Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: DREDIOCK on September 14, 2008, 09:06:55 PM
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May be doing some bartering for a couple of these tomorrow.
which is the request for ASAP is about
Power Supply
PC Power & Cooling S61EPS 610W Continuous @ 40°C EPS12V SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Power Supply - Retail
Get an additional 20% off w/ promo code "PCP20", ends 9/17
$109.99
($89.99 after $20.00 Mail-In
Rebate )
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817703005
Vid Card
EVGA 512-P3-N801-AR GeForce 8800 GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130318
Original Price: $169.99
You Save: $20.00
$149.99
($119.99 after $30.00 Mail-In
Rebate )
Hard Drive
Seagate Barracuda ES.2 ST3500320NS 500GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148294
$99.99
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That's a good PSU. I like seasonic PSUs because they are reliable and quiet, but that one is also pretty good and is probably cheaper than an equivalent seasonic.
That's a lot for a 500gb drive. You can get a 1TB drive for under $150 now so that's how I'd go if I wasn't strictly limited on budget. Otherwise almost any 500gb drive under $90 would work.
For video card, if I had the mobo for it I'd go for newegg's cheapest nvidia gtx 260, just under $250. The 8800 is old news, and nvidia had a manufacturing problem that affected a bunch of boards so you have no way of knowing if you are buying a lemon or not.
edit - if you can get a good deal on the 8800 AND it comes with a really good warranty, then go for it. It's pretty fast and plenty good enough for most games. AH would look great on it. But it's definitely old tech at this point and a purchase risk due to nvidia's manufacturing problem and individual card maker's thin profit margins. I've even read reports of people sending in 8800s for RMA and getting back a card that is labelled a 9800, but when they scrape off the stickers they see it uses an 8800 GPU with a bios update... So I figure buyer beware with the 8800s.
Here's my system refresh wishlist:
http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=6824154
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That's a good PSU. I like seasonic PSUs because they are reliable and quiet, but that one is also pretty good and is probably cheaper than an equivalent seasonic.
That's a lot for a 500gb drive. You can get a 1TB drive for under $150 now so that's how I'd go if I wasn't strictly limited on budget. Otherwise almost any 500gb drive under $90 would work.
For video card, if I had the mobo for it I'd go for newegg's cheapest nvidia gtx 260, just under $250. The 8800 is old news, and nvidia had a manufacturing problem that affected a bunch of boards so you have no way of knowing if you are buying a lemon or not.
Here's my system refresh wishlist:
http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=6824154
Skuzzy recommended, Or I should say suggested if going with a Seagate. to get the NS models as they are rated for server use.
Plus it has a 32 mb cache size
$250 or even $200 is more then I have to spend right now on each component let alone a video card
(think the price ranges each is in. this is still a bang for buck system Im building to a certain extent.
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Read the reviews on that hard drive pretty carefully... Some of the server drives are missing specific features found in consumer drives. For example, western digital has 2 models of server drives that make absolutely terrible consumer drives. One is targeted at RAID applications and the internal cache logic is significantly worse than normal when used as a standalone drive, and the other one doesn't fully or correctly implement S.M.A.R.T. standards so the drive temperature and health readings can cause some hardware or software to improperly fail out the drive, prevent it from going into sleep mode, or worse.
For that matter, the drives might simply be noisy and hot as heck if they use better bearings that last longer but make hideous noises and heat up more than consumer drives. That doesn't matter much in a server room with lots of forced air cooling and noisy fans, but it could matter a lot to a home user. Slower read/write arms might also last longer, and give much worse seek times. Again, not much of a problem in a server that might have several gigabytes of cache or use RAID arrays, but for a home user it would suck.
I don't know anything about that specific drive (except that it's about $10 more than an equivalent consumer drive ought to cost) but I've read reports of people getting burned by buying "server" hard drives that turn out to be either a lot slower than comparable consumer drives, or not suitable for what they end up being used for because they're not intended to be put into consumer level computers. So research it carefully before spending any money.
As for the vid card and PSU, I understand you have to set priorities. Again, make sure you have a full warranty on any 8xxx or 9xxx series nvidia cards because you can't tell if you'll get a bad one or not.
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Oh and can someone point mew in the right direction as for the right memory for this motherboard.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128337
Im finding the recommended list at the Gigabyte site a bit confusing
Warranty and price was the deciding factor on the Vid card
I was thinking about going higher in price.
but I'd like to get this machine finally built sometime soon.
I've only been unable to play AH since april.
Been trying to build this system that long as well
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Or how about this one?
Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000 750GB Hard Drive - 7200RPM, 32MB, Serial ATA-300, OEM
$119.99
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3405853&csid=ITD&body=MAIN#detailspecs
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This site lists price/capacity in near real-time.
http://forre.st/storage
As for how I do my own research, I go to silentpcreview (spcr) and storagereview and look at their charts, primarily for noise and heat. They're all fairly close on real-world performance.
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Those were all great choices. Just buy them. You won't be dissapointed.
The EVGA video card has a lifetime warranty. The 8800 GT will kill AH. I've got an EVGA 8800 GTS 512 with the same G92 chip.
Even the Seagate AS drives have a 5 year warranty so I think Skuzzy's just picky. The likelyhood is it will run forever. I've got the 250 GB Seagate SATA AS series drive.
The PCP&C PSU's are some of the best around. Highly recommended. I've got the 750 W PCP&C PSU.
I didn't look at the mobo but Kingston has a solution for every mobo out there. Just match the part numbers. Kingston is very reliable and is in a lot of OEM systems.
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Assuming you are going with XP and like Corsair memory:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145043
You might check the corsair boards for issues with these but the quick check I did presented nothing unusual. Bear in mind when checking things like this out that customers that visit boards are usually there because they have a problem or need help with clocking.
EDIT: Also I have to relate that Corsair doesnt always honor these rebates. I find them hit-or-miss at best. They honored only one out of three I sent in but I wasnt needing the rebate either time...
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Ok Heres the HD I ended up going with.
Western Digital Caviar Black WD7501AALS 750GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM
$139.99 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136283
This was part of a barter deal where Im getting this, and the Video card in exchange for some work I did for a friend of mine.
Gave him the choice of seveal HD's
This one.
The Seagate,
and the Hitachi.This was the one that was chosen. so.. I aint about to complain LOL