Questions about PC I'm building for gaming & audio creation

I am in the process of selecting components for a new PC I want to build. I would like some feedback on my build.


The most important aspects:

1. High-end gaming
- must be able to play games like Oblivion, Dreamfall, other next-generation titles.
- Must be able to play those on high/highest settings (@1280*1024 at full details)

2. Audio
2.1 Audio Creation (Questions for this I already posted in the Sound forum!)
- must be able to connect my Midi keyboard to PC
- must be able to record audio (need audio capture card and microphone)
- computer must be as silent as possible, although of course background noise can be filtered afterwards

2.2 Audio listening
- speakers must provide excellent sound quality for playing music (mp3 and ogg), playing games and DVD movies (DVD not as high priority). Speakers must also provide good amount of volume (max. volume level: 'wake up the neighbours' ).

- sound card has to be of good quality and performance
- surround sound preferrable
- again, computer must be as silent as possible

3. Internet Surfing and Web Development

- internet surfing: nothing special, except for downloading lots of legal anime fansubs with Bittorrent.
- standard stuff: Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Flash, Gimp, ...

4. Video Recording and editing
- Not a high priority; a few movies or clips here and there. Doubt there'll ever be more than 10 video clips on my hard disk at once.

5. Has to be very upgradable. Minimum expected lifetime: 3-5 years.

With that said, here are the components I already came up with:

Case: Coolermaster Wavemaster Alluminium. I love it. Looked up a lot of reviews, almost all very good. Looks awesome. Lots of room inside. Quite light (alluminium). Reputable company.

Processor: AMD64 3500+. Good price/performance ratio. AMD processors good reputation for gaming. I hope and think it will suffice for my purposes.

Ram: 1GB Corsair Ram, good quality normally. 2 sticks of 512MB DualDDR

Motherboard: Asus A8N-SLI Premium. Powerful. Nforce 4 chipset. Has Sata. Has SLI for possible expansion. Highly praised in the reviews I found.

Video Card: Asus Nv EN7800GT 256MB. I love nvidia for giving me decent Linux drivers. Excellent reviews. High-end card, hopefully will last me for quite a while. Has all the toys. Falls just inside of my budget.

Hard drive: Maxtor 250GB Sata. Lots of HD space. Decently priced drive. Sata model. 16mb cache for better performance.

DVD burner: Pioneer DVD Burner. Multi-functional, decent price, double layer. Not much to say about it.

Power Supply = Zalman Silent Power Supply 460W. It's a Zalman. It's silent. It has great reviews. I only hope it is powerful enough to accommodate possible future upgrades, such as an extra 7800GT card in SLI.

Sound card: Not yet determined
Speakers: Not yet determined
Microphone: Not yet determined
Audio capture card: Not yet determined

 

Okay, this will be my full RIG! Let me know what you think of it!
(The audio capture card will have to wait a bit, I'm out of budget and
I also need more time to learn my keyboard! :| )

Total spent: €1806,88 , VAT included.

 

Well, you can save some cash by going with the plain A8N-SLI, which is around $40 cheaper in the US. It lacks the heat-pipe cooling and the extensive accessory package, but the motherboard is the exact same.

I haven't heard a lot about CoolerMaster power supplies, and while their cases are solid, I just don't know enough about the power supply to say go for it. The Tagan T480-U22, the Antec TruePower TPII-550, and the Enermax EG565P are all in a similar price range, and I do know those power supplies are very good and pretty easy to find. Hiper branded power supplies are also pretty easy to get ahold of in the UK, so they may be another one to look at in other parts of Europe.

Outside of the CoolerMaster 550 being an unknown in the long term, the specs are pretty good, unlike a lot of so-called 550W power supplies that have specs closer to 300-350W power supplies from better brands like Antec and Enermax.

That Zalman you were looking at, while a pretty decent unit, is not something I'd match up with the beast you're building.

Nothing is wrong with the Corsair ValueSelect, but you could get a little bit better RAM, like the XMS stuff Corsair has or Crucial Ballistix for a little more, which tend to offer better timings.

 

"Well, you can save some cash by going with the plain A8N-SLI, which is around $40 cheaper in the US. It lacks the heat-pipe cooling and the extensive accessory package, but the motherboard is the exact same."


Well, it IS €50 cheaper. I picked the Premium because it had such great reviews and because I want to be prepared if/when I have to upgrade in about 3 years (3 years without upgrading, then upgrade the 'obsolete' stuff, that's the plan).

But if you say the heat-pipe cooling and other things are not that important... I might just as well go for the 'standard' version.

 

The one benifit I can see with the heatpipe cooling is obvioulsy it will be silent. Since you want a quiet system I can see the merit in that.
You say you want to max Oblivion so you're going to need some pretty serious firepower here. The 7800GT is a great card but even oblivion will likely bring it to its knees. I'd recommend two anyway. Or at least one GTX. If your set on the 7800GT don't spend the extra dough on the 2HD model, the performance won't change.
The X-fi is the best choice now so you're spot on with that, spending any more on a sound card is just silly so the extrememusic is a nice choice.
I can't help but recommend Seagate or WesternDigital harddrives over Maxtor's models. While they make some nice ones the two previously mentioned brands are generally more reliable and longer lasting. And if you can afford it the Western Digital 150Gig Raptor drive would be great for loadtimes and everything really with it's 1000rpm speed.

 

Like I said, the A8N-SLI, A8N-SLI Deluxe, and the A8N-SLI Premium are all the same motherboard. The Deluxe and Premium have a more extensive accessory package, and the Premium has the heatpipe technology. The motherboard itself is the same thing.
Now, if you do go with the heatpipe solution, make sure you have good airflow through the case in particular, as that's required for the heatpipe to be useful.

A lot can happen in three years, but you are getting a PCIe motherboard, so graphics shouldn't be that bad to upgrade. The only part I can see having a definite upgrade cap would be the CPU, since the AthlonFX-60 is the fastest CPU you will see for socket 939.

 

I wouldn't buy the Creative sound card + speakers if you intend to do any audio creation. Creative sound cards are more for gaming in my opinion. If you want decent studio quality sound then go with M-Audio. They also produce surround cards if that's what you need. Check out the Revolution 7.1, or the Revolution 5.1 cards.

I would not advise you buy Creative speakers either. I bought a pair of ITrigue L3450 speakers, and while they look great, they sound awful. The treble is thin, the midrange is flat, and the bass sounds clumsy and forced

 

Well, the Creative soundcard IS for gaming. The M-Audio (or whatever card I am going to get) is for Audio capture. I was planning to get a dedicated audio capture card later. Or do you think that these two cards could conflict with eachother somehow?

As for the speakers, audio quality *is* very important for me, so I won't be getting the boxes as you say, but price is too. I would rather skimp on features and performance than on audio quality though.

Maybe good headphones would be a solution in the meantime? I read good things on the Sennheiser ones, or maybe you could recommend other gear?

Then I can use the headphones and get a decent audio capture card + boxes when I have a little more spending power...

 

Running multiple sound cards may be something you might want to look up on. I don't remember much, but I recall it being a problem for some people. Then again, I've read a lot of crazy stuff online, and this could be one of them. Just a heads up.

 

Well, I tried to follow some advice, came up with this:

Total: € 1.561,34

Looks good... and more affordable! Only thing I'm not sure about is the speakers. But hey, now that I've cut some costs, I can afford better speakers!

 

Logitech X-530's are a real bargain and everyone how reviews them seems to love the so you might want to look into those perhaps?

 

"Logitech X-530's are a real bargain and everyone how reviews them seems to love the so you might want to look into those perhaps?"

Okay, I will!

BTW, do I need a processor cooler or is that more for overclockers?

 

You do need a cooler, but if you're getting the retail box, then a cooler is provided, and can handle some overclocking in a pinch. If you want to go with something that has less noise, then you'll want a high-performance cooler paired with a slower RPM fan, but that depends on how sensative you are to fan noise. If you're like me, you won't care, but then again, not everyone is.

 

Thermaltake is a good brand to start with for quiet, high quality coolers.

 

For the hard drive I am going to get the 160GB Seagate model. It's cheaper, but especially, quieter. 160GB should be plenty, if I need more I can always get another disc. Then for the processor I'm tempted to get the 3700+ . I wonder is there much difference with the 3500+ ?

 

At stock speeds the 3700 and 3500 perform almost identically. Fortunatley that's a good thing as the 3500 still holds it's own in the midrange class. However the 3700 does overclock a little better, though the 3500 isn't any slouch either. Frankly I'd stick with the 3500, it's cheaper and unless overclocking is your thing the 3700 won't give you much more than a better sounding model number.

 

I put together three systems at different shops. Which one do you think is best?

Personally, I like system 2 the best, but negatives are that the shop is in Holland (I live along the border but from there it's still a long ride should something have to get replaced or there are problems) and that the TFT screen I want to pick (Samsung Syncmaster 930BF 19 inch) is €40 more expensive than with other shops. They also got something called 'pixel insurance', so that you can return the screen and get another one instead if there are any dead pixels, but it's €80, which seems quite expensive.

System 1 I like the second-best, it is perfect except from the hard disc. I really want to go with the Seagate 160GB Sata. Preferrably I'd not pick Western Digital because their drives are reputed to be the noisiest.

System three I like the least, mainly because the shop has limited brands and I had to make some compromises. The case looks ok, but IMO is too expensive for its quality; I much prefer the other 2 cases. Positive is that this shop is close and has a good reputation. They don't have the Samsung TFT screen though and I'm not too sure about the quality of the Acer one.

I sent an email to all three shops, and up to now only Perfect-Systems answered. I sent it on Sunday and Monday morning I already had a reply. I'm still waiting on the replies of PC-Warez and Forcom (though I only sent that one yesterday afternoon).

I'm very much in doubt which shop to buy from.

Also, my upper limit for a budget is €2000. What parts would you guys advise I spent this on for making the system run more silent? (e.g. fans etc.)

Also, I have a 19 inch Gericom screen, which is a nice screen, but it needs a ****load of room and is heavy as hell! But maybe I can keep it for a while, which WILL keep €350-400 in my pocket and maybe save me €10-50 when the price for this screen comes down (should it come down?).

Also, you probably noticed 'assembly' and raised your brows, suffice to say that I don't trust myself yet with all this delicate equipment, but I do want a custom-built game PC perfectly to my taste (which would be System 2).


Sorry for the long mail!


Wouter

 

I'd go with system 3.

The Gigabyte motherboard will do just as well as the Asus, unless you're looking to overclock your system. Secondly, it's got a warranty included, and it's a three year one to boot. That's worth a helluva lot if you don't want to fiddle around with the internals yourself. Third, I've seen a lot more people with Tagan power supplies than CoolerMaster, and I've run across some reading material citing the CoolerMasters as failing under load.

 

Well, sorry to keep posting lists, but I found another shop that:

- is cheaper
- has a really good reputation on tweakers.nl (computer and modding hobbyists site)
- is close to my place: only 1,5 hours driving
- has good information and a dedicated support forum

The difference here is that the guarantee they give is "1 year pick up & carry in", which I take means you can bring damaged parts to them for repair or replacement during that period.

Here is the system:

I put that last part there because I am thinking of using my current box for something practical (possibly a box for music storage and synching). Then I can keep my current screen, keyboard and mouse and save some money on that. Frankly, I'd love to get a TFT screen, but the price and the fact that the pixel insurance s*cks makes me hesitate. That will save me about €400 in the short term.

Some more questions though:

- I noticed the Aopen brand is usually cheaper for the 7800GT card. But is it good quality? I mean, the difference in price has to lie somewhere?

- I took care to pick parts which do not generate a lot of noise. Could anyone recommend what parts for cooling etc. I could pick to make sure the system will stay silent? Preferrably not too expensive parts though

 

AOpen is a not quite big time brand so they tend to push reasonable prices. It doesn't mean there not high quality. So long as the clock speeds and specs are the same all cards will perform almost identically. If you want you can look for a brand that bumps up the clockspeeds a bit for you but it's usually pretty minor. XFX and EVGA are the two big deal firms that often do this.
As for cooling I'd say the Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 would serve you well if you can find it. Very quite but cools well.