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Whoopy-Cat
Silent Dude
Joined: 26 Nov 2005
Posts: 11
Location: Iowa, USA
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 Posted: Sun Nov 27, 2005 10:34 am Post subject: |
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I built my own rig about 8 months ago and then helped my kids each build their own computers a short while later. It was a great learning experience for them.
Normally I like to stay at least one full generation behind the 'latest technology' but this time I went a little extra for my own 'puter.
~ 3.0GHz P4 Prescott socket775 with HyperThreading, 800MHz FSB, and 2MB L2 cache
~ ASUS P5AD2-E Premium motherboard with 925XE northbridge, ICH6R southbridge
~ Radeon X800XL PCI-express Graphics (256MB GDDR3 mem, 256-bit)
~ 2GB (2 sticks X 1GB) Corsair DDR2 533 RAM (PC2-4200) running in dual channel
~ Two 74GB 10,000rpm S-ATA WesternDigital Raptors in Matrix RAID(0+1)
~ 300GB 7200rpm S-ATA Maxtor DiamondMax10 (16MB cache and native command queuing) for extra storage
The kids built their rigs partially as a school project (we home-school our kids) and partially to help them with their other school work (and partially so they could play computer games with their old man  ...heh heh...). So I wanted to spend a bit less on theirs since they would actually be building the computers by themselves (with my supervision, of course). That way, if they accidentally screwed something up, it wouldn't be quite as big a deal as if they had smashed some $500 processor or something. 
Each of their computers is almost identical (except that they each picked a different case and a different brand of RAM, Power Supplies, optical drives, and some other really minor differences). Otherwise both are the same:
~ 2.4GHz Prescott Celeron-D (socket478) 533 FSB
~ ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe mobo
~ 1GB (2 x 512MB) DDR400 (PC3200) dual channel RAM (PzAngel chose Geil for hers, WhoopyJunior is using Kingston)
~ ATi Radeon 9800-Pro 128MB AGP 8x graphix
~ a pair of 80GB W.D. Caviar HDDs in RAID-0 array.
I've been really impressed with the Celeron-D CPUs! They're .09nm Prescott processors just like the newest Pentium 4s, and are WAY beyond the old "Celeron"s as far as performance. No, they aren't HyperThreading procs like my P4, so they're not the best at doing major multi-tasking. But they run much cooler than my P4 (I had to buy a high performance ThermaTake Heat-sink/Fan for my P4, but the kids just use the stock Intel HSFs that came with the proc.s). And they can be overclocked like CRAZY! The kids' Cel-D's are rated at 2.4GHz, but they run perfectly stable well beyond 3GHz, and I know a lot of people push them up to and beyond 4.0GHz with no trouble at all! And they only cost $80-US each (and they're even less now), which is 3-4 times less than I paid for my P4.
Unfortunately, at the time, the Celeron-Ds only came in Socket-478. Now they're also available in LGA775 at alomst exactly the same price. I wish we would've waited and got LGA775 Celeron-D's for the kids because then they could've had more options for upgrading to newer P4s later. But I suppose by the time they feel the need to upgrade beyond what they have, they'll still be able to get an ancient socket478 P4 - and it will probably be VERY cheap at that point.  ...And who knows? By then they might need new motherboards anyway. 
For the games we mostly play, I think their Radeon 9800Pro cards should last them a long, long time. And they still have room for at least another GB of RAM (maybe even 3 more GB - I forget). So I think they made some wise choices. They're certainly good enough to play all the games we like to play.
We usually wait for games to go on sale before we buy them. I hate paying US$60 for a new game  - especially when only ONE of us can (legally, morally, ethically) play that game at a time.  If we wait until they fall into the "bargain bin" we can get them for $10, $15, or $20. Then we can actually afford to buy three copies if we really want to each have our own legal copy of the game. 
Anyway, those are the main computers we mostly use on-line.
_________________
~ Joel ~
whoopycat
veni - vidi - vvhoopi ... {I came - I saw - I ... got fragged ... again} :-/ *sigh* ~LOL~ |
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