">AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ Toledo 2000MHz HT Socket 939 Dual Core Processor Model ADA4400CDBOX - Retail</a>

<a href="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16835100007">Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound - OEM</a>

<a href="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16835118119"> ZALMAN CNPS7000B-Cu LED 2 Ball Blue LED Light Cooling Fan - Retail</a>

<a href="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820146190">mushkin SP3200 1GB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered System Memory Model 991130 - Retail</a>

Total Cost: $1301

[Samuraid]

Questions:
1. Does anything I've listed here appear to be extremely senseless?
2. I could get the X2 4400 for $150 more. So tempting... worth it?
3. Does the processor comes with the fan and heat sink and thermal sludge etc.? Will I need an extra fan or anything?
4. Do I need a 450W power supply? I just threw it in there. I understand video cards use a lot of power, but I only plan to have one video card. I could get a cheapo case and power supply instead.
5. I plan to use my old Creative Audigy2 PCI card. Am I dumb?

I bow to your collective wisdom and experience.

Looks good, but I would recommend using Corsair Value RAM instead of XMS (as long as it is cheaper) as it offers not much latency/speed difference and is generally a bit less expensive. (Run memtest86 once you get it, but it's worked great in all 7 or so computers I've built with it.)
Also, instead of the ASUS PSU, get a Coolermaster RS 450 ALCY:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817171001
I've been running one for a year powering a Geforce 6800 GT, 3 HDDs, and a Pentium dual core CPU (an overly power hungry CPU), and the PSU runs quietly and efficiently. It's also got active power factor correction and runs at a higher efficiency than most PSUs.

Anyway, just $0.02

[Dr Unne]

Sean, I'm rapidly approaching $1300 too. Far too rapidly.

The SATA300 drives appear to be nearly the same price as the slower ones. Same with the RAM. I'd only save $20 getting the cheaper kind. I'd rather get whatever is least likely to break in a month or be dead on arrival. The speed doesn't really matter too much to me.

I really can't spend $300-400 on a video card. It's painful. I really will never use it.

I can't find any info on whether the 450W PSU Samuraid mentions is enough to run an X2 3800 or 4400 and the Geforce 6800. I have no idea about amperage vs. wattage. I don't see any such thing listed in the specs for the video card or CPU. In fact it lists voltage.

[qq=Yamaneko]Here's also something to think about. AMD is soon to be releasing their new lineup of CPUs to battle Intel's new Conroe offering. The Socket M2 architecture of the yet-to-be-released AM2 will use a 940 pin socket as opposed to the 939 pin socket found in the Athlon 64/X2/FX/Opteron. [/qq]

When it's released it's going to be expensive right? No matter what I buy, it's going to be obselete almost immediately. Another reason I hate computers. Even if I wait another year to get a socket 940, socket 973.7 will probably be coming in another couple months. I can't really wait.

[qq]I hope this is not too much to think about. Do you really need all this for programming and light gaming? I doubt you're the FPS type that needs the most powerful gaming system all the time.[/qq]

Oh, it is way too much to think about. A compelling reason I'd like a dual core is because GCC can use the dual cores for parallel compiling which is almost twice as fast. I spend 2 hours just recompiling Firefox twice a month. I think I can get plenty of use out of my CPU.

If I get a cheaper CPU now planning to get a better dual core later, I'm going to end up with a $150 chip that I have no use for and will probably sit in a box for the rest of my life. Then supposing I get a $150 discount on a dual core by waiting for the price to drop, I'll end up with the same thing anyways, but I'll have missed out on months of dual core goodness. Whatever I buy I'm probably going to be stuck with.

I may still go with a single core though. I'm probably looking at spending $400 just to save myself a few minutes a month. Blarg. At least I'm learning and I can make a more informed decision now.

Waaaaaaaaaay too much to think about.

[Samuraid]

I can't find any info on whether the 450W PSU Samuraid mentions is enough to run an X2 3800 or 4400 and the Geforce 6800.

The 450W supply is definitely enough to run even an X2 4800+ and a 6800 Ultra and a few HDDs if you wanted.
I'm running a Pentium D830 (which uses far more power than an X2), 3 HDDs, a 6800GT, and a few optical drives off the 450W supply and it maintains stable operation even under 100% load on both CPU cores.

You can calculate you expected power usage here, which is roughly accurate:
http://www.jscustompcs.com/power_supply/

EDIT:
Good power comparison charts:
http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/01/...lt/page19.html

[Yamaneko]

Good amperage on a 12V rail is at least 18A or more. My PSU has 30A on the 12V rail. Very stable.

[Dr Unne]

Thanks everyone for your help. I got everything I linked above except I got a different PSU. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817712002 It looks roughly similar to the one Samuraid linked to. I can't tell if it meets Yamaneko's requirements:

+3.3V@30A, +5V@35A, +12V1@18A, +12V2@16A, -12V@1.0A, +5VSB@2.5A

Gibberish to me. 18A or 16A at 12V, is what it looks like.

I had to get something today or else it wouldn't have gotten here before the 3-day weekend, so if I got a sucky PSU I guess I'll have to get another. No big deal. $890 total for everything after all rebates, not bad.

[Yamaneko]

That's a dual rail PSU. You don't need as much amperage on each rail because you will have less components plugged into them. The user manual should tell you how to differentiate between the two rails. Ideally you want to power certain components on seperate rails. Mobo/GPU, GPU/HDD, Opticle Media Drives/GPU. Something like that. Maybe the GPU by itself because it takes the most power of any other component in your system.

Have fun with your new system... after you put it together. Of course Windows will ruin the experience.

[Dr Unne]

So I gather my PSU should be adequate. That is good to know. Also I think I have finally grasped the meaning of the term "rail".

[Samuraid]

Yeah, that one should be more than adequate.

[Dr Unne]

Thanks for the link of power consumption comparisons. My CPU seems to do pretty well there.

[Endless]

Here's also something to think about. AMD is soon to be releasing their new lineup of CPUs to battle Intel's new Conroe offering. The Socket M2 architecture of the yet-to-be-released AM2 will use a 940 pin socket as opposed to the 939 pin socket found in the Athlon 64/X2/FX/Opteron.

First test of the Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Socket AM2:
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/328

[Cid]

Doesn't seem like the benefits of the 940 series will be seen soon enough to warrent waiting. Good job, Unne.

[Samuraid]

And http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/05/...nvents_itself/