Gaming Rig

Computer Forum New Build / Upgrade Advice
1

As some of you may know, i want to buy a gaming rig, but what do you think of this spec, is it going to be powerful and relatively future-proof?

CPU

AMD® ATHLON® 64BIT X2 4800 2 x 1MB L2 Cache

Memory

2048 MB DDR400 PC3200 WITH LIFETIME WARRANTY! (2x1GB)

Motherboard

ASUS® A8N-SLI SE: DUAL DDR, S-ATA, 2 x x16 VGA, 3 PCI

USB Options

SIX USB 2.0 PORTS (4 REAR + 2 FRONT)

Hard Drive

SATA II 250 GB HARD DISK @ 7200rpm 8mb cache

Second Hard Drive

NONE

RAID

NONE

DVD ROM/Combi Drive

NONE

CD/DVD Writer

16x +/- DVD WRITER (8x +/- Dual Lyr) (5x DVD-RAM) (40x CD-RW) (£24)

Graphics Card 1

512MB GEFORCE 7900 GTX PCI Express + DVI + TV-OUT

Graphics Card 2

512MB GEFORCE 7900 GTX PCI Express + DVI + TV-OUT

Sound Card

SoundBlaster X-FI Extreme Music 7.1: £78

Modem

NONE, I WILL BE USING BROADBAND

Network Facilities

2 x 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORTS (1 PORT ON A8N-SLI SE)

Floppy Drive/Card Reader

1.44MB FLOPPY DISK DRIVE

Case

Black Neon Bubble case + Neon Extreme Kit!

Power Supply & Cooling

500W (Peak) Silent Dual Rail PSU + 120mm fan & quiet CPU Cooler (£45)

Operating System required

NONE

Firewire & Video Editing

1 x FIREWIRE PORT ONBOARD (A8N-SLI DELUXE ONLY)

Monitor

Widescreen 20.1 Inch TFT Sil/Blk 1440 X 900 RES: 8MS + DVI (£279)

Keyboard

Logitech® Cordless Rechargeable Optical Keybrd + Mouse Silver/Black £36

Mouse

NONE

Speakers

CREATIVE INSPIRE 7.1 T7900 SPEAKER SYSTEM (£65)

Printer

NONE

Anti-Virus

NONE

Office Software

NONE

TV Card

DIGITAL TV CARD (TV/Radio/Remote/Pause Live TV) (Special: £32)

Warranty

1 Year Return-to-Base Warranty + 1 Month Free Collect & Return

2

It looks very nice. The only thing I’d want to know more about is the power supply. Wattage doesn’t mean jack.

You can have a 500W power supply with 16A on the 12V rail and 40A on both the 3.3V and 5V lines and come up with 500W. It’s still valid, but a 16A 12V rail is going to keel over with even a mid-range system. Don’t think that it would hold up under that high-end SLI setup.

Brands like Enermax, Antec, Tagan, and OCZ are excellent units. I don’t know if that’s what’s in there or not, so if you find out what unit it is, you can post back here.

If you find out that the power supply is included with the case, then insist on a better power supply.

Why am I harping on the power supply? That system is amazing, so you owe it to yourself to make sure that there’s a good power supply in that thing.

You also might want to ask what brand and line of RAM they’re using.

3

Also look at Seasonic, all the reviews I read rave about them, they’re quiet, stable and some of the best out there - they often come out on top in some tests :good:

4

what about a 500 watt peak silent dual rail psu, its the highest the selection is

i assume this will be good enough to play anything i throw at it for the forseeable future?

5

That doesn’t tell us anything, we need ratings for each rail - even better a make and model number/ID.

It may be the highest selection but some companies do not include decent PSU’s with their orders.

6

[QUOTE=matthunter3]
what about a 500 watt peak silent dual rail psu, its the highest the selection is

i assume this will be good enough to play anything i throw at it for the forseeable future?
[/QUOTE]

That’s about as useful as telling a mechanic over the phone that you have a 4-wheeled vehicle making a funny noise.

500W is no indication of a good power supply.

There are 500W power supplies out there that have amperages that match 350W units I have from Sparkle and Antec. The 500W is the maximum. Do you know if this can provide this peak power at high temps? A quality 500W power supply from Antec or Enermax may provide the 500W up to 80C. A POS 500W PSU from something like Q-Tech or Aspire may only provide that 500W up to 45C before it drops its output to 300W.
The better power supplies feature more amperage on the 12V rails, which is where PCIe x16 video cards (which is what that system will use) draw off the 12V rail in addition to the CPU. If you’ve got a measly 20A combined, you’re going to hurt when you try to fire up Quake4.

Dual-rails are no indication of it being a good power supply. For all you know, it could have 2x 10A 12V rails.

I don’t mean to sound negative, but you’re doing yourself a major disservice if you’re going to drop that kind of cash and not know that you have a good power supply is in there. You do not want to have some cheap POS power supply in there.
Everything will eventually fail—although if you have this system that long, you’re not going to be able to run anything current at that time. Cheap power supplies tend to take a few victims with it when they go out, and are known to put on a short show with it as well. The good units are much more likely not to fry other components and go quietly. You’re looking at $800-1000 with the video cards alone. I’m sure you’d hate to have the power supply take those on it’s way out.