hardware questions

[122.45]

I'm looking at putting together an Athlon 64 system. The emphasis is on 'budget', rather than 'performance at any price', but I don't want it to be a total dog. I'm less worried about trying to future proof it, in my experience it's never worked before and i've always ended up junking the supposedly 'future proof' motherboard etc.

I know roughly what I want: Athlon 64 3000+, decent but not outstanding graphics card, 1 gig memory, 250Mb disk, all from good manufacturers (no half-tested drivers or flakey hardware, i'd like it to be reliable), but I'm lost when it comes to details:

* is there any practical benefit over s939 when compared to the older s758? s758 seems cheaper.

* likewise, is it worth going for a PCI-express system (I guess this means s939)? I was thinking of a ATI 9800 graphics card, but the new X700 cards seem a similar price (I don't want to spend the money for an X800). Which is better?

-- and can you recommend particular motherboards and graphics cards, there seem lots to pick from, how do I know which is best?

* I'm lost when it comes to memory speeds, PCxxxx, dual-channels and FSB speeds. What memory do I need?

* SATA? i'm not quite sure what that is, but I'd quite like to run a RAID-0 (i.e. mirrored) config and it seems to have some relevance.

* what sort of power supply would I need for the above?

* and what cooling? is the heatsink alone sufficient? I'm not interested in overclocking, but would like cool and quiet.


Finally, i'm a UK resident but i'd like to get most of the above when i'm next in the USA (will probably get the case and PSU in the UK). Any suggestions for a good retailer?

That's quite a list, so thanks for any thoughts. Maybe 'PC on a budget' should be a FAQ?

Will.

[goates]

Socket 754 will become AMD's budget line, and won't have much room for upgrading beyond low end Athlon/Sempron chips. Right now the performance difference is minimal, but if you would like to be able to upgrade just the processor, it will limit you. The price difference isn't very large between mid-range motherboards of either type, so I would go with the Socket 939. If you aren't going to worry about future-proofing, usually pointless as you mentioned, then just go for an AGP motherboard. PCI-Express has only recently come out for Athlon 64s, and only for S939. As such, supplies and availability aren't too good right now.

Don't worry about dual channel memory as only the high end Athlon FX chips use it. And even then the performance advantage won't be noticeable to most people. 1GB of PC3200 RAM from someone like Crucial, Corsair or Kingston would be plenty.

I think the X700 will beat a 9800 Pro, but I'm not as familiar with the latest cards.

Abit, Asus and MSI all make decent motherboards. I actually just bought a MSI K8N Neo Platinum 2 Socket 939 board. Richard seems to like them, among plenty of others. ;)

Two SATA drives are pretty easy to set for a RAID 0 config. They aren't any more expensive than IDE drives, at least not that I found. If you really want to improve speed, the Western Digital Raptors will do it, but they will cost you. Otherwise Seagate, Western Digital and Maxtor all make good drives. I'm happy with my Seagate SATA drives under RAID 0.

For a power supply look for a 350-400W PS from Antec if you want quiet. If you are willing to spend a little more (definitely worth it for a quality PSU), take a look at Antec's NeoPower 480. This is one piece that you don't want to skimp on. Fast processors and video cards aren't going to work properly if they aren't getting enough power.

The default heatsink will be enough to keep the Athlon cool, but they aren't usually very quiet. Thermaltake and Zalman make some good quiet CPU coolers. Just make sure you get one that is designed to be quiet, and not for maximum cooling. The Antec Sonata cases are also geared towards quiet running, so you might want to look at them (if you haven't already). A quiet power supply is usually inlcuded. Using low speed 120mm fans for case cooling should keep noise down while still cooling everything off.

goates