New PC 2008

Post by **GORDON** » Wed Jun 25, 2008 2:50 pm

We always had these threads in the past, so I'll continue the tradition:

1

Antec Three Hundred Black ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
Item #: N82E16811129042

Standard Return Policy
$69.95

1

EVGA 123-YW-E175-A1 LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 750i FTW SLI ATX Intel Motherboard
Item #: N82E16813188026

Limited Non-Refundable 30-Day Return Policy
$189.99

1

Antec NeoPower 650 Blue 650W ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply
Item #: N82E16817371010

Standard Return Policy
$159.99
$109.99

1

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz LGA 775 Quad-Core Processor Model BX80562Q6600
Item #: N82E16819115017

Processors (CPUs) Return Policy
$209.99

1

CORSAIR DOMINATOR 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model TWIN2X4096-8500C5DF
Item #: N82E16820145197

Memory (Modules, USB) Return Policy
$176.00
$136.00

2

Western Digital Caviar SE WD1600AAJS 160GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
Item #: N82E16822136075

Limited 30-Day Return Policy
$89.98
($44.99 ea)

1

Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 32-bit English 1pk for System Builders DSP OEI DVD
Item #: N82E16832116485

Software Return Policy
$109.99
$99.99

Of note:

- QUAD CORE! Will soon be revisiting SupCom....
- 4 Gigs of memory!
And two hard drives.... I'll be going RAID 0. Taking my chances by skipping parity, but I was trying to keep things as close to $900 as possible.

This is a fairly kick-ass gaming machine (mostly), and all for about $900. The only thing that didn't kill me on price is that I already have an NVidia 8800GTX video card sitting here that was given to me. That would have added another $250-ish to the price. Also, no new monitor or speakers. And I made sure to get a mobo with room to upgrade the CPU, memory, mouse, etc, unlike the last mobo I got which was kind of a dead-end.

Sweet.

I'm so excited.

(When there are two prices, that is original price and then price after "instant rebate")

Malcolm · Post by **Malcolm** » Wed Jun 25, 2008 3:01 pm

Western Digital Caviar drives? Damn, I remember buying one of their earlier models about 8 years ago.

Post by **GORDON** » Wed Jun 25, 2008 3:05 pm

Yep, apparently they are still making "gamer" quality stuff..... considering I used PC Gamer's "Build the Perfect Gaming PC" in the Feb 2008 issue as a starting guide. And since 4 months have passed since that issue came out, I was able to get some parts faster and/or cheaper than they said I could. Yeah, "no duh," but still. Only been 4 months.

Post by **TheCatt** » Wed Jun 25, 2008 4:15 pm

I'm a pretty firm believer that dual core is better value for same $ at the current time.

Post by **Cakedaddy** » Wed Jun 25, 2008 5:21 pm

Me too. Was going to suggest hitting some bench mark stuff to see if quad was going to run SC better than dual. Last time I looked, Dual was better in most games.

Post by **GORDON** » Wed Jun 25, 2008 7:03 pm

Man, y'all are just so jealous....

Post by **TheCatt** » Wed Jun 25, 2008 7:06 pm

I went Dual core 3.0Ghz for 2008 PC.

Post by **GORDON** » Wed Jun 25, 2008 7:11 pm

TheCatt wrote:I went Dual core 3.0Ghz for 2008 PC.

Yeah but <s>this goes to 11</s> mine's a quad.

Post by **GORDON** » Wed Jun 25, 2008 7:12 pm

What I really tried to research was the comparison between Intel's Core 2 Quad, and AMD's new Phenom. The Intel Quad is actually 2 cores each on 2 separate chips, but the Phenom is 4 cores on the same piece of silicon. But in the 10 minutes I spent looking, I could not find a side-by-side price/performance comparison for those 2 product lines.

But the CPU I bought has won numerous awards, so even if the AMD is slightly better, I have the peace of mind that I have a mature, well-tested and highly-rated product.

Post by **TPRJones** » Thu Jun 26, 2008 2:09 am

Quad core? Do they make Vista 128 for that?

Post by **GORDON** » Sun Jun 29, 2008 12:38 am

I have a couple negatives to report once I get around to it, but when I was playing Sins of a Solar Empire tonight at one point I paused the game, minimized, went into Task Manager, and saw all 4 2.4 GHz cores working at about 50% capacity. On my single 2.1 GHz core previously, on a map the size I've been playing and at medium-low graphics, I was getting a slide show of about 2 FPS. Now I have graphics maxed and am playing smooth as silk. So this new game, for one, can use at least 4 cores. I've not personally tested any others.

Negatives later.

Oh, also tested HL2:Ep2 for about 10 minutes. No lockups. So anyone still playing TF2?

Edited By GORDON on 1214714356

Post by **GORDON** » Sun Jun 29, 2008 12:48 pm

Some negatives:

- I think one of my 2 sticks of RAM is bad. If I put the bad stick in any slot of the mobo, even by itself, I get a C1 mobo error.... that means a memory issue. So at the moment I have a single stick of 2GB memory in the thing. But I'm only 99% sure it is bad memory, as....

- This must be a real enthusiast mobo, because I actually had to go into BIOS to set memory timings and power settings and shit. There's a 1% chance I may have set it wrong and now it will recognize one stick, but not the other.

- I'm not as happy with the on-board mobo audio, even though it is 7.1. I either miss my dedicated X-Fi sound card, or I just think I do. Maybe if I actually had a 7.1 speaker setup. This on-board audio just doesn't sound as crisp and all HELLO FUCK YOU in your face. Again, there's a chance I'm just imagining that.

I'll probably be purchasing a couple new sticks of RAM and just RMA'ing the other instead of a straight RPL, so I don't have any PC downtime (when I was programming I was doing a lot of warehouse stuff, so I know the lingo). I don't think newegg.com does hotswaps, or at least they didn't a couple years ago when I bought a bad mobo.

I want to say there's one more small negative I wanted to mention, but now I'm blanking.

OH........ the RAID setup was slightly less intuitive than I've seen in the past on a Dell XPS system. I wanted to set RAID 0, but it gave me the options of "mirroring, striping, spanning," and a couple others. I wa pretty sure I wanted striping, but it was such a huge pain if I ended up wrong I had to wiki the term "striping," yaddah yaddah yaddah. I'm pretty sure I have the Array set up properly, it says so during POST, I wish there was a way to test it. It is still pretty simply to set up RAID on this mobo, I just think it could have been done better.

So that's about it. General impression of this system: Very happy, not counting the bad stick of RAM.

Post by **GORDON** » Tue Jul 01, 2008 12:51 pm

OH...almost forgot this negative:

This style of mobo and CPU has, in my opinion, a really shitty way to mount the CPU heat sink.

At each of the 4 corners of the heat sink is a rivet that you have to drive into what are obviously pre-drilled holes in the mobo... the part that made me sweat was that once the mobo is in the case you don't have good visibility, it is hard to see if you have things lined up right before you start thumb-driving the rivets, and it seems to take way too much force than I was comfortable with to get the rivets seated. I don't like have to use muscle when building a PC, especially in relation to a mobo. One small scratch breaks a circuit and kills your board. I had to actually use the tip of a screwdriver to drive the last rivet because of awkward positioning... I couldn't get enough downward force to my thumb. It had a happy ending, but one slip and I was done.

So, that sucks.

Post by **GORDON** » Wed Jul 02, 2008 3:05 pm

Update:

My new memory just arrived, and one of THOSE sticks out of the pair was bad, too. I've now had to use the one good stick out of each package in order to get 2 working sticks.

Jesus.

Beware of the memory product from the original post.

Post by **Leisher** » Wed Jul 02, 2008 3:17 pm

I'm not a fan of the Corsair Dominator RAM either.

Stick with Crucial, I recommend them to home users all the time and I've never heard of anyone getting a bad stick.

Post by **GORDON** » Wed Jul 02, 2008 4:03 pm

This mobo.... through accident or on-purpose... reset all of my BIOS settings when I installed the new stick. Twice. Had to relearn it that it had a RAID array, correct memory timings, and such.

Went into a weird boot-reboot cycle....... I reckon that had to do with the bad memory timings/undervoltage.

Malcolm · Post by **Malcolm** » Wed Jul 02, 2008 4:06 pm

Hmm, Corsair's usually decent. I typically stick w\ Mushkin.

Post by **TheCatt** » Wed Jul 02, 2008 4:37 pm

I've had a roughly 15-25% failure rate on new memory chips on systems Ive built.

Malcolm · Post by **Malcolm** » Wed Jul 02, 2008 5:14 pm

TheCatt wrote:I've had a roughly 15-25% failure rate on new memory chips on systems Ive built.

Wow. I've'd one stick flame out on me once.

EDIT : The "release now, patch later" philosophy getting applied to hardware now, too?

Edited By Malcolm on 1215033320

Post by **GORDON** » Wed Jul 02, 2008 9:22 pm

This is probably the last Corsair I buy. They used to have a good rep, now the last 2 of 4 sticks I've bought have been bad.