New system, everything OK?

[GeForce]

Hi all, I'm looking at the following new system.

Can I just ask you to have a quick look over it and make sure everything is compatible?

CPU: AMD Athlon 3700+ San Diego Socket 939
Mobo: Asus A8N-Sli Premium (no fans)
RAM: 2Gb Corsair XMS 3200C2PT TwinX 2x1Gb Sticks CAS2
GFX: Leadtek GeForce 6800GT 256Mb DDR3 PCI-e
PSU: Thermaltake Purepower 520Watt ATX2.0
Case: Thermaltake Tsunami Dream Micro ATX and ATX (Black)
HDD: 160Gb Western Digital IDE 7200rpm
Other: Plextor 16x50x DVD-ROM (Black)
          LiteOn 16x DVD-RW (Black)

Thanks very much, all answers/suggestions welcomed

Jon

[Saitek]

I assume your motherboard can take a pci-express and that it takes a 939 socket itself.
You have enough power there - looks alright. I'm not very experienced in this area, but looks good to me.

I just looked it up at overclcokers at it does.  8)

[GeForce]

Yep the motherboard is Socket 939 and has two PCI-e slots

Cheers mate

[4_Series_Scania]

A 7800GT would be a better choice of card in the long run, the 6800GT is good, I've got one, the 7800 are alot better especially with anti-alaising enabled.

[ctjoyce]

Ya looks good, except for the same price you can get a 7800GT so why dont you?

Cheers
Cameron

[Weather_Man]

HDD: 160Gb Western Digital IDE 7200rpm

Go for the SATA II version, or SATA I if not available. IDE should not even be considered, IMO.

[ctjoyce]

Indeed, unless your on an extreem budget

Cheers
Cameron

[congo]

I agree. if you are strictly limited to a budget, drop the fancy case/psu for generics or use what you have now if the psu is adequate. (you can get those later).

By the way, have you researched the mainboard power connectors and made sure the Thermaltake has all the right connections?

Alternatively, drop the ram or part of it and use something at hand until later. This is an extreme measure but 2gb is really not needed at all for the time being.

The 7800GT is a huge leap forward from the 6000 series and you'll kick yourself later if you don't get it.

You need to be careful with the heatpipe design on the northbridge cooler. On a similar board, (non Asus), I found that there was an inefficient thermal pad under the Northbridge heatsink and that the unit wasn't sitting perfectly flat on the chip.

I remedied this by removing the thermal pad and using thermal compound directly on the northbridge/heatsink joint. I also had to very carefully bend the pipe in several attempts to get a close or "near perfect" fit on the joint.

The process is a bit tricky and involves removing the entire heatsink/heatpipe/radiator assembly so it can be easily manipulated. This isn't rocket science but it does require some patience and care.

So, have a good look at it when you get the board, if there is an inefficient thermal pad, or the unit isn't seated properly and perfectly flat on the northbridge chip, consider fixing it BEFORE you install the mainboard.

Use great care in handling the board if you do this and place it on a clean folded cotton towel or sheet, on top of the antistatic wrapper if you want. You don't want to damage your new board!

You have to remember that these items are mass produced and that this design technology is new. The heatpipe design and mounting of the northbridge heatsink assembly is certainly vulnerable to assembly errors.

Remember, these heatpipe coolers are fanless and dependent on good airflow over the radiator, (ie. good case airflow).

The nForce4 northbridge chip is a real hotty and system stability may well depend on it's effective cooling.

[congo]

Make sure you Verify that the core is a San Diego with 1mb L2 cache before purchase and get the informant's name just in case.

Also, there are apparently 2 different steppings for the 3700+ the E4 and the E6.

I'm not sure what the exact difference is, but the E6 is a lower voltage model (E6 = rec. max 1.35v, E4 = rec. max 1.4v) and the E6 doesn't handle as much heat.

From a couple of forum threads I read elsewhere, they are tipped to be less desirable than the older E4 stepping, because to overclock, you need more voltage and more heat tolerance.

I haven't got enough info to advise further on this point though, other than that they also said in those threads that the E4 stepping is the one used in the FX CPU's and possibly some Opteron models.

http://www.amdcompare.com/us-en/desktop ... 3700DKA5CF

It would be in the interest of the overclocker, or possible overclocker to seek out the E4 stepping.

[GeForce]

Thanks for all your replies

Jon

[kipman725]

Drop the case and PSU, in my opinion thermaltake is over priced tat.

Get a Tagan or Pc power and cooling psu if you want quality and if your on a budget go for an ebuyer case and save yourself money on something you can hide anyway.

If your not overclocking go for a cheeper duel channel 2gb kit.

go for a 7800gt or gtx there worth the extra over a 6800gt although the 512mb version is definatly overpriced and should be avoided.

[GeForce]

Hmm OK then, thanks again all,

How about the following:

CPU: AMD Athlon 3700+ San Diego Socket 939 (As Congo said, make sure it IS San Diego and go for E4)
Mobo: Gigabyte K8NF-9 PCI-e Socket 939 (has a fan)
RAM: 2Gb Corsair XMS 3200C2PT TwinX 2x1Gb Sticks CAS2
GFX: Leadtek GeForce 7800GT 256Mb DDR3 PCI-e
PSU: Thermaltake Purepower 520Watt ATX2.0
Case: Thermaltake Tsunami Dream Micro ATX and ATX (Black)
HDD: 160Gb Western Digital SATA-II 7200rpm
Other: Plextor 16x50x DVD-ROM (Black)

[Gunny04]

Everything is good, cept your hard drive, you might wanna get more than 160.... my FS has turned my drive into caos at 30 gigs!!!!! then all my other games is another 30 so thats 60 and my programs prolly 20-30 so in total I run 90-100 gigs..... I dont feel a 160 is good enough I'd say bare min 200 Gig! Cheers, Gunny (has a 160 with 120)

[congo]

Something to think about with the hard drive.

Plan ahead.

You can double your hard disk speed with a striped RAID array, in other words another SATA II HDD the same size as the one you are getting.

The thing is, you only get the full capacity of the smallest drive in the RAID array.

So, If you RAID stripe 2 x 160gb drives, your total capacity is 160gb with twice the probable failure rate due to there being 2 drives in the array. (the chances are higher that a drive will fail, because there are 2 drives, not because a RAID setup DOES something to your drives.

So, if you envisage you want the double speed of striped RAID one day, you need to plan your first drive as your total capacity, as the second drive will only double the speed, and not the capacity if RAID 0 is used.

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/rai ... el0-c.html


Cheers

[ctjoyce]

I would change the leadtech to a eVGA 7800GT.

Cheers
Cameron