Decent Computer for Price?

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Decent Computer for Price?

Postby thedog789 » Thu Apr 13, 2006 12:57 am

I am in need for a new computer as my current one keeps crashing if I leave it on for an extended period of time (screwing with my ratio - in a short period of time I can download a lot but not upload much at all - currently suspended all my downloading )

On ebay I found this system and I was wondering what people thought about it. For the price, it seems decent enough.

http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-AMD-Athlon-64-4 ... dZViewItem

Individually bought retail, I estimate the system to be around $1400+. For the price, it seems very decent but I want to see what other people think before buying.



Also, for the monitor, I was thinking about either the Dell 1907FP
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/prod ... ry_id=2999

Using a coupon I can bring it down to $236 + tax on $271.20 w/ free shipping.

Another monitor that I am considernig is the Tyrius T1901D8
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6824224008

Obviously the Tyrius is a bit cheaper with similar specs, but no point in getting a decent computer if I'm going to get a budget monitor.

Which monitor should I buy? Or should I consider a widescreen, maybe 20.1 inch?


In total I want to keep everything under 1500, the lower the better. But this will have to last a while.

Any advice at all will be appreciated.
Thank you!
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Postby Joe88 » Thu Apr 13, 2006 1:25 am

You can still salvage your comp.
It might be infected with tons of spyware/adware and virus causeing it to crash or slowdown almost to a complete stop.
So if you have a scanner update and scan your comp.
Or another option is to do a fresh install. Turn off your comp. Pop in the win xp disk upon startup and let it boot the cd. You can then chosse to do a fresh install.

If you really want to buy a new one, then you can build you own, better then that model for about $850, around that price range.

Its up to you though.
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Postby thedog789 » Thu Apr 13, 2006 2:37 am

Well I did reformat and reinstall a clean Windows, but the dreaded BSOD still comes up on a regular basis.
Seeing as how I'm on a Pentium 4 1.4 GHzw/ 256 MB RAM and a Geforce 2 MX 400, a new system is the clear way to go.

Would considering waiting for Conroe but a computer is needed for school since the crashes are messing me up.


$349.10 AMD Opteron 165
$165.94 ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe
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Postby thedog789 » Thu Apr 13, 2006 3:04 am

$187.26 for both Antec Solution SLK3000-B Black Steel ATX Mid Tower and Antec TruePower 2.0 TRUECONTROL II-550 ATX12V 550W

$159.35 OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered Dual Channel Platinum System Memory Model OCZ4002048ELDCPE-K - Retail

$190.85 XFX GF 7600GT Extreme 256MB PCIe




Everything else I guess I can gut from my old computer.
PATA Hard drives
Keyboard/mouse
network card

etc


Am I lacking anything? Any cheaper suggestions? I want something cheap, but also that will last me for many, many years.

The Opteron I will prob try to OC to 2.4GHz ish.
Is the RAM any good for OCling?


ANY help at all would be very much appreciated. Thanks!
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Postby thedog789 » Thu Apr 13, 2006 3:07 am

Posting in sections because computer crashed during my second, long post with links -_-.


Total - 1136.65

I guess I could reuse my old computer case.

Basically this is all just a very very rough build.

Help! lol
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Postby Willen » Thu Apr 13, 2006 3:42 am

Depending on what happens when it crashes, it may be a bad power supply or bad airflow/dirty or dead fans. Especially if it is as old as it seems.

Why are you looking at the AMD Opteron 165? For a little more, you could get the AMD X2 4200+ for $355. It's got a faster clock 2.2GHz, compared to 1.8GHz. And the L2 Cache difference isn't significant for desktop use. Unless you are intending to overclock much higher than 2.2GHz.
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Postby Kariudo » Thu Apr 13, 2006 9:12 am

You could save a bit of money on the graphics card.
the card you are looking at is more aimed twords gamers on a budget.

although I haven't been able to test my system (yet) it seems that my eVGA GeForce 6600 is more than enough

I'd also reccomend the dual-core processor (performanace increases drop off significantly after the x2 4200 and x2 4400)
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Postby LunaAislin » Thu Apr 13, 2006 11:41 am

I agree built you own you can use your old network card, monitor, case, keyboard, harddrive, sound card and get a bumch of pimp parts for 700-800 dollars.
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Postby thedog789 » Thu Apr 13, 2006 11:53 am

I was looking at the Opteron 165 simply because it is relatively cheap and supposedly can overclock to 2.7GHz and higher on the stock fan. For my purposes, since I'm a complete noob, I was planning to OC to around 2.4GHz, which would make it equivalent to a 4800+ (roughly).


The family of Intel Conroe processors will initially consist of four models: E6700, E6600, E6400 and E6300 that will operate 2.67GHz, 2.40GHz, 2.13GHz and 1.86GHz, respectively. The E6700 and E6600 models will sport 4MB unified L2 cache, whereas the E6400 and E6300 will have 2MB unified level-two cache. Pricing of the parts is expected to be quite aggressive: $529, $315, $240 and $210, according to some sources. In the Q4 2006 the maker will also add the model E6800 that works at 2.93GHz and features 1066MHz bus along with 4MB cache.


lol makes me want to wait a bit longer......

And all the prices I mentioned were AFTER shipping charges and tax.
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Postby gangstaj8 » Thu Apr 13, 2006 2:16 pm

What if it's your HDD that's failing? Have you run any diagnostics?
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Postby thedog789 » Thu Apr 13, 2006 5:02 pm

Semi- final build


$122.99 - DFI LANPARTY UT nF4 Ultra-D ATX AMD Motherboard
$189.00 - XFX Geforce 7600GT PV-T73G-UDE3
$164.99 - OCZ Gold Edition 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM Dual Channel Kit System Memory - Retail
$67.99 - Thermaltake W0090RU 470W Power Supply
$325.00 - AMD Opteron 165 Stock
$79.99 - Thermaltake SOPRANO VB1000BWS

Total : 949.96 before tax / shipping.


Any thoughts?

I guess I will have to try and see what is causing my computer to crash but for sure I am going to get a new system.
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Postby gangstaj8 » Thu Apr 13, 2006 5:29 pm

I'm just concerned about you putting a possibly failing HDD in your new system. I'm not trying to deter you from getting your new system, but I think it would save you a lot of grief knowing that you're putting in a stable HDD. Wouldn't you just scream if you put your new system together and it crashed right off the bat simply cause your HDD was crapping out? Otherwise, the little knowledge I have about building systems, it looks like you've got a good line-up. Good luck.
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Postby NeoQuixotic » Thu Apr 13, 2006 7:13 pm

Mobo looks good.

Video card is good, but not the best price. I'd go with either of these two.
XFX $159 after MIR
EVGA $164 after MIR
If you ever need more 3d power, the 7600 GTs in a SLI setup kick ass ^_^!

Ram looks good.

Processor is good, but get a 3rd party cooler to OC even more, or consider an Opteron 170 to get a higher OC potential. Here's a link to a good 3rd party cooler. Many Opteron users have OC'ed the crap out of their processors with this cooler. The only downsides are it's $50+ and freaking HUGE!!!
Thermaltake Big Typhoon CL-P0114 120mm Cooling Fan with Heatsink

Case looks good except no power supply. DO NOT skimp on the power supply or it will hurt you sooner or later! I'd get at least a 500W rated for SLI if you ever plan on loading that system up or obviously getting another 7600 GT for SLI. Make sure you get a good high quality PSU or you may get sytem instablity/crashes or even damage parts!

I'd recommend for video editing and playing games to get at least one Western Digital Raptor hard drive. Load your games or video files onto that drive. If you have the money now or later I'd highly recommend getting 2 or more for a RAID 0 or 0+1 setup. Hard drives are still the major bottleneck in computers.
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Postby Joe88 » Thu Apr 13, 2006 9:16 pm

Your building more of a gamming machine here then what it was orginally intended for.
I got my comp out of the trash because it kept crashing on them so I fixed it and it works great now.

The graphics crad, you dont really need that one, if your inteneding on playing doom 3/hl2/bf2 any of those games.
You should look in a AGP crad for a cheaper price.
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Postby Willen » Fri Apr 14, 2006 2:23 am

Joe88 wrote:Your building more of a gamming machine here then what it was orginally intended for.
I got my comp out of the trash because it kept crashing on them so I fixed it and it works great now.

The graphics crad, you dont really need that one, if your inteneding on playing doom 3/hl2/bf2 any of those games.
You should look in a AGP crad for a cheaper price.

At this point in time, new AGP motherboards with AGP videocards are a waste of money. The mobo he listed is a PCIe model so he has to get a PCIe vidcard.

I hope you can get the Opteron 165 Dual Core to overclock to 2.7GHz with the stock cooler. If you do get the system you spec'd out, I'd like you to reply with the highest OC you got out of the processor for curiosity's sake.
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