Current best performance/price system sugestions

[xdkx]

I was thinking of several choices for each part under each category--not complete systems. These would be objective picks based on users' experiences.

For example, I believe the Abit NF7-S/A7N8X Deluxe and Athlon XP 2500+ were good overclockers' choices for some time. Then there were the XP-M's to pair with the motherboards a while later.

I guess this is just a thing for people who haven't been keeping up to know what to look at if they decide to build a new system.

I've been quite behind with computers lately...

[impar]

Greetings!

To clarify,
The idea is to keep a member updated list of major hardware pieces for a performance/price system.

What is, in your opinion, the current best performance/price system?

Following pieces to be considered, along with my sugestions:
Case - with 120mm fans
PSU - good brand, at least 35A in 12v
Motherboard - P965 based
CPU - C2D
RAM - 2GB
Video card - 8800GTS 320MB or X1950/7950
Hard drive - Raptor + a large one
Monitor - 19" 5:4 or 22"16:10

Think am changing the X1950/7950 sugestion for a 8600GTS.

[impar]

Greetings!

Have you guys noticed the RAM price?

[powerarmour]

Greetings!

Have you guys noticed the RAM price?

Yep...

Floor, drop, through, the....

[impar]

Greetings!

Last year happened the same. After the summer the prices soared, though.

Think its time for DDR2-800... 2GB or 4GB?

[impar]

Greetings!

"This is a lot of memory and for only €205 you can get 4 GB of the memory. It is not the fastest and happiest solution as we are talking about DDR2 667 memory and 4x1 GB but it will certainly do the job."
in, http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?optio ... 9&Itemid=1

[impar]

Greetings!

Got 2x2GB of DDR2-800, using 3GB in XP.

"Amidst a wave of low demand in the DRAM market that's been responsible for a seemingly endless decline in prices, DigiTimes reports that some DRAM manufacturers plan to reduce production in order to cut their losses."
in, http://techreport.com/onearticle.x/12531

[impar]

Greetings!

"If you want to buy memory do it now, as our industry sources confirmed that the memory price of the chips went up by about thirty per cent in the last two days. We are talking about the chips, not the memory modules itself, at least not for now."
in, http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?optio ... &Itemid=36

[rpbrown]

This system I just got does fairly well on the overclock but it is not a AMD

[me&er]

Here ya go Impar :

I have held out across both AMD/Intel platforms for the last few months and thought now was the right time to 'buy in' to a meaningful upgrade..:

Case - Gigabyte 3DAurora Black Very quiet, good cooling, top quality.. perfect layout/airflow for my 8 HDD & 4 OSes build
PSU - Hiper 580 typeM Same as Type R but w/o modular cables.. more than enough juice, very quiet, very cheap
Motherboard - GA-965p-ds3 Excellent overclocker, simple to setup and good layout, cheap. Replace N&Sbridge paste with premium/silver compound and look at fixing a quiet fan on the Nbridge for serious overclocking.
CPU - C2D Tested a new E6420 went for used E6600, both overclock easily to 30% on air.
Air Cooler - Scythe Ninja Big, but doesn't need a fan on stock settings.
RAM - 2gb Geil 800/1000 Ultra 44412 Were selling them off at ocuk.. couldn't resist.
Video card - BFG 8800GTSoc 320MB Best bang v buck uses less power than my 7600 GTs
Hard drive - Raptor WD740ADFD Expensive but the quickest + WD2500KS Cheapest and most reliable for me with my Raptors.
Monitor - Can't find good enough LCD for less than uk £200 that can come anywhere near my Mitsubishi Superbright Diamondtron.. so I keep stick to the superior CRT quality.
OS - Multibooting with Vista Home Premium OEM as secondary to XP at the mo.

Gen observations that are still valid across both intel and amd platforms imo:

Sata AHCI mode or NCQ or whatever folks want to label it as.. is an utter waste of time in my Desktop settings and often is at the root cause of instablities in my XP and Vista boots.

Raptors are still too noisy and Raid Arrays add too much heat inside the case. Matrix raid (not on the DS3) is very good.. but not worth the extra $$$ for me (extra HDDs, more expensive mb and too much heat).

I always use dos based bios flashing over windows based..

I always use a 800va+ UPS.. it works wonders for system stability and clean power usage.

Image/backup from DOS.. it's so much quicker and easier.. even with Vista.

Vista is coming along nicely.. but still way short of becoming my main OS, but I'm sure that will change within the next few months.

HTH