New computer

[badval]

I wanted to build a very high-end machine on a budget of $2,000.  Got it finished Wednesday and it is by all means a killer machine!

It scores over 10,500 on 3dMark05 and over 6,000 on 3Dmark06 with nothing overclocked - not many machines in this price range can do that.

It is absolutley DEAD SILENT. Very slight whir sound from the power supply fan & you can hear the optical drives spool up from time to time, but there's no way around those things (on air cooling w/ a reasonable budget).  Even during intense gaming or benchmarking it stays silent.

Everything came from newegg.com

Using the new Core2 Duo Intel processors and new Intel motherboard chipsets (975x, 965x) can be tricky as they're picky about certain things - esp memory.  If you're thinking about a serious machine you can use my "recipe" below.  

The Case $58 - Very nice case for the money.  Sure there are cheaper ones, but don't skimp here.  Includes a 450W power supply, but I swapped it out - might be a perfect way to save a few $ by using it.

The Motherboard $170 - MSI makes good stuff at good prices.  Their manuals are pretty good compared to some other top name brands too.

Video Card $260 - eVga GeForce7900GTO - this is by far the best "bang for the buck" high-end card on the market today.  It almost triples the performance of my ATi X850XT, which is also a very strong card.
 
Power Supply $50 - only a little bigger than what came with the case, but I wanted silence & stock supplies are typically noisy (& often questionable quality).  **Opportunity to save $50 by using the stock one.**

Processor $509 - Intel Core2 Duo 2.67GHz.  Don't let the GHz fool you - this is an upgrade from a 3.2GHz dual-core PentiumD and absoulutely smokes it performance-wise, while using much less power and running cooler!.  ** opportunity to save $300 by going with the E6400 2.13GHz version w/o much loss in performance (probably wouldn't notice in "real world" apps)**

Memory $250 - 2GB Crucial PC5300 DDR667.  Motherboard supports DDR800, but all these new Intel chipsets downclock to 667 when running in dual-channel, so it doesn't really make sense to pay extra for the higher speed.

Hard drives $190 - 2 x 320GB SATA-II.  I'm not running RAID -0, but could with this setup to get better disk performance.  Motherboard supports all the common RAID configs.  **Opportunity to save $95 by only using 1 HDD or more by using a smaller one**

Monitor $250 - 20.1" LCD widescreen.  It's inexpensive for it's class but by no means "cheap".  this widesreen is awesome and runs at 1680x1050 resolution.  This has a 5ms (milliseconds) response time which is about the best LCDs get.  What that means is that there is no "ghosting" in games or movies that is the bane of 12ms & some 8ms LCDs.  **opportunity to save $ by using your old monitor or going with smaller screen**

Optical Drive 1 $30 - Lite-on 16x DVD +/- RW + DL

Optical Drive 2 $30 - Sony 16x DVD +/- RW + DL.  2 DVD burners are overkill, but i wanted to compare actual performance and noise of both burners.  **opportunity to save $ by only buying 1 DVD burner**

Sound card $72 - Creative Audigy 4.  Not top of the line, but very good performance.  **Opportunity to save $ by just using the motherboard's onboard sound, which in this case is actually pretty good!)**

Operating System $140 - Windows XP Pro.  **Opportunity to save $ - use media center or home edition & knock off $40-$60**

Case fans $30 - 2 of these ($15 ea) 120mm fans.  The case comes with one, but it runs a little faster so it makes a little noise.  These are expensive for what they are, but are dead silent.  the tradoff w/ 800rpm fans is that they don't push a lot of air.  in this case, it doesn't matter - the processor runs cool, the video card vents to the outside, & the heatsink fan blows right to the back of the case.  the video card & CPU do not exceed 65C under intense load.

CPU heatsink $30 - Used Arctic Silver 5 thermal compound & not the junk that came pre-applied.  Dead silent even under load and you can orient it so the fan blows in whatever direction you want.  10x better than the stock Intel fan!

I recycled the keyboard, speakers, & mouse from stuff I had around here, but otherwise, this is a good blueprint for everything you need.

[Vinny]

Good news on the computer .... Bad news - it just became obsolete!

[badval]

Just realized the end of this got cut off.


 recycled the keyboard, speakers, & mouse from stuff I had around here, but otherwise, this is a good blueprint for a very high-end computer for about $2,000.  Those prices don't include shipping & are rounded to closest $1, but several of the items had rebates or free shipping, so shipping charges were a wash.  Also newegg only charges sales tax in states they have physical locations (TN, CA, & NJ I think). You could also follow this & my ** money saving ** ideas to build something very similar for around $1,350 or less.  

Pound for pound, dollar for dollar, and decibel for decibel this will far exceed anything you can grab at BestBuy or order from AlienWare.  If you're thinking of going with the new Intel Conroe (Core2 Duo) and don't want to break the bank buying off the shelf, or experiement around figuring out what will function well with the picky 975x/975x chipsets, follow this blueprint & you're all set!  You're also "future-proof" for Windows Vista in DEC/JAN.  

------------------

My geek friend at work today had the question/comment "why use an nVidia graphics card on a motherboard that supports crossfire?"  My answer was that there is nothing to be gained with anything on the market today by going crossfire or SLi vs using this single card.  The nVidia 570 chipset motherboards are suspect (and their continual delay of the 590 chipset makes them even more suspect IMO) with Conroe.  The old adage of Intel processors on Intel chipsets still holds true.  It simply isn't worth the money, heat, or noise to go with a single ATi video card, let alone 2 of them.  Especially with the release of DirectX 10 (or D3D10, Windows Graphics Foundation 2.0, whatever they're calling it today) right around the corner when this superb card is available for such a low price.

[sledjunkie]

I stopped building my own computers about 7-10 years ago, when it actually became cheaper to buy a pre-built machine as opposed to building you're own.

So why did you build such a state of the art system? Extra money to spend? Hobby?
Are you a PC Gamer?

I bought this system from Dell's refurb outlet store 6 months ago (which I highly recommend)

Dimension 5150/E510: Intel Pentium 4 Processor 620 w/HT Technology (2.8GHz,800FSB)
1 GB DDR2 NON-ECC SDRAM 533MHz (2 DIMMs)
128MB PCI Express ATI Radeon X300 SE
16X DVD ROM Drive
16x DVD +/- RW w/dbl layer write capability
80 GB EIDE Hard Drive (7200 RPM)
Genuine Windows XP Media Center 2005
 
$358.00 total, after shipping.

[badval]

That's a good price.  I bought my mother the exact same one except it only has the DVD-RW drive & not the 2nd optical drive., but got it from the regular Dell site & it came w/ a 19" flat panel & free shipping.  Was about $600 delivered w/ my whopping 10% employee discount.

Why do I do it?  I like to play some games, but nothing that really needs all that.  Kind of a hobby & I like to tinker with that sort of stuff.  I work from home a lot, copy movies, surf forums like this one, etc. so I spend several hrs a day at the computer so I want it to be exactly what I want.  The one this replaced is a very strong machine, but it was kind of loud - I hate a computer that has a constant noticeable buzz or gets loud when it starts working hard.  Plus, I've been reading such good stuff about the new Intel chip architecture & wanted to try it out.  There really was no big change in the entire Pentium4 series - clock speeds crept up & up, HT & then dual core were introduced, but no real improvements were made.  Depending on what apps you run, you could be hard pressed to tell the difference between a 1.8GHz Pentium4 & a 3.4GHz PentiumD.  The netburst architecture of that series had limits and the improvements felt like more of a marketing ploy than any real performance gain.  The Core 2 Duo is a whole new architecture and process.  It is truly a huge improvement in both synthetic benchmarks and real-world applications.

BTW - Dell is in the last week of it's fiscal quarter right now, so this is the time to shop the refurb website.  Deals get better as they try to empty that inventory completely.

[jeremy]

  I think you'll find the Lite-On to be the better burner.  6 years ago they were a joke, but now I'd take one over a Plextor any day.  You might have done a little better by going with the 16x NEC Newegg carries, it's a bit faster on the RW media, but either way that's a sweet system.  I'd be interested to know if the Sony burner gives you any guff when trying to copy movies and music (DRM stuff).

  Oh, and lucky you, Ubuntu Edgy came out this week so you wont even have to bothered with that Mico$oft junk!  That'll save $200.

[badval]

I have the NEC3500 burner & like it a lot.  Had to use different firmware to get it to change bitsetting & after that was a great drive for me.  I'll go back to it if either of these don't work as well.

I think the Sony drive will deal with copy issues like any others - IIRC Sony doesn't actually manufacture it - it's OEMed & just Sony branded.  Will have to try it & see though.  I wouldn't be surprised if it had riplock though.  I shoul dhave spent some time on CDfreaks or similar researching, but for $30 ea + a known good "spare" it doesn't matter much.

[sledjunkie]

I just bought 86 HP NX6310 laptops for the hospital I work at. These are going to be true mobile wireless devices as they are all mounted on a clinical carts in which clinicians will be using our main Electronic medical application throughout the hospital. We're not gaining much as far as performance with the Core Duo as our application is hosted on a 50 server Citrix farm, and the processing and memory for the client app is all being done on across the 50 servers (again Citrix). The servers are HP DL360’s, dual CPU, 4GB of RAM, , and running Windows 2000/2003 server. We get about 40-50 users per server.
The real benefit to the Core Duo processor on these laptops was the power savings, which when using wireless mobile carts, battery life was certainly something we needed..
I don't keep up too much these days with the latest desktop hardware, I mostly do server/domain/network design and support now and my focus is in that arena.

[Vinny]

I just bought 86 HP NX6310 laptops for the hospital I work at. These are going to be true mobile wireless devices as they are all mounted on a clinical carts in which clinicians will be using our main Electronic medical application throughout the hospital. We're not gaining much as far as performance with the Core Duo as our application is hosted on a 50 server Citrix farm, and the processing and memory for the client app is all being done on across the 50 servers (again Citrix). The servers are HP DL360’s, dual CPU, 4GB of RAM, , and running Windows 2000/2003 server. We get about 40-50 users per server.
The real benefit to the Core Duo processor on these laptops was the power savings, which when using wireless mobile carts, battery life was certainly something we needed..
I don't keep up too much these days with the latest desktop hardware, I mostly do server/domain/network design and support now and my focus is in that arena.

Hopefully you cleared that equipment with your Clinical Engineering Dept! I know wireless devices can play havoc with some medical equipment ... I had a call a few months back that a new telemetry pack was all noise on the central station monitor, I asked if the person was on a cell phone - no, a laptop, I told the nurse have the patient put the thing away - problem went away!

I have a hate/hate relationship with the hospital's IT dept - I never met a bigger bunch of wasted technicians in my life ... before you get mad I'm talking specificaly about the hospital I'm at! They can't even change out hard drives without someone telling them what to do. They say NO more times than any technician I've ever met. Heck they change IP addresses on networked devices without telling anyone and then the equipment doesn't work ... sorry about my rant.

Talking about computers, my youngest bought a game for the computer we have and it won't work. I was thinking about upgrading the video card and adding some more memory. I went onto Dell asnd found their new E510's are going for about $699 with 19" monitor. I just bought a 19" LCD monitor - I could upgrade for about $520 ... I told him buy games for his x box instead!

[sledjunkie]

HAHA, Good stuff Vinny.

Ahh yes the clinical engineering dept...
Yes they are aware, and in fact (per the clin eng dept) our desktop technicians scan each cart before deployment. Not sure what type of scanning it is, it's some sort of device they need to use.. To be honest I wasn't too involved with that part of the process so I'm not sure what it's scanning for..

Too bad you don't have a good relationship with you're hospital's IT dept... I've been at the hospital for about 5 years now, and before that worked at a small software company during the whole dot com boom, so I understand where you're coming from.

The problem with some IT folks is they SHOULDN'T BE IN THE IT INDUSTRY in the first place".. It became so popular the past 10 years everyone wants to be in it.. I say 50% of IT folks today are in the wrong job. You have to have a love for it, and be good at it.. Many many many IT guys don't know the first thing about troubleshooting. I see it every day. It's a shame.
This is one of the biggest reasons you see alot of strange attitudes from IT depts. It's because they either don't know enough to either answer your question, or to solve your problem.

As far as games and PC's.. I recommend picking up an Xbox 360. It's quite the system, and actually does quite a bit more than just gaming.. It acts as a media center extender for your home theater for example. Pretty neat stuff MS has done with the Xbox 360.

[Vinny]

We have all sorts of video game generations here ... Nintendo, playstation and x box. My 11 YO got the xbox for Christmas last year and we refused to pay the money for the 360. He has it in his room and all his friends have that generation too so they go up there and play. Luckily we don't have anything on our family TV and we do have a home theater setup onto the main TV. We do have some little games that have stayed around it but all the gaming systems are in both my sons' bedrooms.

As far as the Hospital's IT dept. I'm a contracted employee there and the IT dept just became contracted. The problem they have with me is that I can troubleshoot and repair just about anything, that's my job. I have had problems in the past with them since I have responded to equipment that they deal with and troubleshoot, call and want them to respond immediately (We have 3 techs, IT has like 12). They come whenever and find out I was right and of course didn't bring the part. We asked them to give us a used floppy drive to get medical equipment up and running and they say they can't ... I can't believe there are no scavenger systems around.

I'm cheap when it comes to certain things and computers are one of them. In the past I've built my own, upgraded a dozen times and now I just prefer to buy. I have a Dell dimension 2400. It has a DVD burner that I used once but I can surf the net, write stuff and even stream videos without any problems!

[Bonibelle]

OK guys, thanks for this thread!   I need a new computer question answered and I know between the four of you, someone will be able to help me out.
I just got a Dell XPS 410... I added the dual Tv tuner card so that my husband could watch TV and record from the computer. I got a 24 inch DELL LCD flat screen ..Tonight we ran the cable ( I have Comcast...no cable box, just cable). I am definately not getting the picture quality from the cable as I am from a DVD or even video that I have imported from my digital camera. Any suggestions? I ran the cable through my surge protector first. Thinking that the surge protector was the problem, I bypassed it but it didn't seem to help. My son insists that we just have maxed out the splitters for the cable. (at this point we have split between 8 TV sets), is that possible? I also have a cable booster that the cable provider added.
Oh I connected my LCD to the computer with a VGA cable. I also have a DVI cable (I know- don't connect both), but why do you have a choice, is one better than the other?
I know that somehow this has to either be related to the cable or how the Tv card processes the cable signal since all other media is exceptional on this monitor...

Any suggestions would be appreciated!

[Vinny]

Boni,

Your son may be right! Video signals get weaker as they get split. It also has to do with the connections and the cable. If you ran RG-59 (old time cable) this might be the problem too. Try running RG-6, it has less signal drop and more bandwidth, I also think they make special RG-6 cable with very low loss. This also applies to the supply lead of the cable setup. You might even need to add a booster to the signal or maybe the splitter is bad or a combination of it all. Think of it as a chain of degrading -> 1% somewhere + 2%  somewhere else + ... = eventually it is a really bad signal.

I have 1 televsion out of my 6 that gets snow on some channels - I attribute that to bad connections. I also have digital cable and I was having pixelizing on the box ... again, a bad connection. My opinion is not to run a video signal through the surge protector (I know you're not at this point), recheck all the connections/ wiring and if need be boost the signal.

[Bonibelle]

So Vinny, I can boost this signal in addition to the booster that is in line from the cable company? I have a generic booster (no longer hooked up) but the cable guy added an industrial one when they ran new cable to my house about a year ago.

[badval]

It could be a simple matter of resolution and how the ATi card is processing and calculating a signal meant to display at 480 lines of resolution.  Your monitor has much more resolution than the broadcast signal delivers.  Your equipment has to compensate for the difference in levels of resolution and aspect ratio.  A lot is going on there and a very common complaint of LCD tv is that it doesn't handle standard broadcast signals well.

You can try keeping the picture to a 4:3 aspect ratio (which kind of defeats the purpose of buying a widescreen), but that usually makes the largest improvement.  You're still going to have some picture quality loss.  Your system is trying to turn 480 lines of resolution into 1366 lines.

You might be able to change your display resolution to 640x480 & see if that helps.  Until broadcast standards change in about 3 yrs, you're probably going to be stuck w/ standard tv looking bad, DVD's looking ok, & HDTV looking great (if you upgrade w/ cable company & get set-top box).

This Wikipedia page explains this much better than I can.