First time builder needs help

[HighVoltage]

I'm new to building computers. I know a decent amount about computers and have researched building them, but I still want to make sure all the parts I picked will work with each other. The system is intended to be a high-end gaming system. The reason I picked the PSU is because it lights up. I want to add lights inside my case, so I figured it was a good choice. Any other suggestions are welcomed though. Also, I plan on reading guides on how to OC, that is why I am buying the liquid cooling system.

Case: NZXT NEMESIS ELITE 9-BAY ATX MID TOWER GAMING CASE W/SIDE WINDOW 400W - BLACK

PSU: ASPIRE ATX-AS520W BLACK 520W Power Supply

Motherboard: Abit Fatal1ty AN8 SLi Motherboard

Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+, 2.0 GHz Processor

RAM: OCZ Gold GX 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM Unbuffered DDR 500 (PC 4000) System Memory

Hard Drive 1: Western Digital Caviar SE16 (4000KD) 400 GB Hard Drive

Hard Drive 2: HITACHI Deskstar 7K80 80GB 3.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive

Video Card: BFG GeForce 7800 GTX OC 512MB PCIe

Water Cooler: Cooler Master AQUAGATE Mini R120 CPU/GPU Water Cooling System


The rest are items that I do not believe I will have a problem with. I'm just curious as to what people think about them.

Sound Card: Creative Labs SoundBlaster X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS

Speakers: Creative Labs Gigaworks S750 Computer Speakers

Keyboard: Logitech G15 Gaming Keyboard

Mouse: Razer Plasma Diamondback Black Mouse

For an OS, I plan on getting Windows XP Pro X64. I'm open to any suggestions for any part. I just want a high-end gaming computer. I do prefer NVIDIA for video cards over ATI though. Also, for optical drives, I already own a DVD+R/W, although I think I may look into a DL DVD burner.

Also, I was wondering if anybody knows anything about the 7800GTX 512MB video card. I heard that NVIDIA was going to stop producing it. Is this true? If so, why are they doing it? Are they not that great? Or is it simply because they are going to introduce another, better video card? I think that's unusual though since this card just got released not too long ago. Also, if they are releasing another card, should I just wait for that one? Thanks in advance.

[freakitchen]

First thing I'd suggest would be to change the power supply. Aspire units are poor quality. You're getting a high-end SLI motherboard, and If you ever want to add another card further down the line, you'll need an SLI-Certified Power Supply. The list is available in the FAQs of www.slizone.com.

There is much discussion at the moment as to whether dual core is worth the expense for gaming. Although great for multitasking, games at the moment have no way to utilise two cores simultaneously - thus, performance will be limited to the speed of just one core. It may be worth you considering a high spec single core AMD processor....although I'm no expert on this subject - I'd suggest searching this forum and google for dual core discussions.

I'd recommend you stay away from Hitachi hard drives. Many are sceptical since their serious reliability problems during IBM ownership. I'd go for a Seagate drive.

One final opinion....stay away from XP x64 edition. It's not widely enough supported by both hardware and software manufacturers to be viable. Unless you need the advanced networking features of XP Pro, standard XP home should be fine.

Freakitchen

[Kov-Ice]

Welcome to PCMech! I absolutely agree with kitchen. Also, looks like your case comes with a PSU, so why not look for a case w/o a PSU to save a few bucks. I recommend purchasing everything from www.newegg.com , as will most members here.

[Al Pollock]

check iti out

http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.p...threadid=98650

[HighVoltage]

Thanks for the help. I looked at the options Freakitchen suggested. Here are the new PSU, processor and hard drive.

PSU: ENERMAX All in One Noisetaker Series EG701AX-VE SFMA(24P) 600W Power Supply

Hard Drive 2: Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 80GB 3.5" Serial ATA150 Hard Drive

Processor: AMD Athlon 64 4000+ 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Processor

Also, another question. I have never had an AMD processor, nor know anybody that has one. I was always put off by how when an AMD is advertised, it gives something like 4000+, whereas the Pentium gives the actual speed, such as 3.4Ghz. The only reason I picked an AMD is because of the motherboard. Now, onto my question. How do I know how fast an AMD processor is? My guess would simply be 3800+ means 3.8Ghz and 4000+ means 4.0Ghz and so on. But that doesn't seem right at all considering the price of the processors when compared to that of Pentiums at those speeds. I don't even know if Pentium has a 4.0Ghz processor. Again, thanks for the help.

[Cricket]

Originally Posted by HighVoltage Also, another question. I have never had an AMD processor, nor know anybody that has one. I was always put off by how when an AMD is advertised, it gives something like 4000+, whereas the Pentium gives the actual speed, such as 3.4Ghz. The only reason I picked an AMD is because of the motherboard. Now, onto my question. How do I know how fast an AMD processor is? My guess would simply be 3800+ means 3.8Ghz and 4000+ means 4.0Ghz and so on. But that doesn't seem right at all considering the price of the processors when compared to that of Pentiums at those speeds. I don't even know if Pentium has a 4.0Ghz processor. Again, thanks for the help.

Clock speed isn't everything. The reason an AMD processor with an actual speed of 2.2GHz is marketed with the 3400+ or 3600+ numbers is because the AMD processor can process data much more efficiently than a Intel processor can because of the way the AMD processor architecture works. It basically can do more operations in one clock cycle than a Intel processor can. A very simple example: if a Intel processor can do 4 operations per clock cycle, a AMD processor can do 6. So it would take a faster Intel processor to do the same amount of work as a slower AMD processor in the same amount of time.

But why even worry about it? AMD or Intel...they both produce excellent products that work the way they are supposed to. Neither is actually better than the other, they just go about doing the work in slightly different fashions...the end results are the same.

Cricket

[Kov-Ice]

Basically, it's AMD's marketing equivalent. Your equation of a 3800+ comparing to a P4 3.8GHz is what they're trying to get across to consumers. As Cricket illustrates, the clock speed is not exact but it makes the point.