Computer hardware experts/geeks?

[David Barnett]

I'm looking to assemble a new system sometime this month. I'll be carrying forward some components from my current system:

Monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, DVD/CDRW drive, maybe sound card.

I'll need:

Case, power supply, motherboard, processor, heat sink, RAM, video card, primary HDD.

I have a sealed 300G hard drive that I bought in February but never used, but it's IDE, not SATA, so I'll probably use it as a secondary drive for data storage and get a smaller high-performance SATA drive for the operating system and primary apps.

I figure I'll go with the Core 2 Duo processor. The Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Conroe 2.40 GHz looks like the sweet spot for price vs. performance right now, and I would mate that with a motherboard using the Intel P35 chipset, such as the Asus 5K LGA775 or Asus P5K Deluxe/WiFi-AP LGA775. Both of those use DDR2 RAM. Think 2G RAM would be enough, or should I start with 4G? I'll be running XP Pro for now, no upgrade to Vista until at least SP1, if then. But I'd like to be "Vista Ready"...

Video is where I'm really confused. The array of different video cards is vast, and I have no idea what's what anymore. The motherboards on my shortlist using the P35 chipset use PCI Express video slots. I don't do any gaming, but I'd like to be capable of at least some acceptable game performance, some reasonable 3D. And I want to be ready for all the nifty 3D UI enhancements in Vista should I ever choose to "upgrade" the OS. Think something around the level of the ATI Radeon 1300GT would be enough for that? Any opinions on ATI vs Nvidia chipsets?

Cooling -- do "retail boxed" Intel processors still come with a heat sink and fan, or are we now forced to scrounge these items up separately?

The present system is an Intel P4/2.0G on an Asus P4B/266 motherboard, 2x 512M Crucial DDR RAM, ancient WD 20G HDD, Plextor PX-760A DVD/CDRW drive, Samsung 204B 20" monitor, Matrox G550 video card, cheap Creative sound card, assembled in January or February 2002. It still performs adequately, but it's five years old and has some issues that I don't want to bother to try to troubleshoot or throw any money at. After five years it's overdue for replacement.

[David Barnett]

ps: Mac folks please restrain yourselves. Thanks.

[Tdot]

Originally Posted by David Barnett

I have a sealed 300G hard drive that I bought in February but never used, but it's IDE, not SATA, so I'll probably use it as a secondary drive for data storage and get a smaller high-performance SATA drive for the operating system and primary apps.

Think 2G RAM would be enough, or should I start with 4G?

Definitely jump on an SATA for your system drive, and drop the IDE into an external USB/Firewire case.

2GB ram should be plenty to start, ram is easy to buy and add anytime. Put extra cash into video muscle.

Originally Posted by David Barnett

ps: Mac folks please restrain yourselves. Thanks.

Who me? Since the PC buddies aren't looking...

[Glen W]

David, I sure ain't no expert-geek, but according to New Egg's site, the retail box includes fan & heatsink. Also might wanna figure out an adequate power supply size for all the new goodies.

New Egg page

[blackdog]

Originally Posted by David Barnett

Any opinions on ATI vs Nvidia chipsets?

In the past ATI really used to be my favorite, but recently (past 2 years or so) I've had really good experiences with their driver support and performance. Also, if you're into Linux, Nvidia is pretty much the only way to go if you want stable 3D graphics support.

[jussishow]

Video:

I've got an "old" (~1.5 years) computer with a low end Nvidia card in it (FX5200) running Linux. Performancevise it's more than I'll ever need (runs Quake 3 arena demo no problemo! ) ... for now that is :-)

The reason I went for the low end card was PASSIVE COOLING ! ie. No fans, which brings me to the next topic :

Retail box cooling: The cooling fan/solution that came boxed with the AMD Sempron I've got was NOISY !!! I ended up buying one of those huge Zalman fans with a speed controller ... + some additional speed controllers/traps for the cabinet fans.

If I'd have to buy a new computer now I'd spend twice as much on the cabinet & cooling and a little less on GB:s and GHz:s ...

My final advice : Spend the money on a new Telecaster instead of wasting it on a computer :-) he he

/J

[Sleph]

ps: Mac folks please restrain yourselves. Thanks.

I'm not going to say anything.....not saying anything......da dee da da......oh the pain......

[David Barnett]

Noise: nothing the computer does can possibly be as noisy as my window-unit air conditioner. Hard to find a passive cooled video card in the PCI-Express format.

Power supply -- looks like just about anything requires a 480W+ supply these days.

Some friends are telling me that Intel's latest fans are actually quieter than most of the aftermarket stuff. I won't be overclocking, so surely the OEM cooling plan will be enough?

Can anyone with better eyes than mine see any difference between these two motherboards, apart from the WIFI?

http://www.directron.com/p5kdeluxewifia.html
http://www.directron.com/p5k.html

For $80, I can live without the onboard WIFI unless there's some other major advantage I'm missing.

[Sleph]

extra WIFI.... that's it.....still not saying anything......

[TDPRI]

I'm running Vista (and have been running it exclusively for a couple of months with no problems whatsoever) and for a good Vista video card I went with ATI VisionTek X1550. It was about $120. I too, do not do any gaming.

Definately go with Core 2 Duo, DDR Ram (I'm using one gig and it's just fine) and a SATA HD. You can get 500 gigs for $150 or less on and internal HD and get at least 7200 RPM.

That motherboard you mentioned looks pretty good, too.

I'm running an 18-month old Dell with a Pentium D 2.8ghz processor, 800mbs FSB, 1GB DDR ram, 250GB SATA 7200RPM HD, and the above mentioned ATI card and I get a very good VISTA "experience" score of 4.4 which is pretty darn good. Especially for an 18-month old "non-vista-spec" computer.

More importantly than my "score," Vista is running very smoothly with zero crashes, or problems. I have turned off Vista's drive indexing though. That did slow my computer down as the system was "background" indexing constantly and it made programs open slow and etc. I know where the stuff is on my computer I don't do a lot of searching. And when I do, I don't mind waiting a few seconds for the results.

Not to open the MAC/PC wars at all, but contrary to popular opinion my Vista PC has crashed 100% less than my Mac Mini OSX 10.4.10 computer. (The Vista has never crashed and the Mini has crashed once.) They are both fine and both OSes have great strengths and few weaknesses. I prefer the PC OS in general, but have no problems with the MAC OS. I like the "look" of the MAC OS, but have set up my Vista PC to look just like a Mac. See the attached image.

Paul Green
PS. I'll be happy to offer Vista advice if you want some. It is very much ready for prime time and it has replaced XP Pro for me perfectly.

[J-man]

I've not got much experience with the high end Nvidia or ATI Graphics, but all my computers seem to come stock with middle of the range ATI or Nvidia, and the Nvidia outperforms the ATI every time, it's especially noticeable when running games.

[David Barnett]

Originally Posted by webmaster

PS. I'll be happy to offer Vista advice if you want some. It is very much ready for prime time and it has replaced XP Pro for me perfectly.

What is that bar of controls across the bottom of the screen, since you have the taskbar up top?

How much HDD space does the Vista installation take?

I ask because I like to partition my hard drives. My ancient 20G drive is divided into four equal partitions: C:\ contains only Windows XP Pro and the various browser plug-ins and other utilities that don't give you an option for location when you install. D:\ is only "online" apps such as my email and news client (Forte Agent) and scratch space for downloaded thingies. E:\ is for "productivity" apps and utilities, where I keep Office, Photoshop, Norton's, pretty much all apps. F:\ started out as scratch space, but I moved the swap file there, and that's where I dump all downloaded update files for apps, and where I dump data that doesn't fit anywhere else.

For the new system my plan is to simplify that -- C:\ for Windows, period. D:\ for all apps. Those two would be the only two partitions on the primary SATA drive, and I doubt I'd need anything bigger than the 74M WD Raptor for that. Since I've got an IDE 300M drive still in a sealed bag, I think I'll dump it in there and put the swap file on it and leave the rest open as one big partition for dumping data, pictures, music, downloaded updates, archives...

On my present system, Windows has outgrown its 5G partition, I'm constantly going in and deleting megs and megs worth of abandoned files such as *.dmp, *.tmp, *.log, just to give it some breathing room. Today I've got less than 200M free space on that drive.

[tazzboy]

David I would defiantly wait to see what computer components comes out that are Vista ready, so when you do get ready to change to Vista that you don't have do some more additional upgrades after spending a lot money on Vista.

[David Barnett]

Originally Posted by tazzboy

David I would defiantly wait to see what computer components comes out that are Vista ready, so when you do get ready to change to Vista that you don't have do some more additional upgrades after spending a lot money on Vista.

I thought I made it clear that was my intention in the first post... :)

[tazzboy]

Originally Posted by David Barnett

I thought I made it clear that was my intention in the first post... :)

Yes you did. But you left two components that will more than likely need to be upgraded and that is CD/DVD Drive and your sound card if they aren't Vista Compatible.

[TDPRI]

My Windows folder is 11 GBs. But that includes all those things you've been deleting out of yours. I installed a pre-release version of Vista on a partition and I think it took 6 GBs.

That bar is an application dock I use it to launch all my applications. Plus it has the weather, calendar, and utilities on it. Its a custom dock that you can install on XP or Vista. As I said, I prefer the way my Mac looks and it comes standard with a dock like that. Mine is from Stardock it's called Objectdock. Another good one is RocketDock.

Most of the icons I have in my dock are custom, but there are zillions available. I have my PC and my Mac set up almost identically in look and feel.

Before switching to ObjectDock my screen was full of dozens of application icons stacked on boths sides of the screen.

MS has lots of good tools for testing your computer to tell you what hardware and software will work or which ones will give you trouble.

Go to: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/pro...a&mg_id=20409b

and download and install the Vista Upgrade Adviser. It will run and report back on things on your computer -- such as your video card or CDROM drive etc -- that might be a problem.

Paul Green

[David Barnett]

Surely my DVDR/CDRW drive would be compatible, it's Plextor's current top model.

[tazzboy]

You probably ought to install it then and run the windows advisory program that Paul posted. Just did and I saw that few firmware for my HP PSC needs to have updates and my network card that runs my high speed internet would need to be upgraded if I were to take on vista.

[David Barnett]

Originally Posted by tazzboy

You probably ought to install it then and run the windows advisory program that Paul posted. Just did and I saw that few firmware for my HP PSC needs to have updates and my network card that runs my high speed internet would need to be upgraded if I were to take on vista.

Mobo has onboard ethernet and sound. Video card will be new and current, DVD is current model, I'm really not that concerned with compatibility. Besides, I'll be installing XP Pro, I already have a legit license that won't bounce.

My biggest concern right now is finding the sweet spot for video card price vs. performance.

[neocaster]

Originally Posted by David Barnett

Mobo has onboard ethernet and sound. Video card will be new and current, DVD is current model, I'm really not that concerned with compatibility. Besides, I'll be installing XP Pro, I already have a legit license that won't bounce.

My biggest concern right now is finding the sweet spot for video card price vs. performance.

David: Depending on what you're doing, check out what I'm using:
Nvidia Quadro4 XGL 980

I eBayed it for $50, 8x agp, 128mb ddr, dual dvi monitors, up to 2048 x 1536 per display, and some passable 3d (a workstation card, not a gaming card.) If you are looking to get a lot on the cheap, this could be it.

[tazzboy]

Here is one that is 512MB on Newegg.com That's gotten a good rating.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814161090

[neocaster]

That's a lot of card for $65.99, tazz. Add $15 more for an active cooling solution (another fan) and it's still a bargain.