Anybody built their own PC ?

Originally posted by james.miller
thats way too high. that's probably the problem right there. I could garentee that every time my axp1800+ hit 48c it crashed EVERY SINGLE TIME. that was with a volcano7 heatsink. now i've got an slk-800 - temps are 27c idle and 34c load. guess what - no more crashes.



Id say generally thats too high as well. But, if it aint broke, dont fix it:D As long as it doesnt crash, then you've got no problems.

According to the AMD web site the maximum operating temperature is around the 90 degrees mark. I would have thought around 50 is fine.
 
Sadly, the thermal specs for processors can rearly be trusted.. go to any computer-related forums and you will see the same there as i am telling you. 90% of people will tell you to try to keep the temps under 50c. anything higher and athlonxp's ARE in danger of damage, very possibly perminent. The same goes for intel p4's, but even more so. P4's are very picky about heat and especially voltage.

being a member of a pc-based forum, and seeing the amount of cpus that die because of heat-related issues, i would NEVER trust either intel's or amd's thermal specs for their processors.
 
I am going to upgrade my pc in the next few weeks but a little undecided to what i should buy. I was going to buy the new FX card but heard they are not very good so i will either be buying GeoForce 4 4600TI graphics card or the radeon 9700 pro.

I currently have a 64mb Hercules Kyro II card, i am also looking to upgrade the cpu i have 1.4 thunderbird at the min but dont know if i should buy an intel 2.4ghz or AMD Athlon 2700.

I can get an Athlon 2700 for £200 radeon 9700 pro for £260 and an Asus A7V8X SktA DDR M/board and Raid for £90, should i wait or are should i buy now as these prices are not too bad
 
well the really depends on what you expect from the products. are you intending on keeping they at stock speed, or are you overclocking them? I'm asking this because most xp2100+ thoroughbred 'b's are getting upto 2.4/2.5ghz with air cooling now, which is way past xp2700+ speeds (xp2700's run at 2166mhz btw).


personally, id rather sped £70 on an xp2100 and overclock it, than spend £200 and end up with something very much slower.

as for the graphics card, yes id recommend the 9700 pro if you can afford it. you could allways get the non-pro and flash the bios - the pro and non pro are 100% identical hardware-wise. all you have to do is flash the 9700 card with the pro bios and there you have a 9700 pro. the 9700 series are extreamly fast and you wont be dissapointed with them. to put there performance into perspective, even the 9500pro is up to 100% faster than a ti4600 with FSAA on. i would never recommend ANY nvidia card anymore. ATI have got all the bases covered and totally trounced nvidia.
 
I would agree with most of what James has just said.

However, it is worth pointing out that the XP2700+ is the thoroughbred "B" core, which does consume less power and hence generates less heat (meaning possibly less case cooling and noise)

Also, while there have indeed been some really good XP2100 chips lately and they do overclock really well, to overclock to their potential your memory will still have to be able to handle higher FSB's.

I wouldn't buy an Nvidia card now, my current machine has a Ti4400 but i will buy either a 9700pro (or wait for the 9900) which is due in April. ATi have truly spanked Nvidia when you turn on the nice filtering and aliasing features

A good place to find 9700pro for £230 is here
 
Thank you for your help i appreciate it. I dont want to spend a fair bit of money and then find what i bought is no good. I have 512 DDR (PC2100) and hard drive is 40 gig 7200rpm. I have been told by someone to wait for the Barton core as this will cause the Athlons XP to fall down in price.
I have never heard of the Barton core what is it and is it much better than Athlon XP, i just want to keep my PC roughly up to date so i can play all the latest games with no slow down and have the graphic details on high.

I have some money end of the month and i will def buy the radeon 9700 pro then, only reason i considered GeoForce is because i heard the Radeon drivers are not very good.
I have heard that you should not overclock the CPU as this will shorten it"s lifetime and you will experience problems in the future.
 
Oh by the way i have a dolby digital 5.1 amp i have seen the creative audigy have an optical output and coaxil output. I want to know do i have to buy the more expensive version which takes one fo the slots on your PC case or does the cheaper version also have optical and coaxil outputs.

I have soundblaster 5.1 live at the min but it is not dolby digital because does not have either a coaxil or optical output.

If you was me what would you upgrade
Epox 8k7A Skt A DDR motherboard
AMD Thunderbird 1.4 athlon
256 DDR (PC2100)x2
Kyro II hercules 64mb graphics card
Soundblaster live 5.1

Games i like are first person shoot em ups mainly, medel of honor,Unreal 2,Mafia and championship manager
 
The Barton Core is the latest version of the AMD XP. And the initial ones i have seen reviewed are rated as equivalent to 3GHZ (XP3000+). The main difference is they feature an extra 256k of L2 cache on the chip, which in theory means the Chip will be able to prefetch twice as much into extremely fast CPU memory than before.

However from the reviews, it would seem that it hasn't added lots over the thoroughbred XP2800+ and i have seen pre-order prices for the XP3000+ @ £500 :eek:

If i were you, i would buy either an XP2100+ or an XP2400+ and buy some faster ram and moderately overclock up to at least 166FSb (You should get a XP2400 to run at XP2700 speeds easily with a decent heatsink and PC3200 Ram)

This with a Radeon 9700pro should handle nicely the current games with high detail, though there will always be a game round the corner (Doom 3) thats going to push things to the next level

Overclocking is dangerous to CPU health if you overdo it (Mainly Voltage for RAM and CPU), but my current machine has been running overclocked for 18 months and absolutely no problem.

The main problems come if you are really trying to push the components for high scores on benchmarsks, but overclocking moderately not only saves you money, but these days is pretty easy and supported directly by most enthusiast motherboards

There are numerous forums where you can read all about this (A place to start is here ) they sell all the kit and have a good forum

IMHO would upgrade the following:

Motherboard - Abit NF7-S (wait for revision 1.2)
CPU - XP2100 or XP2400
RAM - 512 (2x256) Corsair/OCZ DDR Ram (Used in dual channel mode)
GFX Card - Crucial Radeon 9700Pro

The abit board has decent sound support and a digital out connection, so you may not need your Sound card
 
The CPU running temperatures that have been quoted by Intel and AMD, could they be in Fahrenheit? Converting 90F gives a value of 32C! Just a thought.

One other thing, does flashing the BIOS really turn an ATI 9700 into a 9700 Pro? What about the on-card cooling, will this be up to the job of the increased clock frequency and resultant higher running temperatures?
 
Originally posted by holtehero
I would agree with most of what James has just said.

However, it is worth pointing out that the XP2700+ is the thoroughbred "B" core, which does consume less power and hence generates less heat (meaning possibly less case cooling and noise)

yes, and so is the xp2100+ that i just instaled in a friends system, stepping "aiuhb" - one of, if not THE, best t/bred 'b' stepping you can get.

One thing though, they do not consume any less power. they have an extra layer of copper-interconnects which helps dissapate heat more efficiantly, which is why they run a few degrees c cooler than t/bred 'a's.
Also, while there have indeed been some really good XP2100 chips lately and they do overclock really well, to overclock to their potential your memory will still have to be able to handle higher FSB's.
Not a problem, concidering the motherboard he was looking at, even generic pc2700 will get him to 166mhz fsb.

Dont forget, the multipliers are automatically unlocked on t/bred's with 99% of boards that can adjust the multiplier. so you can up the multiplier and you AUTOMATICALLY have an xp2700+, so you DONT need high fsb's.
with t/bred's below the xp2100, 5x-12.5x are unlocked, while xp2100 and above have 12.5x> unlocked. some kt400 and nforce boards unlock all the multies, so you dont have to do any hardware modding whatsoever.
Originally posted by chicken balti
The CPU running temperatures that have been quoted by Intel and AMD, could they be in Fahrenheit? Converting 90F gives a value of 32C! Just a thought.

One other thing, does flashing the BIOS really turn an ATI 9700 into a 9700 Pro? What about the on-card cooling, will this be up to the job of the increased clock frequency and resultant higher running temperatures?
yes, as i said, both cards are indentical, including the cooling.


one last thing. Yes, overclocking does shorten your cpu's lifespan. But does shortening it from 20 years to 10 years really matter? by that time, most of us would have brought at least 3 new cpus anyway. It will shorten the lifespan, but you wont notice it:)
 
James,

You've piqued my interest. What card do you have? ATI drivers are everywhere but I haven't seen any BIOS's for these cards. Are they generic or specific to different manufacturers? Any info would be much appreciated as there are big bucks to be saved here.
 
So just to recap James, you think i should buy
Asus A7V8X (Skt A DDR M/Board+Raid, Sata 1394,LAN

Athlon 2400xp and overclock it to make it a 2700

Buy a Radeon 9700 pro grapahics card

If i buy these upgrades from a small local shop do you think they will clock it for me and would you recomend i buy some extra coolers.

PS you said i should upgrade to some faster ram i have DDR 2100 will i notice much diffrence going to 2700
 
chicken balti:
im currently running on a creative gf4 440mx:(
i did purchase a saphire r9500 which i planned to mod into a 9500pro, but unfortunatly it blew up on my before i got the chance. i didnt alter the card in any way. i just poped it in, checked the cabling and powered up. thats when it blew a hole straight through a capacitor lol
I'm waiting on a replacement an should be here by about wednesday hopefully.

crazzy kopite:
sounds good. i would buy some decent ram, however. i know i said you dont need it for high cpu speeds, high fsb's still make a hell of a difference to the overall speed of the pc. so get some quality pc2700 at least. corsiar, crucial, twinmos all make good quality ram. the choice is yours.


as for coolers, i would only ever recommend coolers from thermalright. if your serious about running at high speeds, then i would say the slk-800. it's expensive i know, but damn does it work:D a fan to go with it? either tha thermaltake smartfanII, or a tornado or delta with a rheostat.

edit: heres a review of twinmos pc3200 (ddr400 or 200mhz fsb)
http://www.theddrzone.com/review.php?category=109&id=189

and heres is komplett.co.uk selling it:)
http://www.komplett.co.uk/k/k.asp?ck=1&r=1&action=info&p=27378
£69.51....not bad at all for pc3200
 
Jamed would you choose the xp 2400 over the Intel 2.4ghz.

I can get the motherboard for £90
CPU £112 the Intel is £160
Graphics card £230
DDR (PC2700) 333 512mb £60

I still dont know if the cheaper Creative Audigy has optical and coaxial outputs does anyone know and is it worth buying.

I am hopeing the system of
Athlon 2400
1024 DDR Ram
radeon 9700 pro
40 gig Hard Drive IBM 7400rpm
Creative Audigy 2 sound card

i hope the system will last me 2 years, the upgrades will cost me £430 unless i upgrade the memory as well
 
yeah id go wiith amd. get a 2100+, not a 2400+. the only difference is their defult speed, and the price. they are otherwise identical.

for sound, i dont know why, but i personally wouldnt pay for an audigy 2. it just isnt good enough to warrent the price. also, along with its copyright protects (not exactly sure on what they do, but it isnt good) i just wouldnt buy it. if i were to buy a new soundcard, i would go for either a turtlebeach santaCruz, or the herculese gametheatre 5.1 or 6.1. the external box of the gametheatres have allways appealed to me more than any audigy has.

heres what i would recommend

athlon xp2100+ T/bred 'b' only
twinmos pc3200 ddr
ati radeon 9700
60 or 80gb maxtor diamondmax 9 w/8 mb cache
herculese gametheatre 6.1

one word of warning DO NOT EVER BUY AN IMB DESKSTAR. they are absolutly the worst hard-drives you could buy. their failure-rate is beyond a joke.
 
Will the hercules soundcard let me conect my PC to my dolby digital amp via optical?

I notice you recomended the Radeon 9700 is that the pro version or the cheaper version, also do you think the shop will clock the CPU for me.
I think i will print this topic for future refrerence, only two weeks till i upgrade my system :)
 
well id get the 9700 non pro and flash its bios, but its up to you if you want to take that risk. if not get the pro

as for the hercules, yes. 48khz spdif optical and coaxial in and out
http://europe.hercules.com/showpage.php?p=8&b=0&f=1

click on tech specs on the left for a full list

btw, they also make a gametheatre 7.1
 
Thank you James you have saved me a few hundred pounds :)
I will get the 9700 radeon pro. I always thought over clocking the cpu would shorten it"s life time i will buy some of the coolers you recomended to be on the safe side :)

I will let you know how i get on when i upgrade my system in 2 weeks
 
no problem, keep us all updated. remember to get a decent psu to power than lot. i'd recommend a sparkle 400w
 
for people owning or looking at buying a athlon Xp cpu,, remember you will need to get it unlocked before you turn it up too much.. or system will crash ALOT.
 
That shouldn't be a problem with the new nforce2 boards or VIA KT400 as they unlock the Thoroughbred "B" CPU's without the need for joining the bridges on the processor
 
Originally posted by Dave20
for people owning or looking at buying a athlon Xp cpu,, remember you will need to get it unlocked before you turn it up too much.. or system will crash ALOT.

As holtehero said - that isnt a problem with thoroughbred xp's. not just 'b's though, 'a's are also unlocked.
 
Just my two penny worth as far as HD go. I have a Western Digital with 8mb of cache, and found it the fastest and most reliable dive I have had, and there seems a lot of offers of them going round there code number ends in JB.
 
indeed...
I got 2 of 'em and they're running sweet...

make sure they're Western Digital SE (if you want the 8MB cache ones)

model number WD800JB for the 80gis , 1200 Jb for the 120gig..etc

i know of a place www.chillblast.com that does a price match ... just tell them 'DIYSOS ' sent you ;) ...advantage is that you get next day delivery (in most cases) and brill cust service!
 
I used Chillblast, they were the cheapest at the time and turned everything round in two days. Ordered on a Sunday night, delivered on the Tuesday morning. Cool!
 

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