Rate My Possible Buy

[the100thballoon]

the100thballoon:

Okay, these prices are off Newegg, I don't buy from US sites, so can't price as well as you probably did, but Newegg is generally pretty close to the lowest prices available.

Athlon XP 4000+: $542.99
Motherboard: $120 (Am lazy and lowballing this instead of finding a price)
RAM: $650 (OCZ PC-5000 platinum, found a low price on a Canadian site, converted to US currency and then rounded down, so it might be more expensive)
Hard drive: $80 (You don't really want the fastest 160Gb hard drive. That would be a SCSI drive, and would require a seperate controller to run.)
Video Card: $500 (Again, I got lazy and estimated low, for an X850XT PE)
Sound card: $60
Mouse: $5
Keyboard: $5 (Nice mouse and keyboard, eh? )
Case: $30
PSU: $100
Optical Drives: $70

This is over $2150, care to point out where you're cutting any corners?

I cant right now but I will list out each item and price tomorow.

 

[gonzo_for_civ]

Zelig you probably overpriced the PSU and the sound card, but everything else seems right/low. You could probably search for some better prices, but in order to get it under 1700 you would have to sacrifice the "fastest" moniker.

 

[Zakharov]

@the100thballoon, you could easily cut the cost of that machine by going for:
- a 3800+ cpu (there is a premium on 4000+ and above)
- 1GB of RAM (2x1GB sticks cost far too much, imo. Go for 2x512MB instead)
- a 6800GT/X800XL vid card (anything above this costs much more for only slightly better performance).

Zelig you probably overpriced the PSU and the sound card, but everything else seems right/low. You could probably search for some better prices, but in order to get it under 1700 you would have to sacrifice the "fastest" moniker.

There is no point buying a top of the range machine if you are going to settle for a bargain basement PSU and sound card. A 550W Antec PSU is around $100 whilst an Audigy 2 sound card is around $70.

 

[Zelig]

There is no point buying a top of the range machine if you are going to settle for a bargain basement PSU and sound card. A 550W Antec PSU is around $100 whilst an Audigy 2 sound card is around $70.

Actually, I did overprice the sound card, most of them I was converting from Canadian prices and then rounding down, unless I knew that they were actually cheaper in the US, and I forgot to for the sound card. A soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS OEM is $60 Canadian.

 

[gonzo_for_civ]

There is no point buying a top of the range machine if you are going to settle for a bargain basement PSU and sound card. A 550W Antec PSU is around $100 whilst an Audigy 2 sound card is around $70.

If you care to believe the hype that anything less will ruin your machine then waste all the money you'd like. Neither years of personal experience nor any of the articles i've seen written for the purpose of making that determination have ever shown the need for a 550w PSU. I've ran fully configured systems with 300w PSUs without the slightest performance hit. Sure some of your more power hungry cpu/vid card combinations may warrant the jump to 400w when used with quite a few peripherals, but you have to really try hard to get over that, and I mean really try.

 

[Zakharov]

If you care to believe the hype that anything less will ruin your machine then waste all the money you'd like. Neither years of personal experience nor any of the articles i've seen written for the purpose of making that determination have ever shown the need for a 550w PSU. I've ran fully configured systems with 300w PSUs without the slightest performance hit. Sure some of your more power hungry cpu/vid card combinations may warrant the jump to 400w when used with quite a few peripherals, but you have to really try hard to get over that, and I mean really try.

I will admit that 550W is probably overkill, but for the high end rig that the100thballoon was describing I think 400W should be the minimum. It is better to have more power than you need now, just in case you need the extra juice at a later date.

However, the most important part about the psu I listed is not the '550W' but the 'Antec'. A decent brand name ensures a reliable peak output that you will not get with a cheaper brand. Many crashes and lock-ups that are usually blamed on software can be be attributed to an unreliable psu.

 

[Zelig]

Yeah, brand name is more important than wattage. Even with a top of line rig, with 6800 Ultra's in SLI and everything, a good ~500 W power supply will be fine.

For more basic computers without a ton of stuff, a good 300W will do fine for most non-overclockers. Fortron and Sparkle are my fave picks for cheap PSUs. (My main rig has a 520W OCZ modstream, btw)

gonzo_for_civ: I could probably overload most 400W power supplies with my rig if I tried... mostly because the amperage is split between different rails, so all you have to do is overload any 1 rail. This also helps explain why PSUs have so much extra wattage than will be normally be needed, since they need some heardroom on every rail, which will all add up.

 

[gonzo_for_civ]

@Zelig: I don't argue the fact that there are certainly rigs that could overload a 400W PSU. Heck there's a reason they make 'em bigger My point is that you generally need to be doing some sort of performance modification in order to stress out a rail to the point of PSU failure.

Agreed on brand name being important, though I don't think you necessarily have to go with the top of the line brand, as long as it's a quality brand(of which there are few).

 

[CIVPhilzilla]

Thank you guys for all your help. I placed my order and it should be arriving shortly.

 

[CIVPhilzilla]

I would once again like to thank all of you. I am posting from my new rig! So much faster. Thanks for all your help.