Directions, Advice on buying a new PC

[ROF]

ROF,

Yeah, I always download the recent drivers for everything. Can you tell me how that PC is performing and what video card did you choose for it?

PC is performing excellent. To conserve money(needed larger LCD Panel) we went with dual x1300 cards ($120 a piece). In my honest opinion this computer system was overkill for the customer but the insistence on the Asus brand and GPU sharing treatment was the ultimate deciding factor in purchasing this setup. I look forward to using this board in future setups.

[zenguitar]

Good to know, thanks.

The person I'm doing this one for didn't quite want to go with the two cards for now because of price so I'll be using one x1800xl and they can add a master card later on if they feel inclined to do so.

I've done so many computers now with Asus boards and I have had not one single hiccup with them, but this will be the first dual video card ready board I've worked with. And it is very new to the market

[ROF]

Asus is a good brand and they do make some innovative boards but they aren't without fault. I got several boards last year with bad capacitors(not only an Asus thing). I also got three P4C800 boards with several bad components. Bad Sound connectors, bad/faulty RAM slots, and a blown sound chip. One board even came without a battery. The packaging of all three was different as well. After the third bad board I switched to using a comparable and considerably cheaper Asrock board(P4V88).

[rallynavvie]

Asus boards are excellent products, however you should stay away from cheap chipsets regardless of the manufacturer. I've found they tend to cheap out in other places as well just to get some money out of the thing. If you're running Intel processors you should be running an Intel chipset, nVidia if using AMD. I honestly don't even consider a board unless it follows those rules.

Though I may have seen an nForce chipset for Intel recently

[ROF]

Sometimes cheap is what fits the budget. You can spend a ton of money and still end up with a POS. Just look at anyone who owns a Dell or a cow.

[RDS1955]

Keep on talkin Guys!!! I'm getting a really good education just reading these posts!!! Thanks for all the input, discussion and guidance..Sitting down and trying to figure out what Products I'm gonna go with, and set up a price list...Asus MB, Lian Li Full ATX Case, the Nvidia 7800 GTX Pci Express are a few I'm starting with...

[ROF]

@RDS1955

Have you given consideration as which CPU(s) you are leaning towards?

[RDS1955]

@RDS1955

Have you given consideration as which CPU(s) you are leaning towards?

AMD Athlon 64 FX60 Toledo 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Dual Core Processor on an Asus or (maybe) MSI Motherboard..Playing with the numbers and various components, I've come to a little over $4800.00 with the stuff...Most of the stuff is being bought from Newegg, but there is some stuff being bought elsewhere..
Asus MB 245.00
Lian Li Case 250.00
MSI Nvidia Gforce 7800GTX 256 MB PCI Xpr Card 479.00 x2
AMD Athlon 64 FX60 1319.00
Kingston 1MB 400 DDR SDRAM ECC 195.50 x4
Turbo-Cool 850W Power Supply 449.97
Freezone CPU Cooler 399.99
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS Platinum Pro 216.00
OPTI-UPS ES1500C-RM 1400VA 980W UPS 241.99

Somewhere somehow I'll get figured out...

[zenguitar]

That freezone cooler from what I read on their site says it can go below ambient temp. You do know what happens then right? Condensation. I didn't see any protection against that in the photos.

A lot of red flags going up in my head regarding that device. I have never seen an all in one water cooling device that was worth a peanut.

www.dangerden.com
www.ocforums.com

Check these places out.

ROF, no brand of anything is without faults. I myself though have had such a good track record with them I'm not interested in changing. You say you've received them with actual damage? Where did you get them from? You most certainly make a point about Dell, hehehe.

RDS1955, do a price comparison at www.zipzoomfly.com I always seem to find things there for a little less than newegg.

I have the full ATX lian-li case, it's awesome.

[ROF]

ROF, no brand of anything is without faults. I myself though have had such a good track record with them I'm not interested in changing. You say you've received them with actual damage? Where did you get them from?

The first and third from NewEgg, the second one from AICMicro. These weren't damage such as broken tabs and such (other than the missing battery). The soundchip on one failed to produce sound. The others had internal damage to the connector not allowing for a sound(no pun intended) connection. On the third one I got from NewEgg two of the RAM Slots failed to PoST RAM being inserted. When I called NewEgg for a return they said I wasn't the first to report this. I noticed shortly afterwards they stopped carrying this board.

BTW, for those coming into this conversation now, this is an ASUS P4C800 MoBo I'm talking about.

[RDS1955]

Zenguitar, thanks for the links, I'll check them out.. I looked at the FAQ on the Cooler site and they specifically say it will not cause condensation if the device is operated according to factory specs, which I think I'm to understand no fiddling with modifying it in anyway..I'm still doing some research, that was just one of my options...might try it, might not...

Hey, I want to thank all you folks who are contributing to this thread..It's helping me out greatly, and I'm learning a little here and there..I'm still trying to decide if I want to try and put this thing together or take it to a buddy who has a PC sales and repair shop here in my town and see if I can coax him into building a system for me...Probably just buy the parts (and the Pizza and bevs...That was a really good idea!!) and see if I can have my buddy put this together one evening after the shop closes...That way I can take part in it's assembly and learn some more..

[zenguitar]

I have the P4C800 Deluxe and it's been running like a rock for years. I built another for a guy with the same board and same thing, been totally solid. I get all my stuff at zipzoomfly.com

Sorry that you had bad luck with that and it sure sounds like heavy bad luck.

RDS1955, check out that ocforums there is tons of info about watercooling. I think you'll find that not one person advocates a "pre-built" watercooling solution. What I built into mine is ungodly efficient and can cool my cpu, chipset and gpu all on the same circuit easily.

I used Dangerden waterblocks, tygon tubing 1/2 inch, Ehiem pump, double 5 1/2 resevoir, DangerDen black ice double radiator. All the connections are made with worm gear clamps. It's been running for 6 months straight now.

[rallynavvie]

Are you looking at the Lian Li VC-series aluminum cases? Those are the hawtness. My next desktop will have to be built into one 8)

I have an Antec P160 now that's really nice as well. Not quite the same as the big Lian Li ones since they lay things out differently. I got it because it wasn't gawdy and had the temp readout on the front panel. Lian Li makes very clean-looking cases though and that's one of the reasons I love their products. They're also a standard in the industry with tons of mods available for them.

If there are games that are supporting dual-core processors then those games must be SMP-aware? If so I need the check this out because suddenly I have a powerhouse gaming machine