Building Computer - Help Please

[Solariss]

Alright, I have almost all of my parts for my computer, except the case I have only has a 350 watt power supply. Everyone is telling me to go with a namebrand power supply like Antec, but does it really matter? The case also has no fans inside of it and I am wondering how many I would need, and where to put them. I'm thinking about buying a different case around 60-70$, because what I bought was just a barebones so the case came with a bunch of parts.

Specs:
AMD Athlon 64 3400+
Asus A8V Deluxe motherboard
1gb Kingston DDR400PC3200 ram
eVGA GeForce 6800GT
Western Digital SATA 80gb hard drive

Can't think of anything else to list, but any help would be appreciated.

[Phoenix]

Only problem is that isnt mine .

You will have one kick ass PC with that setup. I would add a little extra HD space though.

[Zarcath]

Powersupply can make or break your system, don't skimp out on it, especially if you're using it for gaming. I use an Antec 430w (http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...103-908&depa=0) haven't had any problems with it. My old PSU that crapped out on me was a 350 no name brand.

Another thing people like to skimp on is the CPU fan, I recommend a Cooler Master Aero (http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...103-139&depa=0), these things are great, better then the Volcano's and way more quiet.

[Brettation]

you may need more then 350watt, the geforce 6800 sucks alot bro,

[Ham n Cheese]

The 6800GT does not suck. Get a 480 or 500w PS. And wtf, 80gb? I also heard the 3400 isn't a huge jump from the 3200, but the 3500 can be overclocked much better.

[Kilivek]

yes powersupply matters MUCHO get something moderate.

[Fer0x]

Originally posted by Ham n Cheese
The 6800GT does not suck. Get a 480 or 500w PS. And wtf, 80gb? I also heard the 3400 isn't a huge jump from the 3200, but the 3500 can be overclocked much better.

He meant sucks alot of power. Now don't you feel stupid. Second, overclocking is retarded, why shorten the life of your component by over 1/2 just so something will boot 2 seconds faster, or you will get 2 extra fps. Last, power supply brands make a huge diffrence. For one thing noise, which should be a factor, cheap power supplies usually generate a ton of noise. I can't judge recent antec power supplies, because I had bad experience with them in the past I just haven't bothered giveing them another chance. I've always been a fan of enermaxx though. Bought a couple for me and my friends, and I'm loyal buyer now. Nice and quiet and no problems.

In short a bad, cheap power supply, could cause irregular crashes, can shorten the life of some of your components and usually have a bad - no warranty. You might want to think of your power supply as investment honestly, if you buy a really nice good one, you'll be able to use it for several years even after you upgrade your mobo/processor a couple of times.

[Jerkinder]

go with 939...754 going out of date soon with 939 3000 and 3200's

[Solariss]

Thanks for all the help, probably gonna end up buying an Antec 430 watt at least. 80gb is more than I'll ever need most likely, but if I ever need more I'll just get another hard drive.

[Faddor]

Antec is a good brand for PS, as is OCZ, which is what I use. I like their Modstream PS that allow you to attach just the cables you want. This component causes more problems than any other one. Suck it up and spend 150$ on one and be confident it will work for many years.

I would recommend not wasting money (1.8 ghz 3000 = 155$ [newegg], 2.2ghz 3500 = 250$, sorry, no thanks. Last 3000+ I OC'ed met my 'absolutely rock solid stable 100%' at 2.42 ghz, and that was a Newcastle core which is not supposed to take to OC'ing nearly as well as Winchester) on a 3400. The 90nm Winchester core 939 A64 at 3000+ easily overclocks to the 3500+ speeds, and with a good heatsink solution, won't heat up hardly at all over stock heatsink/idle temps.

Contrary to what some 'informed' parties will have you believe, a proper overclock does not (significantly) shorten any hardware life or cause any problems, it's just a fucking pain to setup. I've sold 32 PCs overclocked in the last 3.5 years, 7 of which stayed in the family, and the only hardware failures I've had to deal with servicing were both no-name power sources that came with the case. (It can be argued that at 4 years +, severe OCs can strain equipment, but ffs, if you're buying a 6800GT, you ain't keeping your PCs around for 5+ years.

Additionally, having used most of the big name ram (Corsair, Kingston, Geil, Mushkin) I highly recommend OCZ RAM, as the Gold Revision 2 dual channel kit I put in the last PC I built smoked what I thought was the top dog RAM (Corsair XMS extreme low latency) by a margin of 14% in several memory benchmarking suites including SiSandra.

[Mkopec1]

Get a second 80gig sata and do up a raid-0 set up.

You will have a smokin 160 gig to play with.

For the case and p-suply I bought the Antec SOHO file server. Its made out of some 1mm thick steel, its fucking huge, so you have all kinds of working room (and air flow) and it came with a 400W Antec power supply which kicks ass.

I think it cost around $90 at newegg when I bought it. I built a P4 rig with one for myself, and also built a AMD 3800 rig for my bro with that case and they both rock. dont think my P4 3.0 ghz ever went above 70F even when running games like EQ2 on it. My bros comp runs a little hotter, around 110F full load, but I think that all AMD chips run hotter than the Pentiums.

[Eomer]

Personally I think RAID-0 is overrated, unless you have the money to burn. And in that case then I would make sure I got some sort of redundant array (can't remember what number of RAID that is), as well. Having two hard drives striped basically quadruples your chances of data loss down the road. And considering that the performance improvement from it will only occasionally be noticed when loading levels in games (and then only by a few seconds, maybe), I don't think it's worth it. I used to be more positive on it, simply cause of looking at synthetic benchmarks showing how goddamn fast a RAID-0 setup is. But a few weeks back some gaming website did a comparison of load times in Far Cry, HL2, Doom3, and maybe some other games (and maybe not all of those three, I don't remember) and the load time improvements were damn near nothing. Saving three or four seconds on a 40 second load time just isn't worth the trouble, IMO.

Contrary to what some 'informed' parties will have you believe, a proper overclock does not (significantly) shorten any hardware life or cause any problems, it's just a fucking pain to setup.

Yeah, it will, but it depends on a lot of factors. If you have really good cooling and don't play with the voltage much, then your CPU should last a long time regardless of how fast you run (who cares if it only works for 6 years instead of the guaranteed 10, right?). But if your cooling is mediocre and you do play with voltages and jack it up, you can wear out a CPU pretty fast. I had one of those awesome Athlon XP 1700+ that overclocked like mad, and were perfectly happy with really high voltages. Ran fine at 2500mhz for 8 or so months, rock solid. Then all of the sudden it wouldn't even run much past it's stock frequency (1433) without serious stability issues. It was just plain worn out. Not that I cared much, it was like 90 bucks CDN, oh noz. Ended up replacing it with a 2500+ mobile Barton for the unlocked multiplier, but it never came close to touching the clockspeed of that old T-bred.

And I also vouch for OCZ ram, it's a bit less expensive than Corsair, but seems to be as high of quality. Hell, most ram makers buy the same chips from the same manufacturers.

[Aldarion_Shard]

WTF are you guys doing with your hard drives that 80 Gb isnt enough?

I have an 80 and I think Ive filled less than 10 Gb, including all games and music and everything.

I mean, a second hard drive is a very valuable thing, its true... but seriously, how can you even come CLOSE to filling 80 gigs??

[Eomer]

Shrug, downloading all the super high quality vids from www.allinternal.com and www.asstraffic.com takes up about 65 gigs on my HD! Had to buy a new one cause of it :/.

[The Bog]

Originally posted by Aldarion_Shard
WTF are you guys doing with your hard drives that 80 Gb isnt enough?

I have an 80 and I think Ive filled less than 10 Gb, including all games and music and everything.

I mean, a second hard drive is a very valuable thing, its true... but seriously, how can you even come CLOSE to filling 80 gigs??

My Mp3s total about 10 gigs, games are about 50 gigs, I have a 250 gig HD. I am a HOARDER.