Mother board questions

[JamesB]

Im looking for a new MB, processor, HD's and memory

I have noticed that the Serial ATA speeds vary depending on the MB make and model. I have seen them from 150mb/s to 3gb/s

I amd just a little confsed why there is such a wide gap in the speeds.

I know i want to get SATA capability and drives and a dual core processor, but man this stuff is so complicated these days

James

[josphy]

Don't sweat it...it's not that confusing. There are just 2 interfaces now...the original SATA is usually called SATA 150 (aka 1.5gb/s) and the newer interface is hte SATA2 (3.0gb/s). Just make sure you get the appropriate type of hard drive for the type of interface your mobo has. It's been a few months since I built a computer, so I'm not up to speed on the absolute latest and greatest, but I just did a quick search on www.newegg.com (great place to buy from...excellent return policy if something craps out on you!) and they listed only like 12 SATA150 drives and like 40 SATA2 drives, so I'm betting most of the newest mobos will have that interface. HD space is getting cheaper and cheaper every time I look which I awesome. Same for RAM.

[josphy]

Oh also, to kinda make things seem less complicated...just start decide what processor you want...that will narrow things down right away. The choice of CPU will dictate what motherboard (which socket) you need to use. Then once you've chosen the motherboard, that will narrow down what kind of RAM you can use and other stuff such as whether its SATA150 or SATA2 (probably preferable at this point).

[JamesB]

ok that clears the mud a lot. I have not bought parts to build a PC for several years now, but have used a lot of parts I do have to make something work.

I sorta got the Ok from the wife to upgrade as my machine is ummmm (caugh caugh) making "noises"

James

[josphy]

Well I usually build a computer every couple of years, and as fast as technology changes, it's like I have to learn everything all over again each time. Like I said, once you decide on the particular CPU (processor), that automatically narrows things down a lot.

And again, I definitely recommend www.newegg.com if you haven't already. I'm sure someone will chime in as soon as I say that about some place that is cheaper or blah blah blah, but they are an excellent company to buy from. The prices are basically as cheap as you are going to find. The shipping is lightning quick. And the customer service is great -- especially return policy. I once returned a DVD burner several months (and several hundred burned DVDs later) and they replaced it no questions asked and actually with a newer model since mine was already out of date. Another time I had a power supply crap out on me. I returned that and got a replacement only to find that whenever the power supply went out it had also fried the motherboard. I returned the motherboard and got a replacement for that too (even though that was basically my fault for having used a cheapo power supply in the first place and it was like a couple of months since I had purchased it from them).

Anyway there's my advertisement for newegg.com...they should pay me :-P

that reminds me...when you get everything else narrowed down, get a good power supply. or a lot of times you can buy the case/powersupply together. that's another good thing is that newegg has user reviews and you can usually get a feel from those which products just have like an overwhelming number of people writing good things about them that it is probably the best product or the best bang for the buck, etc.

[jeffkohn]

I built a new workstation a few months back, went with the AMD dual-core Athlon 64, chose the 4400+ for the larger cache though they probably have newer model numbers and faster speeds by now. I chose one of the nForce SLI motherboards with 4GB of RAM. Performance has been very good, I think the memory throughput advantage of the AMD dualcores over the Intel dualcores really makes a difference for me, especially when Photoshop is chewing up 2GB of RAM while editing big 16-bit panos.

[JamesB]

I have a good case now and dont want to replace it, but I should get a new power supply. I think the one I have is a 400w

thanks for bringing that up.

James

[Gordon]

I've also had good results buying from www.mwave.com Used them several times over the years without any problems. Prices are good but not rock bottom and service is okay.

[Gordon]

I recently built a system with an AMD athlon 64 X2 4400+ & gigabyte K8NSC 939
Been happy with it all so far, working well & fast. Though I'm biased about using AMD at the moment.

[JamesB]

I have been looking and thinking of what to get. so far I came up with this list. the 80gb HD will be the OS and programs drive, while the 2 300gb drives will be for storage/backup

Internal Hard Drives
1ea Maxtor DiamondMax 10 6V080E0 80GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
2ea Maxtor DiamondMax 10 6V300F0 300GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive

AMD-compatible Motherboards
ASUS A8N-VM CSM/NBP Socket 939 NVIDIA GeForce 6150 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
Processors
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Manchester 2000MHz HT Socket 939 Dual Core Processor Model ADA4200BVBOX

Power Supplies
Rosewill RP550 ATX 550W Power Supply
Memory - System
2ea pqi POWER Series 1GB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered System Memory Model MD441GUOE

All of this I got priced at newegg for under$950

James

[Sideline]

Originally Posted by JamesB

I have been looking and thinking of what to get. so far I came up with this list. the 80gb HD will be the OS and programs drive, while the 2 300gb drives will be for storage/backup

Internal Hard Drives
1ea Maxtor DiamondMax 10 6V080E0 80GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
2ea Maxtor DiamondMax 10 6V300F0 300GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive

AMD-compatible Motherboards
ASUS A8N-VM CSM/NBP Socket 939 NVIDIA GeForce 6150 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
Processors
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Manchester 2000MHz HT Socket 939 Dual Core Processor Model ADA4200BVBOX

Power Supplies
Rosewill RP550 ATX 550W Power Supply
Memory - System
2ea pqi POWER Series 1GB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered System Memory Model MD441GUOE

All of this I got priced at newegg for under$950

James

Man... oh man... why did you have to post this??? My wife is not going to like this at all :) This looks like a great setup... let us know how it runs when you get it going.

My current computer is one i built in July 2003... overclocked it to get more performance out if it but with the release of dual core processors, I should not have to worry about overclocking now :)

[Gordon]

What graphics card do you have/ plan on getting ?

The one thing that tripped me up a bit is the current switch from AGP to PC-X for GPU interfaces. I have a 'state of the art' 6 months ago AGP 8x gfx card that isn't supported by most 'modern' PC-X motherboards.

[JamesB]

I dont have an AGP card. so thats not an issue, the MB I selected has a built in DVI connector so i can run my Dell ultrasharp off of that.

I dont do any gaming or video editing so I really dont need a slick video setup

James

Originally Posted by Gordon

What graphics card do you have/ plan on getting ?

The one thing that tripped me up a bit is the current switch from AGP to PC-X for GPU interfaces. I have a 'state of the art' 6 months ago AGP 8x gfx card that isn't supported by most 'modern' PC-X motherboards.

[Detonate]

Originally Posted by Gordon

What graphics card do you have/ plan on getting ?

The one thing that tripped me up a bit is the current switch from AGP to PC-X for GPU interfaces. I have a 'state of the art' 6 months ago AGP 8x gfx card that isn't supported by most 'modern' PC-X motherboards.

Yeah, that pisses me off too.

I had a great AGP 8x card. Then I went looking for a new one with Dual DVI, and it was hard to find one with 256 meg of ram and dual-dvi, and supporting other things I was looking for.

They are all PCI-X now, and I didn't want to upgrade my 6 month old mobo AND buy a new graphics card....

Ugh...

[BCPhoto]

James,

What you've got there for your specs is almost a mirror image of what I'm putting together shortly for myself. I'll also support the Newegg site for parts. Graphics card won't be a terribly big problem for you with Photoshop, since all it does is display the final processed image. Any old card will do that you decide on. good luck!