Looking for suggestions on building a 'dream' computer

On Tue, 24 Aug 2004 13:33:18 -0700, Onideus Mad Hatter
wrote:


4 gigs of ECC PC3200's for $1,600?! What the **** crack are you smoking? 4 gigs of Infineon,
PC3200 ECC registered memory shouldn't cost you more than $450, $650 at the most (if you want 2
sticks instead of 4).


Do tell where we can get 4GB of PC3200 ECC for $450-650, other
than reject crap modules.

Scotter wrote:
Hey Brad -

I sympathize with you. It sucks when you post an innocent question
asking for information and your question really does make sense and
you are not asking for anything crazy or stupid and some people feel
the need to attack you.

We feel the need because the guy's a f*ckwit. Work? Yeah right. More like
stealing Daddy's credit card and maxing it out.

--
My great-grandfather was born and raised in Elgin - did he eventually
lose his marbles?

On Tue, 24 Aug 2004 22:48:48 GMT, "Scotter" wrote:

The guy-who-has-anger-issues has some points, even if he's being an ass
about it and exaggerating quite a bit.

I don't have anger issues, you have a "taking Usenet too seriously" issue.

Like I am slightly biased toward AMD,
he seems biased toward Intel.

Um, no I don't. I stated pure facts. As far as video editing and rendering go, the Xeons are
currently top dawg. If all he wants to do is play games then I suppose an AMD processor *might* be
a lil better, but most games rely more on the capabilities of your graphics card than they do your
processor anyway so it's kind of a moot point. Really if he didn't want to do any sort of video
editing I'd recommend any processor really (except for the Duron and Celeron processors, I don't
support low grade hardware).

Each has it's strengths and weaknesses. The
latest Xeons (the most expensive and new ones, btw) have a larger cache and
some (the super expensive ones) have hyperthreading.

You don't pay that much extra for hyper threading actually.

His point about not buying the very latest has some merit UNLESS you have a
large budget.

No, even if you have a large budget it STILL doesn't make any sense. The only way it makes sense is
if you have a penchant for wasting money, in which case you probably won't have very much money for
very long, so it doesn't much matter.

Btw, the Opteron 250 is not super new (this is all relative, right?) but it
IS the highest priced Opteron so there is of course a large price gap
between the 250 and the 248 but I give you the benefit of the doubt that you
know that already. Some of us want/need our fastest-chip now and pay the
premium so we can have it. And hey if you get more renders done faster,
maybe it pays for itself.

Uh huh, some of us though eventually wisen up and realize that there is no real benefit, only
significant loss. I remember the time when I first bought a portable DVD player right when they
came out cause I just HAD to have one...it cost a $1,000...3 years later they only cost $200 and do
twice as much as the first one I bought...not to mention quite a bit less buggy. Patience is the
key to not making stupid decisions and wasting money.

Btw the only chip that really can beat the Opteron 250 in SOME benchmarks is
the very newest Xeon 3.4 with hyperthreading, which is just as new-to-market
and just as untried and untested as the Opteron 250. Maybe moreso. Research
it. I don't know.
So anyway, I *did* already recommend dropping down to the 248 to save money.

For some added interest:
http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_cont...pteron&page=10
(that one REALLY shows how lacking the Opterons are in graphics rendering)

http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_cont...pteron&page=13
Now ya see there's where the Opterons REALLY shine, with web server applications.

Oh and BTW, here's the real kicker:

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProduc...103-455&depa=0
$875

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProduc...117-028&depa=0
$745

OUCH!!! Nearly $130 cheaper than the Opteron, not exactly very good on the savings when you consider
how very little the advantage is with the Opterons...well uless maybe you're setting up a web
server...although in that event I'm thinkin most sysadmins would just go for the gold and get
Itanium processors.

Oh and regarding the guy-who-has-anger-issues' words about video cards: I
assumed (right or wrongly?) that you may play 3D games. If you don't, then
yeah, get a lower-end card OR get one of those cards specifically made for
rendering. He mentioned semi-correctly that rendering software uses the CPU
and not the video card. He's half right because some (and more and more as
time goes on) of the rendering software out there *does* love to have a
sweet gaming-type video card like the 6800 series with lots of RAM. He did
bring up a useful point when he said make sure the card you get has a
video-in.

Oh really? Cause ya know I did some interesting benchmarks myself with a Radeon 9800XT vs a Radeon
9000 using 3Ds Max, Maya and Bryce and in ALL the test there was, get this, NO difference. o_O

--

Onideus Mad Hatter
mhm ¹ x ¹
http://www.backwater-productions.net

On Tue, 24 Aug 2004 22:56:29 GMT, kony wrote:

On Tue, 24 Aug 2004 13:33:18 -0700, Onideus Mad Hatter
wrote:


4 gigs of ECC PC3200's for $1,600?! What the **** crack are you smoking? 4 gigs of Infineon,
PC3200 ECC registered memory shouldn't cost you more than $450, $650 at the most (if you want 2
sticks instead of 4).


Do tell where we can get 4GB of PC3200 ECC for $450-650, other
than reject crap modules.

Oops, my bad, I confused 4 sticks with 4gb (I was thinking about the 512s in my head), the price I
listed would actually be for 2gb, however even 4gb shouldn't cost much over $1,200, nearly $400 less
than what the other guy listed and that's for freakin Infineon memory...you don't really get higher
quality than that.

--

Onideus Mad Hatter
mhm ¹ x ¹
http://www.backwater-productions.net

Onideus Mad Hatter wrote:
On Tue, 24 Aug 2004 13:49:56 GMT, "Scotter" wrote:

DUAL processor solution HIGHLY recommended. Believe it or not, going
from a dual 1800 to a single FX-51, I'm finding sometimes my dual
1800 was faster and that is because I often have something running
while I'm trying to work. If you are doing video editing and related
activities, you really should go dual. Why Opteron instead of Zeon?
Please go out there on Google and find benchmarks and you will see
very good reasons.

It's Xeon, not Zeon.

Well said.


~ $1350 - Opteron 248's oem price = $675 each
(if you get a larger budget go for the Dual Opteron 250's - newegg
$895 * 2 = ~ $1800)

If he's doing a lot of video editing work and rendering he'd be much
better off with a couple 3Ghz Xeons (which would cost about HALF of
what those Opteron go for). And any MORON knows not to not to buy
the "latest and greatest" processor right when it comes out cause the
price will drop by about 50% in less than 3 months. He'd be an
absolute fool to waste his money on Opteron 250s at this point.

'a couple of...' ;o) I thought we'd established he /was/ an "absolute
fool"...? ;o)



~$554 - Motherboard Must be a dual socket 940 board, of course. Your
budget is large. Get the mack daddy. I see the board I've been using
is still in the running if you look at Motherboards-Server at
newegg. It only runs $220. I am VERY happy with this board even
though I'm only using one of the CPU slots. I plan on trading my
FX-51 plus some moolah for an Opteron 250 and buying another Opteron
to build something like your dream machine. It looks like Tyan has a
high-end 940-pin board on newegg called the Tyan Thunder K8SR
running $554. It even supports RAID 10 (striping & mirroring) on the
board for SATA drives. Dual channel gigabyte LAN. If you go SCSI
you'll need to get a SCSI RAID card and hey with $6,000 budget you
can probably afford that! The Tyan even has one of those new PCI-E
slots which will come in handy for your shiny new Nvidia 6800 Ultra
OC!

Why go with a dual Opteron board? Most applications that even make
use of dual processors are graphics rendering proggies and they work
FAR better with Xeon processors than Opterons. If you're just doing
gaming you're not gonna see much difference at all between single and
dual processors.

Correct. Are there even any games that can take advantage of a dual CPU
set-up? If there are, I've yet to come across them.



~$354 - Two 250 gig SATA drives mirrored so you data safety. Hitachi
makes a nice & fast 250 gig SATA drive with a fast for this group
seek time of 8.5 ms. Nice price, too, at NewEgg @ $177 each right
now. Increase to RAID 10 (mirroring AND striping) if you get more
money freed up. Means 4 drives instead.

JUST ADDED EVERYTHING UP AND SEEING SCSI IS TOO EXPENSIVE FOR YOUR
BUDGET ~$2160 AND I would go ahead and get four SCSI drives, striped
and mirrored (RAID 10 again). Seagate seems to be the king right now
over at NewEgg for these drives. I'm looking at the 73 gig 15,000
RPM drives with seek of 3.6 ms (drool)! Because they are so small,
you'll need your SATA drives. If you are needing to save a bit of
money, reduce your SATA array above to two drives and just mirror
and use your SATA array for the slower stuff. Put what you want to
access fast on the SCSI array. ~$629 for Adaptec's 64-bit PCI to
SCSI RAID controller card: I see the 2200S is the best one over at
NewEgg.

Now that is just blatantly stupid right there. For his needs he
would only need ONE 74GB 15000rpm SCSI drive for his OS, primary
applications and scratch space, it wouldn't cost more than $550.
THEN, for storage space ( for storing music, movies, tv shows,
pictures, etc, etc) he should get himself a few mobile rack removable
drives, something in the range of like 250GB, 7200rpm at about $130
bucks per (plus $10 to $60 per mobile rack).

It makes absolutely no ****ing sense whatsoever to have a 15000rpm
drive that you're using for ****ing STORAGE SPACE. o_O

Amen, brother! ;o) Criminal waste. I have a couple of 15Ks and one 250GB,
though am planning to add another.


Now if you're talking about setting up a big 'ol server with hundreds
if not thousands of people constantly accessing data off of it...then
yeah, your idea might make a lil more sense.

'Little' - sorry but it's beginning to bug me now... ;o)

~$1600 (2 x 2 gig sticks @ $765 each) FOUR gig (video editing means
you never can have too much RAM! I would recommend 8 gig here but
only if you have more money. Get fast dual channel ECC/registered
(ECC/registered needed for dual boards) DDR2 400 (PC3200) RAM your
motherboard supports. Corsair makes some good RAM and so does
Mushkin and others.

4 gigs of ECC PC3200's for $1,600?! What the **** crack are you
smoking? 4 gigs of Infineon, PC3200 ECC registered memory shouldn't
cost you more than $450, $650 at the most (if you want 2 sticks
instead of 4).

I paid £400 per GB for 2GB of OCZ DDR PC-3200 ECC Registered (two 1GB
modules). If we equate £1=$1 (as everyone else appears to) then I could have
bought 8GB for that money - which would be pretty pointless as my
motherboard only supports 4.


~$500 - BFG's 6800 Ultra OC - someone here said the XT800 is faster
or something.
They are mostly wrong. The XT800 is not much more than a souped up
ATi 9800; The 6800 line is new technology and much more advanced. I
won't go into details but you can research this and find your truth.
Most modern cards will support two monitors simultaneously.

Or you could just skip the doofy $500 graphics card and get yourself
a PS2, cause other than gaming, yeah the graphics card is mostly a
moot point. Most rendering applications all rely on your system
processor(s) to do their work and just skip right on over any
functionality the graphics card is capable of.

And BTW, if you're going to be blowing $500 on a graphics card boy it
had better have some pretty decent video capturing capabilities.

~$190 - Lian Li PC-70 case. Get whichever one you want. I just
recommend this brand for
cases. Research and see why. They rock. Depending on how many drives
you end up wanting to go with, choose your case.

The Lian Li cases are just about the most boring style wise of any of
the well known case manufacturers.


With you there. I don't like my case - wish I'd gone for my first choice
now, but the bloke who built this for me persuaded me otherwise (he's a mate
and he knows a damned sight more than I do). I should have gone with the
Antec. Of course, if I was made of money, I'd have gone for the Vapochill
Xtreme. I have to run this rig with the chassis panel off - if I don't it
overheats (peaks at 80 - 90°C aren't unusual). Whilst I admit it isn't
ideal, I'm used to it now and have learned to live with it.

~$88 - Antec true 480 (or if you get rich: I see I-Star makes a 500w
x 500w "Real Dual AC Mini Redundant Power Supply.)

Um, if he plans on getting a dual Xeon board he'll need an Antec
True550.

I heard someone mention going with Dell or IBM or some other name
brand to build it for you. I don't recommend that route. You'll pay
more that way for less.

You're making the ASSumption that this guy even has the knowledge and
understanding to build his own system, from what I've read out of his
posts so far...I'm doubting it. If you have to ASK other people what
you should be building for yourself...yeah, you probably shouldn't be
building it yourself.

Those *are* great companies but I doubt you can get the perfect
combination of components if you go that route. I recommend going
with a local computer shop or building it yourself. At least with a
local computer shop you may be able to bring them the parts you
ordered and ask them to assemble and "burn in" the system. Good luck
with your purchase.

Except for the fact that most computer repair shops will try and
screw you up the ass 8 ways to last week, that's why he's better off
just going down to Staples and buying himself a Dell or a Compaq.


My system was built by a local company (the sales manager is a good friend),
so I was able to avail myself of a few 'mate's rates'. Please don't
generalise like that - not all independent retailers are crooked. Whilst the
company that assembled mine charges a little more for its parts than say,
Dabs, I'd gladly pay an extra £20 or so for the customer service. With
Chillblast you know you can ring up, and know that the person you're talking
to knows what he's on about - right down to the HSF. Dabs prices might be
cheap, but you get what you pay for - zero customer and after sales service.
--
My great-grandfather was born and raised in Elgin - did he eventually
lose his marbles?

On Wed, 25 Aug 2004 00:39:45 +0100, "Miss Perspicacia Tick" wrote:

My system was built by a local company (the sales manager is a good friend),
so I was able to avail myself of a few 'mate's rates'. Please don't
generalise like that - not all independent retailers are crooked.

I don't know if you noticed the link in my sig but I happen to be a local company who does such
work...but I still generalize like that because in my experience MOST computer repair shops (at
least in white bread suburbia USA) are absolute crooks. In fact that was the reason I went into
business, cause I was tired of hearing all these horror stories about how people had gotten charged
like $60 just to have them LOOK at their machine, not even fix the problem. o_O

There are some honest repair places, but unless you know them on a personal level or they come
highly recommened I'd be very careful.

--

Onideus Mad Hatter
mhm ¹ x ¹
http://www.backwater-productions.net

hehe, gald to be a help..

--
Almeyda

AMD2500XP @3200XP-11X200-2.21Ghz
A7N8X-E Deluxe Corsair TWINX1024 XMS3200LL DualChannel
HIS Excalibur 9800XT 256mb @463/399 (Omegas 2.5.51 & ATI tool 0.20 No
Artifacts)
1x80GB SATA Seagate 8mg cache 2x40GB ATA Seagate
SB AudigyES ANTEC SuperLanboy 350 Case (350W SmartBlue PS)


"liam" wrote in message
...
**** me thats been my problem all a long, cheers for clearing that one up.


"Almeyda" wrote in message
...
liam ur a dick.... just cause u cant get one.

--
Almeyda

AMD2500XP @3200XP-11X200-2.21Ghz
A7N8X-E Deluxe Corsair TWINX1024 XMS3200LL DualChannel
HIS Excalibur 9800XT 256mb @463/399 (Omegas 2.5.51 & ATI tool 0.20 No
Artifacts)
1x80GB SATA Seagate 8mg cache 2x40GB ATA Seagate
SB AudigyES ANTEC SuperLanboy 350 Case (350W SmartBlue PS)


"liam" wrote in message
...
Here's the system I've just built

ASUS SK8V Deluxe board
FX-55
2GB PC3200 OCZ
X800 Pro (couldn't get the XT)
SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro
2x75GB 10K Raptors
1x250GB Caviar (all SATA obviously)
Plextor DVD burner (though this will be replaced at the beginning of
next year with one of the new 8.5GB units)
Samsung combi (for convenience and when I need to burn a CD in a
hurry - it's twice as fast as the Plextor)
Coolermaster WaveMaster case
Tagan SilentPower 500W PSU (and it *IS* silent!)
Logitech iTouch combi (Bluetooth)
If you're a gamer (which you obviously are) - the you owe it to
yourself to get a MX700 or MX900 (Bluetooth) - they are the most
accurate and most responsive gaming mice currently available. Coupled
with a RatpadzGS (Gaming Surface) - they will (sorry for the
advertising cliche) take your gaming experience to a whole new level.

Whilst I'm not really a gamer (not in the sense of FPS, flight sims,
RTS, etc) I do play (OK, I guess adventures, RPGs and management don't
really count - I can't wait for /Rollercoaster Tycoon 3/ or /The Sims
2/ for example).

Just my 2p (inc. VAT)'s worth.

--
My great-grandfather was born and raised in Elgin - did he eventually
lose his marbles?
WTF Would you want a system like that for if you don't use it for FPS or
Flight Sims/Racing Sims.

What Frame Rate do you get with Solitare ?
Do you suffer from Lag with Internet Hearts.?

Why don't you get an 8 Meg Bonded SDSL connection for your e-mail. ?

Have you got some £2.50 headphones for your soundblaster ?

How's the 14" Monitor running at 640 * 480 ?

What a fookin Tosser you are ?

Brad wrote:

What are you doing with this system? 6000 is a nice gaming rig, but you
aren't going to get anything astronomical for that price.

Im doing a fair amount of video work and compiling from my office in my home
( in the home hence to why i want to add onto it to make it an excellent
gamer system). The computer is to be paid by the company as a business
expense, and Im able to acquire whatever system I feel is necessary. Any
overkill is just a nice extra bonus seeing that it wont cost me anything.

Fastest 64 bit AMD, good motherboard with whatever hookups you want on
it, a case, a cooling solution (water or whatever), 2 gigs of ram, a few
Western Digital 10000 rpm raptor drives, a few 250-300 gig backup
drives, 16x dual layer dvd burner, whichever vidcard you are attached to
(uber6800 or uberx800... both of which have dual outputs you can run
monitors from), an audigy 2 if you hate onboard audio, a set of digital
speakers (logitech or klipsch), an ati or pinnacle capture card for your
cable, and a few LCD monitors... Those would actually break your budget.

But that's what a normal 6000 system looks like.




These look tame in comparision:

http://alienware.com/Product_Pages/w...video_all.aspx

Hey Brad -

Before we all make more assumptions about what you do with your computer (ok
I already did, heh), can you tell us if you play games or not? I apologize
if I assumed you would use it to play 3d games. I see you only said you
would use it to do video work and compiling.

So if no 3d gaming then you may want to look at the nVidia Quadro line (or I
hear good things also about ATi's FireGL cards for same purpose) of cards
instead of the 6800 line.

The system I recommended was for all-around performance. Because I do web
design, graphics design, database design, compiling of code, video
rendering, 3d rendering, audio production, burning, and 3d gaming, I assumed
you wanted the same and designed as if I were building MY dream system, heh.
Hope you didn't put in an order for nVidia's 6800 Ultra OC if you didn't
need one for 3D gaming.

Oh and all those prices I put a little "~" next to because I meant "approx"
and assumed you would shop around for better prices. I usually begin at
newegg.com because they are comparably priced to the best online stores,
carry good brands, have a wide range in stock, and are very dependable. But
odds are you won't find every piece there. The memory I recommended is very
high quality. Not THE highest but definitely rockin RAM.

I hope after you buy all the parts you keep postin to let us know what you
got and then eventually how it all works out.

Maybe time to start a new thread and let us know in this one where to look.
This thread is getting kinda long, ya know?

Scott

wrote:

That makes three totally empty articles from you so far.

--
Chuck F ) )
Available for consulting/temporary embedded and systems.
http://cbfalconer.home.att.net USE worldnet address!