Computer Build

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Ankush09

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Hey, I have a friend willing to spend $3500 Canadian on his new computer, which is going to be for gaming. Here are the parts I have choosen, please give suggestions:

AMD Athlon 64 FX57 San Diego 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Processor Model ADAFX57BNBOX

DFI LANPARTY nF4 SLI-DR Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX AMD Motherboard

QUANTITY 2 OCZ EL Platinum Revision 2 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC3200) Model OCZ4001024ELDCPER2-K

eVGA 256-P2-N538-AX With Battlefield 2 Bundle Geforce 7800GTX 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card

Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 ST3250823AS 250GB 7200 RPM Serial ATA150 Hard Drive

SAMSUNG Black IDE DVD-ROM Drive Model TS-H352A/BEBP

NEC Black IDE DVD Burner Model ND-3520A-KIT-BLU - Retail

ZALMAN CNPS7700-CU 120mm 2 Ball Cooling Fan

ZALMAN VF700-CU 2 Ball VGA COOLER

Thermaltake PurePower W0023R ATX 560W Power Supply

Thermaltake Armor VA8000BWS Black Aluminum/Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case

Grand Total: 2770.89US
He DOES want it later in the fall, so the prices will decrease.
 
Drop the Raptor. Grab a couple of Seagate SATA 80s with NCQ and RAID them.

It's cheaper, and faster.
 
I was thinking its already a waste of money, and i wouldne see much improvement. He doesnt need much space, so just cut off the raptor and keep ONE 250gig? i think thats what I'm gona do
 
You use the RAID drives for your OS and programs, the 250 for files and data.
 
That rig will chew through any game alive on highest settings without breaking a sweat. I would do the harddrive switch as the others suggested, and leave it at that.

The Zalman heatsinks/fans should work very nicely. That system is going to be a real beast for overclocking
 
idiotec said:
The only thing RAID beats a single Raptor at is in synthetic benchmarks. In real world performance benchmarks the Raptor owns 2 7200 drives in RAID.

Edit: I couldn't find the bench I was thinking of, but this is a good one.

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=1746&page=4

Getting a high score in pcmark dont always equal seeing performance increase in real life. The reality is raptors dont give you much of a improvment but if benchmarks important to you lets look at some.

Here one that acturally show real life
2694.Png


Notice a small 3 secounds you save in load time over a 16 cache harddrive with 3 times the space and cost the same amount.

Anouther more useful benchmark for mutitasking

2706.Png


Look at that the 7200RPMS harddrive are acturally better then the raptors.

IF you going for bragging rights for highest score in PCMARK or other like benchmarks tools then you want a rapitor. If you only care about performance increases that you will see in real life then raptors are a waste of money.
 
Ankush09 said:
I was thinking its already a waste of money, and i wouldne see much improvement. He doesnt need much space, so just cut off the raptor and keep ONE 250gig? i think thats what I'm gona do

Yeah if I was you I would just keep the one 250GIG harddrive. I already showed why rapitors a waste of money. If I need to I could also show that RAID 0 is not worth it. With RAID 0 you run the risk of if just one harddrive crash loosing all your data. It very difficult to recover data of a RAID 0 setup that goes bad. You also dont get much of a performance increase in what the average user does.
 
Bah, first I wasn't arguing price/performance. If your a kid and tight on money it might not be for you.

If you want the fastest drive, it is a Raptor. And consintently they even beat the performance of 2 7200 drives in RAID 0.

If you want to pick out a piece that isn't worth the money, its the FX-57. Definately not worth over 3 times the cost of a 3700 San Diego or over 2 times the cost of a 4000 San Diego.
 
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