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Operating System
MS Windows XP Professional 32-bit SP3
CPU
Intel Pentium 4
Northwood 0.13um Technology
RAM
2.0GB DDR @ 167MHz 2.5-3-3-7
Motherboard
ASUSTeK Computer INC. P4PE (PGA 478)
Graphics
HP w2207 Wide LCD Monitor on RADEON X800 PRO/GTO Secondary
256MB RADEON X800 PRO/GTO (ASUStek Computer Inc)
Hard Drives
80GB Seagate ST380023A (IDE) 32 °C
80GB Seagate ST380023A (IDE) 32 °C
SCSI Disk Device (SCSI)
Optical Drives
PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-116D
PLEXTOR CD-R PX-W4824A
Audio
SoundMAX Integrated Digital AudioTricky. I suggest looking into dual-booting. If the copy of XP you have is Retail, you can dual boot. If it's OEM (sticker on case), you'll need to purchase another copy of XP for the new machine.[*] But also (old) games (e.g. Drakensang The River of Time) that do not take advantage of multi-core CPUs.
Anything specced is going to be fine for that stuff.[*] Such PCs usually should be fine for programming, web-design, desktop work, browsing, movies (HD 1920x movies lag on my present system) etc.
Quad-core is the baseline now, especially for a gaming PC. 6 and 12-core CPUs are starting to enter the market, but not practical yet. QC is the way to go, and has been for ~2 years.[*] Multi-core CPUs 2x vs. 4x?
4 is a baseline here. 8Gb would be a good idea if you still have some money left once you've specced everything out. If you go for 4, buy it in fewer, larger sticks so you can expand in future.[*]3-4GB RAM
Makes sense. Don't be lulled into buying the premium stuff (like Hyper-X). The cheapest stuff (like valueRAM) from the reputable brands is 100% fine unless you're overclocking.[*] As long as it's fast from a quality manufacturer (i.e. Kingston?).
2Gb is definitely too low, min 4Gb.[*] Should be at least 2GB, but you seem to be able to get 4 GB cheap these days.
There's not much in it. Nvidia definitely have the better drivers right now. ATI are ahead of the game on DX11. My preference is nvidia but whatever works out at your price point. If you're concerned about energy usage, look at the cards being made with the newer manufacturing processes that use smaller die sizes (40nm/35nm). They use less power than their equivalents on larger die.[*] Graphics card ATi (preferred)
[*] I never liked Nvidia cards. My old GeForce256, GeForce 3 / 4 were all crap.
What always happens with this is you buy one card intending to buy another later, but when the time comes around you either can't find the identical card to pair up, or you don't bother and just buy another single, newer card. So personally I wouldn't fuss about SLI... just spec out the best single card that fits in your budget.[*] I am not sure about "SLI", a card that potentially lets you bundle two cards might be interesting for the future, i.e. by a 2nd one later on, but only if these actually work for "real world" games.
[*] Quality Powersource e.g. Enermax
- The power source should be by a quality manufacturer, with quality cables.
- I'd prefer it to be overpowered to avoid present and any future energy issues.
[*] Quality HDs e.g. Seagate Barracuda
- 1TB HD seem to be all the rage, but I rather have two smaller HDs that are
fast but stable and *quiet*.- 2x 500 GB would be fine.
- I am used to IDE drives, would now be the time to run the system on SATA cables?
- Would a RAID system be of any use? I.e. stability issues? E.g. a 2x500 RAID + 1 TB HD separate.
The new CPUs can run XP fine, but XP 32-bit isn't going to scale to over 4Gb RAM, or offer the latest DirectX features (Games like Just Cause 2 don't run on XP. This will increasingly be the case). Windows 7 is the best choice right now. If you buy an OEM copy while purchasing your hardware, the cost is much better than retail.Important: Windows XP vs. Windows 7
[*] Alas I have no idea what exactly is en vogue presently.
[*] To avoid any slew of issues I would prefer to run the system on Windows XP, to ensure all the software / games I own still work exactly as they have been all these years.
[*] Question is... is this possible? Can these modern multi-core CPUs run on windows XP (32bit)? Is Windows 7 even an option?
There's good SSDs and bad SSDs. Intel's X25 E and M models are the best choice right now. Other SSDs do have some benefits over regular spinners, but longevity is in question, and the Intel drives are smashing everything in terms of performance.[*] My C:\ drive for windows XP only uses 14GB (all non-OS data like games, programming, etc. is *not* on C:\, so a relatively small Solid State drive, e.g. 30 GB should be fine (no idea how large C:\ is under Windows 7).
[*] So are Solid State Drives an option as a C:\ boot partition, to boot up the system more quickly? Or are they still not stable enough?
Yes, No and Yes, respectively. Bluray media is prohibitively expensive for backups, and there's no info about the media lifespan. Bluray drives are SATA.Blueray / DVD / CD
[*] IIRC modern Blueray drives also let you read DVDs and CDs, is that so?
[*] Can Blueray burners be recommended to burn backups?
[*] Are these also SATA?[/list][/list][/size]
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Quick check on Amazon.de (not the cheapest site) :
EUR 196,85 - Intel SSD X25-M Postville 80 GB 2.5" SATA II von Intel
EUR 336,89 - Intel X25-E 32GB internal SSD HD (2.5")I thought you could use retail keys for 3 machines in total? As well, you could potentially scrap/sell the oldest PC and have Microsoft "de-activate" that activation. If you ring them up and explain what you're trying to do, they should be able to help you out.AEon wrote:Old games and XP
Since I bought the WinXP Pro (not much of a manual with it though), it should be retail... trouble is, it only came with two licences (my present and the PC before that are already using those), so I'll have to get another XP Pro. Dual-booting sounds interesting, I read a bit about it somewhere.
I'd go with separate partitions for sure. Even though you can install the two OS instances in different folders and they both use different folder names to store user profiles, there will still be overlap in folders like x:\Program Files\Common Files and the like.AEon wrote:BTW how does this "dual booting work"? Create two partitions on a HD? Or do both OSes use the same C:\ drive? The latter might be slightly ugly if XP starts messing into Win7 folders and the like.
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Nvidia Geforce GTX 285 (1024 MB) 64.6 FPS 360 EU
Nvidia Geforce GTX 280 (1024 MB) 56.80 FPS 300 EU
ATI Radeon HD 5870 (1024 MB) 86 FPS 400 EU
ATI Radeon HD 5850 (1024 MB) 73.1 FPS 290 EU
345 EU - 1024MB ASUS GeForce ENGTX285 GDDR3 PCIe
400 EU - 1024MB Asus EAH5870 Radeon HD5870 HDMI DP DVI
420 EU - 1024MB HIS Radeon HD5870 iCooler Turbo GDDR5 PCIe
290 EU - 1024MB Powercolor Radeon HD5850 PCS+ GDDR5 PCIe
My previous cards:
[429 EU - 128MB HIS Excalibur Radeon 9700 Pro]
[282 EU - AGP ASUS 256MB ATI Radeon AX800PRO]
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105 + 7 EU - Corsair HX620W (PSU)
66 + X EU - CPU-Cooler Noctua NH-U12P SE1366
258 + X EU - Intel Core i7 920 2.67GHz 4800MT/s S1366 8MB 130W BOX
i7 930 2.89 GHz (286 EU)
220 + X EU - ASUS P6T Deluxe V2 X58 S1366 ATX
(294 - ASUS Rampage II Extreme X58 S1366 ATX (for over-clockers)
113 + X EU - Tower(Coolermaster HAF 932)
Just do what I did, do some research and wait for a sale on one or two of the items on your wishlist and impulse buy the rest.AEon wrote:Endless choice is a nerve-racking thing it seems.
Either or, as far as I know. I didn't really look at AMD this time round as Intel seem to be fractionally ahead of the game. AMD motherboards worked out more expensive for me, with less options to choose from, so I stuck with Intel. Intel's latest offerings of the i5 and i7 quad-cores are very solid performers, and there's 2 socket types to choose from, with the 1156 socket being really good value for money, and the 1366 socket offering an upgrade path in the future to drop an 8-core chip into the motherboard (but again, it's a bit like the SLi issue... you'll probably end up buying whole new components at that point)From Intel I take it? Or were the AMDs any good?
Yep, lots of games are starting to assume you'll have 4Gb+ of RAM now. GTA4 is a good example, as performance is way better on 4Gb. The same thing goes for graphics ram now too, GTA4 runs like a slideshow on a card with under 400Mb, but smooth on the 800Mb+ cards.RAM 4GB min
Interesting... does anything actually use that much RAM? Maybe the new Shader 3.0 games are RAM hogs, since I have 2GB I really wonder what could want to use 8GB of RAM. Good tip about using less sticks.
Windows 7 comes with built in backup that works properly now... so you can set it to output a complete system image to a secondary hard drive (or network share). The backup will only be as big as the data on the drive, so if you're only using ~20Gb of a 40Gb drive, your backup will be a manageable size. It even has the ability to restore that image to a virtual machine, so as long as you have a copy of that backup somewhere, your PC can be brought back to life even if it's crumbled to dust. No need for third-party apps on this one any moreSSD / HD / RAID
"Don't trust desktop RAID for any kind of backup (mirroring). It's ineffective. More on backup further down."
Hmm... I have to admit RAID always made me nervous. That's the reason I tried to keep things simple, especially for backups. I use the really old Northon Ghost... but it works, not sure that would ever work with a RAID system. Hopefully a backup of a SSD will work with norton ghost?
I think I'd want to have 3 drives... the SSD, then one HD split in two with one partion the same size a SSD to potentially let me unpack a SSD drive mirror and boot from the HD if all fails. And a 2nd HD for data.
"Intel's X25 E and M models" / "longevity is in question"... so I would want to find a way to "backup" the SSD drive so that if things go all-out bad that I can boot from HD.
Couple of pointers here:Windows XP vs. Windows 7
Great tips here... the only down-side with a dual boot is that I'll have to reboot every time I need the "other" OS, but this would let me set up a working (now much faster) XP installation that gets me going, to then build a Window 7 version in parallel. The other downside... things you set up on one side, are not set up on the other... learning how Win7 works will be weird as is I fear.
BTW how does this "dual booting work"? Create two partitions on a HD? Or do both OSes use the same C:\ drive? The latter might be slightly ugly if XP starts messing into Win7 folders and the like.
The chart on this page is handy:I might look into the Win7 Business version... since I have been using XP Pro all the while, the more "professional" version for Win7 might be better (if I can afford it).
Yep, plently of SATA options on the market now. Really cheap, too. Samsungs are always a good choice.So I'll skip the Blueray thing for now, and get a "competent" DVD/CD burner (pretty much like "PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-116D"), and should be on the safe side. Hmm... are these also DVD/CD burners also available as SATA?
Yep. My current build about 3 months ago was around that spec, all-new components plus a stupidly overpriced monitor and it all ran to $3100NZ which is about 1600EU. Plus, we pay way over the odds for electronics in NZ, so you'll find components cheaper than I could."Buy quad-core, at least 4Gb RAM, 600W PSU.
Buy an Intel X25-M 40Gb and a big SATA drive.
Buy Windows 7 and XP, and dual-boot."
Would you say 1500 EU to 2000 EU is enough?
The main difference between the Intel X25-M and the Intel X25-E is the write speed. The read speed on them is the same. So I would go for the X25-M and conserve some cash. I think there's a 40Gb model available, too, and it should be almost half the price of the 80Gb.The X25-E might be pushing it a bit... but depends on how much money is left over, and how the dual-boot actually works. Seems like I would love to install some of those games that load/save a lot of data on such a SSD as well.Code: Select all
Quick check on Amazon.de (not the cheapest site) : EUR 196,85 - Intel SSD X25-M Postville 80 GB 2.5" SATA II von Intel EUR 336,89 - Intel X25-E 32GB internal SSD HD (2.5")
Yep. SATA III is also starting to appear on some motherboards, although drives that take advantage of this aren't around yet.I take it these modern mainboards all have SATA II? And are compatible with the older SATA?
The SSD might come with a set of expansion rails but if not, you can by these separately. They just extend the size of the SSD drive so it'll fit in a 3.5" bay.The 2,5" SSD would be placed in the disk drive "metal box" in the tower (seems not, since the disk drive about 4.1" wide)?
No probs. Here's the breakdown of my order in January to give you a feel for a complete build:Thank you very much for those tips... this *really* narrows things down so that I can start checking up on each component. To get a feel for how much all this will cost.
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Samsung Spinpoint F1 HD161GJ, 160GB, 7200rpm, 8MB Cache, SATA-2 2
EVGA GeForce GTX260 Superclocked Video Card, GeForce GTX 260, 896MB, DDR3, PCIe-16, TV out, DVI, HDTV, SLI ready 1
Cooler Master Gladiator 600 ATX Mid Tower Case, 500W PSU, Black 1
Intel Core i7 860 2.80 GHz, Socket 1156, Retail pack with fan 1
Asus P7P55D EVO Motherboard, Socket 1156, 4xDIMM DDR3, 3xPCIe-16, 2xPCI, 2xPCIe-1, 14xUSB2, Firewire, Audio, 1xATA, 6xSATA, RAID, ATX 1
Samsung 2233rz 3D Monitor, 22" LCD, 1680x1050, DVI, Black 1
Samsung SH-B083A Blu-ray drive, BD 8R/DVD 16R/16W/8RW, Internal, SATA, Black 1
Corsair XMS3, CMX4GX3M2A1600C9, 2x2GB, DDR3-1600, PC3-12800, CL9, DIMM 1
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium, for 64-bit systems, OEM 1
Those were the so called "Boxed" versions of the chips right? Are those already "mounted on the chip... how could they I guess... so the boxed version should have some "CPU contact paste" included, I hope.Foo wrote:If you're not clocking, the stock cooler that comes with a retail i7 chip is fine.
