My new system

[LuckYx]

So finally I get my student loan check in the mail... I need a new computer to do all of my school work of course ;)

So heres what i have in mind

Abit IC7-G mobo $130
3.2 Ghz Pentium 4 $225
1gb ddr400 ram $160
80gb seagate serial ata hdd $70
ati radeon 9800 pro 256mb $260
antec truepower 330 watt powersupply $50

I did some revisions as I am just going to use my current case, sound card, and anything else I havn't put above as new items.

any comments or ideas please give me input

basically i want an average of 60fps playing planetside (hardly going below that in big battles) and smooth play in doom 3 (played it at an internet cafe then 4 hours later i was kicked out.)

[LuckYx]

also i am going to continue to use my current hard drive it's a 40gb western digital ide 7200 rpm drive (non sata)

so how should i set up my hard drives? this question aimed at rahl since he has the same motherboard...

i will have a:

40gb ide hdd
80gb sata hdd

or should i ditch my old harddrive and go with a bigger sata drive like 120 or 160 gb

[Rahl]

Hah, thats pretty much the system I have. Its working great for me.

I probably am not the best person to ask about drives. I don't use a lot of space. I have a 36 gig drive as my main drive and a few 18gig drives with old data. I don't ever download mp3s or dvds.

The SATA would work great for me all by itself. You might consider picking up a $60 case and sticking your old components and drive in that. It would make a nice Linux box or system for a friend to com over and play games on. Maybe that can be a later project though.

If you're interested in a career working with computers, a good use for old machines is linux systems for doing little projects.

For PS, I think those specs are gonna be great. The speedy memory bus, gig of ram and directx9 card are gonna make a world of difference. I'm sure you'll love it.

[LuckYx]

i'm going to buy a 160 gig sata drive and it'll be the only drive.

how should i set it up with partitions and all? one windows? one for the page file? game partition?

[BuzzEvil]

Just dont put your OS on the Sata drive cuz the mobo will assign it as ide 3.

In my opinion you should get a Sata raptor 74 and the sata 160 gig

[LuckYx]

so i can't just use this single sata drive (the only drive in the computer?)

i was just going to keep my other drive in my old system and use it for whatever... i think my sister wants it for school... i don't mind.

if the sata is my only drive will it default the drive to ide3 or not? i'm confused...

[Rahl]

You can have the SATA as the only drive, but you might have to disable one or both of the IDE channels.

[LuckYx]

oh i understand.. the sata doesn't use the same connections as the ide ribbons do... so there would be ide1 and ide2 not used... then the sata drive coming up as ide3...

[BuzzEvil]

Yes if you just use SATA then there will be no problem. The bios will then just use the Sata ide 3 and call it C: drive.

I ran into this problem when I bought the raptor 74 and kept my 160 gig ide drive in the system. The ide drive got the C: allocation and the raptor got the E: allocation. Since i put my OS on the raptor I didnt like the setup with windows running off the E: allocation. It doesnt hurt anything... i just didnt like it. So i learned how to assign the drive letter from dos cuz it would not allow it from windows. Everything was fine until i turned on the pc one day and the bios tried to reallocate the drive letters. All of a sudden i could not boot the OS. I ended up reformatting and reinstalling.
What finally worked for me was to remove the IDE drive and just run this PC as a pure gaming console. "Charlie dont surf!!" I only visit the SoV web site, play Planetside or other games and thats it on this PC. My system is ridiculously clean. If i do anything more, it would be to add another raptor (ide 4) to have a place to store backups and my pagefile (swapfile) for improved performance.

I put together a second PC from all my old "upgraded from" parts and use that one to surf and email etc. My dirty computer. I put my 160 gig in that one and then networked the drive to the clean pc and now i have a backup storage avail for it.

[BuzzEvil]

Oh yeah, i can play planetside from the old PC as well. I get around 15 to 30 FPS in zergs. I know that Rogue and a few others prolly just hate me in that my crappy pc plays planetside better than their only PC. Sorry guys. :wink:

[LuckYx]

yours plays better than mine.....

[RogueVindicare]

Hippy

[BuzzEvil]

The power supply in my secondary pc failed. I figured it would last a few weeks longer. I noticed it getting hotter than normal and took a peek inside. The capacitors had started to swell up. That is a very bad sign.

I am gonna put the PS from this PC into the old one and buy this new funky looking one i found.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=874745&Sku=ULT31554&SRCCODE=SHOPPINGDF&CMP=OTC-SHOPPING

[Flattfoot]

Fuck me, It's got a HIGH GLOSS finish on it... I'm SOLD!!

My computer IS my ART! ;-P

[BuzzEvil]

What i really like about the Ultra X-Connect power supply, besides being industrial rated to 500 watts, is that the wires coming from the power supply can be removed allowing you to have just enough wires that you need.

[LuckYx]

so i ordered this stuff

abit is7 mobo
1gb ram
3.2ghz pentium 4 w/ fan
antec 330 watt powersupply
logitech optical mouse (yay no more ball mouse, im in stoneages)
doom 3 - word

someday i'll get a new video card

is there anything i should take into consideration when installing this pooop?

[LuckYx]

what do you guys think of pci express cards?

[Navin]

PCIx cards seem to be 50% more expensive than x8AGP. Probably overkill for current games. But of course if you can afford them why not buy them.

Practical approach is simply to use mainstream tech until you can't get acceptable gaming performance, then upgrade. That will keep costs reasonable.

[rev]

what do you guys think of pci express cards?

To my knowledge, no games have been written with support for PCI-Express cards to date.

[BuzzEvil]

so i ordered this stuff

abit is7 mobo
1gb ram
3.2ghz pentium 4 w/ fan
antec 330 watt powersupply
logitech optical mouse (yay no more ball mouse, im in stoneages)
doom 3 - word

someday i'll get a new video card

is there anything i should take into consideration when installing this pooop?

3.2 GHz... i hope it's the prescott.
I really think you should get the power supply i just rambled on about. Its not expensive comparatively for what you are getting.
Otherwise it looks like a good system

[LuckYx]

yes its got the prescott core, hyper threading and the whole 9 yards

1mb L2 cache 800mhz fsb rawr

[LuckYx]

what is this "burn in" i read about

[BuzzEvil]

Computer lingo for powering up the Motherboard with the Processor on it to see if it works and will stay working.

[tj2spike]

In Bios if given the option for access size make sure it is LBA


Partitioning of the Sata or IDE with only 1 Logical drive

c: about 10 to 15 gig for the OS
d: partition for your stuff . ie. games office and the like
e: depends on space I reserve 15 gig here ; 2 gig for page. Put the IE history folder here Java cache and system backup.

So for and 80 gig drive that would be

c: 15 gig FORMAT in dos / install
d: 50 gig Format after OS installed default access size is 4 K push this one to 64k
e: 15 gig this one also format in the os with 64k

And the Power supply seems a little weak 450 or up. I just needed to up mine to 550 but I also run 12 fans. Cooler the better.

If you need more information on what I mean just PM me.

[LuckYx]

got all my new stuff today, and it's all installed

the only problem i encountered was the HDD light on the case, I plugged it in opposite. my bad

so far its working great, but i havn't tried any games yet

i think tonight is a doom 3 night

[Navin]

Run the Doom3 demo from the console to check PC performance. Run it at least twice. You can tweak settings that way.

[LuckYx]

I have encountered my first problem, my internet does not seem to be working properly, I know its not the modem because my wireless laptop is working fine.

when i first turn on my computer, and load windows, the internet works fine, then it stops recieving packets.

i just bought 2 new ethernet cables to see if that was the problem, since that has happened before - bad ethernet cables. but unfortunantly the cables are not to blame.

im going to reinstall windows so hopefully that will work.

any ideas?

i disabled the onboard lan on the motherboard and i'm using a linksys card.

[LuckYx]

AND

Doom 3 is awesome... its creepy but fun

fortunantly i can play it even though my net is fooked

all i need now is a decent video card, i get about 20-30 fps in 1024x800 resolution(those right numbers?) with High quality set.

i havn't had a chance yet to test planetside. since my net is down.. but i did do the offline training and with all options turned on i was getting very high fps... so hopefully soon i will get everything worked out and i can play online again YAY

rawr

[LuckYx]

well my internet sucks, but is working right. reinstall of windows worked

[BuzzEvil]

The local shop that was to supply my new X-connect power supply (http://www.ultraproducts.com) is still back-ordered so i asked (nicely) for a loaner till it comes in. They agreed. Man i can hardly wait to get that beauty.

[Navin]

What is an X-connect power supply?

[LuckYx]

while playing doom 3 my computer case beeps every once in a while, and when i open abit eq (shows cpu temp, along with other stuff)

its rather annoying and i'm about to unplug the case speaker cause i know my cpu and all my other stuff isn't overheating...

any ideas?

[BuzzEvil]

I have an IS7 and i get a beep like that in planetside when i hold 3 or more buttons down at the same time.