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Roll your own

 
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Scratchmonkey
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Joined: 02 Mar 2005
Posts: 1439

PostPosted: Thu Mar 22, 2007 1:34 pm    Post subject: Roll your own Reply with quote

For the past couple years I've entertained the prospect of building my own PC with the main purpose being catching up with years of gaming that I've missed. I have a 2-year-old laptop that runs a lot of things pretty well, incluidng Half-Life 2 at medium settings; however, it chokes on Oblivion and obviously can't run anything like Stalker or Fear.

So, with that in mind and with my Christmas bonus as a guide (at this point a charred and crumbling guide), this is what I'm looking at:

Proc: AMD Athlon 64 X2 5400+ Windsor 2.8GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM2
Mobo: ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe Wireless Edition Socket AM2 NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI MCP ATX AMD
Video card: EVGA 320-P2-N815-AR GeForce 8800GTS 320MB 320-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP
PSU: FSP Group (Fortron Source) FX700-GLN ATX12V, V2.2/EPS12V, V2.91, 700W RoHS Quad. SLi
Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda ES ST3320620NS 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s
RAM: Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1000 (PC2 8000) Dual Channel

That's a lot of numbers! And it adds up to quite a bit. On the other hand, it should be enough to handle everything that's been released to date and a lot of what'll be released in the future.

As for monitor, I'll try and find the best Samsung LCD that I can get for the price and ditto for a low-end Lian Li case and prolly a Samsung optical drive. Keyboard and mouse to be determined.

Thoughts? Warnings? Screams of terror?
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dhex
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Joined: 13 Dec 2004
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Location: brooklyn, Nev Yiork

PostPosted: Thu Mar 22, 2007 7:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

that looks pretty dope to me.
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AJ 187
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Joined: 26 Dec 2006
Posts: 22
Location: Chicago

PostPosted: Fri Mar 23, 2007 1:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

yeah that looks pretty good, assuming you get an OS that runs in 64 bit.
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simplicio
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Joined: 03 May 2005
Posts: 1091

PostPosted: Fri Mar 23, 2007 1:42 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Recommendation:
Buy a generation behind, especially with the GPU. It's really damn easy to waste $100-200 per component buying the bleeding edge while not getting any recognizable gain. I've run Oblivion, Stalker, FEAR, HL2, etc. just perfectly comfortably on my 9800 pro which is what, 4 years old at this point? My guess is that your laptop fails you largely on the RAM side of things. So unless you're one of those dorks that just upgraded your 60" tube TV to a 60" Bravia so you could watch the Fifth Element in HD rather than just plain DVD, you might be overshooting the mark here.

Think of it this way: six months from the time you buy any bleeding edge component, you can generally buy it for half the original price or less. And there is no game in existence that will require you to buy a quad-SLI setup to be playable.

Another recommendation:
I've never once regretted my Dell 2405FPW, in gaming or otherwise. And the optical drive makes no difference whatsoever.
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dhex
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 23, 2007 7:41 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

you might have a good point here were it not for vista and dx10. in a year or so we're going to see a lot of dx10 only games, and in two years that will be the rule.
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Shapermc
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Joined: 14 Oct 2004
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 23, 2007 8:54 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

what the hell is dx10?

I kind of hate computers from a recreational side at this juncture.
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ryan
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Joined: 20 Feb 2005
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 23, 2007 8:57 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Shapermc wrote:
what the hell is dx10?


Direct X 10

From wikipedia: "DirectX is a Microsoft collection of APIs for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming, on Microsoft platforms. One portion of it, Direct3D, competes against OpenGL and against SDL. It is widely used in the development of computer games for Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Xbox and Microsoft Xbox 360."



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Whenever I get an old system running with my super sweet Diamon Monster Fusion (Voodoo Banshee), I get to bask in the glory of early OpenGL Quake. Good times.
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dhex
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 23, 2007 9:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

shaper long story short dx10 means you either bump to vista or you don't play games on the pc after figure maybe two years or so, depending on how things move.

i.e. this is my last year of pc gaming, probably. but what a way to go out! stalker, bioshock, crysis, half life 2 ep 2, etc.

even hellgate. i think that has potential.
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Ethoscapade
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Joined: 30 Oct 2005
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 23, 2007 9:34 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

hey man hell if the eventual ep3 (aka "mango box") won't run on dx7 hardware.
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Shapermc
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 23, 2007 10:48 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

BIOSHOCK!

My wife actually said to me the other day: "When's that awesome looking game in the underwater city coming out?"
"Which one?"
"The one that was pretty violent"
I remembered I had shown her the Bioshock trailer "OHHH! BIOSHOCK! Yeah that comes out in the fall."
"Oh Sad "
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"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"
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Scratchmonkey
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Joined: 02 Mar 2005
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 23, 2007 11:29 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

simplicio wrote:
My guess is that your laptop fails you largely on the RAM side of things.


Nah, it's the video card (ATI x300). I mean, I could upgrade the RAM to 2GB from 1; that seems a little silly to me considering the rest of the innards.

After talking to Mr. Hexler about it, I may wind up waiting to see if I can get through my current work project without putting anybody in an oil drum, filling it with concrete and then rolling it off the Richmond Bridge, then reward myself with builidng a PC, which should mean some price drops on the above components.
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ryan
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Joined: 20 Feb 2005
Posts: 999

PostPosted: Fri Mar 23, 2007 1:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Scratchmonkey wrote:
Nah, it's the video card (ATI x300). I mean, I could upgrade the RAM to 2GB from 1; that seems a little silly to me considering the rest of the innards.


Yeah, I have the same problem. It runs some stuff (Guild Wars) great, but other things (Rome: Total War - Barbarian Invasion) can barely crawl along. Although it's surprising what runs good with lowered settings, like Battlefield 2.
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