New PC help - - cont:

[caveman16]

     Hey Guys,   Thought I'd keep the info current with a new post.    [ Don't want to get lost    ]      

     I stumbled onto something following different site pointers.     Have you Guys heard about the  " Ageria Phys X  processor  "  at  [  www.ageia.com/index.  ]       ???

     If this is for REAL - - - - it may be worth looking into.

      I'm going to stop for the moment to let you Guys look it over.       I'm still watching very intently and sure do appreciate your help.                    caveman

[congo]

Their site shows 3 games support it, who will "aquire" it I wonder, Intel or AMD ?

This comes as microsoft nears completion of it's DX10, a risky time for MS, I don't doubt MS's capacity to ward off such a competitor, but you never know.

[caveman16]

     Good Morning to all you Guys and Ladies,

    Getting back to my original post .      Would  "you Guys " step over to  www.Ibuypower.com ,      and thinking that you had  $1500.00 in your pocket just for a PC for FSX - - - -.

    What would " YOU "  buy ?     I sorta have a way of cutting through  " STUFF " and get right to the point in my wild moments        

     I've been reading the post you guys  present for "us" and I just wish to tap in on the knowledge  you have.   You " GUYS " are sooooo helpful to me,          THANK YOU VERY MUCH.       caveman

[congo]

The weekly gamer special needed so many addons to get it up to spec, it wasn't viable. I don't like SLI setups at all, so I didn't look at them in detail.

The special looks ok at first glance, but these guys are not doing you any favours, they give you a cheap mainboard for a start, so if you didn't spot that, you'd be stuck with it.

The same thing goes for almost every component. They are out to get your cash and It looks like $2000+ by the time you'd get something similar to a custom gamer you could build yourself for a fraction of the cost.

I'm glad you asked. Makes me feel a lot better that I don't have to rely on these guys for my PC gear.

[congo]

You really need to be careful, because it's as if they hire a cross between a psychologist and a magician when they write up the specs.

It always looks good, and then you check the details with a magnifier and things start showing

[caveman16]

     Thanks Congo,    what you've said is what I want to hear , straight honest "talk".     That is always expected from helpful friends.     No  PC  knowledgeable  persons for the next 17 miles [ nearest town ].      I sorta live in the national forest in the mountains of western NC.    [only 2 neighbors - -one on other mountain and other in the valley ].    

     Would you point me in the direction of what place to buy the needed parts.        Then tell me what parts to get.   I will have the company put it all together for me.  I really don't mind an assembly fee.    

     I know this is asking an alful lot of others  - - - -  But  - - -  you " GUYS " are sorta stuck with this pain called caveman  ;D  
Keep in mind the approx cost  - - -  I could go some higher if needed.                      
                        Thanks again, - - - caveman

[ctjoyce]

Honostly building youself is rathar easy. If you can change the oil in your car, you can build a PC. www.newegg.com is a good place to get parts from.

AMD 3700+
ASUS 939 Board
1GB Corsair, OZC, or GeIL PC3200 RAM
ATI X1800 / 1900 or nVidia 78 or 7900 series video card

Those are the basic parts, what is your budget? Depending on what you want to spend we can suggest quite the dream rig, and walk you through on how to build it. I'm putting a rig together for a mate this weekend, and I will take pictures the whole way, then poast them to show you how to build.

Cheers
Cameron

[congo]

Actually I know a guy on the

[caveman16]

     Hey Guys,      After giving this  project much thought up to this time  - - - I'm sure not   backing off now .   How can I go wrong with guys like you two and others helping me  so much .  

     I just as well get started.       First the budget part.      Perhaps  $ 1500.00  to $1700.00    Maby I can continue to use my present monitor  and  speakers  and  upgrade on THOSE   items  later.     If you think this is too low - - - don't be shy- - - let me know .    I 'll work it out somehow for more .    I view this PC as an investment in my good mental health.  [ Being real happy ]  

     Next on my list are the parts   -- --  all of them  --  --  right down to the spacers / nuts and bolts  etc.        I wish to  have a PC that won't need upgrading for a year or two with the exception of getting Vista when it comes out.    Dual core sounds pretty good to me.   However - - -  I will go with all of your advice.       You know what I need far better than I do .    I'm not one to look at frills and fancy stuff   or  lights and bells.
   
     I would appreciate very much if you would tell me what I'd need.

     If I can't get the  parts company to put it together  I'll have a go at it.   [ with hands shaking ]  

     Really Guys,  without your help - - none of this would be possible.    Thank you Guys so much.       caveman

[ctjoyce]

Well sir for $1500 you are going to get quite the system.

Motherboard Asus A8N32 SLix16
Processer: AMD Athlon 4400+
GPU: eVGA 7800GT (Two of them)
RAM: Corsair XMS 2GB
Harddrive Western Digital 250GB
DVD Drive: Samgsung DVD Burner
Case: ThermalTake Soprano
PSU: Hier Type R

The breakdown.
Okay so basically any GPU you get today isn't going to last much longer than two years due to the intagration of DX10 into Vista, FSX, and other mainstreem games. However the two I have you set up with are one hell of a combo, and out do everyone on this forum (even Jimbo's one 7900GT). The motherboard is a personal favorite. I have used a few of them in builds for friends, and couldn't be happier with them. I know congo said there was a bug in the chipset, but not one that I have seen and the board gets pretty good reviews so I wouldn't be too worried about it (Congo if you have a better SLi x16 board do tell). Moving along to the 4400+. Wonderful little dual core, and overclocks pretty well. You can easilly get it up to 4800+ speeds on a stock sink. RAM. This is really a personal choice in look, Company, and Cas timings. The kit I recommend is the 2GB virsion of the one I have in my system. Works wonders, however the OCZ stuff that Congo likes also preforms beautifully. Go with what you like.

The other bits: The PSU I suggested is the one I use. SLi Ready, very powerful, and very stable under just about any situation. GeForce had some trouble with his, but Hiper fixed those problems in their latest batch, and now they are safe as ever. I have ordered 4 since nov 2005 (One in nov for me, one in Dec for my mate, one in feb for my fathers rig, one two weeks ago for another mate going to a LAN party). So far no one has been able to break this PSU. The case I suggested is the non windowed virsion of mine. Very cool and quiet, and all of the tooless parts make putting the PC together very easy. However their are thousands of cases out there. Buy what you like. I suggets CoolerMaster, Lian-Li, Thermaltake, and Antec.

Well I hope you have fun with your new system.

Cheers
Cameron

[Delta_]

I will give an alternative to the Soprano case.  I use this case myself:Antec SLK3000-B
Features include, removable chassis parts; the hdd cage, fdd cage.  Rubber bits are used between the screws and chassis for the hdd; to reduce noise.  It comes with a silent 120mm fan.  It even has a filter on the front to stop dust getting into the comp.  CD-Drives are fitted by putting a rail on them (supplied with the case), then sliding it into the case from the front.  It simply clicks into place.

[ctjoyce]

Looks like a TT Tsunami, but at about half the cost. The only two things I dont like about this case are how limited the screwless stuff is (TT with the exception of the mobo is completely screwless) and the airduct which limits how big of a heatsink you can put on your processer (you woud have to take it out to put in a Zalman bigger than the CNPS-7000).

Cheers
Cameron

[caveman16]

     Good Morning  Guys,       I've just read the input.    WOW - - -  Thank you so much.     With all of this help - -  there is no way I can go wrong.    

      I have pressing matters to take care of at this moment and can't wait to start checking out and pricing the needed parts.       Again  I  wish to thank each of you ,     Be back soon.              caveman

[Delta_]

Looks like a TT Tsunami, but at about half the cost. The only two things I dont like about this case are how limited the screwless stuff is (TT with the exception of the mobo is completely screwless) and the airduct which limits how big of a heatsink you can put on your processer (you woud have to take it out to put in a Zalman bigger than the CNPS-7000).

Cheers
Cameron

The reason it is not completely screwless is because it is one of Antec's silent range.  Screwless parts rattle, using screws and rubber seperators absorb vibrations and reduce noise.

The air duct can be removed very easily and a standard fan grill or an 80mm fan can be put there instead.  It gives your cpu cooler its own air supply.  It also has a grill lower down offering an air supply to the gfx card.

I don't even have the air duct extended, but i can definetly feel the cpu cooler drawing air in.  I currently have 36C load temps on my cpu and 31C for inside my case, it definetly keeps the components very cool.

[congo]

Motherboard Asus A8N32 SLix16
I know congo said there was a bug in the chipset, but not one that I have seen and the board gets pretty good reviews so I wouldn't be too worried about it (Congo if you have a better SLi x16 board do tell).

I've tried to explain this before, but here goes again....

First of all, SLI is for people who have too much money and can't figure out how to burn it fast enough. You don't need it, period.

ctjoyce (and much of the PC world) is under the impression that there is some benefit in having 16 PCI express lanes available per PCIe slot in an SLI rig.

In the first round of SLI mainboards, the 16x lanes of PCIe bus normally used by a single card were split into 2 during SLI mode, resulting in 8 lanes per card or 16 lanes total. Each PCIe lane allows a certain amount of graphics data traffic to pass along it. In the new chipset, 16 lanes are available for each card in SLI mode.

This modification was not based on need, there is plenty of PCIe bus bandwidth anyway with 16x in single mode or 2x8 in SLI mode, this situation is not likely to change in the near future.

In other words, in the dubious SLI mode (oh my, there's a new card out that makes my SLI rig look sick, why on earth did I just spend a fortune on 2 cards when this one beats them anyway) there is no bottleneck on the PCIe bus.

Now when nVidia made the change, there was a tradeoff..... the 16x2 PCIe lanes required the bitrate be halved on the Front Side Bus in one direction, hence bottlenecking the front side bus. Again this was not serious because the Front side bus has plenty of bandwidth....... or does it? In reality, the FSB will run out of steam well before the PCIe bus needs more bandwidth....ie. it's not a balanced chipset.

The explanation above may not be entirely accurate in detail, because I haven't gone back to the info to refresh myself on it yet, but essentially it is accurate in it's end result.

Tested side by side, (the old SLI boards and the new ones like ctjoyce is recommending), the old original SLI board is actually faster by a small margin, this result comes because the buses are not running at full capacity quite yet on current software.

When a game or application arrives that uses a lot of FSB bandwidth, the new SLI 16x chipset could be in for some serious bottlenecking, until then, the problem remains invisible and people are buying a defective board with little ill effect, for now.

Ok, so we have an over expensive mainboard with dubious SLI support enabling dubious amounts of PCIe lanes at the expense of Front Side Bus lanes. They are fine board, as long as it's not in my PC thankyou....

In answer to the "what 16x SLI board is good" I say none. Just buy an older SLI board if you want the features it offers and stick a single card on it or buy an NF4 Ultra board. Simple and cheap.

I honestly do not know why nVidia released this chipset other than that they were under pressure to do so, personally, I feel it was a bad decision, but it may have been in response to ULI's release of a 16x2 SLI chipset.

nVidia has since bought ULI. Possibly a very smart move.

The ULI chipset is worth a look, Asrock use it in some well featured, slightly slower and very cheap mainboards.