Need advice on building Athlon64 system

[studio11]

I'm planning on building a system for PTLE 002R and I need pros' advice on specific questions (system components list below).

Here's the system:

---------------------------------------------------------------
CPU - AMD Athlon64 3500+ (skt 939)

MB - MSI K8N NEO2 PLATINUM (nVIDIA nForce3 chipset)
or option 2: - ASUS A8V DELUXE (VIA K8T800Pro chipset)
---- which motherboard would be more appropriate and give more performance ?!? ----

VIDEO CARD - ATI RADEON 9550 256M DUAL

HARD DISKS syst. - 36G WESTERN DIGITAL 10K RPM 8MB SATA
audio - 74G WD 10K RPM 8MB SATA
---- is SATA much better than IDE ? ----
---- are 10k rpm drives too noisy compared to 7200rpm drives ? ----
---- if 10k rpm isn't really worth it, what type and brand of hard disk I should look for ? ----

MEMORY - 2 seperate (not dual-channel) KINGSTON 512MB DDR400
---- anything I should know about KVR / HYPERX ? ----
---- CORSAIR vs. KINGSTON ?? ----

DVD - LG GSA DVD BURNER 16X

CPU FAN - CO0LER MASTER HYPER48
or option 2: - THERMALTAKE SILENT TOWER
---- which one would be more silent and worth it ? ----

CHASSIS - THERMALTAKE TSUNAMI ALUMINIUM (no psu)_
or option 2: - COOLER MASTER WAVE MASTER (no psu)
---- which one is more silent ? ----

PW SUP - THERMALTAKE SILENT PUREPOWER 560W
---- do I really need that much watts ? if not, how many ?? ----
---- what about other THERMALTAKE PSU ??? ----
---- what about ENERMAX ? ----
---- what PSU would be less noisy and give excellent performance ? ----

MONITORS - SAMSUNG LCD 17'
and
- SAMSUNG LCD 19'

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Is there anything else I should know about incompatibilities or else ?

Thank you for your suggestions and comments.

P.S. I'm open to suggestions on different performance brands but I'm limited to what's available in the cpu parts suppliers around here in Montreal (QC).

[superpenguin79]

CPU - AMD Athlon64 3500+ (skt 939)

are the 64's officially certified by Digi now?? If so, it is re-build time for me also.



MB - MSI K8N NEO2 PLATINUM (nVIDIA nForce3 chipset)
or option 2: - ASUS A8V DELUXE (VIA K8T800Pro chipset)
---- which motherboard would be more appropriate and give more performance ?!? ----


as semi-mentioned above, I would go with anything that is on the digi compato list to make sure you get the best performance and what not. Tech wise, as long as it is digi certified, I would go with the ASUS board personally.


VIDEO CARD - ATI RADEON 9550 256M DUAL

Nice!



HARD DISKS syst. - 36G WESTERN DIGITAL 10K RPM 8MB SATA
audio - 74G WD 10K RPM 8MB SATA
---- is SATA much better than IDE ? ----
---- are 10k rpm drives too noisy compared to 7200rpm drives ? ----
---- if 10k rpm isn't really worth it, what type and brand of hard disk I should look for ? ----



For building purposes I like going with IDE 7200 rpm drives and have had much better luck with them personally. Noise wise too I would go with 7200 rpm drives in my opinion. As for brands, I have used toshiba, Maxtor, and Seagate. For noise wise, I would go with a Seagate first, Toshiba next, and Maxtor last case scenerio from those drives. Maxtor drives are really noisy in my opinion. *shrugs*




MEMORY - 2 seperate (not dual-channel) KINGSTON 512MB DDR400
---- anything I should know about KVR / HYPERX ? ----
---- CORSAIR vs. KINGSTON ?? ----



I would go with the Kingston if you are going really high end. Personally I shopped around and found a no-name brand ram which I got two 512 chips of SD for $40 each which suits my purposes on the system I am running. If you get the Kingston also, make sure you get the cooling enclosures for the ram to keep everything running efficently on them.



DVD - LG GSA DVD BURNER 16X


never used one of those myself as I use a NEC DVD-RW/CD-RW drive, but I belive it will be compatible.


CPU FAN - CO0LER MASTER HYPER48
or option 2: - THERMALTAKE SILENT TOWER
---- which one would be more silent and worth it ? ----


I would look on Allan's post for best desktops and what not to answer this question. I used a regular old heatsink in the system I built and it does the trick. If you get into a lot of those fancy fans and cooling systems, usually you'll pay an arm and a leg. *shrugs*





CHASSIS - THERMALTAKE TSUNAMI ALUMINIUM (no psu)_
or option 2: - COOLER MASTER WAVE MASTER (no psu)
---- which one is more silent ? ----


once again, can't comment on this part.....




PW SUP - THERMALTAKE SILENT PUREPOWER 560W
---- do I really need that much watts ? if not, how many ?? ----
---- what about other THERMALTAKE PSU ??? ----
---- what about ENERMAX ? ----
---- what PSU would be less noisy and give excellent performance ? ----


For power supplies, I went with an Antec 530 watt. One thing you will want to make sure of is that you have enough juice to power anything plugged into the system. Usually if you are doing audio, video, cad...etc.. you want more watts so that it doesn't burn out your equipment by making it run too hard.





MONITORS - SAMSUNG LCD 17'
and
- SAMSUNG LCD 19'


I would go with the 19 inch flat panels if you can afford them, or a really big LCD if you can find something bigger. My ultimate goal is to put a flat panel LCD TV of some sort on my wall and run things that way personally, but bigger viewing area is always good.




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Is there anything else I should know about incompatibilities or else ?


in my opinion I don't see any incompatibilities off hand from a glance, but like I mentioned I would check the digi compato list and get a couple other opinions also about your specs from other users just to make sure. I haven't used too many of the newer systems on the market yet.

As for other stuff, did you consider what type of keyboard, mouse, computer cables..etc.. that you might need? I found out that when I got all my parts I needed some cables that I didn't have for the guts of the computer that you might want to check on for your specs.



Thank you for your suggestions and comments.

P.S. I'm open to suggestions on different performance brands but I'm limited to what's available in the cpu parts suppliers around here in Montreal (QC).




Last but not least, Goodluck on the new system!

[theMeanTeam]

you asked about kingston vs corsair. if you're not running dual-channel, you're not getting the full benefit out of your memory anyway. if you're planning on running single channel, it doesnt really matter what type of memory you get. just go to pricewatch.com and find the cheapest ddr400 out there.


<<you really want to go dual channel>>>


oh yeah, by the way, you should definitely think about going dual channel... :0)

[theMeanTeam]

oh yeah, one more thing


watch out for the asus boards using nForce chipsets. just take my word for it, you dont need the headache.

[Allen Hallada]

oh yeah, one more thing


watch out for the asus boards using nForce chipsets. just take my word for it, you dont need the headache.



I'd stay away from the nForce chipsets period for PTLE. Stick with the K8V or A8V motherboards.

Allen

[theMeanTeam]

I'd stay away from the nForce chipsets period for PTLE. Stick with the K8V or A8V motherboards.

Allen



fair enough. i built an nforce2 asus machine for my dad a few weeks ago and had tons of problems getting it up and running. haven't used PT on it, but had problems getting the memory clocked right, the board wouldnt recognize the processor so i had to set all my numbers manually, then it still had a problem where it wouldnt shut down properly. it would only restart, never actually power-down. had to try several different bios revisions to fix that... just a headache of a board.

[er1c]

Hi

Personnaly i use :

- CPU : Athlon 64 3500+ S939 (Socket 939 for future upgrate to 400+ or fx55)

- MoBo : Abit AV8 (Less integrated hardware so much free irqs, Abit is so stable and powerful as Asus "We had habitude to say that Asus is good for integrated hardware and Abit is good for power-tweakers users") Also AV8 has VIA K8T800 Chipset that i prefer because Via makes chipset for AMD 5 years longer than nVidia.

- Memory : 2 Sticks of 512 Mb DDR PC4000 Corsair (TwinX Low Latency : 2-2-2-5) Why? because it is the best DDR memory for Athlon and Pentium 4 at this time.

- HDD : I use 2 "old" IBM 180GXP of 120Gb with 8Mb cache that use IDE PATA connection. They works very fine and never made any problems

- Video : I use a Matrox Pharelia P650 Dual DVI out with 2 LCD DVI 17" monitors (Matrox is for me the only one for professionnal 2D graphics)

- DSP : Two Universal Audio UAD-1 and One PowerCore FireWire.

Digi002R is connected to an Adaptec Fireconnect 4300 and Powercore FireWire is connected to an another Adaptec Fireconnect 4300.

All work perfectly in 64+64 samples of latency. (Je touche du bois )

This is only my config with my thought and what i would buy if i was you.

-> 7200rpm hard disk drive are enought for audio editing with ptle even with 32 audio traks. Sure that today i will buy some SATA drive but my research would be for quietest drives.

-> 1 gig of ram is enought for ptle, prefer 2 gigs if you use a lot of vsti (is RTASi the name for virtual RTAS instruments ?!?) like reason, reaktor...

-> Make a good research for quiet composants, personnaly i use a yesico fanless power supply in a textor 6u69 pc case with 2 papst 120mm fan at 900rpm.

Happy holidays and Happy new year to all the Duc's