ok, so i plan on slowly building my next comp. just looking for some advice.

i have been a asus follower for a long time.. 10+ personal machines over the years.

i plan on going AMD but not a high end CPU right away. i was thinking a mid range XP CPU.. like a XP 2500 or so.

i like asus because they are just reliable as hell. never had a prob with any of my MBDs.

i wouldnt mind staying with Asus, but this comp is being built just to OC. so i want a MBD that is highly OCable, and able to take new CPUs when i get the cash for it. i have a WC kit already, so that will be my cooling. i currently have about 2 gigs of PC2700 i would like to use until i upgrade that as well.

so, anyone want to toss in thier 2 cents ?

im open to all MBDs.

thanks in advance,

Hellz

OK dude ASUS isnt a problem. Heres a Spec list I think you should follow:

Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe nForce2 AMD Athlon XP2600 Mobile


Corsair 1GB DDR XMS3200XL MSI NX6600GT-VTD128
Platinum TwinX


and ofcourse a good thermalright heatsink. But perosnally im unsure wehter the SI/SP97 is the wiser choice.

The 2700 will bog u down a tad, I recomend you sell that on and go up to the standard PC3200. 2GB isnt nessecary really, some of us here are still crusing on 512, and the record for 3DMARK 2001 is based on just 512mb of memory. A gig will see you in good stead As its a mid range I thnk the above will have good OC stability, and keep you going for a while. Upgradability is also there and youe still got the 6800 series above that, and ofcouse faster memory. The ASUS board is the best that I know of for socket A.

Quote: Originally Posted by nev_payne The 2700 will bog u down a tad, I recomend you sell that on and go up to the standard PC3200.

yeah i agree, iv got a 2500+mobile and an NF7-s Rev2 and 512 2700 and man, the ram bottle neck is killing me. iv had my friends 3200 in for a oc test once and it added a TON to my benchmarks. deffinitly go with some nice ram.

If your looking to OC I would drop that board and go for Abit NF7-s. The Asus is a good board at stock speeds but OC potential just isn't there when put next to the NF7. And I would get better memory then that if your gonna run a 2600 mobile because he's looking at a fsb of 450 easy so he is going to need memory to keep up.

Remember, if you use 2gb of RAM, you can run windows with no page file, which is very nice, indeed.



J

how does that work, i thought windows had to have the page file to run at all???

my memory is just so i dont have to drop alot of cash at one time upgrading. i plan on upgrading it to 3200 or better, but for now im just going to piece it all together starting with the Mbd and Cpu.

not sure on the video card just yet. i plan on gaming on this new comp, but really really hate the thought of dropping $300 plus on a video card just to have it outdated in a year and selling for $99 bucks. so i may hold off and just use my curretn ATI 9600 for now.

not worried about heating as i will be running a water cooling unit to the CPU and VGA. its a all in one kit, but it was free. Titan internal/External Water Cpu and VGA cooler TWC-A04. its a ok kit, but i know i will be gutting it soona nd replacing the pump atleast.

BTW... i have been researching this all, but i just got back from a tour over in Kosovo and had been out of the loop for the last year. so im just catching up on everything that has been released. the Abit boards i hear alot abotu how good they are Ocing, but i dont have any personal exp with them. so thats why i asked for some opinions to see what would be a better mbd and such.

thanks again
Hellz

well your not really getting rid of the page file, your really just saying that the page file exists in the memory instead of your HD.
you can actually do it with lower memory as well. im thinking closer to 1 gig or so maybe 1 gig to 1.5.

ehh,

Hellz

Quote: Originally Posted by Hellzarmy my memory is just so i dont have to drop alot of cash at one time upgrading. i plan on upgrading it to 3200 or better, but for now im just going to piece it all together starting with the Mbd and Cpu. not sure on the video card just yet. i plan on gaming on this new comp, but really really hate the thought of dropping $300 plus on a video card just to have it outdated in a year and selling for $99 bucks. so i may hold off and just use my curretn ATI 9600 for now. not worried about heating as i will be running a water cooling unit to the CPU and VGA. its a all in one kit, but it was free. Titan internal/External Water Cpu and VGA cooler TWC-A04. its a ok kit, but i know i will be gutting it soona nd replacing the pump atleast. BTW... i have been researching this all, but i just got back from a tour over in Kosovo and had been out of the loop for the last year. so im just catching up on everything that has been released. the Abit boards i hear alot abotu how good they are Ocing, but i dont have any personal exp with them. so thats why i asked for some opinions to see what would be a better mbd and such. thanks again Hellz

The Abit NF-7 (Or even AN-7) are the generall thought of as the best overclocking boards around, the DFI Lan Party/Infinity is the second best...
Zenn has hit 3GHZ on his Abit, and will run to around 450FSB, with a few voltage tweaks and a custom Bios they will reach over 500FSB.
My stock DFI LP Mobile 2500+ will run at 520FSB using some PC4000 with a Bios update

Your 9600 will do fine for a while, when considering a somewhat reasonable budget, I think anything much over 200$ is a waste for a video card.
A 9800Pro or 6600GT are in that price range and would be a nice upgrade if you were to buy soon, but the best bang for the buck can change quickly...so do a check back in when you are ready to go for it

Don't worry about your video card quite yet, if you're budget strapped... I'm still running a 2 year old (come January) Radeon 9500 Pro 128mb, and it still works the new games (Doom 3, HL2..) with ease.

my plan of attack is to buy the motherboard first, then CPU to get the system up and going. after that to buy some better memory and then a video card.

i would like to stay away from doing and tweaks to the MB( soldering and what not) but if i gotta do to fry my comp, i guess i'll do it.

side question... anyone here build a acrylic case at all? from scratch ? if so, where did you get the parts and got any pics?

instead of using a old case, been tossing the idea of making this new comp easy on the eyes as well. somethign with clear walls and some fancy lights. cuz you know the guys with the fancy lights gets all the chicks, right?? hehe

thanks again

Hellz

pcapex.com - cuz chicks dig a pimped out rig wasn't that the slogan long ago?

You mentioned that you wanted the ability to upgrade the CPU later...just FYI AMD is phasing out the socket-A chips and moving to the 754/939 sockets. You might want to keep that in mind, and but for the future...

Quote: Originally Posted by Hellzarmy my plan of attack is to buy the motherboard first, then CPU to get the system up and going. after that to buy some better memory and then a video card. i would like to stay away from doing and tweaks to the MB( soldering and what not) but if i gotta do to fry my comp, i guess i'll do it. side question... anyone here build a acrylic case at all? from scratch ? if so, where did you get the parts and got any pics? instead of using a old case, been tossing the idea of making this new comp easy on the eyes as well. somethign with clear walls and some fancy lights. cuz you know the guys with the fancy lights gets all the chicks, right?? hehe thanks again Hellz

I take it you have a slightly older system in need of an upgrade then (You don't have it listed in your profile)

If you are going that route above, I suggest skipping the old Athlon XP 2500+ (Socket A)

AMD 64 (Socket 754) is the best value for the near term, and still has a reasonable upgrade path, Socket A is past it's prime.

Don't think it will cost a ton more either, the Chaintech Zenith NF3-250 board is around 75$ and overclocks reasonably well, or the socket 754 DFI Lan Party will rock past 300FSB for around110$

The current "Best bang for the Buck" CPU is the Athlon 64 2800+ at 112$ from Portatech, it can reach 2.4GHZ or more with out too much trouble.

Later down the road prices will drop quite a bit for this platform, then you can grab one of the recent favorite of overclockers, the 3400+ (Around 200$ at the moment)
The 450$ 3700+ is the highest currently available CPU for this platform.

I have a 1.8GHZ Sempron 3100+ wich is virtually the same as a regular AMD 64 2800+ with less cache, and no 64 bit support on the DFI Lan Party running over 2.4GHZ , and it simply blows away my old Mobile 2500+ overclocked to 2.6GHZ in benchmarks and in day to day use it feels much more responsive.

EDIT: OOPS!!! PJ was thinking exactly the same thing above (wasn't there when I started)
Socket A is fine for short term, 754 will be around for a quite a while and is currently the best performance/price combo.
While 939 is what AMD plans on using for the long term, the CPU prices are a bit high for now (155$ for a 3000+) and finding a good performance motherboard is sketchy for the PCI express N-Force 4 at the moment, they have just now started to hit the shelves.

Right now, a Gigabyte GA-K8NS (that's what I'm getting at least..) with an A64 3000+ is about $225 total... An Asus A7N8X with an XP 3000+ is about the same price (if not a little more o_O)

i read alot of people saying if you buy a mbd, get one with the Nforce2 on it. i havent heard or seen anyone say much about the new kt800 tho, nor the nforce 3 and i think i saw a nforce 4 out there as well.


right now, it is looking like this is the mbd i want if i go with a 939 socket
http://usa.asus.com/products/mb/sock...d/overview.htm#

i know i will have to buy new memory, as well as a new video card. but its nto like i was really planning on throwing this system together in a day and start gaming and Ocing. i expect this upgrade to take a few months for me to get all the pieces together. this way i can spend more cash on items at a time. liek right now, i willing to spend 200 on a mbd. after the new year, i expect another 200 or so for a CPU, and so on and so on.

granted this Asus board has onboard audio, but i guess thats ok. i normally dont like anything on board except maybe Lan. but this board looks pretty sweet. i will search around some for some Abit boards to see how those are. if anyone ekse can recommend a good board.

here is my idea for you, an amd 2500+ M
your probably wondering why i'd segest that,
well it has a low stock voltage, high heat tolerence,
and the multi is un locked, Dfi lanparty, i hear nothing
but good things about the board. 2GB of pqi it has lower
voltage than an equal sized and rated corsar
as for the video card 6600gt

Socket A's are great cpus but coming out of style, as posted above by a few people, and he said he parts in bigger timeline for better parts so I think he would want to go with a amd64 system.

You're coming along at a time when the AMD processors are going through change. The XP line has been a great one and is still a great value buy. The mobile XP2500 or mobile XP2600 are excellent choices and very overclockable.

But the future is the A64 processors. Two variations are generally available, the 754 pin based cpu and the 939. The 939 is the future direction but unfortunately aren't cheap at this point. I bought an 754 A64 3200 as an affordable initial step into the A64 arena, reasonably priced and overclockable. However when I want to step to the 939 processors, I'll have to buy a different mobo when I move to a 939 cpu.

This issue of things getting old and outdated isn't a new problem of course and you just have to decide what is the best direction for you.

In terms of motherboards, I'm partial to DFI today. In the past I've used Asus, Epox, and Abit also. Abit was king of the hill a couple years ago with NF7 and NF7-S rev2. However a couple years ago DFI hired the designer of the NF7-S away for Abit (Oscar Wu, think that's his name) and has been on the raise in the overclocking arena ever since. The DFI Infinity and Lanparty are nForce2 based boards for the XP processors and the DFI LanParty UT 250 is a nForce3 board for the 754 A64 processors, all these boards show Oscar's touch and overclockability.

Which motherboards are trouble free? If you're overclocking, I don't know of any. Trouble is part of pushing the edge.

Whatever you buy, have fun!

well this is what i went out and bought today.

DFI LP UT NF3 250GB
http://www.microcenter.com/single_pr...uct_id=0180962

AMD 64 2800

ill still use my old memory and video card for now, but will evetually upgrade those.
once i get up and running, ill post some benchmarks.

anyone running this curent system or similar specs got anythign to say on it?

thanks,
Hellz

Quote: Originally Posted by Hellzarmy well this is what i went out and bought today. DFI LP UT NF3 250GB AMD 64 2800 ill still use my old memory and video card for now, but will evetually upgrade those. once i get up and running, ill post some benchmarks. anyone running this curent system or similar specs got anythign to say on it?

I'm currently running the nF3 250GB with A64 3200.

You should be happy with it, I am. Take your time with the overclock till your used to the slight adjustment on the new setup.