Building a New Computer

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Ever since my old kickass PC friggin' blew up, I've been using this piece of crap. Well, I'm tired of it, so I'm building a new one. I went to NewEgg, and decided on the following parts. Now I just await the verification and confirmation of the brilliant minds of the ESF Forums:

Hard Drive: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144392
CD/DVD Drive: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16827152058
5x Cooling Fans: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16835150007
Memory: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820145594
Monitor: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16824116282
Mainboard: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131540
Power Supply: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817103931
Processor: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103546
Sound Card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16829102188
Video Card (1x): http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814130023

Grand Total: $1,780.87

And I SHOULD, theoretically, be able to fit all of this inside here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811129155
 
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I can't recommend the case more, my last two builds have used that case. The "cooling pipe" works real well if you slap some fans in it and place the openings just above the vid card and CPU.

It's a great time to build an AMD machine because of the pricecuts, and you probably won't be able to afford a Conroe ;p

I like all of your choices but the HDD and DVD drives. NEC is okay, but why not go with LiteON? LiteON is consitantly the best bang for the buck, hands down, often ending in the top three in performance and landing in the bottom 10 for price. As for HDDs, Samsung isn't the name of choice, but it's not bad either. Hitachi, Seagate, WD are all better known, and better tested by the masses, reviews should be easy to find on them. I have never personally tested a Samsung HDD though, so I could be wrong.
 
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Thanks Cuc, I'll keep that in mind about the fans and positioning.

I also edited out the hard drive. I see no problem with the DVD drive, but I agree with you on the HDD. My brother has the exact same Samsung HDD that I posted, which is only reason I was willing to use an HDD that wasn't a Western Digital.
 
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Cucumba said:
I have never personally tested a Samsung HDD though, so I could be wrong.
My 160gb HDD is a samsung drive, Iv'e had a few issues with it spinning out and making strange noise however while booting, however that hasn't happened for a while and diagnostic tests that I have ran on it didn't really find any issues that I should be over-concerned about. All in all, the drive works for me however and that's all that matters. At the time I bought this HDD, my supplier showed me a list of returns for drives of other brand names, with only 2 returns of this particular HDD (It was DOA on one guy, and someone managed to melt the HDD somehow as far as my memory goes). Maxtor is also another decent brand when it comes to HDDs.

As for a dvd burner, atm I currently use a Pioneer DVR-109 (Current revision from last time I checked is DVR-111). A reliable burner from my own experience, haven't hadd any issues with it during the time Iv'e used it. Some manafacturers do use the base model of another company's optical drive and modify it a little sometimes as well and label it as their own product sometimes aswell.
Spunky said:
Ever since my old kickass PC friggin' blew up, I've been using this piece of crap. Well, I'm tired of it, so I'm building a new one. I went to NewEgg, and decided on the following parts. Now I just await the verification and confirmation of the brilliant minds of the ESF Forums:

Hard Drive: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822144392
CD/DVD Drive: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16827152058
5x Cooling Fans: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835150007
Memory: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820145594
Monitor: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16824116282
Mainboard: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131540
Power Supply: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817103931
Processor: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103546
Sound Card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16829102188
Video Card (1x): http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130023

Grand Total: $1,780.87

And I SHOULD, theoretically, be able to fit all of this inside here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811129155
Most of these specs seem fine. Just about all useful computers in my house use a ASUS mainboard. DFI is also another brand to consider, with these particular boards being popular amoung enthusiasts and overclockers (not that I am expecting you to overclock your processor, it's not the general fact that I'm telling you to buy it souly because of ocing).

Just a small note that Nvidia tested the 7950GX2 on A8N-SLI bios v1016, so should you run into problems with using the 7950GX2 in your board, check to see what bios you are using. Aside from that, on a forum thread is I was just reading, a consumer that bought the card said he had issues with peg-link turned on, a option in the A8N-SLI bios that auto-overclocks the pci-express bus, which might possibly cause problems for you. Turning it off fixes the issue though accordingly. Also, another thing you might want to note, if you for any reason want to run quad sli in future, you will need a mainboard that uses nForce4 SLI 32x, which utilizes 32 pci-express lanes, however your psu could be a limiting factor of running quad sli, and the 4gpus will likely be bottlenecked on such a setup.

Edit: After being bored and doing a bit of price researching for DDR2 800MHZ memory, A Conroe E6400 and a 965 based chipset mainboard:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819115004 - Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 Conroe 1066MHz FSB 2M shared L2 Cache LGA 775 Processor - Retail

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131030 - ASUS P5B Socket T (LGA 775) Intel P965 Express ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820231065 - G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM Unbuffered DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit System Memory - Retail

Total cost with the other system specs mentioned when you made the thread comes to $1915.86 (replacing the mainboard, memory and processor you posted). If you can afford to strech your budget further, I would consider this a better upgrade for you then what you have already planned.
 

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