The XMEN Clan Forums

Okay, based upon input from a couple of other threads I'm in the process of picking out the components for my system. Below is a screen shot of the contents of my cart at Newegg.com. Here's what I'm asking...

1 - Do you see any obvious incompatibilities?
2 - What would you recommend changing and why?
3 - What's missing? I know that there's not a power supply listed, but what else is missing and what would you recommend?
4 - Anything else I missed?

Thanks!

I would add a power supply. Say about 400 - 450 Watts range.

I have had a very good experience with Enermax, but they are a bit expensive. (Worth it in my opinion.)

I have put the Xclio Stablepower 500's in all my highpower builds and not one problem yet. I love them. Best bang for the buck at $62. You really need a good powersupply for a highpowered machine like that.

Question: Why DDR2 1000? You can get the Mushkin DDR2 800 for less than half that price for the same size, 4GB. You aren't going to need that extra speed unless you overclock. Just asking.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820146692

David

I'll second Ice's comment.

Was wondering about the hard drive warranties? Not a huge deal if your small one goes out as they're not very expensive to replace, but I'd want to make really sure the company was confident about that TB drive. Just asking because they're listed as OEM.

I'll change out the memory. No big deal - I was just looking for something in the 2Gb DIMM range.

As for the HDD's, what's wrong with OEM? All I really care about is that they're Western Digital. Reason being that the only HDD failures I have ever experienced have all been Maxtor, which is now owned by Seagate. If you have a better suggestion I'm all for it. I need the sizes shown, and I don't want to speed to be slower than 7200rpm.

Okay, here's cart part deux...


I followed Asha's advice and added the Enermax power supply. I took Putz's advice and changed out the memory. I changed out the HDD's to Hitachi based upon advice I found at Anandtech.

Thoughts?

Heh. Nothing is wrong with OEM. It's just that OEM usually carries different warranty terms, and I wanted you to be aware of what those were, whatever they were. Sometimes an OEM hard drive even carries a better warranty than retail. In any case, I'm glad that you researched the drive closely. Not such a big deal for a gaming rig as it is for a picture store. FWIW, I've had drive failures on Seagate, NEC, IBM, and... something else. I'm not very brand-loyal on drives.

You still may be spending more on memory than I would, but it's understandable (per above comparison). Mushkin's certainly a good brand. I just lean more these days toward, say, Patriot or OCZ.

I have had very very good luck lately with GSkill memory. I also like the OCZ and Crucial.

OEM drives are fine, that is what I get. I have been using the new Seagate SATA drives, I like the perpendicular recording technology. They are very quiet and fast. No failures yet but they are fairly new.

Okay, no one has said anything about a heat sink for the CPU. Never bought an AMD CPU before; will it come with one? If not, the Newegg site shows a Rosewill RCX-Z1 unit that got some decent reviews.

The CPU comes with one. You don't have to worry about it. And the new AMD's come with a copper core heatsink, they are very nice.

Great!

Okay, so how does the cart look? Anything missing? Pretty solid configuration for a non-gaming, business machine?

Thanks for the input and advice, folks!

Comment on the heat sink, just to clarify:

Retail Boxed CPUs, both Intel and AMD, come with a factory heatsink & fan that is fine. Only overclockers or folks without air conditioning (heh) really need to worry about replacing these stock units, since they're actually pretty good.

OEM CPUs are shipped in a tray and do not come with the HS/Fan. Everyone buying one of these needs a HS/Fan. Meaning the money you save by going OEM is almost certainly wiped out by that cost, anyway.

I think you are ready to go bud. Please let me help you build that.

Don't! It'll get his cooties! You know you don't want a computer with putz cooties in it.

Hmmmmm.... last of my computer parts were delivered yesterday by the big brown truck. Did a quick inventory of everything, looked in the processor box and.... no heat sink. Means I'll have to buy one from Fry's or something.

Edit - 2nd check of the box shows that there's a label that even says, "No Heatsink/Fan Included". DOH!