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George's Custom Built PC IV (2005) AMD Athlon 64 3500+ |
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As with my previous built PC's [PC1 (1996) | PC2 (1999) | PC3 (2001)], it is getting to the point where I would like something a bit faster. Although I have to admit my current PC (Based on a Athlon 1700+) still holds its own pretty well. The only issue is the new generation of games such as Doom 3, Half Life 2 and Far Cry, which could use some more processing power.
As I am pretty happy with my AMD Athlon processer, I am sticking with AMD and will go for a Socket 939 AMD Athlon 64 3500+. NVIDIA has been getting a good reputation for their motherboard chipsets since I built my previous machine, and their new Nforce4 chipset seems pretty impressive. I went with a Gigabyte K8NXP-SLI motherboard (Nforce4-SLI based chipset) that supports 2 video cards in SLI mode. Although I will stick with one Geforce 6800 GT for the time being, I will look into getting a 2nd card to run in SLI mode when the cards get cheaper.
March 7, 2005: The machine has been assembled and has been running fine now since February 23, 2005. Early on I had issues with stability and had gotten a few BSOD's. One of the BSOD's came when I tried running Nvidia's nTune software. I later discovered that nTune doesn't suppport my motherboard currently. When I was burning in my PC using PRIME95 I would get a BSOD and it would specially mention the NVIDIA IDE driver (I had installed the NFORCE4 nForce4 Standalone Kit version 6.39 (dated Feb 4, 2005) that included the IDE NVIDIA driver 5.07 (WHQL). So I installed the version of IDE driver from Gigabyte's site which was 6.31 and that seemed to take care of that. For the video driver I went initially with the 67.66 Forceware drivers and had some issues, but have since moved to the 71.84 drivers which are beta at the moment but apparenlty have been sent to Microsoft for WHQL certification. So far they have been running fine. I also bought a TRENDnet 2 port KVM switch so that I could run my 2 machines off the same Keyboard/Mouse/Monitor and it works great. Pretty cool to be able to switch between machine with a few keystrokes. I was worried that I may have jumped the gun a little early on NFORCE4, but so far so good. From what I hear the SLI folks are having more issues which is why I am glad I won't be even considering adding a 2nd card for probably at least a year, by then hopefully they will have all the major issues worked out and have a lot more game support. Out of the nearly $2400 in components, the only item that was DOA was the $7.50 1.44MB Sony floppy drive. The drive wouldn't read disks for whatever reason. It was sent back to Newegg.com who promptly have sent me a new one which is on the way.
I guess it goes without saying that this machine is fast. I ripped a CD of MP3's on both my new and old machine to compare. The old machine took 16:19 to rip the CD whereas the new one took only 7:48 to do it. 3DMark 2001SE got a score of 9337 on my old machine and 22,028 on the new machine. Not bad. More later...
Motherboard: Gigabyte K8NXP-SLI (Nvidia Nforce4 SLI based motherboard.)
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3500+ (Socket 939, Winchester core, 90nm process) (review)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP Pro SP2 (Maybe eventually WinXP Pro x64 Edition. Might dual boot with Linux as well.)
Memory: 1GB (512x2) of Crucial Ballistix memory (DDR PC3200 • 2-2-2-6 • UNBUFFERED • NON-ECC • DDR400 • 2.8V • 64Meg x 64) (review)
Video: eVGA Geforce 6800 GT (PDF datasheet) (NVIDIA Geforce 6800 GT PCI-Express video card with 256MB of DDR3 Memory.) (review)
Audio: Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic (Had to replace my SB Audigy 2ZS as it kept causing BSOD's in games). (review)
Hard Drives: Two Hitachi 250GB SATA Drives with 8MB Cache. Model HDS722525VLSA80 (review)
DVD/CD Drive: Plextor PX-716A (Dual Layer DVD burner) (review)
Floppy Drive: Sony Model MPF920 (Not much use for these anymore, but it has to be used to flash my motherboards BIOS when needed.)
System Case: Lian-Li PC-V1200B (review) (newegg.com page)
Power Supply: PC Power & Cooling 550-SLI (PDF Brochure) (Spec Sheet)
Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS): APC Back-UPS XS 1500
(The following are accessories and peripherals carried over from my previous systems)
Speakers: Logitech® Z-5500 Digital (THX® Certified • 5.1 Configuration • Dolby® Digital & DTS® Hardware Decoding • 500 Watts • Digital SoundTouch™ Control Center)
Printer: EPSON Stylus Photo 1270 (unbelievable photo quality prints. Now succeeded by the 1280) Support
Scanners: EPSON
Perfection 2450 Scanner (2400 x 4800
dpi, 48 bit color, Firewire connected).
Nikon
Coolscan IV ED (2900 dpi Film Scanner) Tech
Support Page
Cable Modem: Motorola SB4200 SurfBoard (Connected to Road Runner Cable modem service)
Network: Linksys Wireless-G Broadband Router w/ Speedbooster (Connects my PC's, 2 TIVO's, XBOX and Wireless Devices)
Modem: None (As I have had broadband since 1998, I doubt I will even have a modem connected to this PC).
Monitor: Mitsubishi Diamond Plus 200 (an excellent 22" inch (20" viewable) flat screen color monitor)
KVM SWITCH: TRENDnet
TK-210K KVM Switch with audio. 
Keyboard: Some old KeyTronic, I have had for years. (Has a nice click feel to it.)
Mouse: Microsoft IntelliMouse Optical (my favorite optical mouse)
USB Hub: Belkin 7 Port USB 1.1 Hub (I guess I will need to upgrade to a USB2.0 hub eventually. Although the motherboard on this system has 10 USB 2.0 ports)
Game Controllers: GRAVIS Eliminator Gamepad Pro (Nice USB gamepad.)
USEFUL LINKS
PC
PERSPECTIVE (formerly amdmb.com. an excellent resouce for AMD system
users!)
ANANDTECH (great
PC info source)
I've had enough, send me back to The George Cifrancis Home
Page!