Critique my computer

[Griselda]

I am planning to build a computer for Mr. Gris for the holidays, and as luck would have it the recent storm seems to have killed his old one. I've built a couple of computers before, but always from a parts list put together by a friend. This time, I'm trying it myself, and this is our first computer since the days of PCI express and dual-core processors, so I had quite a bit of learning to do to even get started. I am trying to spend around $800, and have a list that is just a tad over.

He's going to have to keep his old monitor, DVD drive, OS, and extra hard drive to make this fit in the budget. Also, we are going SLI but only buying one video card for now. He wanted dual-DVI outs, just in case he adds a second monitor, someday.

So, take a look at this list. How does it look?

CPU- AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual core 4200+ retail $172
(this is the 89W, I don't know what the difference is between that and the 65W)

MB- ASUS M2N4-SLI nForce4 Sempron/Athlon $94.99
I'm a little nervous that this board accepts Semprons, but it also takes the Athlon 64, and appears to be the same chipset as some of its more expensive relatives.

VID- XFX PV-T73G-UGD3 GeForce 7600GT 256 MB $149.99 before $20 rebate

RAM- Corsair TWIN 2x2048 DDR2-800 $257 before $40 rebate
OK, we're spending some cash here. It doesn't seem like we want to skimp on memory, though. Please note that this appears to be two 1024 sticks, not two 2048 sticks (silly and excessive)

Power- Seasonic S12 500W $119.99
Should be enough juice to power that second vid card if/when we get it.

HD- Hitachi Deskstar 7K80 80GB SATA II $50.99
He has a couple of old HDs to move over, but wanted a fast one for (at minimum) the OS.

Case- RAIDMAX xB ATX528BP w/ lame power supply $41.99
I'd rather spend the money on a better case without a cheap power supply, but there were no cheaper ones that had front USB ports.

The free shipping from zipzoomfly is nice. Obviously, I'll shop my list around a little when I'm sure that I'm not going to change any parts except maybe the case. I might just get the case locally, too.

Ideas?

[Taem]

Just off the top of my head without check out the links you provided, just make sure that motherboard will accept a dual-core proccessor, the video card is SLI, and that the chasis, er case your purchasing will be big enough for the video card and motherboard your getting. Also, have you considered a RAID 10 configuration since your getting a SATA drive and a nice motherboard? You might want to invest into this in the future to prevent disk corruption and help dramatically increase the performance of your system; it requires a total of 4-sata drive of same sized partition. The 2-gigs of ram is a great idea. Seems you can upgrade to 4, but thats overkill now. You might need that much if you get the newest Windows, but not for gaming - not yet at least. It's good you leave your options open though.

With all this nice stuff, what are you using for sound? Seems like a great possible gaming machine, but if your using dinky headphones, kind of kills it, dosen't it? Just my 2-cents.

The next computer I build is going to be tricked out ala 2-Fast 2-Furious with neon lights on the chasis and cables. I know, I'm such a nerd when it comes to this...

[Griselda]

Just off the top of my head without check out the links you provided, just make sure that motherboard will accept a dual-core proccessor, the video card is SLI, and that the chasis, er case your purchasing will be big enough for the video card and motherboard your getting. Also, have you considered a RAID 10 configuration since your getting a SATA drive and a nice motherboard? You might want to invest into this in the future to prevent disk corruption and help dramatically increase the performance of your system; it requires a total of 4-sata drive of same sized partition. The 2-gigs of ram is a great idea. Seems you can upgrade to 4, but thats overkill now. You might need that much if you get the newest Windows, but not for gaming - not yet at least. It's good you leave your options open though.

With all this nice stuff, what are you using for sound? Seems like a great possible gaming machine, but if your using dinky headphones, kind of kills it, dosen't it? Just my 2-cents.

The next computer I build is going to be tricked out ala 2-Fast 2-Furious with neon lights on the chasis and cables. I know, I'm such a nerd when it comes to this...

He has a nice Terratec sound card that he's moving over. I forgot to mention that. :P

Edit- Oh, you meant speakers, not sound cards. His Terratec cards allows him to go through stereo speakers, I think, plus he has a set of computer speakers when the stereo isn't available. He's a DJ, so sound equiment is all up to him.

You're right that the vid card itself might not be SLI. I'll check that.

[Griselda]

OK, I did some checking on the video card, and it will work with SLI. However, this website recommends a 550W power supply for SLI mode. I don't want to buy a new power supply when I buy the second vid card (6 months maybe?). I could spring for the 600W Seasonic, but it would bump the price up $50 or so.

[Rhydderch Hael]

You forgot the retractable drink tray.

[Griselda]

You forgot the retractable drink tray.

He'll have to use his old one, or a coaster.

[DeeBye]

The Athlon X2 line has been overtaken by the Intel Core 2 Duo processors for performance/price. I'd seriously look at building an Intel-based system using something like the Intel Core 2 Duo E6300. It's a tad more money, but outperforms the X2 4200+ by a significant margin. Check out this Tom's Hardware review of the Intel Core 2 Duo versus the Athlon X2 lines. You'd obviously need another Intel-based motherboard if you went this route.

I'd also like to suggest being careful about what video card you buy, and whether you REALLY want or need SLI. Direct X 10 cards are just around the corner (in fact, they are already here), and spending a lot of money on mid-level DX 9 cards (like the 7600GT) might not be such a great investment. This goes double when you plan on going SLI.

I've always reasoned that SLI is not a great idea unless you are buying the absolute top of the line cards. You can always buy a single card that will outperform a pair of mid-level cards in SLI, and for a better price. A single 7900GS beats the absolute PANTS off of a pair of SLI 7600GTs, for about $200. And in six months, there will be an even better upper-range card than a pair of SLI 7600GTs, for an even better price.

[Griselda]

Well, I went ahead and ordered it, actually right after I read DeeBye's post. While I agree that the Intel dual cores generally outperform the AMDs, it seems like the AMD is a decent enough chip at my price point (remember, I was already overbudget). It was also recommended by a Tom's guide, fwiw.

I'm also wary of SLI. It really strikes me as "Hmm, technology isn't improving quickly enough for people to need to buy new cards. I know- let's make everyone buy TWO cards!" But, in this case I feel like we didn't have that much to lose. I don't think I could have done much better on price for a quality non-SLI board, and for now we bought the best ONE video card that we could afford. In the future, we have the option of adding a second card for SLI, or replacing it with a newer card. Without the SLI board, we wouldn't have that flexibility. We're buying the machine now, and not 6 months from now, so whether or not we would be able to afford DX10 cards or quad-core processors (heh) in 6 months isn't really a factor. (Although it might be for me, as I will need a new comp if any new games come out that I want to play. We used to always buy two computers at once, but the price of two computers is significant enough that we haven't upgraded in so long that I can't even remember what year it was.)

I actually did go ahead and go for a 7900 GS card, though. I talked to a friend who had TWO of the XFX 7600 cards break on him, so we were switching to a slightly more expensive MSI card anyway. So, the price difference between the 7600 and 7900 was even smaller than it had been before.

I also stuck with the 500W power supply. I am thinking that a good Seasonic 500W might be better than an average 550W from somebody else. I also ended up buying from Newegg, because they had more choices in cases without power supplies, and the prices were comparable otherwise. It looks like we got a better case for about the same price.

We still need to figure out what is wrong with the old comp to see if we can salvage some of those parts for little Gris' computer (when we get an upgrade, she gets an upgrade, hehe). It would be nice to be able to move most of it over. I'm thinking it could be a power supply issue, and the problem began when the power flickered on and off for about 10 minutes before an 18-hour blackout. It could still be a lot of things, though.

[kandrathe]

...I've always reasoned that SLI is not a great idea unless you are buying the absolute top of the line cards.

But, if parallelism makes any sense for CPU's then it should eventually make sense for GPU's. I would expect that eventually having multiple parallel processors would be the optimal solution for graphics, but it is always hard to know when that time has come.

[Tal]

But, if parallelism makes any sense for CPU's then it should eventually make sense for GPU's. I would expect that eventually having multiple parallel processors would be the optimal solution for graphics, but it is always hard to know when that time has come.

There is the very real problem that precious little is being written that would take advantage of SLI's particular strengths where dual-core CPUs don't need any such consideration to be as useful.

[Drasca]

Right now, newer cards generally outperform and cost less than older cards on SLI. I don't recommend SLI unless you want bleeding edge. I'd rather get a new card than put an old gen one in SLI...

Good choice on the 7900GS upgrade. The rest is... nice to keep within budget:)