Planning a system for a friend, need advice
Posted: Tue Aug 23, 2005 9:39 am
Hi guys and girls,
a friend of mine is building a home computer for himself. He will get the computer through his employer and because of this his component selection is somewhat limited regarding manufacturers. The "problem" is, that all components must remain in stock condition, so I cannot swap heatsinks etc... This person doesn't play at all, so a very lightweight GFX card is OK. He has a server, so he really doesn't need big chunks of storage space. The computer will mainly be used for surfing, movies, digital video cam encoding etc... "normal medium usage"
Below is a list of things I've gathered, I would appreciate your help on this one
Motherboard, S939
Possible manufacturers are ASUS, Abit, Asrock, MSI and Intel.
I'm planning on taking a Venice core Athlon64 3000/3200+ for his system. I've understood the stock HSF isn't THAT horrible...?
Are there any good boards out there that have four SATA connections onboard, RAID5 or RAID10 would be nice? C'n'Q appreciated also. Should we be looking at nForce3 or nForce4? AGP or PCI-E?
I've though about using two 1Gb/512mb sticks of RAM as DC. Kingston is the only viable manufacturer in this case. Are the HyperX memories worth considering or should just go with good ol' ValueRAM?
GFX card:
as stated, mainly 2D usage. So I think a GF6200 or similar will be OK.
HDD:
1-2pcs Samsung SP1614C (SATA, 160GB, 8mb). AFAIK, these newer Samsung drives should also be quite quiet?
The case will be one of Compucase, the choice would be between LX-6A21 and CI-6919. PSU will be a HEC, most likely the new Powermaster 480W (only HEC with a ready 24-pin ATX-connector)
So, if you got this far, thanks for reading! Suggestions especially on the motherboard selection would be very much appreciated. Thank you!
a friend of mine is building a home computer for himself. He will get the computer through his employer and because of this his component selection is somewhat limited regarding manufacturers. The "problem" is, that all components must remain in stock condition, so I cannot swap heatsinks etc... This person doesn't play at all, so a very lightweight GFX card is OK. He has a server, so he really doesn't need big chunks of storage space. The computer will mainly be used for surfing, movies, digital video cam encoding etc... "normal medium usage"
Below is a list of things I've gathered, I would appreciate your help on this one
Motherboard, S939
Possible manufacturers are ASUS, Abit, Asrock, MSI and Intel.
I'm planning on taking a Venice core Athlon64 3000/3200+ for his system. I've understood the stock HSF isn't THAT horrible...?
Are there any good boards out there that have four SATA connections onboard, RAID5 or RAID10 would be nice? C'n'Q appreciated also. Should we be looking at nForce3 or nForce4? AGP or PCI-E?
I've though about using two 1Gb/512mb sticks of RAM as DC. Kingston is the only viable manufacturer in this case. Are the HyperX memories worth considering or should just go with good ol' ValueRAM?
GFX card:
as stated, mainly 2D usage. So I think a GF6200 or similar will be OK.
HDD:
1-2pcs Samsung SP1614C (SATA, 160GB, 8mb). AFAIK, these newer Samsung drives should also be quite quiet?
The case will be one of Compucase, the choice would be between LX-6A21 and CI-6919. PSU will be a HEC, most likely the new Powermaster 480W (only HEC with a ready 24-pin ATX-connector)
So, if you got this far, thanks for reading! Suggestions especially on the motherboard selection would be very much appreciated. Thank you!