New computer specs

[wtiberon]

I was recently considering getting an Alienware's high end PC ALX. I started researching and found that ALOT of people think they are a piece o blip. So I'm taking on the brave mission of building my own based on the specs of the ALX. So if anyone would be so kind to do a final inspection on my parts I would appreciate it since I'm kind of a puter ****** .


ASPIRE X-Navigator ATXA8NW-BK/500 Black Aluminum ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 500W Power Supply

Asus A8N SLI

AMD Athlon 64 FX-57

Corsair TWINX Dual Channel 1024MB PC3200 DDR 400MHz Memory

Dual NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX

Western Digital Raptor WD740GD 74GB Hard Drive

Western Digital / 120GB / 7200 / 8MB / ATA-100 / EIDE Hard Drive

Plextor PX-716A/SW / 4x DVD+R DL / 16x8x16x DVD+RW
/ 16x4x16x DVD-RW / 48x24x48x CD-RW / DVD Burner

Plextor Plexwriter Premium / 52x32x52 CD-RW / Roxio Software / CD Burner

Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS PCI Sound Card

 

[Zelig]

Hm, from those parts, I take it money isn't really a concern?

#1 Change: Get a good power supply. Those are all top of the line parts you're getting, you don't want to be running them with an wimpy power supply. I can highly recommend the 600 watt OCZ Powerstream.


Case: These are highly subjective... myself (and many other people recently) have been really impressed by the CoolerMaster Stacker, many drive bays, great airflow, great quality, etc.


Motherboard: I'd get the DFI SLI-D (Or the SLI-DR if you want 8, rather than 4 sata ports.) It is the best S939 motherboard currently available.


RAM: If you're going for a rig like that, I'd go ahead and get 2Gb of ram. 2x1024Mb sticks should do fine.


CPU: What are you going to be doing with your CPU mostly? The FX-57 is the fastest single core cpu available, and reigns supreme in gaming, but if you do other cpu-intensive tasks, I'd consider a dual-core cpu, such as the X2 4800+. You'd lose some gaming performance (games would still be blazing fast though), but you'd gain performance in multitasking, and in the future, more programs and games are expected to support dual-cores, giving your computer an extra performance boost.


Hard Drives: IMO, the raptor drives are overhyped... they've been released for quite a while now, and any sata-2 drive will be almost indistinguishable in speed, while costing much less, and probably making less noise. How much space are you looking at having total?
The new Samsung, Hitachi and Maxtor sata-2 drives are all very good.
Also, don't bother getting an EIDE hard drive... sata drives are nearly the same price, and high end ones are getting to the point where their burst speeds are being limited by the EIDE interface.


Video cards: They can't be beat at the moment, but you'll need a powerful PSU for them.


Any questions?

 

[taper]

Do you really need all that? Your video cards alone cost more than my entire system, which can handle all of today's games with no problem. If you plan on acting as a server for a 64 player online game, maybe, but otherwise you're wasting money on parts you'll never use to their potential. Do some poking around on newegg.com and you can easily find cheaper parts that will still do everything you want.

 

[Zakharov]

If only I had the money for a rig like that.

I would echo everything Zelig said, especially the suggestions for 2GB of RAM and a decent power supply. Another motherboard you could consider is the Gigabyte GA-K8NXP-SLI as the hardware review sites seem to like it.

If you plan on acting as a server for a 64 player online game, maybe, but otherwise you're wasting money on parts you'll never use to their potential.

Try playing Half-Life 2 at 1600x1200 with 8x AA and 16x AF and then tell me you don't need that high end machine. Plus I'm sure there will be games released in the near future which can bring this system to its knees, especially if they utilise Shader 2.0++.

 

[wtiberon]

Hm, from those parts, I take it money isn't really a concern?

#1 Change: Get a good power supply. Those are all top of the line parts you're getting, you don't want to be running them with an wimpy power supply. I can highly recommend the 600 watt OCZ Powerstream.


Case: These are highly subjective... myself (and many other people recently) have been really impressed by the CoolerMaster Stacker, many drive bays, great airflow, great quality, etc.


Motherboard: I'd get the DFI SLI-D (Or the SLI-DR if you want 8, rather than 4 sata ports.) It is the best S939 motherboard currently available.


RAM: If you're going for a rig like that, I'd go ahead and get 2Gb of ram. 2x1024Mb sticks should do fine.


CPU: What are you going to be doing with your CPU mostly? The FX-57 is the fastest single core cpu available, and reigns supreme in gaming, but if you do other cpu-intensive tasks, I'd consider a dual-core cpu, such as the X2 4800+. You'd lose some gaming performance (games would still be blazing fast though), but you'd gain performance in multitasking, and in the future, more programs and games are expected to support dual-cores, giving your computer an extra performance boost.


Hard Drives: IMO, the raptor drives are overhyped... they've been released for quite a while now, and any sata-2 drive will be almost indistinguishable in speed, while costing much less, and probably making less noise. How much space are you looking at having total?
The new Samsung, Hitachi and Maxtor sata-2 drives are all very good.
Also, don't bother getting an EIDE hard drive... sata drives are nearly the same price, and high end ones are getting to the point where their burst speeds are being limited by the EIDE interface.


Video cards: They can't be beat at the moment, but you'll need a powerful PSU for them.


Any questions?

Thank You very much for the response...are those motherboards you described able to handle two video cards?

What about liquid cooling v air cooling? Should I get a seperate memory or hard drive cooler?

 

[wtiberon]

o and another question is there a difference in getting 4x512mb v 2x1024Mb sticks. I noticed that when looking at the alienware specs that all their systems had 512 sticks and was wondering if there was some kind of advantage. And what is the best kind of memory to get...DDR266 (PC2100)
DDR333 (PC2700), DDR400 (PC3200)?

 

[Zelig]

Thank You very much for the response...are those motherboards you described able to handle two video cards?

What about liquid cooling v air cooling? Should I get a seperate memory or hard drive cooler?

Yes, pretty much any motherboard you see with "SLI" in the name can handle dual nVidia cards.

Watercooling genereally cools only slightly better than High-end air cooling, but with much less noise, and is especially beneficial when overclocking. If this is the first computer you're building, I'd stick to air cooling, as it's simpler, and if you want, you can always upgrade later.
(If you're really interested in water cooling though, I can post links to a couple of my favorite setups.)

Don't bother buying a separate memory or hard drive cooler, just make sure your case has adequate airflow. Overclocked memory does need active cooling (heatsinks don't help memory at all), but this can easily be achieved with a standard 80mm fan (or larger) and some elastics around the memory clips.

o and another question is there a difference in getting 4x512mb v 2x1024Mb sticks. I noticed that when looking at the alienware specs that all their systems had 512 sticks and was wondering if there was some kind of advantage. And what is the best kind of memory to get...DDR266 (PC2100)
DDR333 (PC2700), DDR400 (PC3200)?

4x512 Mb sticks will only run at a command rate of 2T (loss of performance due to limitations in the memory controller on the cpu), but there are more high-end 512Mb sticks available, meaning that they can generally be overclocked to a higher frequency and/or with tighter timings. (tighter timings = less latency, more speed)

2x1024 Mb sticks (I'd recommend the Ballistix Tracer sticks) won't overclock quite so well, but will run at 1t command. 2x1024Mb sticks will leave you more free memory slots in case you want to upgrade later.

To be honest, you aren't going to notice any difference in either of those ram setups outside of benchmark numbers, after you pass PC3200, Athlon 64 systems have plenty of bandwidth available, and latency affects usability far less than some people believe.

DDR400 refers to the speed at which the moduals run (200 MHz x 2 (DDR = Double Data Rate) = 400 MHz) while PC3200 refers to the maximum potential bandwidth of the ram in megabytes.

The best 2Gb sticks you could get would be the Crucial Ballistix Tracer ram (which I would get, if I had your money to blow on a single computer)... however, there would be very little performance loss if you chose to go with cheaper ram. Do get PC3200 though, that's the standard for modern DDR systems.

In case you're wondering, higher rated sticks, such as PC4000 are guarunteed to work at faster speeds for overclockers... however, good quality PC3200 ram will usually overclock well, the Crucial Ballistix should be fine up to PC4000 if you're inclined to ramp up it's speed.

 

[wtiberon]

Thank you very much for all the help

 

[Lozzy_Ozzy]

Wow.

If you don't mind me asking, how much will all of this cost you?

 

[wtiberon]

The parts by themselves at the best possible deal will run 3500 dollars. Thats about 2500 dollars less than the Alienware with similiar specs

 

[Zelig]

The parts by themselves at the best possible deal will run 3500 dollars. Thats about 2500 dollars less than the Alienware with similiar specs

Heh, you could snag a Dell 2405FPW and a set of Klipsch 5.1 Ultra speakers to match the rest of the rig, and you'd still be coming out ahead, if that's the case.