Building the *almost* Ultimate System.
Building a cutting edge system on a budget - By Lewis Miller
The System Made Me Do It
A couple weeks ago i decided to get a new graphics card so i could play a new game (c&c tiberium wars). While at walmart i spotted a graphics card on sale, the GeForce 5500 FX and purchased it. Unfortunately my current motherboard had onboard graphics that couldnt be disabled and my old K8M8 biostar motherboard would not work with the new graphics card. On top of that it was an old PCI legacy interface card (slow, outdated) and would soon become obsolete.
I became quite upset that i had spent 70$ and still couldnt play my new game. (I was even more upset when i found the same card on tigerdirect.com for 24$) So i decided once and for all, that i was going to get a new system. For 2 weeks I researched the best price/quality ratio and finally decided that, unless i built my own system i probably would never be happy with the result. So i started window shopping for pieces and parts. I knew my budget would not stand up to a bleeding edge system, but my desire was to get as close as possible for the dollar that i did i have.
Best Bang For The Buck
While i am most definetly an intel fan at heart, as any budget minded system builder will tell you, AMD is the best bang for the buck in most cases. Couple that along with the fact that AMD has recently slashed all there prices on their high end dual core processors, and the decision was pretty much a no-brainer. After picking out a HEC 69R5BB full ATX tower, i settled on a GIGABYTE motherboard and a AMD 5600+ Dual Core processor. All purchased and ordered from newegg.com.
My original plan was to use parts from my old system (such as the power supply and hardrives) but after seeing the reasonable prices on the new hardrives out, i decided against it. This way i could have 2 systems and use the older system as a testbed for legacy computer user application testing and as a network file server.
Rubbing The Majic Lamp
The criteria for my new system was fairly simple. It had to be fast, upgradeable, and reliable. Since im not concerned about looks, or alot of fancy extra's i could focus my budget on the core system components that i wanted. I knew i wanted a full ATX tower, and the latest memory and mobo that was midrange priced. I found a full ATX tower with some nice features for 70$ (now only $60!) Such as 11 drive bays and easily accessible USB and Audio jacks..
Here Comes The Bride
The tower arrived first and boy was it HUGE! It was much larger than i had imagined and i now almost wish i had gone upper mid-size. But nevertheless it was a very nice tower for 69$. As you can see in the pictures it has 4 cdrom bays, 5 drive bays, and 2 floppy sized bays, making for a whopping 11 bays in total. The bays featured the nice snap-in slide rails.A nice storage rack for unused rail guides, a lockable front panel to protect and secure the CD/DVD drives and power button. (read: kid safety). Overall it stood a massive 20.5 inches tall, 17 inches long and 8.5 inches in width, (20x18x8) weighing in at 25 pounds. While this is a nice tower, I wouldnt recommend it for the average user, simply because it is overkill. It is larger than what almost any normal home user will ever need, making it a pain to lug around if it needs to be moved or transported. My next tower will be an (18x17x8).
The Mother Of All Things Good
In this beast of a tower i added in a GIGABYTE GA-MA790FX-DS5 ATX motherboard with the 790FX chipset and the AM2+/AM2 sockets ,1066mhz/4ghz FSB with up to 16 gigabytes of memory. The mother board is shown below. Notice the ultra cool copper northbridge cooling system. :) I wouldve liked at least 1-2 more pcide slots but with 2 PCIe and 2 PCIDE slots it keeps a happy medium between legacy, current, and future technology.
This board features support for CROSSFIREX technology which allows you to tie together 2 ATI graphics cards for super speed gaming and long upgrade life for graphics. It also supports the AM2+ socket for the new Phenom AMD processor while maintaining support for the current AM2 Dual/Quad core Athlon's. It also supports 64bit computing for the next gen Operating Systems from Microsoft such as Vista 64. With the ability to upgrade to 16 gigabytes of ram, this board should remain a viable board for at least 4-5 years, while most boards are outdated in 2 years.
Gentlemen Rev Your Engines
I plugged in a AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ DUAL CORE processor which i planned on overclocking to a 6400+ or 3.4 ghz. However i have since decided against that. I ended up overclocking to a nice 3.0 (3000 X2) where it seems nice and stable. So, for the price of a 5600+ i actually have a 6000+ processor. I bought a monster ARTIC FREEZER 64 cooler fan ($20) for it to make sure it stays cool and happy. However, with the stock cooler, which was nicer than i had imagined, it actually ran at a decent temp of about 45c idle, and 50c at load while overclocked. Not bad for a stock cooler. But since i had the artic cooler i installed it, and gained about a 5-10 degree drop in temps overall.
Scotty I Need More Power!
Finished that off with a HEC ZEPHYR 650w power supply. The picture doesnt do it justice, this PSU is a very shiny nickel polish finish with a beautiful blue led large 20mm fan at the bottom of it (its upside down in the picture). 650w is more than i need for this system, but with an eye towards future upgrading i thought plenty of juice wont hurt.
Space, The Final Frontier
I got a new 3 platter 320gb Seagate Barracuda SATA 3gb/sec hardrive for $85 and its worth every penny. The speed of the SATA 3 gig/sec data transfer rates makes an amazing difference in the speed of file heavy operations. For instance, my daily virus scanner runs at 10 times the speed of the old system. I outfitted the system with 2 sticks of CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel memory. This is plenty of memory for running Windows XP Pro and any current Games on the market. However if i ever upgrade to VISTA i will be able to upgrade to 16 gigabytes of memory if need be. I can upgrade nicely to 4 gb for about $40-50 currently.
A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Bytes
I plugged my soon-to-be-old BFG GEFORCE 5500 FX graphics card in, It works just well enough to play C&C3 on low settings but it plays Generals very nicely... but a new card is on the way. I am totally dissatisfied with its performance and with RA3 coming out soon i want to be ready!
At first i had ordered a XFX GEFORCE 8800GT 512MB 256bit GDDR3 card since im an INTEL/NVIDiA fan at heart but then after some thought i decided that would be a waste of money since my mobo is optimized for ATI cards and crossfireX technology. I quickly cancelled that order and set my sites on a new ATI HD 3870 512/256 board. The ATI 3870 series is the current ATI solution to compete with NVIDIA 8800 series cards, at a avg $50 less cost.
Here is the old card (soon to be replaced).
And here is the new ATI 3870 card that is on the way.
HEY MOM! LOOK... ISNT IT BEAUTIFUL!!!
For peripherals, i got a new logitech LX3 optical wired mouse, a microsoft enhanced keyboard and some cheapy Altec Lansing speakers. I plan on getting some new speakers soon.
If A Man Cant See, A Man Cant Fight
The system is rounded off with a Acer AL2216Wbd Black 22" 5ms Widescreen LCD Monitor with HDCP support . Mhmmm Thats what im talking about!
And the final resulting system looks kind of like this
All in all i am quite pleased with my first experience at building my own system. While i wouldnt recommend building your own system to a new computer user, anyone with the ability to do some research and who knows a little about hardware, it is definitely the way to go. NOTHING was as satisfactory as putting the main system together, pushing the switch and the tower came to life the first time without a hitch. The biggest problem i had was getting windows activated with an OEM copy of windows XP. That was a nightmare but i finally got it solved.
The final price was of course more than i had wanted to spend and i ended up going about 400$ over budget with the new graphics card and monitor, but it was well worth it. As i sit here writing up this page in Dreamweaver MX i continuously am amazed at how snappy everything is compared to my old system.
Budget: $800.00
Final Price: $1215.00
Here is a rough breakdown of the system and prices of each unit.
monitor 250.00
video card 200.00
motherboard 200.00
processor 134.00
pwr supply 90.00
hardrive 85.00
tower 70.00
memory 55.00
mouse 30.00
keyboard 25.00
cooler 20.00
speakers 15.00
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Total(est) $1200.00
I cant say enough how well NEWEGG.COM has performed in getting the order ready and shipping on time and with good packaging. I highly recommend them!
Now... Lets see what I'd build if $$Money$$ were not a crucial object.
THE ULTIMATE SYSTEM