Money Well Spent?

PiKe · 21 May 2006 at 13:42

Last night I ordered the following:

Item: Lian Li PC-7B PLUS Aluminium Black Mid Tower Case - No PSU

Item: ASUS A8N-SLI Premium skt939 nForce4 Gigabit Ethernet Firewire 8channel audio

Item: Corsair (TWINX2048-3200C2PT) 2GB (2 x 1GB Matched Pair) DDR PC3200 2x128Mx64 non-ECC 2x184 DIMM unbuffered 2-3-3-6 64Mx8 DRAMs Matched Pair Silver Heat Spreader Lifetime Warranty

Item: AMD Athlon 64 (ADA4200BVBOX) X2 4200+ socket 939 Dual Core 2.2ghz 512kb and 512kb Cache

Item: Pioneer DVR-111DBK 16x DVD±RW Dual Layer Internal IDE (Black) - OEM

Item: Club 3D 7900GTX 512MB GDDR3 DUAL DVI VIVO PCI-E

Item: Western Digital WD2500KS Caviar SE 250GB 7200RPM SATA2/300 16MB Cache - OEM

Which came to £920 with delivery, I know I had the option of a ATI x1900 but I didn't fancy the extra power/heat output.

Have I made any glaring mistakes? The 4200+ was only £30 more than the 3800+ so I thought why not...

BigDom · 21 May 2006 at 13:44

4200+ is NOT well spent.. either go 3800+ and overclock, 4400+ or opty dual core.

Seem to be missing a PSU? Get a Tagan 430 or 530W modular silent.

Kezmo · 21 May 2006 at 13:49

AM2 is out on tuesday :rolleyes:

PiKe · 21 May 2006 at 13:56

Didn't want to overclock, already have a Tagan I intend to use.

A.N.Other · 21 May 2006 at 14:00

Very nice spec, although as above, you did waste money on the 4200.

This has the same amount of cache as the 3800, so saving money, you could have clocked the 3800 to have the same / better results (my 3800 is @ 2.5GHz and does 2.4 on stock volts). The 4400 has the bigger cache, so that is worth the money difference.

Generally, you should go for the 3800 or the 4400 with the larger cache. The 4200 is a poor middle ground.

PiKe · 21 May 2006 at 14:12

At the end of the day it's £30 for 200mhz.

Plus if I do want to overclock in the future, I'm on a higher multi to start with so the motherboard is less likely to be a limiting factor.

A.N.Other · 21 May 2006 at 14:22

That's fair enough. It's still a very nice spec though

MeatLoaf · 21 May 2006 at 14:23

PiKe said:
At the end of the day it's £30 for 200mhz.

Plus if I do want to overclock in the future, I'm on a higher multi to start with so the motherboard is less likely to be a limiting factor.

Have to agree there. Im glad i got the 4200+, but then i got £100 for my old 3700+ so it didnt cost to much to upgrde

Minstadave · 21 May 2006 at 14:23

Snoops said:
AM2 is out on tuesday

Yeah this is the reason you should have waited, you just bought whole setup based on a platform that is end of life pretty soon. Its a good system and will last you a good while, but you'll be left with no upgrade path on your RAM or CPU as AMD are killing off S939 and DDR.

BigDom · 21 May 2006 at 14:27

PiKe said:
At the end of the day it's £30 for 200mhz.

Plus if I do want to overclock in the future, I'm on a higher multi to start with so the motherboard is less likely to be a limiting factor.

Nah, mobo won't be a limiting factor at all. Your not going to get more than roughtly 300-400 OC on it tops. Your also still starting at 200mhz/1000HTT same as on a 3800+ so as soon as you OC your going to hit the same issues as a 3800+. You'll most likely have to drop the ram too 166 in either case so at 2.5Ghz you'd have :-

3800+ 207Mhz ram and with a x4 multi 1000 HTT.
4200+ 188Mhz ramand with a x4 multi 908 HTT.

Neither likely to see the mobo as limiting factor.

squiffy · 21 May 2006 at 14:27

Most people leave the computer till it's dead slow, my last machine was Pentium 3 933mhz with 512MB RAM, with a Geforce 2 MX440. So no part of that can be used for a new machine. And when you upgrade the 2GB won't probably be enought anyway, PCI-E probably phased out also.

PiKe · 21 May 2006 at 14:29

Minstadave said:
Yeah this is the reason you should have waited, you just bought whole setup based on a platform that is end of life pretty soon. Its a good system and will last you a good while, but you'll be left with no upgrade path on your RAM or CPU as AMD are killing off S939 and DDR.

As true as that may be, I tend to not upgrade very often, my current machine has lasted me 3 years, the graphics card dieing on me prompted last nights purchase.