Original post but now edited to update and reflect new changes. Discuss if you want--I still have a bit of stuff to get... much of it should be here by Christmas or so.

Why are you getting a floppy drive?

id buy a floppy...its really cheap and useful if you lose your flash drive...

also wouldn't it be possible to purchase a much faster processor and compatible motherboard for just a little more money?

I'm not very computer experienced but thats what I would do. I guess there would be the compatibility issues with all the other parts to consider as well and when you added the total cost up for all the different parts you'd have to buy it might be alot more than what you're going to be paying now...

I thought you can buy a Pentium D for about that price, although I'm not sure if it would offer more performance compared to Pentium Dual-Core.

But then I suppose you can't beat that price to performance ratio...thats really cheap. I wish I can buy them at that price so I can get my old desktop running again (Pentium 4 Socket 478 )

On the graphics card, I myself have the new 8800 GTS 512, and if the GT performs close to it, you really should consider getting one. It easily beats the older GTS, and is pretty darn overclockable. (see my signature, stock speeds are core 650 and memory 960.) Naturally, only if you want big graphical horsepower. If not, the 3850 looks like a really good deal, for a really low price.

Stick with Toungy's advice, either get the 8800GT or the new 8800GTS. Much more performance for the money . I take it your going to OC your system?

8800GT>8800GTS G92, price/perf ratio. Hehee Toungy..

Price / performance both are amazing! But the GT does take the crown. It's the 16 shaders and the much better cooling+overclockability that made me choose the GTS, and the difference in price is only ~50 euros.

Because I do enough with Legacy computers that I'll need a floppy drive.

It's already a modern processor--Pentium Dual-Core is basically low-end Core 2 Duo... and the M0 revision frequently hits a 100% overclock with a bit of extra voltage. The board's modern (P35 chipset) and the processor's modern (Core micro architecture). I'll decide if I will go for the Q9450 at launch, a few months after, or skip it and grab a low-end Nehalem or fixed K10 setup. Either way--a dual-core E2140 at 3.2+GHz is more than enough. Besides--those two components totaled $190 when I got them--reselling them, even brand new (as they are) would just be a loss of $50+.



Pentium D isn't worth it--they run too hot, draw too much electricity, and are generally slower. And you can, Carbon 14... just figure out what type of RAM and graphics you have, and then rebuild with a hybrid motherboard (often from Asrock). As long as you're using DDR RAM, you should be able to upgrade to an E2140 or so.

The Radeon 3850 is still $170-$180... it's worth it over the 8800GT... much better price/performance in my mind.



I know what I'm doing--and I'll take the 3850. $180 for a card that I can actually find is better than $220 (for 256MB) to $280+ (for 512MB) for an 8800GT.

Also--of course I'm going to overclock. 100% is my aim.


One thing I didn't mention before:
I actually got a case (XClio 188A) and tried to build in it (basically just put the standoffs on the tray, put the board in without I/O shield, and finger-tightened the screws) but found that my Scythe Infinity would definitely NOT fit--at least, not without a mod. Anyways--I'm having it returned for a refund while we order the XClio Propeller (with a 36CM fan mounted outside of the side panel--which will make it fit). Unfortunate really--I liked the look and style of the 188A over the Propeller--but the Propeller will actually fit my Infinity.

It's a cheaper card, but it performs less. Though it should still run most games on some really good looking settings, the GT has quite a performance increase.

Ofcourse, the 3850 is technically the same as a 3870, but underclocked. (And GDDR3 vs 4, which isn't that big of a difference, unless you have a big monitor.)


Yup, the 3850 is a lot cheaper. But I'd personally either get one with a third party cooler and overclock it, or go for the 3870 straight away, if we're looking at price. (3870 is still ~250 dollars, link)

For a 3850, this one looks properly cooled, and I remember reading some nice review about it: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16814161216


ATI + Overclock = bad. Nvidia cards overclock a lot higher, but are more instable as a result.


Had the same problem with my Apluscase Monolize II + Thermalright Ultra 120 eXtreme, had to mod my case (place the fan outside and turn it around) for the thing to actually fit, and it's still very tight.

I'm not going for 100% on the graphics--just the processor. I'm going to order an Abit replacement BIOS chip after Christmas (for my IP35-E... $6 or so) and then flash the older chip with a modded v1.4 BIOS--that'll manually unlock FSB strap and some other settings (allowing to select DDR2 400 and DDR2 1066 memory ratios). I'm not planning on using a BSEL mod--just a modded BIOS.

As for the XClio 188A / APlus Monolize II, they both are the same case (basically). I gave my build-list and it had the 188A on it--instead of the Propeller. I knew it wasn't going to fit--and revised the list a bit later. So, it's being cross-shipped back. It's a shame really... I like the 188A (I think it looks better than the Propeller). If I had a second ATX computer worth running, I'd certainly keep the 188A and get the Propeller. I doubt that'll happen, however.

Anyways--I'd mod my case, but I care about a bit of aesthetics for the case itself. If the mod was unnoticable (as I've done before), I would gladly do so. Unfortunately, it's very noticeable so I won't.

EDIT: Oh, and I have a 17" CRT still. I want a 20" LCD--but either way, I don't particularly care for a slide-show at ultra-high quality on Crysis. 256MB should be fine--it's worth the money, unless the 3850 512M appears within $10 of the 256M version.

If you're not going for full graphics power, the 3850 is definitely the way to go.

I can't afford full graphics power--so no problem for me. Better than a Radeon HD 2600XT or GeForce 8600GT, for one.

EDIT: Since I love the XClio 188A so much (and I have $50 to spare--the exact amount that the Propeller is with the current free shipping), I'm keeping it as well! I'll be doing another build later--so I might as well keep the case. No point in paying for $15+ shipping twice on an item I'll use again later.

Lol. Spent more than me. You must show me your overclock topic when you've done it.

I think floppies are quite useful.

Why don't you get a Geforce 8800 GT/GTS?

Get the cheaper video card for now. You can upgrade later on. I'm sure some nice 10.1 cards will come out in a few months if you want to upgrade then.

Well I got everything. I'll be overclocking shortly. Highest FSB on stock voltage: over FSB1336 (2.67GHz). More to update later.

EDIT: Booting and benchmarked at 3GHz so far (8*375). The RAM is holding up well--the 2GB ValueRAM module runs up to its rated DDR2 800 speeds without extra voltage. Anyways--I have an FSB wall between FSB 375 and 400 and the board isn't giving any more voltage to the processor (it's staying at 1.2V load no matter what I set it to in the BIOS). I'll be contacting Abit about it and hopefully get a fix (later revision board? I have v1.00) for it.

I also had some problems back with an older BIOS revision--basically it was sluggish booting. It would take 2 minutes to get into the BIOS. I updated to the latest BIOS (v1.4) and it seems to have gone away.

The extra cases ought to be removed from the budget since it's not for this machine.

Anyways, if I were you I'd get a lower end Core 2 Duo, even though Pentium Ds are so much cheaper and easily overclockable.
Also if you look close for deals, you can easily get a 500GB HDD for $90, not that everyone needs that much room.

The 188A? That was originally for this computer.... but I'm going to take swap the front bezels around and put the new side panel on later. It'll still (technically) be a 188A with different bezel and side panel. That, or I'll enjoy tearing it all apart and rebuilding in the Propeller.

Anyways--this processor is a low-end Core 2 Duo. The Pentium D is outdated and too hot to be used anyways. I already have everything up and running... I don't need a 500GB hard drive (as I have more-than-enough space with the 320GB).

I'm currently running at 2.67GHz (333*8 at 1.2375V set and 1.2V effective) with RAM divider at 5:6 (DDR2 800 speed) and timings of 5-5-5-16 at 1.8V. I'll contact uAbit about the board not giving any more than 1.2V to the processor--even under load and read with their Abit EQ utility. I don't have a PC with working USB ports around so I'm stuck with some older utilities and lacking a few items (WinRAR, some ISOs, the a source-code upgrade for a game that's stuck on the ISOs right now). So far, however, so good. I can't wait to have a fix for the voltage problem.

1.2 V? My default voltages are even higher. (1.325)

Benchmarking/Stress Testing at 3.0GHz (375*8)

Under SuperPi XS mod 32M run, it was fine and stable at 1.2V core. It was fine and stable under Battlefield 2 (Radeon HD3850 running very smoothly at 12x10 with all high settings, 100% distance, and 8x AA). My last testing of 3GHz was quite... bad... I ran Civilization 4 with Warlords and Beyond the Sword and started crashing. I started to investigate again and came to the conclusion that the processor is giving off bad cycles which are crashing Civ4. I was at stock voltage for all of this--then I began raise voltage. Tried Civ4 again at 1.3V... 1.35V... 1.4V... and I think I even tried 1.45V. Everything was still sending out crashes for Civ4, so I started running SuperPi again to stress test and watch the voltages. It was always 1.192V or 1.200V under load--no matter the BIOS setting.

I toned back the overclock from the 87.5% (3GHz) overclock to a 67% (2.67GHz) overclock. That's what it's running at now and it's Civ4 and BF2 stable so far. I'll be contacting uAbit's tech support about the problem with voltage.

EDIT: I'm going to reflash the BIOS to kill two birds with one stone. First bird is hopefully this voltage issue, second bird is the annoying double-boot. I'll come back with some more reports later.

EDIT2: Still double-booting, but I have voltage control back. After a few other issues were finally fixed (somehow), I am back and stable at 3GHz. Civ4 seems stable enough at the new clock (375*8 at 1.3375 or 1.3575V, IDR which). I'll update again later, hopefully with more results. I'm Prime95'ing at <22.xxx seconds which I consider quite good for the little price I paid.

I need to buy Civ 4 .

And wow. Nice overclocking.

A quote from my overclock thread on another forum...



There it is. I decided not to post that until I had a bump. As it is, I'm running at 1.3575V (I had a crash in Civ4 so I set another +0.02V). Anyways--the computer runs well. Still missing most benchmarking programs--but other than that I am happy. I need to 3DMark and PCMark it soon, as well as get some utilities and still get a RAR program.

Crank the PCI-E speed up to ~135 MHz, gave me 500-1000 3DMark06 points extra.

I'm going to be checking some of the voltage settings and PCI Express bus speeds... see what can be done to speed it up for a few benchmark runs.

I haven't tried going over 135 MHz, but maybe when I'm in an overclocking mood. I thought it would give less of a boost in performance though, it works pretty well.

A 35% increase in bandwidth can have a bit of a performance impact for the better. Still, for these cards at least, the double-bandwidth of PCI Express 2.0 gives all of about 1 extra FPS when playing at 1920x1200. Hardly worth buying an X38 for PCI Express 2.0, at least right now. Now all I have to do is research sub-timings on my RAM.

Um... From what I remember, Pentium D is the same as Pentium Dual-Core, and that's what you're using. I see that Pentium Ds are basically just a low-end Core 2 Duo, but I think a "real" low-end Core 2 Duo would be better. Though if you really overclock, Pentium Ds perform better than Core 2 Duos at a much cheaper price.

We want to differentiate a Pentium D 8xx and 9xx (Netburst, like the old Pentium 4's) from a Pentium Dual-Core E21xx and E22xx (Core, like the new Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quads). In short--the Pentium DC's overclock much better. Their limiting factor is having 1/4 the cache of a "full" Conroe, but then again they cost a faction as much. As I'm going to replace this computer either in ~1-2 years or when Win7 comes out, I really don't need anything faster. As it is--the chip runs smoothly at 3GHz, where it beats chips (at stock) that cost 3x as much (E6750). I'm happy with my purchases.

Oh...I see.

Anyways, I'm surprised that you are deserting such a nice PC in only 1-2 years.

Remember, you usually only need upgrade certain components, so it isn't necessary 'deserting'.

Deserting? More like putting on standby. I'm going to see what I can do about getting an RMA from Abit... I'll probably pay the $150 cross-ship fee and hope for a better board. The boot issues are getting to be too much... as the board is unstable booting at stock. I'm looking more into the problem and we haven't figured out what it is. There are still bad boots that I'm getting--but i've not had a "siren" in the last 10 reboots. I also had Battlefield 2 crashing when I tried to load SP.

Hooray for people like you building PCs for people like me.

Chocolate anyone? =o

RMA has been initiated. Oh and chocolate = good (you remember our MSN conversation earlier eh?). Anyways--I'll be shipping it out soon--probably USPS or something. I might as well walk down to the post office tomorrow and have it shipped out ASAP. Oh and my new case (XClio Propeller) is now in. GIGANTIC fan to say the least. 36cm fan... wow.