Gaming PC help

Is this a good build?


Maxtor DiamondMax 10 250 GB - SATA-300 - 7200 rpm - 16 MB
(6V250F0) $119.00 $119.00

ASUS TA551 MID TOWER BLK 350WPSU 20/24/4 PIN W/4X FRONT USB
(90-PL551C75-ACALZ) $75.00 $75.00

OCZ 1024M Enhanced Latency GOLD Series Gamers eXtreme
(OCZ4001024ELGEGXT) $159.00 $318.00

Asus nForce 4 SLI 4DDR Aud+WLS Lan+PIC-Express 4SATA+2Ultra DMA
(A8N32-SLI Deluxe) $245.00 $245.00

BENQ DVD+/-RW Black Dual Layer W/LIGHTSCRIBE
(DW1655-0B3) $65.00 $65.00

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 4400+ / 2.2 GHz- L2 1MB + 1MB - Box
( ADA4400CDBOX) $575.00 $575.00

ASUS SILENCER 256M PCIE DDR TVOUT DVI 2ND VGA OUTPUT
(EN6600/TD/256M/SILENCER) $153.00
Subtotal:
$1,550.00

Looks good to me.

Yeah, it looks decent to me.

My comments are on this 2 items:


ASUS TA551 MID TOWER BLK 350WPSU 20/24/4 PIN W/4X FRONT USB
(90-PL551C75-ACALZ) $75.00 $75.00

350W PSU = bad for gaming

500W = good (Systems do to the higher needs of power eat up power like a mother if you don't get a decent power supply your system will be restarting everytime you use an application that gets your system going)


Asus nForce 4 SLI 4DDR Aud+WLS Lan+PIC-Express 4SATA+2Ultra DMA
(A8N32-SLI Deluxe) $245.00 $245.00

SLI is only worth for people who have the $$$ to throw around to buy the top of the line video cards at the moment they come out. The extra cash that you would save from a mobo without sli would be better spent on a video card or a good case (aluminum). If you decide to buy another mobo I would still recommend it to be pcie.


Extra recommendations:


buy Artic Silver and use it instead of the thermal paste that heatsinks come with.

Regarding the Processor I have to say NICE! Still a little pricey, I will probably end up buyinga DC processor when they drop down a bit in price.

Entropy said:

350W PSU = bad for gaming

500W = good (Systems do to the higher needs of power eat up power like a mother if you don't get a decent power supply your system will be restarting everytime you use an application that gets your system going)

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Before you go into overkill mode. Use one of the nice power supply calculators (one of them is at http://www.jscustompcs.com/power_supply/ ) to know how much power you will consume.

Entropy said:

Asus nForce 4 SLI 4DDR Aud+WLS Lan+PIC-Express 4SATA+2Ultra DMA
(A8N32-SLI Deluxe) $245.00 $245.00

SLI is only worth for people who have the $$$ to throw around to buy the top of the line video cards at the moment they come out. The extra cash that you would save from a mobo without sli would be better spent on a video card or a good case (aluminum). If you decide to buy another mobo I would still recommend it to be pcie.

Click to expand...

Well, besides that whole "possible upgrade in the future, thing", the Asus boards are incredible and come very highly recommended. You wouldn't be doing the wrong thing at all in getting one.

Personally, I would go with something better than a 6600GT. GPU is the most important thing if you are planning to game. 7800GT would be more fitting, you can find those for less than 300 if you look around. And I would get a higher rated power supply, if there is one thing I learned , its over buying on a PSU helps in the future. Remember though, wattage is not what is important. Its all about rail ratings. I have seen 500W PSUs with 16A on the 12V rail. These days you want something with at least mid 20s on the 12V rail. And lastly 1GB is not what it used to be, if you are not planning to overclock at all, then get some value corsair or gskill, something of that nature. I got a 2GB set of GSkill DDR500 a little while ago for like 230 off newegg. Remember that ram timings arent as important as they used to be with A64 CPUs. Something 2.5-3-3-6 would give you a nice performance/price point. Most games run fine with 1GB, but stuff like FEAR, BF2, EQ2, etc all are vastly improved with more ram. Its not a performance improvement, its an improvement on stuttering and hitching because you dont have to pull from the HDD as much.

CnC said:

Before you go into overkill mode. Use one of the nice power supply calculators (one of them is at http://www.jscustompcs.com/power_supply/ ) to know how much power you will consume.

Well, besides that whole "possible upgrade in the future, thing", the Asus boards are incredible and come very highly recommended. You wouldn't be doing the wrong thing at all in getting one.

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350W is few power if you plan on using it with a current system for playing games . If you want to buy a quality PSU you might want to check Tomshardware.com they had a Stress test for a bunch of PSU's.
http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/07/11/stress_test/page30.html

Yup love ASUS have one, I was going to get that same one but ended up getting a none sli one

I'd stay away from Maxtor, from what I've read more people seem to have problems with Maxtor's then other brands. For a little bit more you can pick up a Seagate Barracuda which also has a longer warranty (5 years versus the Maxtor's 3), although I'm not sure if they make SATA3.0Gb/s with 16mb cache. I also hear Western Digital HDD's are good but I personally don't know. I built my PC using a Seagate Barracuda 250gb Sata150 with 8mb cache around April and I've been quite happy with it. Another suggestion I have is that if this is strictly for gaming you may want to have install a Western Digital raptor drive with 10k rpm, but they are quite expensive (100 bucks for 37 GB, 150 for 74GB).

I'd also like to point out that you are majorly bottlenecking your system. You're buying an awesome CPU but a relatively crappy (Keyword: relatively) GPU. The GPU is going to be the limiting factor in this build it seems.

Also if you do plan on getting a newer GPU you're gonna more than likely need a powersupply with 400~500 Watts (Going to vary greatly on your configuration, but more than what comes with the case thats for sure), I forget whats in mine at the moment (All my boxes/manuals at home so I can't check anytime soon either :( )

Also as Entropy said, Artic silver is great stuff :) . Especially in conjuction with an alternate heatsink... like my huge mofo xD (its 4.5 inches with a 120mm fan in the center).

Also what's your budget for this system and what other major uses will you have for it (i.e. Listening to music, encoding video etc.) before i start suggesting things out of your price range XD.

Some tips: When looking for fans keep in mind that the bigger the fan the quieter it is (the bigger the fan the slower it can spin to circulate the same amount of air as a smaller fan).

Why are you upgrading your PC? Need those extra fps for Doom 2 that badly? You could be spending that money on juicy steaks. Or, better yet, juicy women!

My computer, which I built in 2001 (vidcard upgrade in 2002), has lasted me to this day, and I've played and beaten Half-Life 2 and Doom 3, and still shows no signs of dying. Personally, I think the whole hardware upgrading craze is an expensive and never-ending trap.

Invest in stocks Google is up to around 600 a share, up from 444 this week, and it shows no signs of splitting.

Walter said:

Invest in stocks    Google is up to around 600 a share, up from 444 this week, and it shows no signs of splitting.

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Holy shit, you wana handle my stocks Walter? We can dance all the way to the bank

I will 2nd the Maxtor comment. Pick another one :O

Well personally I had been using my parents comp which has a 1.3ghz p4 and 384 mb ram with a 32mb Geforce MX 2 lol... so i built mine which actually saved me money rather than buying... Also you're mistaken about google it's about 466.25 dollars a share now(Although that's a huge increase considering it debutted at 83 dollars a share in August 2004).