High end gaming rig for sub $700 - PSU enough?

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Thank you for acknowledging my research. There have literally been sleepless nights I've spent reading about each part.

Trust me though, I know about how wonderful the black box 5000+ is. I originally was going to pick it up for $92 and some change (shipping included) and while the default 5400+ isn't much of an "upgrade" per se, it runs faster at stock, and that's really all I need. As long as I see people running Crysis with two gigs of worse ram than I chose, the same graphics card, and X2 3800+ processors, I'm positive, for my purposes, that the 5400+ will deliver more than exceptional performance for me, at least until I decide to find an AMD quad that I'm interested in ;)

You did, however, provide great details about graphics cards/ power supplies to me, and for that, thank you very much. It makes me feel much more secure knowing that I should be fine. For me personally, I wouldn't trust Coolmax with those cards, but I'm glad you did, and even happier to hear you had good experiences for the most part.

I feel really solid about this build. Can't wait to throw the parts together. Thanks ricanflow and nagasama. The parts are already ordered now, but I don't feel I'm missing out by not getting a 5000+ black box. I'm stoked about the 5400+ at stock. Getting an extra 200mhz out of it, even with increasing the voltage is just fine by me.

Because of the great help and suggestions I've received here, I'm making this my new e-home for computers instead of PCMech.com. I have my own site as well, dedicated to the Sony PSP. It's PSPBrew.com, if anyone is interested. I'm not trying to advertise, just be helpful if anyone is looking to run homebrew on their PSP. Great community of helpful people, much like this site. Knowledge is power.
 
Also, have a look a this

Newegg.com - GIGABYTE GA-P31-S3G LGA 775 Intel P31 ATX Intel Motherboard - Intel Motherboards

Newegg.com - Intel Core 2 Duo E4600 Allendale 2.4GHz 2MB L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor - CPUs / Processors

Check this review, this is a proof that E4600 is better
X-bit labs - Contemporary Dual-Core Processors Shootout (page 3)

E4600 is slightly faster than AMD 5600+ on average. So, it is faster than 5400+.

In addition to that E4600 overclocks better as well.

(Note for people here: I'm not forcing anyone to buy Intel. He can buy the slower AMD processor if he wants.)
 
Um... no? I chose AMD because I wanted it, but thank you regardless. Is nagasama the only one to understand lol?

Anyways, well, I'm a man of my word. I'm back to give the heads up about all of the parts and how easy the build went together. This is going to be a long post of reviews for my products. If you don't feel like reading all of this post, please know that I recommend all of the products I chose at an A+ level of satisfaction and ease of use. I do have one problem with my motherboard that I'll outline in the bottom of this post in red font like this, so please help if you can. I also haven't ran 3Dmark yet, the thermal paste hasn't set in yet on the processor fully, so keep that in mind. Anyways, continuing on...

First off, the Nextherm ICS 8200 is a beast of a case. It offers amazing cooling efficiency (avg. 4 degrees off each component) and is so strong structurally that I'm confident that if I wanted to, I could STAND on it without harming it. The 4 temperature diodes work extremely well and seem to capture temperature and update the front panel every 1 second. Two of the diodes are free to place wherever you wish. The power supply included is a complete steal as well. It has enough juice on the +12V rail for any power-hungry single-card graphics solution on the market right now and the voltages are solid as ever. I haven't seen them fluctuate once yet. The Nvidia 8xxx series graphics cards, known for being long cards, are nothing to this case, as you have over one whole foot of clearance until you reach the A/C unit. My ATX motherboard is the same story, and fits with so much clearance that there is a full 6 inches from the edge of the hard drive to the right side of the motherboard... talk about roomy! While gaming in Windows XP and playing Crysis with all of the settings on high, 8x anti-aliasing, 1280x1024 resolution and with the A/C unit on "snow" mode, the wattage gauge on the front panel never went above 350W of use and the game is not only "playable" at that performance, but very enjoyable as well. Considering that this case still sells for upwards of $250-300 around the web, and sometimes even higher, and keeping in mind that I got it on newegg for $99 and free shipping (41 lbs free!!!), I have to rate this product an 11/10. It's the most high-end case I've ever seen and it's the easiest thing ever to navigate. I would have paid $99 for this power supply, let alone this tank of a case.

Second, the motherboard. The manual was helpful until I was installing the cables to the top/front panel for the microphone and headphones. I can't tell where all of the pins go because the documentation differs too much in terminology from the case to the motherboard (more info at bottom). However, seeing how that is the ONLY thing I can say that is negative about this board, I can't help but give it a 9.5/10. The motherboard itself didn't come with screws either, but the case did, and with plenty of them along with paper washers to protect the A770. I installed it, powered on, and it worked the first try without any problem at all. The features in the BIOS rival those of a motherboard easily twice as expensive and offers every feature I need. Great purchase for a budget high-end gamer ;)

Third, the WD Caviar 320gb 7200RPM 16mb cache hard drive. I won't go into detail here, as this isn't exciting, but I'd just like to comment that it can install games and programs faster than 1gb per minute. Crysis only took a little over 5 minutes to install, for instance. Very fast, quiet, and most importantly, efficient. 10/10.

Fourth, the Lite-On optical. This is the worst part in the build, and not because it doesn't work as it's supposed to, but because when it is at full-spin, it's the loudest component in the case. That's probably easy to imagine though, and almost expected, so it gets an 8.5/ 10.

Fifth, the GPU. I have to say that this thing is a workhorse. I mentioned my performance with Crysis earlier, and that proves that this card is no joke. Also, upon downloading RivaTuner, I was able to change the fan speed from the defaulted and SLIGHTLY inefficient 29% speed, to 65% speed. Doing so dropped the temperature of the card from 58-59 degrees Celsius to 43-44 degrees Celsius, and now under load, 58-59 is the highest I've seen the temperature raise so far. Well within temperance, and quiet (though I'm sure the 1.0mm steel on the case helps to limit the sound some. 100% fan speed is a little on the louder side, but it's not a "whine" or aggravating sound. It just sounds as if I installed an old case fan in the top vent or something to that extent. Seems how this thing benches within 3% to the GTX model in most tests, I'm beginning to think that this is truly the next Nvidia "flagship" card. I can even juice more performance out of it by using the superclocked BIOS, but I haven't decided to do that yet.

Lastly, the 5400+ X2. I'm used to a Turion 64 X2 1.6ghz, so the Athlon 64 X2 2.8ghz is actually sometimes scary to be on. It's faster than fast and capable of powering through Winrar archives with ease. It's surely enough for any game I can throw at it and even though it's not the best overclocker, I could hit 3.2ghz safely if I wanted to, and that's enough of an overclock to notice even more performance gains. Tips for overclocking would be nice. I'm a smart guy, but I've never done it. 10/10 score for sure.

*** This is my only problem with the build ***

Everything works but the mic port and the headphone jack, and I want the headphone jack to work. Could someone please help me match the pins correctly? The motherboard manual gives these pin names:

1. Mic Left in
2. Ground
3. Mic Right in
4. GPIO
5. Right line in
6. Jack Sense
7. Front Sense
8. Key
9. Left line in
10. Jack sense

The cords from the case are labeled:

MIC-POWER
GROUND
L-RET
MIC-IN
R-RET
L-OUT
R-OUT

Help aligning these pins would be great. It's the last thing I need to do.

-DarkPacMan77-
 
DarkPacMan77 said:
I have been a two year member of PCMech.com and I'm so sick and tired of those fools. "Get an Asus p5k-e" - "Get Corsair" - "Get a five hundred quadrabajillionoid watt power supply or the terrorists win"... needless to say, I'm just tired of them not understanding that some people just don't want what every single other person has.

Anyways, I came here because my parts will arrive soon, perhaps even today, and I'm wondering if the power supply bundled with my base is going to be enough for my system. I know people with as low as 250W system running 8800gt 512mb cards :eek: ... that's just scary to me. The 460W PSU with the Nextherm ICS 8200 is apparently very high quality, has the power on the +12V rails, and I really don't think I need to choose another power supply. My build is listed below for reference, but my interests are with the PSU.

The parts I chose are:

MOBO: Biostar A770
GPU: EVGA 8800GT 512mb / 256-bit
HDD: WD Caviar SE16 320gb / 16mb cache / 7200 RPM
CPU : AMD Athlon 64 X2 5400+ Brisbane 2.8ghz 65W
RAM : Wintec AMPX DDR2 800mhz 4-4-4-12
CASE/ PSU: Nextherm ICS 8200
OPTICAL: Lite-on 20x DVD R Burner w/ lightscribe
OS: WinXP 32-bit


I'm very computer savvy myself, so I know everything is compatible. I've researched all of the parts, yes, even the Wintec ram, and everything is exactly what I want out of my new system. I've already purchased everything, so please don't recommend a different processor or hard drive or something because I WANT the parts I have lol.

What do you guys think about the power supply? I've used a few power supply calculators and the highest I was recommended for "my system" was a 403W power supply, and that was when I was actually lying and calculating specs for a more advanced system with more ram, 3 hard drives, and 16 case fans lol.

I think I'll be fine, but do you guys have any worries?
Click to expand...
o_O

darkpacman? How did you come from psp-hacks to here? sup?

sounds like you may be an amd fanboy just like des ;)

anyways, I recommend a e4600 like maroon said. I never heard of that case, but every case is fine if it has at least 3 fans, enough room, not cardboard, and cool features. My 60 dollar ultra case ran my core 2 duo with a tuniq at 15C idle. I'd say that's cool ;)
 
HOLY CRAP PSP CRAZY!!!!!!

Anyways, no, I'm actually an Intel guy! lol

But hey man, it's great to see you. Like I said though, the case has over a foot of space for a graphics card and it's always cold. If I take off the side panel, I'll get cold lol. Have any idea about these pins though? Also, I have my own site, PSPBrew.com. Worth a look-see I think. RAM = perfect. It has a lifetime warranty anyways. I'd have no problem getting working sticks if it was an issue.

-DarkPacMan77-
 
you got me on that one, man. the only thing i can find about it...in the manual it says it must be HD audio, which your mobo is, but no explanation of the pin-outs.
here is my wager (no guarantees, lol):
1. Mic Left in OR Mic Right in ---> MIC-IN
2. Ground ---> GROUND lol
3. Mic Right in ---> see above
4. GPIO ---> "general purpose input/output" i have no idea what this could be for.
5. Right line in ---> R-OUT
6. Jack Sense
7. Front Sense ---> this "may" be the GPIO
8. Key
9. Left line in ---> L-OUT
10. Jack sense

really, i have no clue. i was never able to make my front jacks work (but, i have a soundblaster card, and it just WONT work with front jacks).
so, i am just guessing here.
good luck.
 
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