May not need the 8GB, but it's nice to have in the event I do. Especially since I most likely will be VMWaring windows to play games. When the time comes to get the better video card it'll most likely be a high end 8 serious at least.

I've been on anandtech and tomshardware a couple of times looking at reviews for things, specifically processors, but don't go there regularly.

So even with VMed Windows running a game, which is therefore limited to 2Gig usage max, what else will your machine be doing while you play to use even 2GB more? Remember a linux desktop only needs like 256-512MB for usual usage max, regular apps just aren't quite that bloated/powerful yet.

I think you'll find even £50 saved from RAM or CPU will really be noticed on a GPU, they provide so much more bang for your buck unless you know you're needing in another area.

Modern usual desktops don't even need more than 2GB, definitely no more than dual core, but the GPU can be maxed out with high res games. Unless you have unusual professional multimedia, scientific or high-load server needs, you're overspending where you won't notice any benefit. Just don't want someone to be suckered into wasting their cash, from what I think I know.

3 Part article about 32bit OSs, "A Messy Transition"
http://www.anandtech.com/gadgets/showdoc.aspx?i=3034
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...oc.aspx?i=3044
http://www.anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=3060

Uh -guys; there are 64 bit operating systems around w/o that limitations.
Dunno what I am suppossed to fill the 32 gig max with on my mobo with 4 slots though - seems to be a marketing ploy or so ...............

I understand what you're saying. The only reason I would get that much RAM is to make sure I have enough down the road when I will actually need it. RAM is much more difficult to upgrade 3 years later than a VGA, so I want to make sure I have what I need up front, and like I said I will be getting a better VGA as well. I have 512MB of RAM right now, and it's almost completely used all the time (minus 5-20MB, ~100MB when it's idle) while half my swap is used at the same time. That tells me that I need to increase the RAM as well as I probably don't have my system optimized for the hardware.

OpenGL requires a high performance video card. An PNY GeForce 8400GS with 256MB of video RAM will provide low performance in Linux games. In my notebook computer it has a nVidia Geforce8 8400 GS with 128 MB of video RAM (uses less power) and I do not expect it to hit high FPS numbers. More video memory is preferred. I do not recommend choosing a video based on DirectX 10 compatibility at this time. PNY does not create high performance video cards. XFX and BFG makes high performance video cards and some of them are overclocked.

I have never heard of a power supply brand like Dynamax unless its an Antec model. Antec does not make good power supplies. I use Seasonic power supplies because they have been in the business since AppleII computers. Also their power supplies are the most efficient and produces less heat, so they are very low noise.

For a 32-bit OS and using dual-channel memory setup, 2 GB of memory is the highest you can go with out playing games with PAE. PAE gets in the way when using 4 GB of memory in a 32-bit OS because PAE uses around 900 MB to help address the rest of the memory even though a 32-bit processor can easily address 4 GB of memory with out any help. A 64-bit OS can handle all memory that a 64-bit processor can handle. Linux does have a way to mix 32-bit and 64-bit libraries, but not all distributions handle the mixture well.

Running intense games in VMware will slow your game playing. You may want to try Virtual SMP with VMware Server. I suggest try Cadega. It may or may not run your game. If it does, you will see a big speed up in performance because the computer does not have to render everything.

On my Pentium 4 2GHz (Northwood core) with 1 GB of RAMBUS ECC memory and a GeForceFX 5700 Ultra with 128 MB of video RAM, it barely plays UT2004 well even after upgrading from X.org 6.8 to X.org 7.

If it were me, I would get GIGABYTE GA-M61P-S3. Then spend the money on Hitachi 7K1000 (1 TB) hard drive which has the same performance as Western Digital Raptor hard drives, but with a lot more capacity and produces less noise. The on-board graphics will give enough time to do more homework and save up for the best performing video card. Zalman CPU heatsinks are not the best anymore, Thermaltake Big Typhoon might be better on terms of dissipating more heat and very low noise. Also it will cool components around the CPU better than the Zalman model.

Try Gentoo because you can get programs compiled tuned just for your setup. It might give you about 5% boost in performance compared to Slackware.

I do not suggest chassis that places the power supply on the bottom because the power supply have to work harder to cool itself off. Locating the power supply near the top of the computer case takes less effort for it to cool off. Putting the power supply on the bottom of the case may be different and easier to mount, but its disadvantages out weighs its advantages.

I'm not much of a PC gamer, so I'm not concerned with that terribly much. Like I said, I only got this one because I needed the PCI-E VGA and it was a decent price. Down the road I'll go for 2 SLI high end VGA's, but for now this works to get the machine up with as little out of pocket as possible.

I've never heard of them either, but it was a combo deal with the case, so I figured I give it a shot.

It'll be awhile before I get more than the 1GB, again minimum to get the machine running.

I do need to check out Cedega. But then the games I really enjoy are the Baldur's gate era RPG's. Haven't found too many current RPG's with as good of stories, and certainly none besides NWN that are based on DnD.

The last really high res game I can remember playing on the current setup was Call of Duty. Not sure if Civ IV pushed the graphics faster, but it ran flawlessly as well.

That certainly is a great looking HDD, but for the price and how much storage I actually use it's a bit much. Perhaps when I finally get around to building that media server I've been wanting to I will look into investing in a couple of those, but for now the WD is fine. I've never been a big fan of Gigabyte. Saw a couple of friends have problems with them and I've never had any issues with the Asus MoBo's I've used. I looked quite a bit for a socket AM2 compatible HSF, but I somehow missed that one, maybe if the Zalman doesn't perform up to expectations then I'll look into the Thermaltake. The current rig is running a Thermaltake Volcano, and it's keeping in around 38*C. Highest I've seen this thing get was 48*C, but that was on a 117*F outside temp when I forgot to set the thermostat on the AC unit.

Tried Gentoo awhile back and couldn't get it to install. Most likely a bad download/burn, but I compile most all the programs running on my Slack. I really need to go through and trim out all the stuff I don't need, but I just haven't had the time for it.

Normally I would agree with you, but a friend has the 900 and it's a wonderful case. The 3 120mm fans coupled with 200mm exhaust fan keep the temp low and airflow moving.

Thanks for the input though, you gave me some more options to consider should things go south on me.

A GPU is a GPU, almost all manufacturers stick to the reference board design, those who charge for a few % overclock make money providing almost always no improvement in real world performance or experience, only heat and noise production. I'd be interested in articles showing otherwise.
Equally, RAM and CPU overclocks typically show minimal correlation between clockrate and performance. Just buy enough RAM, and beyond that tons more will not be doing much for you.
From your usage figures, I'd imagine that even if you _double_ your RAM usage were you to have more, you would not expect to require beyond 1.5-2GB in the forseeable future.

A few years ago I got an Antec case which came with a PSU, both with 120mm fans, love it, and upgraded it recently to a new '80PLUS' >80% efficient Antec PSU for my new nvidia 8800GTS 320. No problems with those brands here.

IIRC NWN runs fine natively in linux, and after paying for a few months of Cedega, I'd rather promote Wine which is more in the spirit of OSS in code reuse (they forked long ago and have diverged code).

Older non-3D RPGs would be fine on lower spec GPUs, but again then why buy DX10 support, as any game using it or the OpenGL equivalent won't require such support for many years. Surely it's better to get a midrange DX9.0c card for the same money, or less?

Your 5200 may be coping because it's only able to provide the simple DX8? features. I picked a 6600 (nonGT) years back instead of a high 5 series after seeing what DX9.0c features provided. Wouldn't want to play HL2 without those ;-)

Could one not equally argue that a PSU in an airflow of its own at the bottom of a case would not have to deal with the heat from all the other components rising through it, reducing its own cooling and efficiency?

Actually the CPU is the only thing worth overclocking IMHO since you can get 30-80% higher easy depending on what you got versus 5% or so for GPU and Ram which is something only a benchmark will feel.Got an E4300 which is ugly at 1800 and a beauty at 3000.

If you use virtual machines you might need a lot of RAM since things get really ugly if they start swapping (slooow disk I/O).Other than that I'm with you there.


Actually I couldn't believe how slow a 5600 was back when I got one - Nvidia didn't exactly shine with the 5series.

I don't see the bottom thing making much sense - heat rises from the PSU to the CPU and even better the first graphics card in the way doesn't make a lot of sense to me.If you got 2 fans in the CPU on top it pulls heat out of the case.
In the end I'd rather have the PSU die because of heat (unlikely if it's worth anything at all) than anything else.

CPUs, I admit I forgot to mention the latest Core 2s do seem to do show benefits, but from my Comp. Sci. degree book, a simple processor with a 100% frequency increase only saw a 20% performance increase anyway because the cache/RAM system didn't keep up. Again benchmarks of real world usage seem to be the best test.

I hear ATI trumped the crippled 5 series, but going from I think a Geforce3 Ti200 to a 6600 was great.

Again sorry, I didn't look at the case to see it doesn't have a partition for the PSU airflow, and also you then have to consider the cable length to the mobo's power connectors, or look into the BTX form factor?
I'd rather not have the PSU die over anything else, if it goes badly it'll fry all the rest...

Hehe - on my old xp2600 box three PSU's died.One just went and the other two got a lightning hit over the line.Those things where fried - charcoal inside
The secound lightning hit did it in
Judging from that I assume a 1:2 ratio in PSU frying the rest

Dunno about the performance but core2 seems to scale well - benchmarks show mine even with a 3 gig CPU for FPU and stuff like that.

Shameless plug:Got Samsung cheapo RAM in that box and can't believe how well it performs.

Granted, anything is only as good as it's slowest/weakest component. Going from a 1.4Ghz single core to a 2.8Ghz dual core should effectively quadruple the computing power.

NWN does run natively, but I've heard it can be a PITA to get running properly, evenso it will be something I will look into eventually.

At the moment, a number of my college courses are online, especially those such as Networking Fundamentals which run through a Cisco Academy, and the need to have multiple resources running at once is high. The current rig bogs down when trying to WINE Packet Tracer and running the courseware, so my needs are faster CPU and more RAM over a more powerful VGA at this point.

I'm used to having the PS on top, but after seeing my friends 900 in action I was sold. With stock HSF on a C2D Extreme and an 8800GTX, the PS, indeed none of the components, peaked over 38*C running full load. He has a 3rd party (can't remember brand) fan controller and temp sensor unit, which had 3 leads for the CPU, HDD and case, of which he put the case sensor on his PS.

Personally, I haven't had a faulty PSU fry any of the other components. The ones I have die on me did just that, and didn't power anything.

I would have gone for BTX had it been more popular. Building a rig designed on that form factor just seems to be far too much trouble at this point in time due to non-acceptance by the general market.

So, while I'm here, anyone know of a good wireless ergonomic keyboard? I'd prefer to stay away from MS purely for philisophical reasons, but if they beat out everyone else by a large margin I may lean towards them.

Holy Carp! Newegg is fast! I bought the case and stuff yesterday and it's already out for delivery to my house. I'll have everything but the Artic Silver 5, which is being shipped from New Jersey , so I may just use the thermal paste coming with the HSF.

Again the power supply on the bottom have to work harder to draw in more air because the box is restricting air flow. Of course you can add a piece of plastic in a form of a ramp, so the air flow moves easily. However, it will take a lot of room to do this.

The reason why newegg is fast is because how they organize their facility. Anandtech has a good article about newegg. I wish Dell was like newegg because Dell took 6+ weeks and almost four delays to actually ship my Inspiron 1520.

crashmeister, you need to make sure the electrical ground is proper grounded. If it is not, lightning will then find a way that is a shorter path which can be any electronics or you.

If you bought anything less than GeForceFX 5700 Ultra for GeForceFX series, you are just wasting money. Also if you are considering to buy a GeForceFX 5200 during those times, it is best to buy a GeForce4.

People always think multiple processors increases processing power. This is not true. In a multiple processor system, you calculate the maximum clock of one processor, so it will actually be two times faster. In a multi-threaded application it will be around three to four times faster depending on the efficiency of the program.

I am more of King Quest, Quest for Glory, Myst, and Starcraft gamer than today's high quality 3D games.

The motherboard that I suggested has an integrated graphics, so you do not have to buy a video card at that time.

All motherboard brands have the same problems if you do not spend on a quality power supply. I use Abit boards in my computers and never have any problems. Also my community college have used Gigabyte boards and I never experience them restarting while working on them for four years. ASUS motherboards even with quality power supplies have issues. They restart or do not show any status that they are on or indicating any hard drive activity. IMHO, ASUS motherboards are crap and they like to sell refurbish boards with out telling their customers or the computer store. My community college have now upgraded their computers that now contains ASUS motherboards. Most of them do not indicate that they are on or showing any hard drive activity. The only way to tell is by the fan noise and seeing what is on the screen.

Actually, I've got the machine up and running now (typing from it), and the bottom front 120mm fan blows straight on the PS, which has 2 fans of it's own, 1 in front to suck in air and 1 in the rear to exhaust the hot air, so air flow is not a problem with this thing.

The way I'm looking at it is, 1.4Ghz x2(double the processor speed)=2.8Ghz x2(dual core)= quadruple the computing power of my old machine, but perhaps I am looking at it wrong?

So far, the ASUS boards I've had have been really good quality with 0 problems. I'm not sure what to make of the comment about them being difficult to determine power state. Have you checked the power save mode, or HDD suspend mode? All my computers usually have indicator lights that tell you that it is on.