Rate My Proposed Setup, PLEASE!!!

[holistic]

How come none of you genius' (genii?) are suggesting a killer Mac G5 system?

Hmmm let me see.

Maybe because :

A: The question was "Rate My Proposed Setup".
B: The original poster started out with the PC product.
C: The original poster already owns a PC.


Genius indeed

[boofer]

holistic,

I was just browsing through the replies and hit on those two links you gave me earlier (swiftech and sff). I am kind of amazed that those SFF PC's have not become more prevelant. Although the newer Dells are much smaller than before. But for the builder, we are kind of locked due to the size of the motherboards. I realize that there are a few people out there who may need 4 or more external drive bays but most people have 1-2 on average and the rest is just wasted space.

Anyway, just a comment.

[Piccoro]

512MB ram is a good choice of size for WinXP.
Although if you have dual channel memory you might want to get 2 DIMMs to use that. Good performance boost in memory bandwidth. And then if you did use the dual channel, I would buy 2x 512mb (1gb) and not 2x256(512mb). Stick with 512mb DIMM size with whatever you do.

WinXP is a big comform compared to 95/98/ME.
I get no blue screens, I can close a frozen application quickly with out it disrupting my work and it is very easy to work with/install new hardware.
WinXp pro is best for networking/permissions.
Home will work good but lacks some of the options it seems.
Any fancy feature (fade effects) that you dont like can be switched off. Some people like plain and simple look like Win2k.

I also bought the 9800Pro from bestbuy. -50$ rebate and free HL2.
I was planning on buying HL2 anyway so for me it was a great deal.
350$ -50 =300$
300$ -HL2(50$)=250$
I consider the card 250$ and thats assuming I was going to buy HL2 for 50$ also. Great deal, I could not have asked for better.

3GHZ P4 should work well.
External harddrives are a good idea. They can be easily swapped to another PC if you ever need. I would suggest using firewire on them.
A good solid drive as your OS/Applications drive is key. I really would not download or have random files on this drive. Keep it as clean/defragged as you can.

My dad has a computer desk that has the tower enclosed.
He drilled a slot behind the molding to bring air in underneath and it works quite well.
I have had several different cpu fan/heatsink setups and the one I have now is the best. I've had a standard retail fan/heatsink. It was quiet but my CPU got too hot for my tastes (and too hot for being enclosed). I've had several Volcano fan/heatsinks and while they can control the RPM/noise of the fan, they either are quiet and hot or loud and cool. I currently have a Thermalright SLK800U copper heatsink with a 2400RPM fan on it. It is extremly quiet yet I get 34C idle/38C load.

There was a interesting product I saw a while back. Thermaltake Subzero 4G
If you are considering water cooling, maybe you should check up on this product and see if it meets your needs or completely off.
It's the same price as a decent watercooling setup and might work better.

I've never heard but in a enclosed environment, I wonder how the buildup of heat affects how well watercooling performs. Does the water warm up too much and affect the CPU tempurature much?

[boofer]

Thanks piccoro. I like everything that I have heard about XP. My only gripe right now is I will have to BUY additional keys for two other computers. That tacks on about another $180. Argghhhhhh!!! I do not think that it is fair that I as a home user need to buy these additional keys to place an operating system that costs a pretty penny on my computers. That is in no way piracy and I think that it is downright unfare. Anyway, that is another subject entirely.

I am actually rethinking the whole watercooling option. My current computer uses an AMD Athlon and it flat runs hot (52-58C) even with the desk door open. I know that the Pentiums are not as hot as the AMD CPUs but still get warm and need active cooling. I understand your observation about the ambient heat and the heat exchanger. Obviously you want the heat exchanger to have access to cool air and the temperature of the air that it has access to will have a direct impact on how well it can cool.

Well, thank you for your input. I have not bought anything yet except for the Radeon which is dying to get out of its box.

[rallynavvie]

The motherboard you've got is basically the AMD equivalent of my favorite single CPU board, the Asus A7N8X Deluxe. I can't believe it cost $60 more than the AMD board though, Intel's always screwin' ya That part is certainly a keeper. Onboard FireWire and USB 2.0 is great, and the 6-channel audio isn't bad. 512MB is a good amount of RAM for most everything, it's what I have in my other 2 PCs. Dual channel is nice, especially for RAM intensive apps like AfterEffects. I use Mushkin but Corsair would be my next choice. I stay away from Crucial and Kingston now. Crucial never liked to play with other brands and Kingston keeps insisting they've sent me ECC registered RAM when it's obviously not.

[Piccoro]

Current Athlon XPs actually have less heat than Intels P4 models.
I've read that Intel gives off less heat when idle but when in load they run hotter.
Intel P4 model's do give off more watts than AMD. Their rating for heatsinks are higher as well. Believe a lot of them require heatsinks that can disapate upwards of 70-80watts.
I'd have to look again to where I found the tempurature benchmarks.
Intel has always been good with cooling setups though and they have heatspreaders on their CPUs as does AMD's Athlon 64/Opteron although AthlonXP does not.

What kind of case are you looking at? Are you going to use your current case?
I would highly suggest a case with 2 front fans and 2 back fans at least.
Because you have 2 for both in and out there is a lot of air moving so they dont need to be high RPM or make a lot of noise.
Lian Li, Kingwin, Coolmaster are some I would look at. Good aluminum cases.
Lian Li and Coolmaster have some really high ($$) models but look at their lower ones as they are great value/case design, same with Kingwin.