Help A Geek Out - CPU woes

[toastmstrgeneral]

A week later, no new responses.................that's why it was posted in the geekdrome section.

[wyrmwood]

Originally Posted by darksydeavenger

Any assistance would be much appreciated. Kthxbye!

Ok - gaming AND video editing AND redundancy...

Let's start with a good solid mobo - The ASUS A8N-SLI Premium (now supports x2 athlons)

Now plop in a dual core AMD - Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Windsor (good bang for the buck - $180 or so), You've got your dual core for video, your A64 for gaming, and much cheaper than the intels.

Next, grab 2GB of RAM - CORSAIR ValueSelect DDR400 (2 x 1GB) - about 150 bux... No reason to go 1GB anymore, and DDR2 is still a bit pricey...

Boot Drive - Go with 2 Western Digital 74's in RAID 0 for your boot/proggy drive, the speed is just plain painful.

Game/Video Drive - A nice, simple Seagate Barracuda 320GB SATA 3Gb/s should do the trick, just make separate partitions for games and video since audio/video rendering creates more fragments than you can imagine.

Video Card - I'm a BFG/Nvidia fanboy. Best bang for the buck right now is the BFG 7950GT 512MB pcix-16... Wait a month and it'll be down to 200 bux.

As for the case - you want some nice airflow, I'd say go with the Thermaltake VA8000BWS (it's a beast). Just don't use the included PS.

Now then, the POWER SUPPLY. This is painfully important (especially once you put in your 10krpm raptors) - the Thermaltake ToughPower 700W.

Backup/Redundancy - Personally, I don't bother with redundant drives, I just use a firewire external drive (I personally use a Lacie). There's a cool new one out there, the Seagate Pushbutton Backup 500GB - uses USB2 or firewire. Then just get used to backing up, make it a habit just like defragging - or get a nice backup scheduler.

And finally - COOOOOOOOOOOOLING... Whether or not you overclock, you want a good CPU fan and heatsink (thermaltake again is great), some heat spreaders for your RAM, a dual fan card (fits into a pci slot) for the GeForce, identical intake/outtake airflow, and possibly a Hard Drive bay fan.

Also make sure you get a ROUND cable for your DVDRW, and lots of tie wraps to tie up all of the sata,ata,power,fan and case wires.

As far as monitor, keys, mice, dvd, etc etc - no opinion there...

Ah! And a final note - Tweak XP once you've got it loaded, here's the best guide on the web:

http://www.tweakguides.com/TGTC.html

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I've been drooling at newegg lately looking for a new system, otherwise this wouldve been a much more short winded message...

Intel Core 2 Duo is where it's at. I think AMD is a false economy at this point in time. I've updated a couple of my lower-end X2 Socket 939 machines to upper-mid Socket AM2's and it actually drags noticeably over (sure, it's a little more expensive) my C2D's. I'd say there's more life in the Intel way.

I'd say an E6600 (although some say the one-model-below can overclock better) and a P5NSLI or a Premium. You'll need the faster memory of course, but these mobo's support a wide range according to your budget.

Apart from that, the above recommendations don't seem too bad.

[bird603568]

why do you need 700W? im willing to bet it wont even draw 500W

[striker1211]

I had a thermaltake and it was a POS, said 400w and it was always dragging ass on the +12v rail at 200. Anywho, always best to have more power than you need than the bare minimum. You never know what you may want to get in the future. The price difference should be marginal. Better than buying a whole new psu for 100 watts more power down the line.