The "Freeola Customer Forum" forum, which includes Retro Game Reviews, has been archived and is now read-only. You cannot post here or create a new thread or review on this forum.
Right, finally decided to do the Half Life 2 PC thing, mainly because my old machine is limping ever more heavily. Stupid progess. Anyhow, I've not been paying much attention to hardware of late so if people have comments on this initial spec that would be helpful. In particular I chose the graphics card pretty much at random, having heard good things about PowerColor and a budget of around the £250 mark.
DFI LanParty UT NF4 Ultra-D (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard £105.69
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Winchester 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail (CP-096-AM) £111.57
GeIL 1GB (2x512MB) PC3200 Value Dual Channel Kit CAS2.5 (GE1GB3200BHDC) £93.94
Samsung SpinPoint P SP1614C 160GB SATA 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-012-SA) £67.56
PowerColor ATI Radeon X800 XL 256MB DDR3 VIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-038-PC) £229.07
Antec Sonata Piano Black Quiet Case - 380W TruePower Silent PSU (CA-003-AT) £82.19
Total £690.02
Oh, just realised I've not added a heatsink/fan. Comes with the stock one but I presume they're rubbish and noisy still?
DFI LanParty UT NF4 Ultra-D (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard £105.69
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Winchester 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail (CP-096-AM) £111.57
GeIL 1GB (2x512MB) PC3200 Value Dual Channel Kit CAS2.5 (GE1GB3200BHDC) £93.94
Samsung SpinPoint P SP1614C 160GB SATA 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-012-SA) £67.56
PowerColor ATI Radeon X800 XL 256MB DDR3 VIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-038-PC) £229.07
Antec Sonata Piano Black Quiet Case - 380W TruePower Silent PSU (CA-003-AT) £82.19
Total £690.02
Oh, just realised I've not added a heatsink/fan. Comes with the stock one but I presume they're rubbish and noisy still?
Page:
Should of paid 4 times the price and got a powermac g5.
Then you'd be sitting happy.
Although you wouldnt be able to play halflife.
But atleast you could megaflop alot of things.
Then you'd be sitting happy.
Although you wouldnt be able to play halflife.
But atleast you could megaflop alot of things.
If you want it to be quiet, make sure you've enabled Cool'n'Quiet. My CPU fan doesn't bother running most of the time unless I'm playing games or something. For just web browsing and design work, it's turned off.
Bought it. Yay, now I'm smug.
Cheers for the advice: I took it on board and got the 3200. Couldn't get my first choice PSU - a Seasonic, as reccommended by the chaps at silentpcreview.com - and the OCZ was out of stock. Went with a Vantec in the end, which also had good write ups for quietness, which my is biggest priority really. Also bought a different Antec case, without a PSU. Got a different graphics card too in the end: still an X800 XL but one with an arctic cooler already attached, for some quiet, still-in-warranty action. So, all in all, an entirely different machine to the one I first came up with.
It's not overclocked or finding yet: I want to make sure temps are OK and stuff first.
Now, back to World of Warcraft...
Cheers for the advice: I took it on board and got the 3200. Couldn't get my first choice PSU - a Seasonic, as reccommended by the chaps at silentpcreview.com - and the OCZ was out of stock. Went with a Vantec in the end, which also had good write ups for quietness, which my is biggest priority really. Also bought a different Antec case, without a PSU. Got a different graphics card too in the end: still an X800 XL but one with an arctic cooler already attached, for some quiet, still-in-warranty action. So, all in all, an entirely different machine to the one I first came up with.
It's not overclocked or finding yet: I want to make sure temps are OK and stuff first.
Now, back to World of Warcraft...
I know there is never a wrong time to upgrade, but there will be a big change very soon. ATI will soon have a new chipset and 512MB cards, there will soon be dual core processors. This should hopefully mean cheaper prices for us cheapskates. I will soon leave AGP and 32Bit processors very soon, might do a system very similar to what you are going to get.
Not really. Pricey mind.
Actually Coin, it is. And my own personal review goes something like this:
"Wow, what a £$%^ing excellent PSU. Worth the upgrade from my Tagan-tick-o-matic. If Scotty had one of these on the Enterprise it would have been so much faster."
In fact, I may in fact post that review somewhere.
As for overclocking, the Winchesters run really cool so a 92 mm silent fan will be fine for a moderate boost.
Actually Coin, it is. And my own personal review goes something like this:
"Wow, what a £$%^ing excellent PSU. Worth the upgrade from my Tagan-tick-o-matic. If Scotty had one of these on the Enterprise it would have been so much faster."
In fact, I may in fact post that review somewhere.
As for overclocking, the Winchesters run really cool so a 92 mm silent fan will be fine for a moderate boost.
Notorious Biggles wrote:
> Pfft, Tagan. Can't touch the almighty OCZ Powerstream range.
That's not what the reviews say...
> Pfft, Tagan. Can't touch the almighty OCZ Powerstream range.
That's not what the reviews say...
Notorious Biggles wrote:
> Pfft, Tagan. Can't touch the almighty OCZ Powerstream range.
Noisy?
I think I will go for the 3200 but overclocking comes second to tolerable noise levels for me. Fingers crossed though.
> Pfft, Tagan. Can't touch the almighty OCZ Powerstream range.
Noisy?
I think I will go for the 3200 but overclocking comes second to tolerable noise levels for me. Fingers crossed though.
Notorious Biggles wrote:
> Should get it finding you know...
I should. I might try and get it running again on this machine in the meantime - I think my evil (and I genuinely mean evil) ISP was blocking it, among many other things. After I threatened them with Ofcom they gave their customers a whopping 1.5k/s on bittorrent, so FAD may also now work. Alternatively I might just have messed it up somehow.
> Should get it finding you know...
I should. I might try and get it running again on this machine in the meantime - I think my evil (and I genuinely mean evil) ISP was blocking it, among many other things. After I threatened them with Ofcom they gave their customers a whopping 1.5k/s on bittorrent, so FAD may also now work. Alternatively I might just have messed it up somehow.
Pfft, Tagan. Can't touch the almighty OCZ Powerstream range.
Good spec. If you are planning on overclocking at all (what?!), whilst is true that all Winchester core Athlons have approximately the same ceiling, the 3000+ uses a 9 multiplier, running at 1.8 GHz. Now whilst they have been known to POST at 3+ GHz using that board and a Thermalright XP-90, the RAM had to be able to do more than 300 MHz. I love TCCD. The 3200+ would give you slightly more flexibility in having a 10 multiplier, allowing you higher overclocks. Otherwise your RAM will hold you back. Still, overall it'll be good.
Should get it finding you know...
Good spec. If you are planning on overclocking at all (what?!), whilst is true that all Winchester core Athlons have approximately the same ceiling, the 3000+ uses a 9 multiplier, running at 1.8 GHz. Now whilst they have been known to POST at 3+ GHz using that board and a Thermalright XP-90, the RAM had to be able to do more than 300 MHz. I love TCCD. The 3200+ would give you slightly more flexibility in having a 10 multiplier, allowing you higher overclocks. Otherwise your RAM will hold you back. Still, overall it'll be good.
Should get it finding you know...
Yah, very nice rig.
A couple of things though, I'd go with something with a little bit more weight than the 380W PSU, possibly a 480W Tagan TG-U01? It's a personal favorite when it comes to quiet power (not to mention outperforming pretty much anything on the market, especially on the 12V rail...).
Also, why not go for a Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 HDD? Veeery good.
A couple of things though, I'd go with something with a little bit more weight than the 380W PSU, possibly a 480W Tagan TG-U01? It's a personal favorite when it comes to quiet power (not to mention outperforming pretty much anything on the market, especially on the 12V rail...).
Also, why not go for a Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 HDD? Veeery good.
Page: