Upgrading at the end of the month. Help needed!

no_1_dave · 4 Mar 2006 at 11:27

So far I'll be getting:

AMD Opteron UP 170 Dual Core San Diego 2.0GHz 2MB Cache (Socket 939) - Retail (CP-148-AM)
Asus A8N-SLi Premium nForce4 SLi (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-111-AS)
Akasa Eclipse-62 Aluminum Case (CA-005-AK)
Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940) (FG-000-AR)

I need:

Graphics Card <--- Will be getting either X1900 XT/XTX or 7900 which ever is better & we'll all know soon anyway!

PSU <--- Must be as quiet as poss, reliable, have long enough cable for the Akasa Eclipse (so not Hiper apparently) & be able to power SLI (which I may get in the future if I go the Nvidia route) along with 3 or 4 hard drives. Also, detatchable cables would be a plus

Akasa Eclipse side panel <--- is the side panel that has a 120mm fan on it worth £20, would it help much for cooling?

2 or 3 120mm fans <--- Quiet with good airflow is a must! I hear Akasa one's aren't all that great, but i'm no expert.

SATA 2 hdd <--- Either 1 small one for windows & programs, games on a second almost small one. Or, a bigger one with Windows & games on it? Was thinking Samsung cos I have an IDE samsung which I can't even hear & it's been excellent!

Ram <--- I have 2Gb Geil Value. If selling this & buying 2Gb of better clocking stuff would only cost me £40ish then ok, otherwise I guess i'll prob have to use a divider when overclocking my opty. How far does this ram clock anyway? My board at the mo has no PCI locks so I cant test!

So yea, what do you guys think?

Oh & I have some AS5 that's about 2 years old, it'll still be good right?

semi-pro waster · 4 Mar 2006 at 12:29

For the PSU I'd probably suggest a Tagan Easycon maybe the 580w model when it comes back into stock because although it has dual rails they can be combined to one single rail which apparantly is better for SLi.

Hard drive is pretty much down to personal choice so go with whatever you think will do the job

Your Ram will be fine, you can run it on a divider if necessary but Geil Value often seems to clock better than the value name suggests. At a guess from others results 230mhz should be achieveable and possibly more.

I don't think that AS5 degrades particularly but it is pretty cheap to get more anyway.

no_1_dave · 5 Mar 2006 at 14:41

Cheers.
Are the Tagen cable's definatly long enough?

semi-pro waster · 6 Mar 2006 at 09:49

no_1_dave said:
Cheers.
Are the Tagen cable's definatly long enough?

I'm not certain of exactly how big the Akasa is but according to the Tagan website(PDF file) all cables are at least 45cm long and some are longer so I don't know if that helps you at all but I'd guess they should be long enough

no_1_dave · 6 Mar 2006 at 12:17

45cm is the same as Hiper PSUs. I've read that Hipers are too short for the eclipse, can anyone confirm this?
I can't find how long the Akasa ones are, not even on there site...

muckymick · 6 Mar 2006 at 13:23

Try and source panaflo fans,they are supposed to be the dogs !!!

paradigm · 6 Mar 2006 at 13:37

With regards to HDD's, the samsung spinpoint SATA and SATA-II drives are damn near silent

So yes, by all means stick with samsung!

muckymick · 6 Mar 2006 at 13:44

I'm running a sata samsung drive,v v quiet.

Eliminos · 6 Mar 2006 at 13:50

There is no point in buying an opteron. The current available steppings of X2 3800s are better. Mine runs 2.6GHz on stock volts. Go for an X1900 as it is a fair bit ahead of the 7900s (apparently), and because of this, change the motherboard for an ASUS A8R-MVP or A8R32-MVP - if it is available.

Dutch Guy · 6 Mar 2006 at 13:55

If you really want a quiet PSU get one that is in the recommended list of SilentPCReview: http://www.silentpcreview.com/article28-page6.html

ted34 · 6 Mar 2006 at 15:11

no_1_dave said:
Cheers.
Are the Tagen cable's definatly long enough?

Im not sure about the easycon but i got the tagan tg530-u22 and i have had no problems with cable lengths in the eclipse 62 case and i have run the asus premium board and the dfi expert and have had no probs. Have just had a look at the case panel with fan. Looks like its more the graphics card than the cpu but not sure. Let me know if you get that panel[size=+1][/size]

no_1_dave · 7 Mar 2006 at 10:10

Cheers for the replies

The Tagen does seem to be the best bet on the psu side of things

I know the current stepping for the 170 isnt all that great but there are places around that have a small choice in which stepping you get

I can't find panaflo's in anywhere