The Furious Angels

FA Discussion => Off Topic => Topic started by: Jeyk on March 02, 2008, 09:10:53 pm

Title: New Gaming Rig
Post by: Jeyk on March 02, 2008, 09:10:53 pm
Well...I decided, after quite a bit of initial reluctance, to finally do a decent PC upgrade.  I really didn't want to spend the dough, but I think I made off with a reasonable deal, and I should be content with this setup for a couple of years:

AMD X2 5000+ Black Edition
2GB DDR 800 (1GB x 2)
Asus MSN-SLI nForce 560 SLI AM2 Motherboard
Nvidia 9600GT 512MB
Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro 92mm Heatsink/Fan
Rosewill Stallion 500W PSU

Total: $482

I'm going to use my old case (Thermaltake Xaser III Supertower), and old hard drives/DVD burners (IDE/PATA, which the board supports, up to 4 devices).

Chances are that I'm going to need to ask for help on setting some of this up. :)

EDIT:  Had to add a new PSU, turns out my old one was only 430W, not enough "voltage on the rail" or some shit.
Title: Re: New Gaming Rig
Post by: Lithium on March 02, 2008, 09:22:16 pm
I did almost the same thing. I just got my new desktop running. Except I needed to get a speedy hard drive and a new PSU

I went for:

AMD 4800+
2GB DDR 800
Gigabyte SLI Motherboard
XFX Nvidia 8600GT Card
70gig 10K SATA Raptor HDD
Thermaltake 420W

Total is almost exactly $500 after rebates. The hard drive pretty much was the most expensive thing! I might buy another XFX 8600 card and SLI it. (any opinions on that?) The one I bought was $70 after rebate, really good deal I think to just get another!
Title: Re: New Gaming Rig
Post by: NoCry on March 03, 2008, 03:37:49 am
nice gentlemen! very very nice! can not beleive the cost of those parts!! so so much cheaper than in blightly.
Title: Re: New Gaming Rig
Post by: Anamodiel on March 03, 2008, 08:45:51 am
I've actually been thinking of getting a new desktop for college, and I was thinking of beginning to build my own computer at the start of the summer. Seeing the costs of this makes me all the more happy for my prospects of getting a computer for a pretty cheap cost.

My dad, however, has always been a Dell fan and has never wanted to build computers on his own because they don't have warranties or 24 hour support that you could just call. Any ideas on how to convince him to let me build my own computer instead of buying from Dell?
Title: Re: New Gaming Rig
Post by: Pirus on March 03, 2008, 09:29:39 am
well if youre paying for it yourself that should be enough to convince him... its your money do with it what you want.  But you do have support... FA FTW! lol we can help ya with whatever arises.  And btw Jeyk im here if ya need me I'll give you my cell number if you need me to walk ya through it.
Title: Re: New Gaming Rig
Post by: Heironymus on March 03, 2008, 10:20:17 am
Quote from: "Anamodiel"
I've actually been thinking of getting a new desktop for college, and I was thinking of beginning to build my own computer at the start of the summer. Seeing the costs of this makes me all the more happy for my prospects of getting a computer for a pretty cheap cost.

My dad, however, has always been a Dell fan and has never wanted to build computers on his own because they don't have warranties or 24 hour support that you could just call. Any ideas on how to convince him to let me build my own computer instead of buying from Dell?


newegg.com... to buy
and a few people on here know a good bit about computers.. ask for there numbers for "wingman" support...
Title: Re: New Gaming Rig
Post by: Pirus on March 03, 2008, 10:52:31 am
If youre going to sli the 8600 Im not sure the 420 watt PSU will be enough I would definately check into that.  It may squeek in there there is a nice calculator for such things here.....

http://extreme.outervision.com/PSUEngine

If it does work then yeah I would say go for it.. I have actually toyed with the idea of getting another 8800 ultra.
Title: Re: New Gaming Rig
Post by: Lithium on March 03, 2008, 03:18:52 pm
LOL yeah it says I'd need like 228W. I'm telling you all these PSUs now a days with 800+W is just bullshit marketing. I think even high performance machines could run with 650watters.

The new rebate on the 8600GT on newegg said for purchases as MWAVE, I emailed them about that early early this morning and come today then went and removed it, never did email me back... lol, so I'll wait until it goes on sale again or I get it from MWAVE. But I think it'll be a smart buy.
Title: Re: New Gaming Rig
Post by: Jeyk on March 03, 2008, 08:03:19 pm
OK, this power supply stuff is confusing the hell out of me.

Apparently the 9600GT needs 22A (amperage) on the +12V rail to power efficiently.

Take a look at this and tell me if the amperage on this PSU is sufficient enough:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ShowImage.aspx?CurImage=17-182-076-03.jpg&Image=17-182-076-09.jpg%2c17-182-076-08.jpg%2c17-182-076-03.jpg%2c17-182-076-04.jpg%2c17-182-076-05.jpg%2c17-182-076-06.jpg%2c17-182-076-07.jpg&S7ImageFlag=0&WaterMark=1&Depa=1&Description=Rosewill+Stallion+Series+RD500-2SB+500W+Power+Supply

I've heard that you can't simply add up the +12V1 and +12V2 rails to get the amperage - supposedly, you take the total wattage of the 12V rails and divide that number by 12.

Which way is the right way to calculate amperage on the PSU linked above, and would someone be kind enough to tell me what the amperage on this particular PSU is?  I don't trust the answer I came up with until I get another opinion (480W total minus the 130W for the 3.3V and 5V rails and 22W for the -12V and +5V rails = 320W divided by 12 = 27A).
Title: Re: New Gaming Rig
Post by: Pirus on March 03, 2008, 08:58:14 pm
yep your fine jeyk.. its not saying the card needs 22amps its saying your power supply has to have atleast 22 amps on it.. and it does.  so you have nothing to worry about.
Title: Re: New Gaming Rig
Post by: Jeyk on March 03, 2008, 10:39:41 pm
Thanks, was going mad for a moment there. :D
Title: New Gaming Rig
Post by: Da6onet on March 03, 2008, 11:09:02 pm
it can't be 22amps, that's insane. a corded circular saw only draws like 9-12 amps

sure it's not 2.2 amps? which is still high considering most electronics run just fine betweem 300mA and 500mA
Title: New Gaming Rig
Post by: Pirus on March 04, 2008, 04:43:47 am
welll all this is saying is that it recommends a PSU that can sustain 22 amps not 22 amps to the video card but 22 amps to the whole system.  I seriously doubt he is using that much as you were saying but, always good to have enough :)  Its like it said it needed a 400 watt power supply.  The card itself doesn't need that much but added with all of your possible peripherals the whole system might.
Title: New Gaming Rig
Post by: Jeyk on March 06, 2008, 04:04:11 am
Just got done building/overclocking/testing it over the past few hours at a friend's.

Runs stable at 40-45C OC'd to 3.0.  Crysis runs smoothly at 1024 w/ most settings running on High.  I'm in love with this thing.

Reinstalling XP and games at the moment; see you folks tomorrow! :D
Title: New Gaming Rig
Post by: Lithium on March 06, 2008, 12:52:36 pm
Wow that is a pretty good overclock on that processor. I have very little experience with overcloking but I did manage to bump up my CPU 100mhz. I really need a better than stock cooler to push it any further and my RAM is cheap shit that if pushed too far will blow up! But the little increase I gave it actually did very very little in the CoH benchmark, gained maybe a frame a second.

On the other hand I overclocked the crap out of the XFX 8600FT card, went from 620mhz to 710mhz and uped the GPU RAM over a 100mhz too. Now that gave me nearly a 10FPS increase on the average in the CoH benchmark.

Goes to show that the graphics card is really the bottleneck in games.
Title: New Gaming Rig
Post by: Pirus on March 06, 2008, 01:35:03 pm
yeah that processor is pretty good on overclocking the core 2 duo's are better though.. I went from 3 ghz to 3.8 ghz all without water cooling.  Love that thing lol  I think the 5000 starts at 2.6ghz... so a difference of 400 mhz which is real nice for an amd processor.
Title: New Gaming Rig
Post by: Jeyk on March 06, 2008, 02:15:55 pm
I'm going to try to get it to 3.2-3.4 today...I'll have to change some of the voltage settings, though - should still run stable.
Title: New Gaming Rig
Post by: Lithium on March 06, 2008, 06:27:39 pm
I imagine I could get a lot more out of the processor with a new heatsink but it is really the ram that scares me now because I didn't realize this before buying but it appears some of the ram goes bad REALLY REALLY quickly, it may have just been a bad batch I hope
( http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16820146565&SortField=0&SummaryType=0&Pagesize=10&SelectedRating=-1&PurchaseMark=&VideoOnlyMark=False&Page=2 ) but hell for $40 what did I expect.

Anyway I guess a question I have is do I need to lock the ram at it's default mhz's because as you up the FSB the ram speeds up too... (Sorry, I know its a noob question!) :)
Title: New Gaming Rig
Post by: Tecknik on March 06, 2008, 07:53:37 pm
Quote from: "Pirus"
yeah that processor is pretty good on overclocking the core 2 duo's are better though.. I went from 3 ghz to 3.8 ghz all without water cooling.  Love that thing lol  I think the 5000 starts at 2.6ghz... so a difference of 400 mhz which is real nice for an amd processor.

3.4ghz from 1.8ghz.  On the stock heatsink.  Completely stable.

Beat that. :)

Core 2 Duos FTMFW!
Title: New Gaming Rig
Post by: Jeyk on March 06, 2008, 09:51:51 pm
How much does the 1.8GHz chip cost? Is it a Conroe? Link!
Title: New Gaming Rig
Post by: Pirus on March 06, 2008, 10:10:58 pm
Hmm I could maybe beat it but would have to lower down my memory too far... its bottlenecking me right now
Title: New Gaming Rig
Post by: Jeyk on March 07, 2008, 03:11:54 am
OK...I had XP installed on the main HDD, and Vista installed on the second HDD...after reinstalling XP on the first HDD, the dual boot menu (allowing you to select Vista or "Earlier Windows") has disappeared from startup.

Any ideas on how I can get it back?
Title: New Gaming Rig
Post by: Pirus on March 07, 2008, 04:48:43 am
1. go to Control Panel
2. open System and select the Advanced tab
3. choose startup and recovery & settings
4. Under system startup (you will also see your current default o/s - click on edit
5. This will then bring up your boot.ini, which will display your current o/s in boot order.
6. You will need to delete the ghost entry ( you should check this prior to booting into windows by hitting the F8 key after first turning on your computer - this will get you to the o/s select option of your boot loader, as well as options on safe mode etc..)
check which entry of xp is fake by selecting the working boot entry
7. Once you have deleted the entry you will then need to resave your boot.ini
8. you can also select which o/s is set as your default and how long this option is displayed at system startup, and change it to the desired o/s from system startup

See if that helps
Title: New Gaming Rig
Post by: Tecknik on March 07, 2008, 11:37:56 pm
Quote from: "Jeyk"
How much does the 1.8GHz chip cost? Is it a Conroe? Link!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115005&Tpk=E6300
Title: New Gaming Rig
Post by: NoCry on March 11, 2008, 05:45:21 pm
i have received my new computer; is it possible to have 2 operating systems on one harddrive?
Title: New Gaming Rig
Post by: Pirus on March 12, 2008, 12:06:06 pm
yeah it is but you will have to re partition the hard drive basically you split the hard drive in half or in any fraction you want. so that one part of it has one operating system and one has another.  It will treat it as 2 different hard drives.  If im not mistaken you have to do this while formatting the hard drive.  Btw whats the specs on your new computer?
Title: New Gaming Rig
Post by: NoCry on March 12, 2008, 04:55:26 pm
pirus the specs are quite frankly filthy!
Title: New Gaming Rig
Post by: NoCry on March 12, 2008, 05:01:32 pm
well; basically a clevo laptop; broad specs are as follows: t9300 intel 2.5gh; 4 gb of 800mhz ram, nvidia 8800gtx. also got the new draft n wireless or whatnot; r
Title: New Gaming Rig
Post by: Pirus on March 12, 2008, 05:10:22 pm
nice you liking it so far?
Title: New Gaming Rig
Post by: NoCry on March 12, 2008, 05:11:35 pm
loving it;) just upgrading to vista then will be set!!
Title: New Gaming Rig
Post by: Jeyk on March 13, 2008, 12:26:10 am
Damn, nice specs Nocry!
Title: New Gaming Rig
Post by: Tecknik on March 13, 2008, 01:05:29 am
Very nice, NoCry.


Someone talk me out of a MacBook Pro.  I was researching them for a friend, and now I want one badly.  The more I look, the more I want one. :(
Title: New Gaming Rig
Post by: Lithium on March 13, 2008, 02:27:28 am
I'll give you a good reason. It's Mac. They try to suck you into their propaganda. And remember the only thing more snobby than a Mac is it's owner.
Title: New Gaming Rig
Post by: Jeyk on March 14, 2008, 05:28:45 am
Is it true that SLI only works with select games?
Title: New Gaming Rig
Post by: Pirus on March 14, 2008, 05:59:21 am
I would say most games out there support SLI but its true that some games take advantage of it more than others.  In some you may only see 5 fps better and then others 30 or 40.. It varies a lot.
Title: New Gaming Rig
Post by: Lithium on March 15, 2008, 10:11:16 pm
Yeah... I made a mistake buying the 8600gt card. When I did my initial research I didn't realize how much more bang for the buck (an extra $100) you get with the 8800gt. So I think I might buy the 8800gt and sell the 8600gt on ebay, I can get most if not all my money back on it!
Title: New Gaming Rig
Post by: Jeyk on May 26, 2008, 04:38:12 pm
I need some quick input...I'm deciding on whether or not I want to do this today, before the sale is over at midnight:

Upgrading RAM from 2GB (1GB x2) DDR800 to 4GB (2GB x 2) DDR800
Upgrading to SLI with another 9600GT
Total: $234

Is it worth it performance-wise?
Title: New Gaming Rig
Post by: Lithium on May 26, 2008, 07:43:32 pm
If you are running XP 4gigs might be too much? If I recall correctly XP can handle 4gig total between (GPU and RAM memory)?
Title: New Gaming Rig
Post by: Anonymous on May 27, 2008, 05:30:10 am
Quote from: "Lithium"
If you are running XP 4gigs might be too much? If I recall correctly XP can handle 4gig total between (GPU and RAM memory)?


I'll be running 4gigs of RAM on my PC and my new GFX card will have 1 gig on it. XP can run it fine. :)
Title: New Gaming Rig
Post by: Pirus on May 27, 2008, 08:13:50 am
Well jeyk, did you get the ram and card?
Title: New Gaming Rig
Post by: Lithium on May 27, 2008, 09:17:43 am
Quote from: "Woodgrain"
Quote from: "Lithium"
If you are running XP 4gigs might be too much? If I recall correctly XP can handle 4gig total between (GPU and RAM memory)?


I'll be running 4gigs of RAM on my PC and my new GFX card will have 1 gig on it. XP can run it fine. :)


Of course it runs--but it only detects 3gigs of ram no?
Title: New Gaming Rig
Post by: Phienyx on May 27, 2008, 09:30:38 am
Three is a way that you can get XP to detect all 4 gigs.  I had a buddy of mine who is a certified microsoft tech who was able to get XP to detect all 4 gigs of my ram.  I just couldn't tell you how, but it is possible.
Title: New Gaming Rig
Post by: Jeyk on May 27, 2008, 02:53:50 pm
Not yet Pirus, but I'm going to get an additional 2GB (2 x 1GB) RAM instead, as well as the card, which has a $20 rebate until the 31st - saves me $40 vs. the 2GB x 2.

I got a 512 8600GT for my 2nd PC though, as well as a Raidmax 530W SLI PSU.
Title: New Gaming Rig
Post by: Bellthazor on May 27, 2008, 07:45:04 pm
I know the 64bit XP will recognize 4Gigs of RAM, but the 32bit will only recognize 3Gigs..
Title: New Gaming Rig
Post by: Jeyk on June 07, 2008, 02:24:24 am
Final Specs:

AMD X2 5000+ Black Edition OC'd to 3.0
4GB DDR 800 Dual Channel (1GB x 4)
Asus MSN-SLI nForce 560 SLI AM2 Motherboard
Nvidia GTX 260 512MB
Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro 92mm Heatsink/Fan
Raidmax 530W PSU
500GB HDD
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