£1500 budget *back after a long break!!*

Aikon359

Aikon359

Aikon359

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Joined
1 May 2003
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Peterborough
afternoon all!,
well it certainly has been a damn long time since ive last been here!

probably about a year and a bit ago, i decided to deviate from the world of overclocking, desktop pcs and insane modding and just go for a nice easy desktop replacement laptop.. well.... that time has come where i just miss the tinkering, the tweaking and well the sheer performance and fun of a custom rig. so back again and armed with £1500 to spend *case excluded, i allready got one* i have specced up myself what i think is a pretty good rig.

though after showing it to people i know they have pointed out a few things i might want to consider, and well i thought id come ask the OCUK PROS ;-)
ive been out of the picture for a while so am probably a bit rusty, so just wana play it safe, so hope yall can help!!

heres the rig im looking to get:

CP-148-AM AMD Opteron UP 170 Dual Core San Diego 2.0GHz 2MB Cache (Socket 939) - Retail (CP-148-AM)
£249.95 £249.95

MB-018-DF DFI LanParty NF4 SLI-DR EXPERT (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-018-DF)
£109.95 £109.95

MY-060-OC OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC4000 Dual Channel Gold GX XTC Series EL-DDR CAS3 (OCZ5002048ELGEGXT-K) (MY-060-OC)
£144.95 £144.95

GX-112-SP Sapphire ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-112-SP)
£214.95 £214.95

HD-087-WD Western Digital Raptor 74GB WD740ADFD 10,000RPM SATA 16MB Cache - OEM (HD-087-WD)
£103.95 £103.95

CD-041-PO Pioneer DVR-111BK 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter - (Black) OEM (CD-041-PO)
£22.95 £22.95

CB-000-WD Western Digital Secure Connect Serial ATA Cable (CB-000-WD)
£4.95 £4.95

CA-005-HP Hiper HPU-4K580-MK Type R 580W Modular ATX2.2 PSU - Black UV (CA-005-HP)
£54.95 £54.95

FG-024-AK Akasa AK-183-L2B Ultra Quiet 120mm Fan - 3 pin (FG-024-AK)
£9.95 £19.90

AC-000-AC Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound (3.5g) (AC-000-AC)
£5.95 £5.95

HS-017-TR ThermalRight XP-120 (Socket 754/939/478) Heatsink (HS-017-TR)
£26.95 £26.95

GX-100-AS Asus Ageia PhysX Accelerator - Retail (GX-100-AS)
£169.95 £169.95

MO-012-AC Acer AL1916WS 19" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Black/Silver (MO-012-AC)
£149.95 £149.95

Subtotal £1,279.30
VAT £223.88
Total £1,503.18


now im not too bothered about the res of the tft, 1280x1024 and 1440x900 is cool with me i think *THOUGH SCRAPPING THE PHYS-X AND GETTING A HIGHER RES MONITOR MIGHT WORK?* the phys x is cool and i just wanna try cell factor lol

and i most probably wont be looking to go x-fire or sli at all so that dosent bother me much either.

BUT! THE PROBLEMS THAT SOME OF MY MATES HAVE MENTIONED ARE AS FOLLOWS:

1: someone told me that with a dfi motherboard, the most compatible ram for overclocking is "OCZ" thats why i looked at the pc4000 ocz gold, but to be honest im rather tempted by the "G.SKILL" pc4000 ram as i heard good things about it and well... its cheaper lol

2: the motherboard is an nforce 4 chipset but the card i want is an ati branded card, will there be any performance hit between using these 2 cross branded cards?, i heard so much good stuff about the dfi expert and well its cheaper than the cross fire version too, would these be ok together?

3: well i intend to clock the nuts out of the opteron so would this air cooled combo i chose work well? or do you think it would be better scrapping the phys-x adapter and going water cooled?



HOPE YOU ALL CAN HELP! ID REALLY APPRECIATE IT IF YOU COULD!

MAYBEE IF YOU THINK MY RIG IS A BAD COMBO THEN YOU COULD SUGGEST A BETTER RIG FOR 1500? *MY ONLY 2 POINTS ARE, I ALLREADY HAVE THE CASE AND I WOULDNT GO P4.*


THANKS ALL!!! AND GOOD TO BE BACK!!
 
ok, point taken ;-) cheers, ill scrap the phys-x and allocate it elsewhere,
do you have any thoughts/answest to the other probs i have?


cheers ;-)
 
I have the OCZ RAM in question on my Asus board and it behaves very nicely. It doesn't need a ton of volts to overclock well.

As far as I've ever heard the only time the board and graphics cards need to work together nicely is when you're trying to do SLi/Crossfire. Sinc you're not I don't think it'd be a problem.

If you really want to clock the nads off of it watercooling is not a bad idea. As far as air coolig is concerned, the Xp-120 has been overtaken of late by the Scythe Ninja and the Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro. Both of those coolers will do a fine job.
 
cool cheers! i was looking at the freezer pro but i dunno why, the cheap price got me thinking that it wouldnt be that good, stupid me really...

ill replace the coolers and scrap the phys x, thatll free up about £230 ;-)

so which one would you say is the better performer, g.skill or ocz?
 
Aikon359 said:
ok, point taken ;-) cheers, ill scrap the phys-x and allocate it elsewhere,
do you have any thoughts/answest to the other probs i have?


cheers ;-)
Click to expand...

Hi,

I've just spent around £1500 on my new PC,

I went with a dual TFT setup, two of the Viewsonics WS 19"

Opted for the new Intel P4D 820, rather than a Opteron, and TBH it's a very good processor,

RAM looks good as does the GPU & PSU

I couldn't see a decent sound card on that list, if you planning on playing some decent games (like FEAR) you might consider an XFi, IMO good sound is a requiement if you are seriously into submersive gaming.

Also have you thought about a DVB-T card, they only cheap and if you a student like me, having to ability to flick the news on whilst your writing an essay is quite nice.



D
 
cheers fer the input davem ;-)

as for dual tfts tried it before and just cant get on with the split down the middle, good for multiple deskspace tho!, i got a 32" lcd screen at home that i use for a second monitor just incase tho, as for going intel, well im impatient and am getting the rig this week sometime, otherwise i would have held out for the conroe i think, i have a 3.0 ghz p4 64bit in my laptop and its ok, but always liked amd fer games,

sound card , im not too fussy about, i got my pcs plugged into a standard 2.1 stereo, so not into too much immersive gaming, but will considder it now i got cash spare as i think it helps framerates to have a dedicated spu instead of the onboard karajan one.

and as fer dvb-t i gots a tv card allready, but for some reason i never actully bother with telly, ;-(


you have been damn helpfull ;-) cheers to bothe you and billy ;-)


ANYONE ELSE OUT THERE THAT COULD HELP MAYBEE GIVE THEIR IDEAS ON MY PROBLEMS TOO? ;-)
 
ok updated spec here, is this an improvement on the previous spec?

*doubled up on the raptor to put in raid, gone for a 20inch monitor, got an arctic cooling cpu cooler and ati gfx cooler and changed to g.skill ram.

this good?


CP-148-AM AMD Opteron UP 170 Dual Core San Diego 2.0GHz 2MB Cache (Socket 939) - Retail (CP-148-AM)
£249.95 £249.95

MB-018-DF DFI LanParty NF4 SLI-DR EXPERT (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-018-DF)
£109.95 £109.95

GX-112-SP Sapphire ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-112-SP)
£214.95 £214.95

HD-087-WD Western Digital Raptor 74GB WD740ADFD 10,000RPM SATA 16MB Cache - OEM (HD-087-WD)
£103.95 £207.90

CD-041-PO Pioneer DVR-111BK 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter - (Black) OEM (CD-041-PO)
£22.95 £22.95

CB-000-WD Western Digital Secure Connect Serial ATA Cable (CB-000-WD)
£4.95 £9.90

CA-005-HP Hiper HPU-4K580-MK Type R 580W Modular ATX2.2 PSU - Black UV (CA-005-HP)
£54.95 £54.95

FG-024-AK Akasa AK-183-L2B Ultra Quiet 120mm Fan - 3 pin (FG-024-AK)
£9.95 £9.95

AC-000-AC Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound (3.5g) (AC-000-AC)
£5.95 £5.95

MO-014-BQ BenQ FP202W 20" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Black (MO-014-BQ)
£239.95 £239.95

MY-008-GS G.Skill 2GB DDR HZ PC4000 (2x1GB) CAS3 Dual Channel Kit (F1-4000USU2-2GBHZ) (MY-008-GS)
£124.95 £124.95

SY-002-AR Artic Cooling Accelero X2 Cooler (X1800/X1900 Series) (SY-002-AR)
£19.95 £19.95

FG-000-AR Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940) (FG-000-AR)
£14.95 £14.95

Subtotal £1,286.25 VAT £225.10 Total £1,511.35
 
The Karajan audio on the DFI is pretty good, so it might be worth holding off on the X-Fi until you have at least tried it out.

However, if you really want an X-Fi then go for it! I have one and it is awesome. Just dont bother with the Elite Pro or Fatal1ty editions tho. Unless you're into some heavy audio processing it is not worth the money, and the fatal1ty is just a means to sell an X-Fi for more money. I have the Platinum edition because I play a lot of music and do a fair bit of gaming too.

OCZ RAM is fine with the DFI boards. I dont have any problems with my OCZ Platinums. If you are worried then go take a look at www.dfi-street.com. a lot of the guys on there work for DFI so you can be sure you're getting good quality advice. They're a nice bunch too.

You wont have any trouble with the X1900XT on an nF4 chipset so dont worry. Also good choice of card :D Anyone silly enough to buy an XTX deserves a slap. It took me less than 5 minutes to clock my XT faster than an XTX using ATI Tool :D

EDIT: Bah, sod the RAID mate it really isn't worth the money. You have two Raptors but only get half the capacity. You double the chance that you will lose all your data for a very very small increase in performance. I would just stick with just the single drive and get a nice 250GB Hitachi Deskstar for your data.

EDIT EDIT: [lol] You might not need that Arctic Silver 5. The AC Freezer 64 Pro comes pre-applied with MX-1 thermal paste and it is just as good if not better than AS5.

SiriusB
 
Last edited:
I would ditch the hiper as theyre not the most reliable and go for a tagan, I hear there are some problems with Dfi and seasonic so dont go for one of them.

Oh and dont get an Sli board with a crossfire card, not much point really. Get the Ultra-D instead
 
Mikey1280 said:
I would ditch the hiper as theyre not the most reliable and go for a tagan, I hear there are some problems with Dfi and seasonic so dont go for one of them.

Oh and dont get an Sli board with a crossfire card, not much point really. Get the Ultra-D instead
Click to expand...

My DFI Lanparty UT Ultra-D and Seasonic S12 600W get on just fine. Never heard of a problem with Seasonics and DFI boards :|

SiriusB
 
OK! advice greatfully taken from both parties there ;-) cheers sirius and mikey!

this is the 3rd revision now, *fancy sticking with the xpert board, im not doing sli, but just generally heard good words about it, and well i 100% know it will work well with an opteron 170up, replaced the psu, scrapped the raid and got the hitachi hdd, and switched back from the g.skill ram to the ocz ram ;-) *would rather pay more for the psu and ram and get quality ;-)

SO IS THIS RIG OK NOW PEEPS? ;-) ITS BEEN GREAT SO FAR TO GET ALL THE INPUT, BUT STILL UP FOR HEARING MORE ;-)

CP-148-AM AMD Opteron UP 170 Dual Core San Diego 2.0GHz 2MB Cache (Socket 939) - Retail (CP-148-AM)
£249.95 £249.95

MB-018-DF DFI LanParty NF4 SLI-DR EXPERT (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-018-DF)
£109.95 £109.95

GX-112-SP Sapphire ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-112-SP)
£214.95 £214.95

HD-087-WD Western Digital Raptor 74GB WD740ADFD 10,000RPM SATA 16MB Cache - OEM (HD-087-WD)
£103.95 £103.95

CD-041-PO Pioneer DVR-111BK 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter - (Black) OEM (CD-041-PO)
£22.95 £22.95

CB-000-WD Western Digital Secure Connect Serial ATA Cable (CB-000-WD)
£4.95 £4.95

FG-024-AK Akasa AK-183-L2B Ultra Quiet 120mm Fan - 3 pin (FG-024-AK)
£9.95 £9.95

AC-000-AC Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound (3.5g) (AC-000-AC)
£5.95 £5.95

MO-014-BQ BenQ FP202W 20" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Black (MO-014-BQ)
£239.95 £239.95

SY-002-AR Artic Cooling Accelero X2 Cooler (X1800/X1900 Series) (SY-002-AR)
£19.95 £19.95

FG-000-AR Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940) (FG-000-AR)
£14.95 £14.95

CA-008-TG Tagan TG530-U15 530W ATX2.01 Easycon SLi Compliant Modular Silent PSU (CA-008-TG)
£61.95 £61.95

MY-060-OC OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC4000 Dual Channel Gold GX XTC Series EL-DDR CAS3 (OCZ5002048ELGEGXT-K) (MY-060-OC)
£144.95 £144.95

HD-002-HI Hitachi Deskstar T7K250 NCQ 250GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (0A31636) (HD-002-HI)
£52.95 £52.95

Subtotal £1,257.30
VAT £220.03
Total £1,477.33
 
I'd think you could save a few quid by ditching the SATA cable. Your mpbo should come with a bunch of them.

Is the AS5 you've listed for the GPU cooler? Does it come with thermal paste like the CPU cooler does? They are from the same manfacturer.
 
BillytheImpaler said:
I'd think you could save a few quid by ditching the SATA cable. Your mpbo should come with a bunch of them.

Is the AS5 you've listed for the GPU cooler? Does it come with thermal paste like the CPU cooler does? They are from the same manfacturer.
Click to expand...

You get nice yellow ones with the DFI :D

SiriusB
 
ive always disliked standard sata cables, i spend 99% of my fime fiddling with my pc when its on and stuff and i have knocked sata cables out so easily lol, just for the raptor i dont mind spending $6 for safteys sake on my main drive, and as for the as5, i always get as5 cos ill be wiping all the thermal paste/tape off the gpu cooler and cpu cooler and lapping them both to a mirror finish, so i like to stick with the as5 goodness.


does this sound ok?
 
SiriusB said:
My DFI Lanparty UT Ultra-D and Seasonic S12 600W get on just fine. Never heard of a problem with Seasonics and DFI boards :|

SiriusB
Click to expand...

They do exist tho...see post.

Seasonic may well have fixed that by now, or it maybe it was the lower powered model.

Search for seasonic at DFI street, and you'll find masses.
 
theres not much of a difference between the g.skill and the ocz is there? or is one a lot better than the other, and as for the sata cable, your both right, maybee it is a waste of time, seeing as the hitachi will have a standard cable anyways, sorry guys i was prob just being a bit paranoid.



but what would you rather have? 2gig ocz pc4000 @ £170 or
2gig g.skill pc4000 @£140

i deffo want garunteed stability and overclockability with the opteron ;-)

as for the opteron!, would it be good with me going with the opty170 or just an athlon 64 dual core 3800+ ? is there a big performance difference? i heard sometimes the opty performs close to an amd fx60
 
there ;-) got rid of the extra sata cable, went for g.skill instead of ocz and have been able to fit in a logitech g5 gaming mouse to replace my aging mx700 and my wired elecom laser mouse lol ;-)

would still love input on the whole processor thing tho ;-)

are they better than most of the dual core amd 64s for gaming?



CP-148-AM AMD Opteron UP 170 Dual Core San Diego 2.0GHz 2MB Cache (Socket 939) - Retail (CP-148-AM)
£249.95 £249.95

MB-018-DF DFI LanParty NF4 SLI-DR EXPERT (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-018-DF)
£109.95 £109.95

GX-112-SP Sapphire ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-112-SP)
£214.95 £214.95

HD-087-WD Western Digital Raptor 74GB WD740ADFD 10,000RPM SATA 16MB Cache - OEM (HD-087-WD)
£103.95 £103.95

CD-041-PO Pioneer DVR-111BK 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter - (Black) OEM (CD-041-PO)
£22.95 £22.95

FG-024-AK Akasa AK-183-L2B Ultra Quiet 120mm Fan - 3 pin (FG-024-AK)
£9.95 £9.95

AC-000-AC Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound (3.5g) (AC-000-AC)
£5.95 £5.95

MO-014-BQ BenQ FP202W 20" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Black (MO-014-BQ)
£239.95 £239.95

SY-002-AR Artic Cooling Accelero X2 Cooler (X1800/X1900 Series) (SY-002-AR)
£19.95 £19.95

FG-000-AR Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940) (FG-000-AR)
£14.95 £14.95

CA-008-TG Tagan TG530-U15 530W ATX2.01 Easycon SLi Compliant Modular Silent PSU (CA-008-TG)
£61.95 £61.95

HD-002-HI Hitachi Deskstar T7K250 NCQ 250GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (0A31636) (HD-002-HI)
£52.95 £52.95

MY-008-GS G.Skill 2GB DDR HZ PC4000 (2x1GB) CAS3 Dual Channel Kit (F1-4000USU2-2GBHZ) (MY-008-GS)
£124.95 £124.95

KB-069-LG Logitech G5 Gaming-Grade Laser Mouse (KB-069-LG)
£31.95 £31.95

Subtotal £1,264.30
VAT £221.26
Total £1,485.56
 
Aikon359 said:
MB-018-DF DFI LanParty NF4 SLI-DR EXPERT (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-018-DF)
£109.95 £109.95

GX-112-SP Sapphire ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-112-SP)
£214.95 £214.95
Click to expand...

I'm guilty of not reading the entire thread, so don't mind me if I'm saying something that has been said/answered already. :p

Why not change the mobo to:

DFI LanParty UT CFX3200-DR RD580 Crossfire (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-019-DF)

Would that not be more sensible than getting a top of the range SLI mobo with an X1900? :)
 
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