Building bros comp $1500 opinions

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sharpobjectss

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hello everyone, i am currently sorting thru parts to build my brother a computer (he is paying for it, trying to keep within 1500)
he already has a hard drive from a long time ago, from the box its a ::

Western Digital Hard Drive
Ultra ATA/100
7200RPM
120gigs
8.9ms
2MG Buffer

if i should get a new hard drive pls let me know, but I believe this should be fine.

He also has a shitty monitor, no clue what kind or what it looks liek but he says he is keeping it. Along with the HD and monitor he also has an old Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound card (which honestly i dont even know if it will be compatiable or not) and he wants to keep that instead of getting a new one.

ok onto the computer, here is what i have pieced together so far.




!!PAGE 2 WITH NEW SYSTEM!!




Ok now for the reasoning behind some stuff. I know a lot of people think the SLI boards are useless, however he is into games and i believe in the future the 7800 card will go down in price and he might want to buy another one of those and run the 2 in SLI mode. As for the fan controller, i was told that the case i choose had very loud fans, also my brother may wish to replace the stock fans later down the road anyway. If the controller is useless please let me know.

Basically i would love to know if all of this is compatiable with each other, are good/the best choices, and your opinions. The RAM im not sure about at all, i just picked random value ram, and as for the power supply I was at a loss as well.

Thank you :)
 
The ram is DDR2 and you need DDR ram (184 pin)

I would get a DFI lanparty board, cheaper and better.

I have no problems with the harddrive, but get 2 rounded IDE cables though. Have one for the harddrive and one for the dvd burner. Don't put them on the same cable.

You will have to use the extra 4 pins attatchment for the PSU. But is a good choice. OCZ are one of the best, and would be the company I would trust with such a good PC like that.
 
Everything looks really good, except the DDR2 thing that Trifid mentioned. That will turn out to be a killer system, and I wouldnt really change much.

The only other concern I have is that the hard drive has a 2MB buffer instead of an 8MB buffer. I cant tell you how much of a difference there is, though, but it seems like the HD cache should make a difference. Hopefully someone has a link to some benchmarks or something to compare an HD with 2MB cache to one that has 8MB...
 
I think that MSI board is definitely better if you won't be OC'ing like crazy. I own one, and I must admit, it lacks many of the memory settings that the DFI has. I think the DFI has some 24 or something while the MSI has 16 (not sure of the exact numbers, but something to that extent).

If you don't plan to OC at all in the future, the MSI may be a better choice.

I do think it would make more sense to go with the DFI though incase you plan to later. It's always nice to know that you will have the ability to OC on the best OC'ing board available should you decide to. And well, it is cheaper. I can't compare it to a DFI because I have never owned one, but I can tell you [from experience] that the MSI is a very solid board and has dealt with my abusive use very well. It even has a CMOS button instead of having to physically remove the battery. But those DFIs have buttons on the mobo to startup. But honestly, what would you need that for?

I would go with the DFI for the reason stated above. But make sure to analyze what you plan to do with it in the future. Keep in mind that your uses for a PC can often change.
 
i would get an evga card not bfg but its up to you i think the evga card is cheaper
 
Get the MSI NEO-4 SLI regular non platinum. Def the better buy. At 135, its very cheap for an SLI board.
 
ok, the set up is sweet, except the case is an overpriced piece of crap, and you should get this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811156175

it looks really sweet, and it's tight...
and one sugestion, that PC is so sweet, you're gonna ruin it with that slow hard drive, so get a Western Digital RAPTOR, to have windows and your main programs on it cuz this HD is SCREAMING fast... , and use that other hard drive as a secondary one, to just put the other crap on...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144200

oh, and for ram, get DDR ram with 2-2-2-5 timings... it's gonna be a little more expensive, but it's worth it
 
Alright I looked everything over and i decided to get that hard drive for his comp, ill just convince him to pay the extra 100 for the performance increase. I am also switching the mobo to the DFI LANPARTY nF4 SLI-DR Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI because i do intend on overclocking.

the memory im still looking around for, i will be changing that, and the case i dont how the other one is better minus the price. if anyone else can comment on the case or suggest one that would be great :)

thanks

edit: unrelated to this comp, however, i am planning on getting an LCD flat monitor for my comp, any suggestions for a fairly decent priced one would be awesome. thanks again

Fuji Plus FP-988D Silver-Black 19" 12ms LCD Monitor 250 cd/m2 600:1 Built in Speakers 0.264mm Pixel Pitch - Retail
 
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