New Computer

[Bradley]

Hi all,
I decided that my emachine I bought as a 2nd desktop no longer suited my needs (aka couldnt expand too much with it) and I purchased most of the necessary parts to build another one (done it many many times before )
I was wondering what you might suggest for cpu fan, memory and hard drive? The specs of the machine are:
Soyo Dragon Ultra (platinum edition) KT333 supports AthlonXP2200+
AMD Athlon xp 2200+ 1.8ghz
no ram
no hd
(those will be added from old machine, currently using western digital hard drives which I want to avoid as much as possible)
Currently have ATI Radeon 8500 128mb agp card, going to see if I can use that aswell as a Matrox G450 dual head card too..
CoolerMaster ATC210VX1 case
300w powersupply (which will be upgraded sometime )
Thanks in advanced for any help
This machine will be dual booting windows xp and linux until I can drop xp permenatly.

Thanks
--
Brad

[NoahM]

I have a friend that builds AMD systems regualrly and lives by this site for recommendations.
Hope it helps.

[Bradley]

Hi Noah,
Thanks for the reply, I have checked out toms and pretty much know what I would like.. I know Terra highly praised this coolermaster http://www.coolermaster.com.hk/produ...&product_id=11 and didnt know if he ran into any problems or such with it.
As for the harddrives I have had my eye on maxtor for some time now as I will soon be using those as the disks in my server (scsi if possible for the server). I know they have the maxline plus model and it looks pretty tempting though maxtor has shortened their warranties.

Crucial is probably my top pick for ram, I will have to wait until I have the resources available though to add the amount of ram I want.

I recently remembered ATI's Firegl series and wouldn't mind having one if I was doing graphics, etc but at ~$3-500+ is abit out of the way right now.

If anyone has any more suggestions I am listening, I wont have this monster done for a few months anyways Should have the basics finished tonight though I hope.. *knock on wood!*

[manish]

If you are looking for a new hard drive, make sure you look at serial ATA. I'm not sure if the Dragon Ultra Platinum has SerialATA built into the South Bridge or it just uses the PCI bus. If it has built in support, try to see if a serial ATA drive fits in your budget. They have 10,000 rpm drives out int he market over serial ATA.

Otherwise, go for a hard drive with 8MB of buffer and which runs at 7200 rpm - I don't know what you have against WD, but look at Maxtor and WD. Make sure you get the drives that carry a 3 year warranty.

Check out www.storagereview.com for a lot of benchmarking info....

Hope this helps....

Manish

[ryount]

Here's some power supply reviews in case you decide to get it now. I usually get the Antec True series even though they are a bit more.

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1774
(For some reason I can't get this one to come up right now)

http://techreport.com/reviews/2003q3/psus/index.x?pg=1

I know you said you didn't want Western Digital, but I have had this 80GB in my system for about 6 months and haven't had any trouble. All the drive makers seem to go through bad lots at times.
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...ion=22-144-122

I have had this 120GB one in my Tivo for a couple of months, no problems yet:
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...ion=22-144-118

I have been thinking about getting this 36GB 10K Serial ATA drive though. Hard to say if it's really worth the extra money though.
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...ion=22-144-200

For memory I usually get Crucial, Kingston, or Corsair. Can't really say I prefer one over the others.

[Bradley]

Hi all,
Thanks for the info and suggestions.. the only reason I don't want to use WD is due the problems I've had with them over the years, 8 out of 10 drives had to be sent back including a brand new 60gig I bought late June/early July

I will possibly go with maxtor if the wd's start to act up, I am currently running 2 (1 40gb and 1 60gb) drives and they are doing ok for now..

Unfortunatly I didnt do ALL the research I should've.. I need to finish configuring my cpu speed, and I forgot that XP/NT doesn't like for you to install new motherboards on it

So after a few lessons learned I finally got it up and working, running pure linux now! (Mandrake 9.1 for those who care)
It kina urks me cause I have my windows games I still play so I will have to find a solution bah

I will post some pics of the install et al shortly.. Thanks for the advice, always seeking more (especially about cpu cooling, etc.. I dont overclock so thats not a great deal but still I want to keep things running

Danke!
--
Brad

[Randall]

I'm re-evaluating my prejudice against WD; I bought two of the 40-gig Special Editions for a client recently.

Most of the complaints nowadays seem to come from people who stopped buying them years ago, like I did. And I'm still confused about the whole warranty issue. Does a one-year warranty mean you don't have long-term confidence in your products -- or just that anything that doesn't die in the first year (eek!) is going to last a good long time?

Randall

[Bradley]

Wanted to post the link to the pictures before I passed out for exhaustion giving blood kills me sometimes

Anyways http://www.knowthematrix.net/pn/modu...view_album.php

for those who care

Ive browsed around on some heatsink/fans and still havent found "the one" I could always go liquid cooling but thats overdoing it for me

I am going to see if this system stabilizes in the next 72hours and then I will start "haxxoring" it up, no fancy lights or such, just some added features lol

Thanks again!

[manish]

Nice pictures, Brad.... I like the mountain dew touch to the desktop (reminds me of school and endless hours of projects)

Does a one-year warranty mean you don't have long-term confidence in your products -- or just that anything that doesn't die in the first year (eek!) is going to last a good long time?

I believe the whole warranty thing is based on failure analysis. If your MTBF (based on constant usage for x amount of hours) is say 2 years, they give you a 1 year warranty. If your MTBF is say 6 years, they will give you a 3 year warranty.

I remember when I used to work in the IT field (I sound so old when I start a sentence like that), we always looked at failure rates before buying any drives and typically the warranties jived with the analysis. So, if this machine is going to be a server, I can safely say that none of the consumer drives (1-year warranty) are going to do you any good if you are going to hit the hard disk all day with data.

Manish

PS My 120G WD special edition (7200 rpm, 8M buffer) is sweet - It's quite and (knock on wood) has been pretty reliable....

[Randall]

That's reassuring. So far I'm not having any luck finding MTBF data for the Maxtor and Seagate drives I'm using -- some of which are still available, only with the one-year warranties instead of three...

Randall