New system

[taper]

Now that school's out, I'm planning for my first build. Here's what I found so far, is there anything that won't work well together? I have a little room in my budget too, so if there's something better that's a little more expensive I might consider it.

AMD Athlon 64 3500+ ClawHammer/Hammer 1GHz FSB 512KB L2 Cache Socket 939 Processor - $267
ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX AMD Motherboard - $175
ATRIX CSCI-C8023-C43 Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 480W Power Supply - $46.50
Rosewill Radeon X800XL 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI-Express x16 Video Card - $279.99
Western Digital Caviar SE WD800JD 80GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache Serial ATA150 Hard Drive - $56
NEC Black 16X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 4X DVD+R DL 16X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 24X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM 2M Cache IDE DVD Burner - $56.99
CORSAIR ValueSelect 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM Unbuffered DDR 400 (PC 3200) Dual Channel Kit System Memory - $74.99

$956.47

 

[anarchywrksbest]

Very nice indeed, but you might want to invest in a bigger hard drive. You might not think it but 80GB doesn't go so far with a powerful systems as the games you play on it usually take up more disc space than older games.

 

[Zelig]

Get a better PSU. For a rig like that, you probably should be paying close to $100 for the PSU alone.

Do you really need the SLI? It won't work with the X800XL card anyway...

 

[taper]

Guess I missed that. I noticed some other people had used that with the chip I chose, so I picked it too. Is this one better?

ASUS A8V DELUXE Socket 939 VIA K8T800 Pro ATX AMD Motherboard - $118

I've heard good things about ANTEC cases, this one seems popular.

Antec Performance Series II SX1040BII Black 1mm SECC Steel Server Computer Case 400W Power Supply - $110

 

[Zelig]

If you want an Asus motherboard take a look at the ASUS A8N-E, it's based on the nForce4 chipset, which is better than the Via.

I own the DFI LANPARTY UT NF4 Ultra-D motherboard. From what I've seen, it's the best S939 board available, you may want to take a look at it.
You could also get the DFI LANPARTY UT NF4-D. It's basically the same board, but with the SATA II features disabled, so it's cheaper. If you're up for some simple hardware modding, it's easy to enable both SATA II and SLI on this board.

That's a high-end rig you're building, so I would really consider getting a power supply seperate from the case. For the DFI board, it's recommended to have a good 480 watt, 24 pin power supply.

 

[Zakharov]

Some comments:

CPU- You should look for the 3500+ Venice core. It has SSE3 enabled and it can run 4 sticks of dual channel RAM at full DDR-400 speed.

Mobo- As others have said, you do not need to spend $175 for a SLI board with your choice of graphics card, (X800XL is an excellent choice btw). I agree with Zelig that you should look for a nForce4 board, as that is the best chipset available.

HDD- The minimum capacity you should get is 200GB. Make sure it has at least an 8MB cache too.

 

[taper]

So now I'm looking between the ASUS A8N-E and DFI LANPARTY UT NF4 Ultra-D. Newegg didn't have the DFI LANPARTY UT NF4-D, although I might do some more looking around. I noticed that the ASUS doesn't have a audio chipset, so I'll need a separate card for that, and the DFI is SATA II. I would rather buy a SATA 150 HD, but are the connectors the same?

Also, newegg only has the 3500+ Venice as OEM packaging, not the retail box. Is there anything important I'd be missing? You guys are helping me out a lot.

 

[Zakharov]

Also, newegg only has the 3500+ Venice as OEM packaging, not the retail box. Is there anything important I'd be missing? You guys are helping me out a lot.

The OEM cpus have no heatsink or fan included. This will allow you to buy a better heatsink/fan combo than the AMD stock, eg. Thermaltake Venus (with a copper heatsink) :

LINK

 

[Zelig]

Zakharov: 4 sticks still isn't the best of ideas with Venice though, it's still touchy as to wether they'll run them at 1T command.


taper: All sata drives have the same connectors, the only differences are features and supported speeds, and they're all backwards compatible anyway. (Almost exactly the same as pata drives )

Depending on how much you care about the quality of audio and what kind of speakers you have, a seperate audio card wouldn't hurt. I've got the DFI board, but have the onboard sound disabled in favour of my Audigy 2 ZS (should be able to pick up an OEM version for about $50.) No onboard sound can yet match the quality of a good PCI soundcard.

With the OEM cpu, you have no 3 year warranty from AMD. However, CPUs very rarely are defective, and you can check out Newegg's policies to make sure you can get an RMA if it's wrecked in transit or anything.

Regarding the NF4-D, it's pretty new, so it should be in stock soon... I wouldn't wait for it if you're ready otherwise though.


Zakharov: As a side note, using anything other than stock heatsinks on AMD cpus voids the warranty... for that matter, ever applying AS5 on the stock cpu voids the warranty. Pretty lame by AMD IMO... not that they'll be able to tell the difference if I ever send a cpu back.

Thermaltake heatsinks aren't all that great... I'm a big fan of Thermalright's, and Zalman ones aren't shabby either.
Winchester and Venice run pretty cool anyhow. On my stock 3000+ Winchester, I only hit around 40 C at full load.