Purchasing a Gaming Computer

[Bozos of Bones]

I'm buying a Gaming Computer(in capital letters in respect) in about 10 to 15 days from now. How's this configuration seem to you?
Motherboard - ABIT, socket A, NF7, nForce2 SPP + MCP, BUS 400 MHz, 5.1 zvuk, DDR 400, LAN, ATX 2
Processor - AMD Athlon XP 2500+, 1833 MHz, 512 kb c., socket A, BUS 333 MHz, Barton
RAM - 2x 512 MB, DDR, PC-2700, 333 MHz, KINGMAX
Cooler - ZALMAN, CNPS 7000A Cu, (socket A, socket 370, socket 478, socket 754)
Case Cooler - ZALMAN, FB 123, carrier + fan
HDD Cooler - unknown, but good 5.25"
RAM Cooler - COOLTEK (DIMM, SDRAM, DDR), copper, passive
Case - Midi Tower, EVER POWER CX-5959, 400 W, side fan, USB + audio + IrDA front panel, ATX 2
Graphics Card - SAPPHIRE ATI Radeon 9600XT 128 bit, 500 MHz, 256 MB, with tv out & DVI
HDD - MAXTOR 160 GB, UDMA 133, 7.200 o/min., 8 MB cache
DVD - LG 16x/48x
Cables - rounded 60cm blue glowing
I know I've put on every single screw and bolt that'll be coming into my PC, sorry for that What do you think of this? Anything I should add, remove or change? It'll be some 900$.

[Albromor]

It looks sweet. Have you condsidered an Asus motherboard? I have had nothing but good luck with their quality.

[Bozos of Bones]

I have an ASUS right now, and I'm really happy about it. Mine works good, and I have nothing bad to say about it. Actually, I've been having a bit trouble choosing between the one I've put down and this one: ASUS, socket A, A7N8X-X , nForce2-S, BUS 400 MHz, 5.1 zvuk, DDR400, LAN, ATX 2. The price is almost the same, but the reason I've chosen the Abit one is that it has an rather good active chipset cooler while the Asus has a passive.

[andrewas]

Right then. No argument from me RE the mobo, and apparently some people have been having trouble with the ASUS A7N8X-C, but I havent used one myself. Still, the ABIT is good.

For CPU, I would be tempted to go higher than the 2500XP. Looking through your stats, the mobo has a 400Mhz FSB, whereas the CPU only supports 333Mhz. Your going to be losing performance there.

RAM is nice. Ramcooler is a waste though, at least on the system RAM. On the graphics card it can be worth it, but system RAM dosent run that hot even under a moderate overclock.

HDD cooler is also controversial, but it wont do any harm. You might want to experiement with removing it to see what it does to the sound. Unless your case is highly underventilated, your HDDs shouldn't be getting dangerously hot.

HDD - you should have SATA ports on that mobo, so you have the option of setting up a RAID system. That can improve your boot up and load times signficantly, although its expensive. It also helps when your system starts paging to RAM, since the HDD becomes a processing bottleneck when that happens. But with 1Gb that should be rare.

Graphics card - ATI is all very well, but I've heard far less stability probles with the Geforce line. They may not be quite the equal in pure power, but I'll trade a couple FPS for fewer CTDs anyday.

[Ladyzekke]

Andrewas (using this thread rather than making a new one), question:

Have you ever heard of a program call "Go Back"? I've heard it is excellent, in that you can literally "go back", set the time how far, and undo anything you may have done beforehand (i.e., if something goes wrong and you don't know how to fix it), including if you get a virus? Just wanted to know your thoughts, if any, you may have re that program. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[andrewas]

It seems to be an improvment over the windows system restore feature, which isn't a bad thing. However, I wouldn't trust it to stop a virus, those things are typicaly designed to get round AV software.

I havent turned up anything bad about it, except it kills your bootup times if you don't trim down its hard drive space allocation.

[Ladyzekke]

Thanks Andrewas! [img]smile.gif[/img] Sounds like a good program then mostly, I was figuring the virus part would not be something you could count on. I ask because recently something went screwy with my pc's resolution, I cannot get back to the setting I had it at, when I do it is humongous. So would be nice to have a program wherein I can just go back an hour and put things back as they were, as I'm not all that learned re computers, and have no idea how to fix something like this, nevertheless anything else that may happen. And consequently I feel a bit limited as to things I want to "try" whether it be games or some other type of program. I may soon get a new PC, so just thinking of things I may want to buy and install in it. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[RoSs_bg2_rox]

the Athlon 2500xp is quite a good choice, it is actually better than the 2600xp and also is the most popular XP CPU so should (if your lucky) be a good overclocker since AMD had to use better CPU's and tone them down because of the high demand. I would say though, if you are sticking with the 2500+ you should get a better cooler in there for overclocking purposes, since the 2500+ is starting to get a bit outdated. If you had the extra cash you could go for an athlon 64 3000 (or maybe even 3200+) for only £10 more (dunno how much $ that is) than the xp3200+ and there are some improvements. Just my thoughts though

[andrewas]

LZ - at a guess, reinstall your graphics card drivers.

Ross - there are XP2600+ and there are XP2600+. Some have the old 266Mhz FSB, some have the 333Mhz FSB. Since this board supports up to 400Mhz FSB, it makes sense to get a CPU and RAM which supports that FSB.

[Bozos of Bones]

I'll see if I can get my hands on a Kingmax 512 @400 MHz, and I'm overclocking the processor to 3200+. But Ross, I think the Zalman is the best cooler there is. Copper core, quite silent 50$.
And to andrewas, you're right, there are Barton 2600+ and Thouroughbred 2600+ with 333 and 266 MHz FSB respectively.