Experts, with your help so far....

urmood

urmood

urmood

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Joined
29 Nov 2004
Posts
48
Hi experts,

With your help so far this is the spec i have come up with:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4400+ (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA4400CDBOX) (CP-127-AM)
£333.64

Asus A8N-SLi SE nForce4 SLi (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-101-AS)
£76.32

Corsair 2GB DDR XMS3200C2PT TwinX (2x1GB) CAS2 (MY-079-CS)
£146.82

Western Digital Caviar SE16 250GB 2500KS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD-046-WD)
£65.21

Antec Sonata II Piano Black Quiet Case - 450W Smart Power PSU (CA-040-AN)
£82.19

NEC ND4551 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer LabelFlash ReWriter (Black) - OEM (CD-026-NE)
£30.49

Sapphire ATI Radeon X800 GTO² 256MB DDR3 TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-101-SP)
£123.32

Total = 857.99 inc vat

Not looking to overclock at all or play games, just looking for a powerful multi-tasking PC, to use 3ds max, photoshop, illustartor, visual studio etc

What ya think? Can you do better? ;)
 
Im not an expert....

But if you are not looking to overclock or play games then I would say thats fine..

If you were going to overclock I would change the mobo to DFI and CPU to opty 170 dual core...Although the 4400 runs faster at stock speeds (2.4ghz as opposed to 2.0ghz) its only has 512kb cache whereas the opty 170 has a 2mb cache plus you can easily overclock the opty 170 to 2.6 - 2.8ghz therefore you would have a faster machine for a £10 lesser than what the 4400 retails for...

Also you may want to consider a plextor or pioneer dvd rw as they are better than NEC...

With regards to RAM again the GEIL 2gb value is cheaper and will I think (dont quote me on it) will be better than the RAM you will get, you may want to research that...also the GEIL is £35 cheaper :D

Last but not least your case, if I was spending £80 + on case I would have to go for the Akasa Eclipse as its value for money however that said I dont have much experience with your chosen case. I know from forums tho the Eclipse is a great cooling case...

I hope this helps
 
xirokx said:
If you were going to overclock I would change the mobo to DFI and CPU to opty 170 dual core...Although the 4400 runs faster at stock speeds (2.4ghz as opposed to 2.0ghz) its only has 512kb cache whereas the opty 170 has a 2mb cache plus you can easily overclock the opty 170 to 2.6 - 2.8ghz therefore you would have a faster machine for a £10 lesser than what the 4400 retails for...
Click to expand...

Both the Opteron 170 and X2 4400+ have 1MB L2 cache per core, giving a combined total of 2MB. And also, the 4400+ only runs at 2.2Ghz as opposed to 2.4Ghz. If you're not overclocking, the X2 4400+ is faster than the Opteron 170. :)
 
The only thing i'd maybe change if I were buying the rig for myself would be the ram. I'd go for the OCZ PC3200 Platinum, just cos it's the best IMO.

However, there is nothing at all wrong with the Corsair.
 
urmood said:
Not looking to overclock at all or play games, just looking for a powerful multi-tasking PC, to use 3ds max, photoshop, illustartor, visual studio etc
Click to expand...

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4400+ (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA4400CDBOX) (CP-127-AM)
£333.64
Asus A8N-E nForce4 Ultra (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-088-AS)
£70.44
OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC3200 Dual Channel Platinum Series EL-DDR CAS2 (OCZ4002048ELDCPE-K) (MY-057-OC)
£164.44
PowerColor ATI Radeon X800 GTO 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-054-PC)
£76.32
Hitachi Deskstar T7K250 NCQ 250GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (0A31636) (HD-002-HI)
£66.39
NEC ND4551 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer LabelFlash ReWriter (Black) - OEM (CD-026-NE)
£30.49
Antec Sonata II Piano Black Quiet Case - 450W Smart Power PSU (CA-040-AN)
£76.32

Total inc VAT: £818.04

You don't need that SLI mobo with an ATI graphics card. Furthermore, you don't even need than fancy GTO² because you're not gaming. The most important things for your kind of rig (photoshop, vector graphics, video editing etc) is a good processor, quality 2GB ram and lots of hard drive space. Hope that helps :)
 
thanks for the help :)

Explicit - the only reason i chose the SLI mobo over the A8N-E is because it has firewire which i use for my digi-cam, unless there is any other reason i shouldn't go for it? Or if there is a better suited board that is more expensive i'd go for it??

The ATI graphics i chose because everybody said it was the best value for money and i wanted something pretty good for 3ds max and also a bit future proof. Again if you reckon there is a better alternative??

Also is the Western Digital not a better drive as it has 16MB cache, Hitachi only has 8MB??

xirokx - the Akasa Eclipse-62 Aluminum Case doesn't come with a PSU. I reckon the 450w that comes with the antec case will be fine. Thanks for the suggestion though :)

Thanks again ;)
 
Last edited:
you may wanna double check that the PSU is powerful enuff for your rigg...

Only reason I say is becuz altho they say 450w it doesnt necessary mean it will give that out...

Apparently you have check the combine wattage...

Read up on it unless someone else can help out??
 
Yeah looks good, the 4400 is a nice chip and can be pretty easierly clocked up to the 4800 speed if you want to. Only thing i would say is why get an SLI capable motherboard if you are getting an ATi card and not planning on playing games (and therefore not needing an SLI/Xfire setup). I would say either go for a none SLI/Xfire board and save about £30 or get an Xfire motherboard which will give you the option of putting a second card in later.
 
urmood said:
.....the only reason i chose the SLI mobo over the A8N-E is because it has firewire which i use for my digi-cam, unless there is any other reason i shouldn't go for it? Or if there is a better suited board that is more expensive i'd go for it??
Click to expand...

I think you'll find that all current boards have firewire as standard now, which is why most of the time it's not listed in the spec!
 
Monstermunch - the A8N-E doesn't have firewire at all, i've checked it out. But you guys are probably right so i'll go for the A8N-E and buy a seperate firewaire card.

So do ya reckon the revised spec will be ok? and the 450 PSU ok to?

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4400+ (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA4400CDBOX) (CP-127-AM)
£333.64

Asus A8N-E nForce4 Ultra (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-088-AS)
£70.44

Corsair 2GB DDR XMS3200C2PT TwinX (2x1GB) CAS2 (MY-079-CS)
£146.82

Western Digital Caviar SE16 250GB 2500KS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD-046-WD)
£65.21

Antec Sonata II Piano Black Quiet Case - 450W Smart Power PSU (CA-040-AN)
£82.19

NEC ND4551 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer LabelFlash ReWriter (Black) - OEM (CD-026-NE)
£30.49

Sapphire ATI Radeon X800 GTO² 256MB DDR3 TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-101-SP)
£123.32

Total = 852.11 inc vat
 
Thanks gr1mey, thats what i thought.

With that confirmed i reckon i'll get this ordered tonight. Need to wait longer because of the bank holiday though :(

If anybody reckons i could do any better for the money please let me know.

Thanks again for all the help :)
 
Just checked...the A8N-E doesn't have firewire. The SLI-SE doesn't have it either, so you might have to consider that firewire card.

That PSU in the antec is more than enough, nothing wrong with it at all. :)
 
Thanks Explicit, i noticed that too about the firewire. Must have been the deluxe version i was looking at. :)

Just noticed these 2 boards under the £100.00 mark and they both have firewire which i'm after, reckon either of these would be better than the A8N-E, neo looks really good, nice price too:

MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum nForce4 Ultra (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-046-MS)
£76.32

DFI LanParty UT NF4 Ultra-D (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-014-DF)
£93.94
 
I can whole-heartedly recommend the DFI Ultra-D, especially if you're looking to overclock. :)

I have no idea how good MSI boards are as I've never read any reviews, but it looks pretty good for the price.
 
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