Recommendations for PC System Builder

[eric_palmer1]

Okay - I've priced out the Intel system and now need sugestions for AMD. I'm AMD stupid so please explain XP and MP.

 

What motherboards would be recommended. Looking for high reliability, USB 2.0, FireWire, 4 IDE UDMA 100 or higher ot serial ATA, on-board promise raid would be nice with AGP 4X or higher. Don't need onboard sound or LAN. Must take up to 2 GB RAM.

 

Thanks in advance.

 

BTW - I'll publish the cost and specs when I have the AMD system spected out.

 

Cheers,

 

Eric

[jimvanson]

For a high end MB my suggestion is HardOCp�s MB of the year & Tom�s highly rated choice the Asus 7N8X DX. Review here;

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=Mzk0

or

http://www6.tomshardware.com/mainboard/20021111/index.html

Corsair 512MB PC-3200 DDR ram or Samsung 512 MB PC3200

Thermaltake Volcano 7+

Probably an XP 2700 with a 333 FSB

Antec SLK-2600AMB Metallic Bronze Mid Tower w/ 300W SmartPower PS and two stealth Case fans or a new Antec LanBoy Case with the same PS and fan setup

Matrox G550 Video Card

WD1200JB 8Meg Cache

I don�t know what your sound tastes run to. The MB�s built in sound may be good. If not the Sound Blaster Audigy value with i1394 port.

Windows XP Pro

So what will you end up with? The machine will be fast. It will be cutting edge. Then of coarse you could think dualie...a dual processor machine...wonder how much that would be...

You could also go the other way and build a machine almost as fast for about half the cost.

You�d use a K7S5A board (limited to 2 RAM slots though), a G4 video card, PC 2700, USB2/Firewire card, WD 1200 JB 8 meg cache drives, Volcano 5 fan (or something else that�s quite), and something like an XP1800+ to 2200+ CPU. All in a generic box with a good 300 W PS.

In closing I'd like to apologize for the appearance of this doc. I'm not going to learn HTML or whatever it takes to format this thing correctly...jim

[www.alaskanphotographs.com]

Here is my two cents. I'd forget IDE hardrives altogether. I've built several computers from scratch, and upgraded many many times. By far the best speed increase/ purchase was the scsi ultra 160 controller card and the 15,000 rpm seagate hardrive. If you really want to smoke go for the scsi raid set-up with two scsi drives. www.hypermicrosystems.com is the place to go for anything scsi. The scsi hardrive until replaced by its predecessor was the fastest drive on the planet. They are designed for enterprise server use (on 24/7), the warranties are far better. Scsi will also give you multi-tasking abilities thar are unsurpassed by IDE, this alone will make you system much more stable. Scsi drives won't tax your CPU as much as IDE drives will as well. Go to www.storagereview.com to see a comparison of IDE vs. SCSI drives performance. I hope this helps. SCSI is more expensive, but it is twice as fast in the real world and last three times as long! Good Luck!