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Author Topic: Any PC builders out there? Wolff King Morrow Master Film Handler Posts: 490 From: Denton, TX, USA Registered: Feb 2004 posted 11-14-2004 08:16 PM                        Just curious to know what motherboards and devices catch your are when building a new system. I've done a lot of looking around at various sites and decided to go for an SLI-ready Nforce4-based motherboard. Specifically I'm interested in Asus's SLI board coming out probably next month sometime. Here's a link to an interesting article on the SLI technology: SLI Hardware  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 11-14-2004 08:41 PM                     SLI - hardware for the gamer who happens to be independently wealthy. It's bad enough a single nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra video card costs around $500. Now SLI is a great way to gouge customers for twice the money. And if you want to talk about some price gouging, check out the cost on some brand name PCs featuring this kind of setup. Alienware, VooDoo, Falcon Northwest and others offer gaming PCs featuring SLI configuration. In configuring an Alienware ALX system with a twinned GeForce 6800 Ultra SLI setup, the cost topped a staggering $7000 with a modest set of options added. The base price was $6000. And that's without a monitor. I like video games, but I don't like them that much. Perhaps in about a year, I might consider buying a new desktop PC to replace my old Dell system. Maybe by then the graphics systems will be powerful enough and reasonable enough in price to allow one to play Doom III at good quality settings without it costing a fortune. I would not recommend a new desktop PC purchase to anyone right now unless they are in dire need of a new system. A lot of current software, particularly gaming software, requires too much of a workload for mainstream hardware to handle to an acceptable degree. With new generations of ATI and nVidia video cards on the way, SATA II due to arrive and other improvements, maybe hardware (and sensible pricing) might catch up within a year. I've still got my heart set on buying a notebook computer to liberate myself from the desk and even the house.  |  IP: Logged Wolff King Morrow Master Film Handler Posts: 490 From: Denton, TX, USA Registered: Feb 2004 posted 11-14-2004 09:34 PM                        I did make note of Alienware's outrageous +6,000 price tag. That's one of thew reasons I prefer to build myself. It would be great for gaming, but mostly I'm doing it for graphics developement. I do CGI render work on the side, and recently found I needed more powerful graphics and a LOT more ram. My last render ran out of ram even at 1.5 gigs, making me have to cut back a few of the effects. I figure I'll probably save $3,000 building the system myself comparing the prices of the components versus pre-built systems.  |  IP: Logged Gordon McLeod Film God Posts: 9532 From: Toronto Ontario Canada Registered: Jun 99 posted 11-14-2004 09:41 PM                     I use Abit or MSI mother boards on most of my builds  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 11-14-2004 10:25 PM                     Abit makes a very good mb, Asus is also excellent. I have had an Epox dual P-3 board in my computer the last few years and no complaints at all. I recently converted my hd's to all SCSI type as my year old IBM drive began to do some wierd things. So far the SCSI is alot faster than the IDE drive running on HPT 370. And I still need to get the higher end SCSI card to take advantage of these drives actual speed... so I can double my through put fomr what it is now. Because some large server manufacutrer screwed up big time and overbought drives there are alot of brand new ST150176LC 50 GB Seagates available new for 40 bucks or so.... This drive lists for 540.00!! I have three installed in my computer and there's room for 4 more if I want to expand the storage. With the ease of installation, supposed higher reliability, and the present glut of cheap brand new SCSI drives out there I doubt that I would go back to IDE again. Also, I always build only INTEL CPU based computers... I know several IT guys and they just laugh when you bing up the name AMD they all say it means "Another Major Disaster". That has also been my experince with them. Mark  |  IP: Logged Adam Wilbert Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 590 From: Bellingham, WA, USA Registered: Mar 2002 posted 11-14-2004 11:26 PM                        The computer I use at home is the second desktop I built, (geez, 2, 3 years ago now?) and includes a 1.0ghz AMD Athlon Thunderbird, and i've never had a hiccup from it to this day. I'm on my second ASUS mainboard with never a complaint (second because the first was outdated, but it's still in a box somewhere in case I ever want to tinker). I've always gone with ATI video cards, again never a problem. I hear great things about other vendors, but I'm very brand loyal and, until ASUS, AMD, or ATI do me wrong, I'll probably continue with their parts when the next build comes along.  |  IP: Logged Wolff King Morrow Master Film Handler Posts: 490 From: Denton, TX, USA Registered: Feb 2004 posted 11-14-2004 11:38 PM                        I haven't yet decided on an AMD-based SLI or Intel Xeon. There's even a Dual Xeon SLI being made by Tyan I think it was. I also took a close look at Fatal1ty's new mobo, and its an excellent design. The only problem is rather it's marketing being that of the "ulitimate gaming board". Many preview articles show that an equal board using AMD simply blows it away for gaming. John Wendel (Fatal1ty) has thus been critisized for endorsing an Intel-based board because of this. The running joke being that he puts his name on an Intel board, but secretly uses AMD for his own personal gaming.  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 11-15-2004 01:49 PM                     If you're concentrating on rendering, especially for paid professional work, I would consider getting some kind of dual processor capable motherboard. Oh yeah, and there's no such thing as having too much RAM. Depending on the application you are using for graphics rendering, you may need to take a different approach for the graphics card. 3D gaming cards are often not set up to work with applications like Maya, Studio3DMax, SoftImageXSI or Lightwave3D very well. Normally you would need to go the route of a nVidia Quadro card or some other type of industrial level 3D acceleration card. 3D Labs and others make good alternatives. I don't think any of those are set up for SLI, although I would not be surprised to see an nVidia Quadro-based SLI version hitting the market. On top of RAM overhead, you have to have plenty of room for storage for rendering routines. 3D animation work and professional digital video editing work pretty much demands some kind of RAID setup. I've seen various turnkey systems sold using IDE or SATA for the boot disc and internal devices, but use Ultra320 SCSI based RAID for an external stack of RAID discs. Avid and a few other vendors sell setups like that. Lots of people on the Apple side will use a FiberChannel card and external XServe RAID.  |  IP: Logged Wolff King Morrow Master Film Handler Posts: 490 From: Denton, TX, USA Registered: Feb 2004 posted 11-15-2004 02:08 PM                        Right now I just recently moved up to a more powerful ATI graphics card and it has made a huge difference in 3DSMax in terms of navigation and pre-rendering work. Obviously the ram is the big issue for post-render. The Dual Xeon boards have many more options in the way of expanding ram, but also are nearly 3 times the expense. I guess the ideal board I'm looking at would be the Tyan Dual Xeon SLI board, but I'll have to wait a while before they release it.  |  IP: Logged Brad Miller Administrator Posts: 17775 From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall) Registered: May 99 posted 11-15-2004 06:37 PM                     I've had terrible luck with the Tyan dual Xeon motherboard S2668. Asus on the other hand makes very reliable motherboards.  |  IP: Logged Trevor Bailey Expert Film Handler Posts: 113 From: Woonsocket, RI Registered: Jun 99 posted 11-15-2004 09:22 PM                        I've also had very good luck with Asus mobos. In fact, I just installed one in a customer's PC last week. She had an existing Gateway system with an Intel OEM mobo - P4 2GHz. Replaced mobo and upgraded RAM and HD. I also prefer ATI cards and mostly go with the All-In-Wonder. However, most "home theater PC" people will say that's the worst way to go due to compatability issues and lack of hardware MPEG2 encoding, but that's not my goal and they have worked fine. On the topic of CPUs, I had previously been only using Intel, but two recent builds were with AMD Athlons and they have not had any issues since construction two months ago (although I felt one was running too hot and installed a higher quality heatsink and fan).  |  IP: Logged Floyd Justin Newton Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 559 From: Phoenix, Arizona, USA Registered: Jun 2002 posted 11-15-2004 10:00 PM                     Hey guys..... if your computer has turned into a slo-mo infected machine, check out lavasoft.com. Their freebie program will turn your lame-duck back into Superman that it once was! fjn Local 294 Ret.  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 11-15-2004 11:31 PM                     quote: Floyd Justin Newton if your computer has turned into a slo-mo infected machine, check out lavasoft.com. Also check out Spy Bot. I have both Adaware and Spy Bot. Of the shareware programs available Spybot seems to do a much better job at keeping them out of the computer once detected. I agree with everyone on Asus MB's. They are about the best there is.... Although my MB and CPU's P3/1ghz are a bit dated it still performs well because of its dual CPU's. I do alot of large file Photoshop work and this thing chomps though that stuff easily and very fast. Even rendering for DVD's is great and I can be doing other work while the rendering is going on and its never locked up on me. Haven't given much thought to which way I'd go on a new MB and CPU's but I think I'd lean towards the Intel Xenon's. According to a software guru I know most common software is written based on working with the Intel CPU's. Mark  |  IP: Logged Ron Lacheur Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 650 From: British Columbia, Canada Registered: Feb 2002 posted 11-16-2004 08:31 AM                     I'm running a Dual Xeon 2.8 on an Asus PC-DL Deluxe. After getting a replacement due to a faulty ram socket, it's been running pretty good.  |  IP: Logged Michael Gonzalez Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 790 From: Grand Island , NE USA Registered: Sep 2000 posted 11-18-2004 09:00 PM                     I have built three desktop systems over the past two years. One for myself and one for each of my two brothers. My current system is a little over a year old. P4 @2.2Ghz overclocked to 2.8 Gigabyte motherboard 8IPE1000Pro(no problems whatsoever) ATI Raiden 9600XT 128mb The system runs really good but of course is already out of date. I just dont feel like shelling out $400 for a new video card. I'd like to upgrade to the new PCI Express but that would require a whole new system. I will probably just stick with what I got for another year or so. Doom 3 and Half Life 2 run really well (high but not qltra settings and 1080X720). So I should be good for now. As far as cost goes, I bought a little bit at a time. I started with the most expensive CPU that I could afford (P4 2.2) but my first motherboard (also Gigabyte) was only about $35.00 and a used videocard from ebay (GForce Ti) was about the same. I also salvage my hard and cd drives from my old store bought system. Later on I added the 80 Gig Hard drive the DVD burner and then finally the new videocard and motherboard when I could finally afford them. Though I used my handmedowns to build my brothers computers, you can always sell any old stuff on Ebay. Just one way to go...  |  IP: Logged

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