My new affordable dream system, I don't have a job.

[Daversinger]

What does anyone think of this idea for a gaming system:

edit(i was also thinking of the nforce3 ultra Msi Neo 2 Platinum) GA-K8NXP-SLI nForce4: 255$
AMD Athlon 64 FX53: 635$
BFG FX6800 Ultra PCI Express: 494$
1GB Corsair Dual Channel DDR: 200$
2 60BG SATA 7200rpm: 100$
Thermaltake Xaser III VM2000A Full Tower Case: 100$
Gigabyte 3d rocket cpu cooler: 45$
Aspire 550watt Chameleon: 40$

Lite On Dual layer DVD/RW CD/RW 16x 52x 32x 52x: 50$

Total $1,919

Oh, and are these prices right? I used froggle and pricewatch.com

[bachviet]

Nice but I would replace the hard drives with two 37GB WD Raptor hard drives.

[shocky123]

Agreed, if you're planning on doing a RAID on those drives, it's probably cheaper to go with the Raptor's, and not raid, would likely yield similar if not better performance. If you run out of hd space, then you always have room to upgrade without messing with controllers having certain amounts of ports and whatnot. It may/maynot keep costs down to do the raptor drives now, and maybe upgrade later, but it will give better performance.

[gear02]

why are Raptors so lauded?

And if you're trying to be affordable, the FX line isn't something you should consider. Is there such a performance difference between FX and AMD64?

[ski]

Raptors rival SCSI performance. I'm putting one in as my OS drive in my next computer.

[AlpineJay]

:stupid: The system I just ordered has a 37GB Raptor as the OS/important apps (Photoshop, Office, Matlab, etc) drive along with two Seagate 400GB drives on separate IDE channels.

[Daversinger]

aren't sata 10k's more expensive, and Markel (friend's dad) does have two raid 7200rpm satas, a skt754 AMD 64 3200 and any game like farcry loads in 2 sec flat i would say thats pretty fast so i might just stick with a AMD 64 3400 instead of an fx 53 (too pricy) im not sure which is better skt754 1 meg cache or the 939

[Daversinger]

Agreed, if you're planning on doing a RAID on those drives, it's probably cheaper to go with the Raptor's, and not raid, would likely yield similar if not better performance. If you run out of hd space, then you always have room to upgrade without messing with controllers having certain amounts of ports and whatnot. It may/maynot keep costs down to do the raptor drives now, and maybe upgrade later, but it will give better performance.
oh i already have an extra 160gb samsung 7200rpm for OS that i expect to use with this config, but i might upgrade to a 10k Sata if the funds come in, but realy who cares if you graphics are insane in the first place?

[iLLWiLL]

if u dont have a job, how the heck can u afford a $2000 pc? :gle:

[Bires]

...and how is that AFFORDABLE!?!...
$600 CPU?













Do you know P3rsian? :)

[Airencracken]

Affordable?
http://www.sophos.fr/images/common/misc/dreamcast.jpg

[shocky123]

compared to the opteron 850 or an Itanium 2 .. both of which are around $1500 I'd say it's affordable. Now, this would also be assuming that Daversinger had a great job before he ran into the whole I don't have a job now thing. Hehe.. personally I'd go with a Cray XT3. If you want affordability, nothing can beat it.. you just need the startup $2,000,000 for the smallest system they make.


~Kyle

[AlpineJay]

aren't sata 10k's more expensive, and Markel (friend's dad) does have two raid 7200rpm satas, a skt754 AMD 64 3200 and any game like farcry loads in 2 sec flat i would say thats pretty fast so i might just stick with a AMD 64 3400 instead of an fx 53 (too pricy) im not sure which is better skt754 1 meg cache or the 939

It's been said before but RAID does NOT help gaming performance at all. Whatever time Markel's dual-SATA setup loads Farcry in, the Raptor will do it faster throughout. 37GB Raptors are around 130 bucks through ZipZoomFly I believe.

[SecretIkon]

the comp isn't bad but i would also suggest the Raptor drive. everything else seems pretty good to me. happy building. :)

[Daversinger]

37GB Raptors are around 130 bucks through ZipZoomFly I believe.

i found one for 100$ flat is that a good deal, it might be refurbished

[AlpineJay]

How about this one from ZipZoomFly? 109 shipped 2nd day:

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=101221-316603

They are a reputable dealer and I would buy from them or Newegg and even pay a slight price premium to do so - this is because I know what they give me is what they say on the website, which is not always the case when you're dealing with computer products sold by online retailers.

[johnnymk]

if u dont have a job, how the heck can u afford a $2000 pc? :gle:

That's what I was wondering

[iLLWiLL]

Agreed, zipzoomfly is a great place to buy. I'll probly round out my component buying from there...

[Daversinger]

well usally you might wait around or gradually build your pc, i just posted basic prices not highest or lowest, theres got to be deals sooner or later, plus i know how to save my money when it does come in.

[irwin]

:stupid: The system I just ordered has a 37GB Raptor as the OS/important apps (Photoshop, Office, Matlab, etc) drive along with two Seagate 400GB drives on separate IDE channels.

Dude are you for real? And here I was thinking I was hot **** with ONE of those Seagates. :(

[nate el bueno]

yeah, emphesis on doesnt have a job rofl. my dream system would have dual opterons instead though. good choice on the case an video card though.
affordable ok... and if you're gonna spend that much, might as well spend a little more and get the fx-55, and hey, if that's affordable to you i might be hanging around you more often :disa:

[AlpineJay]

Dude are you for real? And here I was thinking I was hot **** with ONE of those Seagates. :(

I'm an engineering major who runs a lot of simulation models and edit a lot of video/music for fun. When I edit sound I generally like to keep everything at WAV, and you know video takes a lot of space!

I figured I'm splurging for my first desktop in 3 1/2 years - I figured why the hell not. Always could use the space.

[nate el bueno]

if u dont have a job, how the heck can u afford a $2000 pc? :gle:
his dad's a dentist. he gets all the luck

[Jeffbx]

Raptors ARE the sh!t, but by ALL MEANS go with the 74 GB, not the 37. Both are 10k RPM, but they made some more speed improvements in the 74GB (not to mention the additional capacity).

Don't bother with RAID - just pop this bad boy (http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?sku=A0236282&cs=19&c=us&l=en) in there & use it for OS & apps. Get another big slower drive for data storage & you're good to go.

[gear02]

are raptors only SATA? No ide version?

[AlpineJay]

Raptors are SATA by design to utilize the faster bus. I doubt there will be an IDE version coming out.

[bbrian]

It's been said before but RAID does NOT help gaming performance at all. Whatever time Markel's dual-SATA setup loads Farcry in, the Raptor will do it faster throughout. 37GB Raptors are around 130 bucks through ZipZoomFly I believe. This is only true if you have enough memory to load up the entire game into memory. DOOM3 hits the drive quite frequently if you have less than 1GB of memory. The raptors aren't going to help FPS, but it will help reduce chunking when loading up levels that aren't already in memory. I will say that the performance increase is minimal when you consider the price. However if you plan to do any video editing what-so-ever, it is well worth the $$.

If you're gonna go raptors though, get the 74GB. They support NCQ which makes a big difference.

[Daversinger]

NCQ? sry i don't exactly know what you mean

[bbrian]

NCQ = Native Command Queuing
SCSI has supported a similar technology for quite some time and is one of the reasons why SCSI has always outperformed ATA.

"Command Queuing" basically reorders commands so that the drive can read the data off the drive with fewer head moves, resulting in faster read times. It is just a more efficient way of reading the data off of the disks.

Most newer SATA drives are supporting NCQ and are capable of competing with the 34GB raptors without having the 10K rotational speeds.

I believe the 74GB raptor drives are actually TCQ not NCQ, but the performance difference isn't much.

btw- the sata controller does have to support ncq and supposedly the controllers on GA-K8NXP-SLI do.

Article and benchmarks on queuing:
http://www17.tomshardware.com/storage/20041116/index.html