It's time for a new system!!

Frenchy wrote on 12/13/2005, 10:05 AM

Old topic, I know. I've perused the recent (6-8 months+/-) posts on building a new system, and I'm narrowing down my choices, and I have a few questions for the esteemed group here...

Vegas and editing is just a family video/hobby thing for me, so I don't need to spend a ton of $$ to get the latest and greatest, since hobby time does not translate to $ for me - I'm just looking for the sweet spot of affordability/performance. With this in mind, the system I'm replacing is in my profile (1999 vintage Dell PIII-600MHz, 384GB Ram, Win 98SE) - so as you recommend things, keep in mind that ANY change is going to make me giddy...

I'm trying to keep it under $1500 (with an LCD monitor, hopefully), and would like to build my own system (finally), for a number of reasons outlined in a variety of posts here (future upgradability, lowered quality of Dell systems (which I've been happy with to date), and I like putting stuff together...)

I think I've settled on the AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core (probably the 3800+ or maybe the 4200+). Cooling and fan options? Other comments?

I'm trying to decide on MB (ATX Form form factor?), Case and Power supply (450 watts+) right now - any help?

At least 1GB RAM - ?

I'd like to salvage as much as possible from my existing system (two 120GB external Firewire HDD's I use for media and capture/rendering, one of the internal 40GB HDD's, and a 120GB IDE 7200 RPM Seagate still new in the box, a Sony DRU 500 DVD burner, and another 52x CD-RW burner) Any recommends here?

I'm just starting to read a lot about SATA drives, but because I want to utilize my existing drives, I'v concluded that I pretty much need a MB that has PATA and SATA on-board. Should I look at an addon SATA board as well?

I like the appeal of removable drive caddies, so the case should be (At least) a mid-tower. Other comments?

Video Card - minimal gaming here, but I do want a dual-head card to add a (future) 2nd monitor, just in case one falls in my lap...

Sound - again, more of a hobby - I've been recording my vinyl to disk (slowly), so I'd like as clean an input as possible (with my current setup, it seems hit/miss on the quality of the recording), so I'm leaning toward one of the M-Audio cards (Maybe the Audiophile 2496?)

I know I've overlooked a few things, but this is where I am at right now. So any suggestions/comments/concerns/etc?

Thanks

Phil

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Comments

Frenchy wrote on 1/6/2006, 11:56 AM

Thanks for the addtional info, JR. Since i posted, I found out a little more info on the difference between PCI/PCIx/PCI-Express (in various flavors from x1 to x16). I hope you're correct that more x1 cards will become available. I noticed (on newegg) that they have a few USB/1394, RAID, LAN and tv tuner cards use the x1 slots (and they're fairly expensive). It just seems like I have these two "features" that I can't take full advantage of (yet, at least).

On the video card, I realize that the 6600LE will be more than adequate for Vegas. My main concern is taking full advantage of the Dell. Looking at the Dell specs vs. the eVGA specs:

Dell:
"To optimize this monitor's performance, your system must be able to support WSXGA+ resolution (1680 x 1050)."

eVGA:
"(1600 x 1200 Max Digital)"

This is of course for DVI. The eVGA card supports higher analog resolutions. Several higher-end eVGA cards support higher (Digital) horizontal resolutions. This is why I'm wondering about losing (or not making use of) 80 pixels with a DVI connection.

Thanks again

Phil

GlennChan wrote on 1/6/2006, 12:08 PM

- Any first hand info about the "IDE to Serial ATA Converters" I'm considering? This way, I can use my brand new IDE drives as SATA drives. I realize I will not get the performance of a true SATA drive, I just don't want to take a throughput hit...
Storagereview.com I believe have done a comparison between IDE and IDE with a SATA converter. They found speeds to be (virtually) identical.

The bottleneck is not in the interface... 100MB/s is plenty for hard drives which can, at best, do about 45MB/s (except for 10k and 15k rpm drives). In most real-world situations, the hard drive reads at a fraction of the maximum speed.

If you search around storagereview.com you'll probably find it.

except that I was thinking that having the 10k RPM WD SATA Raptor as the boot drive would really speed up boot and program access times. Any comments about this?
I believe the tests at Anandtech show that the Raptor loads games only a few seconds faster than normal drives.

Anyways, even if the drive were 50% faster (the theoretical maximum) it still wouldn't be worth buying. You're not going to be spending much time loading programs and loading windows. Usually you're waiting on the computer to preview or render.

2- As far as hardware review sites go, sometimes they have some problems.
A- Some of them base conclusions on synthetic benchmarks, which have little relevance to real world performance. And it's really real world performance which you should care about.
A subset of that is that only one of two benchmarks in their tests are relevant to Vegas (usually MPEG2 encoding). The rest are irrelevant.
For example, low memory latencies (i.e. in premium-priced RAM) does nothing for Vegas rendering.
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=18841

B- In the motherboard performance tests, the manufacturers sometimes cheat. The faster motherboards have some sort of subtle overclocking- i.e. dynamic overclocking (MSI was the first), lowering memory timings (i.e. Asus), or a clock speed that is slightly too fast. In production models, they won't have this subtle overclocking enabled and thus will perform the same (i.e. MSI motherboards have dynamic overclocking turned off, and for good reason). Overclocking can cause instability, so the extra performance doesn't really count. Most [though not all] motherboards can be overclocked anyways.

If the motherboards all have the same chipset, they'll perform the same.

Moebius~ wrote on 1/8/2006, 1:26 PM

The drives go in the Sonata II sideways. If the converter sticks out the back much, and in combination with the stiff sata cable exiting to the rear, will likely have problems. I remember reading that people had similar probems with the original Sonata and the Abit Serillel converters. I don't like doors on my cases, having built a system in an Antec SLK2650-BQE and finding that some applications open the optical drive trays without asking. I always thought that the chrome front jack cover looked pretty tacky so I think I would leave it open! I do like the 120mm fan, and the front drive fan cooling option with intake filter. I have always run my 120mm fans on 7v with a little creative rewiring and they have been very quiet.

I would rather have 2GB of RAM on two DIMMs than the Raptor. XP loads very fast, anyway.

I would opt for the Opteron 165 (dual core, 10x multiplier, 2 x 1M L2 cache) instead of the 4200+, run the memory with the 5/4 divider and the FSB at 250 for a conservative 2.5GHz (if this is possible with this board) if not purchasing more expensive DDR500 memory to run 1:1. I wouldn't buy the CPU at Newegg because they are not competitive with some others on this item.

As for the widescreen monitor, do you realize that a 20" widescreen has a screen area that is less than 10" high? You give up 53 square inches over a 20" 4:3 monitor. Dual 19" monitors for the budget conscious. The 24" widescreens will be coming down in price as the competition heats up. Maybe just wait a bit. I run a 19" LCD 4:3 monitor with a Matrox G400 analog connection on one om my systems and it looks great at native resolution with XP's Cleartype enabled.

Don't forget some nice speakers! I really like these Swans M200.
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=36-136-102

Further, I would opt for a separate internal card reader in addition to a standard floppy. Don't plug the card reader into the motherboard until after you install the OS or else disable something in the bios which assigns a drive letter to all those card readers. Otherwise, you will find XP is installed on drive G: like I did!

My latest system was built in an Antec SLK1650 case. It was very tight even placing the motherboard (P4P800SE). The 350w power supply was sufficient because I installed a Pentium M 730 (mobile) on a CT-479 adapter. This thing is amazingly fast but with a single core overclocked to 2.5GHz, and it runs very cool. It was only about $800 with an unlocked GeForce 6800LE and XP Home. I don't play games much, but I do like to watch the game demos and 3D Benchmark apps! I initially had installed a $25 Matrox G400 MAX from eBay as it's an AGP board. The Matrox was amazingly still viable and the system was nearly silent.

Moebius~ wrote on 1/8/2006, 8:41 PM

I forgot to mention that a new WD Raptor of double capacity will debut in January, so hopefully we will see some price drops on the old ones!
www.xbitlabs.com/news/storage/display/20051223083509.html

It looks like they may be on their way, and not inexpensive at $300:
www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822136012

Frenchy wrote on 1/9/2006, 4:04 PM

Glenn-
Thanks for the input. I went ahead and ordered a couple of the converters from the Addonics site - it looks like it'll be an ok way to go. Between what you posted, what JohnnyRoy posted above, and further reading, I decided against the 10k rpm Raptor, and am going with a 200GB Seagate SATA drive instead (It'll save me $50, and get over 2.5x the storage). I going to use my new 120GB Seagate as the boot drive (master) on the IDE channel, one of the DVD burners as the slave on the same channel, and the other DVD burner on the second IDE Channel. The new 200GB SATA, and an existing 200GB IDE (converted to SATA with one of the Addonics converters), I'll put in a RAID 0 on the MOBO, and still have two unused (for now) SATA channels. How does this concept sound?

Is anybody still partitioning their boot/program HDD's? I remember some older threads about having a small OS partition on the boot drive, and a larger program partition, if only to make it easier to do a clean install of the OS in the future, just in case of problems...

Moebuis-

Thanks as well for the additional info. I didn't realize the drives were mounted sideways in the Sonata II. I really like the looks and reviews on the Sonata II, as well as the slightly larger PS, so I'm going to stick with it. The Addonics converters aren't as deep as the Abit converters (25mm vs 34mm), so I'm crossing my fingers that it won't be an issue...

"I have always run my 120mm fans on 7v with a little creative rewiring and they have been very quiet." Further explanation please - what is/how do you get creative about your wiring?

Regarding the Optiron 165 - you lost me, and I pretty much based the system aroubd the X2 4200+, so I'll probably stick with this as well.

I am rethinking the Widescreen monitor however. I didn't realize it was only 10" high. I just looked at one that a co-worker has, and although the format is nice, you made an excellent point about the overall viewable area. The 24" is cost-prohibitive for me, and as I mentioned above, two monitors just take take up too much desk space. I will probably end up getting a 19" flat screen LCD (or maybe a 20", if I can keep the overall height to less than 18.5" - the opening size on the desk that will be it's home...) This will also save 150-200 clams.

Any recommendations on a 19" or 20" LCD?

The Mitsumi drive I am getting has a 3.5" floppy, as well as a multi-card reader, and I appreciate the input about waiting until after the OS is installed before connecting the internal USB, so as not to run into drive letter assignment issues.

Thanks

Phil

GlennChan wrote on 1/9/2006, 5:09 PM

RAIDing two mismatched drives can give you worse performance than just the drives by themselves.

2- Will your new computer have two hard drives in total? In that case, RAID 0 is probably not worth doing. Having the OS and apps on that one drive can slow down everything else on that RAID.

Having two seperate drives can be better. That way video capture doesn't go to the drive the swap file / OS is on. That is more reliable.

Having two seperate drives is also faster if you manually wrangle your files, or set your programs so that any renders goes to the other drive.

2- If you're installing Windows yourself, you might as well install it on a 15GB (or larger) partition.

Coursedesign wrote on 1/9/2006, 5:27 PM

Any recommendations on a 19" or 20" LCD?

I still like Samsung LCD monitors. Not all their models are great, but most are so see what you can find locally and check reviews.

There is also the Gateway 21" FPD-2185W with 1680x1050 resolution (yes widescreen), DVI, 1000:1 contrast, 8ms response time, USB2 hub, Faroudja DCDi and the picture is outstanding for both and it also has HD component etc. regular video inputs. The 16x10 aspect ratio makes it great for viewing video, both DVDs and ATSC look totally astonishingly good in HD on this screen. Currently only $527.99 with free shipping at circuitcity.com (you may be able to price match their web site in a local CC store).

Note that not all video cards (older and feebler especially) support this resolution.

Moebius~ wrote on 1/9/2006, 6:58 PM

All the SATA cables I have seen are very stiff. You might try these right-angle sata cables:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16812104557
Out of stock at the moment. As for the fan rewiring, I'll let someone else do the typing:
http://www.redenius.net/archives/32

Opteron 165 works in most Socket 939 boards, is comparable to the X2 4400+ but with 10x multiplier instead of 11x. People say the Opterons overclock better, and they have the 1MB cache per core instead of the 512KB cache of the 4200+.

I was about to get a 20" widescreen monitor until I cut out a piece of cardboard that size. If you don't insist on DVI, I thought this 19" at Costco was a good deal at $239 after $40 rebate. Just don't plan on using the speakers! Costco rebates are the only ones I will bother with anymore since you apply online and get your check fast! Their return policy is stellar, and you can return online purchased to a local store. Got Costco?
http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=11104101

The Mitsumi didn't state that it will read Memory Stick Pro. Got Sony?!

Coursedesign wrote on 1/9/2006, 7:52 PM

Screw the cardboard, work with real monitors to decide this!

If you like to work on a short and cramped timeline in Vegas, get a 4:3 monitor.

You might as well get a 17" rather than a 19", they have the same 1280x1024 resolution and a 17" can be had for less than $200.

You could even do two of these side by side for $400 together and a resolution of 2560x1024, if you can stand the bezel discontinuity in the middle of the timeline (I can't).

20" 4x3 monitors at least step up to 1600x1200 and cost $400-600 for a quality unit (and Dell's highly rated widescreen 20" LCD is $463 right now).

For higher resolutions (>1280x1024), DVI provides a much better picture than analog.

OdieInAz wrote on 1/10/2006, 7:47 AM

I had the Gateway 21" FPD-2185W and can say it is truly outstanding. I bought it at the local costco for around $530 - but I returned it. Seems some of the monitors have an annoying buzz from the power supply. Wasn't really noticable in the store but when hooked up to my laptop at home it wasn't comfortable for me. I expect a display to be silent.

The display model seemed totally silent (pressing my ear to the back vents at the store) so It seems hit or miss on any particular display. Unfortunately, costco sold out and didn't know when they would reorder so cheerful refund was in order. I did notice a buzzing unit bundled with a computer on display that did buzz.

So... Check the return policy before you buy just in case you get one that buzzes and bothers you.

Circuit City return policy
http://www.circuitcity.com/rpsm/cat/-13317/edOid/105469/rpem/ccd/lookLearn.do#returns

busterkeaton wrote on 1/10/2006, 9:07 AM

Dell's Ultrasharp monitors are pretty nice and defitely among the best bang for the buck. Look for sales, you can often catch very good deals on them. Websites like fatwallet.com are good for finding sales and special coupons, Dell LCD's are always a popular topic in the forums there.

PC Word lists the 10 best LCD Monitors every month.

"Don't forget some nice speakers! I really like these Swans M200.

Do a search on this forum for "audio monitors." For video editing, you don't want speakers that sound "Good." You want monitors that sound accurate. This lets you find and fix and problems in your audio.

Frenchy wrote on 1/12/2006, 4:07 PM

GREAT responses here - thanks everybody. I finally got off the fence and placed some orders.

Monitor: 19" Dell LCD (1905FP) from Dell. I have a 19" CRT now, I didn't want to go down in size (and I know an LCD is larger than the same size CRT), and wanted to make certain it would fit on the desk. Great reviews at the PCWorld site (thanks, buster), and a couple of other sites. The Samsung you cited was a nice one though, Coursedesign. Regarding two monitors, I didn't think I'd like the bezel discontinuity either, and I think two monitors would crowd the available space on the desk. I just couldn't justify an extra 100 clams+/- on a monitor, so I spent it on another GB of RAM instead ;-)

MOBO: ASUS A8N-SLI Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX AMD #: A8N-SLI

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Manchester 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Dual Core Processor Model ADA4200BVBOX - Retail

RAM: (2 ea) CORSAIR XMS 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered Dual Channel Kit System Memory Model TWINX1024-3200C2 - Retail (total 2GB)

Video Card: eVGA 256-P2-N369-T6 Geforce 6600 256MB 128-bit DDR PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail (slight upgrade here)

Audio card: Stay with onboard audio for a few months, then probably an Echo Mia Midi

Speakers: I'll move my existing 2.1 speakers from my Dell box for now. I'd like to get some nice sounding studio monitors, but I DO need to feed the family...

Case: Antec LifeStyle SONATA II Piano Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 450Watt SmartPower 2.0 ATX 12V V2.0 for AMD & Intel systems Power Supply - Retail (found another vender through techbargains.com, that saved me $11 in shipping and $5 in purchase price)

HDD: Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 ST3200826AS 200GB 7200 RPM 8M Cache Serial ATA150 Hard Drive - OEM

I "think" I'm going to set up my drives like this:
IDE 1 (master): 120 GB Seagate (new, in box) used for OS and Apps
IDE 1 (slave): Sony DRU 510 DVD burner (take from existing machine)
IDE 2 (master): HP 740i DVD lightscribe burner (Future: I'll put anouther PATA drive here, either fixed, or with a removable caddy)
IDE 2 (slave): unused for now (future: move the HP lightscribe here)

SATA 1: New 200GB SATA listed above
SATA 2: New 200GB Seagate drive in box (It's a PATA, but I'll turn it into a SATA with an Addonics converter listed earlier)
SATA 3: Unused for now
SATA 4: Unused for now

Still undecided about a SATA RAID 0 or not
Got some 20" right-angle SATA cables from satacables.com, for $4 each with shipping

Like I stated above, I have two existing 120 GB HDD's in FW boxes that I'll move over to this new system...

CPU Fan: ZALMAN CNPS7000B-CU 92mm 2 Ball Cooling Fan/Heatsink - Retail

DVD Burner: HP Black IDE LightScribe DVD Burner Model DVD740RI - Retail

KB & Mouse: Logitech LX300 967427-0403 Black PS/2 RF Wireless Standard Keyboard Mouse Included - Retail

I decided to separate the Floppy from the card reader
Floppy: NEC Black 1.44MB 3.5" Internal Floppy Drive Model FD1231H-302 - OEM

Card Reader: LINKSKEY LKA-CR15B 19-in-1 USB 2.0 Black Card Reader/Writer - Retail (It'll read xD cards and Memory sticks)

OS: XPPro from edirectsoftware.com

Total: about $1700

I've downloaded manuals and drivers from the various hardware sites.
Now it's just waiting for the rest of the parts to arrive, and start putting them together. YEE HAW !!

I know this reply is from the department of redundancy department, but for everyone who's taken the time to reply to my lengthy, overanalyzing posts (I'm a civil engineer by profession, after all), I think it's nice to find out the resolution of an issue that's posted here, and just say thanks once more.

Once I start building, configuring and troubleshooting, I'm sure I'll start another OT thread to help me troubleshoot...

Phil

Moebius~ wrote on 1/16/2006, 7:48 PM

Well, congratulations, and it's about effing time! You are going to love it, but surely you have used other computers which are faster. I can't believe you used that PIII 600 so long. I guess you'll be upgrading again in about seven years?! I had a PIII 600E on an Abit BF-6 board that I ran at 800 MHz. I upgraded the cpu to a 1.1A Tualatin Celeron and it is running today in my son's computer at 1.53 GHz. I have upgraded twice since!

The main thing I would have done differently is to have used two 1GB sticks instead of the four. Two will generally overclock higher and with tighter timings, but of course they cost more. $1700-- it sure adds up! And you are re-using some drives, to boot! Ok, bad pun...

Part of me wants to build a dual core system, but there are other things I would rather have, like a 24" monitor and a copy of Vegas instead of the frustratingly crippled Movie Studio. I was so impressed by the Pentium M in a desktop that I can't help but wonder if the "Core Duo(ver)" will have a similar desktop venue with good overclocking potential. Aah, well, no 64 bit extensions for the future, anyway, but I am not one to wait seven years to upgrade.