Advice on Intel Build

[spartan_phalanx]

Hey guys (gals) I am looking to build my first pc and I think I want to go with Intel. I am looking for speed and reliabilty. It will basically be used for photo editing/multitasking. Nothing too intense, PSP9/frontpage/excel/some gaming(RTW is currently the most intense game I play- no Doom/Far Cry/SL2 or anything)/lots of basic photo editing. I am coming up from a P4 1.6 GeForce 2 512 MB RAM system that just went to CP heaven after 3 years of headache/disapointment (HP shelve bought pc). I have scoured the net researching everything I could find (most of which seems to fly by my pee-brain) but have come up with a general idea of some components. Budget is a factor but is flexible if deemed necessary. Monitor/KeyBoard-Mouse Not needed.

CPU- Intel LGA775 Pentium 4 550 3.4 GHz or Intel LGA 775 Pentium 4 640 3.2GHz - Roughly same price - Any other Recommendations?
MB- ABIT "Fatal1ty AA8XE" 925XE or ASUS "P5AD2 Premium" 925X
GC- 6800GT or Sapphire RADEON X850 XT - Both Higher end but open for good lower cost option
RAM- Unsure Here, Is higher end mostly for OC'ers? 2x512 or 1G?
Case- Undecided but a couple in mind, open for suggestions - Silver (75USD or less preferably)
PS- Open for suggestions as well.
HD- A couple questions first, Is it worth it to go with 10k RPM for the speed. Idealy I'd like to have a main drive with a backup for all the photo editing(external maybe???).
Drive- Nothing special but again I am looking for speed/reliability
OS- Can my old OS from my previous CP be used (XP home edition)?

Anything else I need/suggested? OC'ing isn't in mind at the moment but would be a nice option entertain in the future if all goes well with the build.

[Pent uP Rage]

I think I'm the resident Intel fanboy here, so I'll try to help...everyone else here has an A64.

CPU-Go for the 640.

MB-I'm partial to ABIT personally as I've found the latest ASUS boards tend to have a slight voltage droop problem at higher voltages. But, can be remedied with a small mod. (Only really important for overclocking.)
Depends on what you like though really....e.g. Ford vs. Chevy...

GFX card. The 850 will be a little faster, but a GT is more "moddable". Also, Nvidia is the only one to support CineFX 3.0(shaders). But, honestly, if it's gonna be a month or so before you build...wait. ATI is suppoed to be releasing their new batch of cards within the next month or so.

RAM-Yes, TYPICALLY faster speeds(non-DDR2, above PC 3200)are considered "overclocking RAM"
For video and image editing...and depending on your budget, I'd try to get 2Gb if possible(1Gb x2). If that is too much, then 1Gb will be fine.(2 x512Mb). But, keep it in two sticks...not one. Also, Stick with reputable companies(Kingston, Crucial, Corsair, OCZ, Mushkin, etc...)

Case-Pick one. Get at LEAST a mid-ATX tower. But, I'd try for a Full tower if you can. And, aluminum is always cooler, and is of course, lighter. Lian Li and Antec cases are pretty much the standard on which most others are based.

PSU-I know their website is kinda cheesy, but PC Power & Cooling(PC P&C) are THE BEST PSUs' available. PSUs' that come installed in cases are generally garbage. Buy them separate

HD-I'd just get a couple really big SATA drives and run them in RAID. Maybe even a third separate(external) drive for main storage. All your image/video editing info resides in the RAM while working, so a 10K rpm HD is only gona show you faster load times. And, avoid Western Digital like the PLAGUE. Hitachi HDs' are the highest quality you'll find.

Drive-I just got a Liteon Dual Layer DVD/RW from newegg for $58.

OS-If it's an HP backup disk...no, you have to buy a new copy. BUT, if you can find a copy of Win98, you can just buy the upgrade XP version instead of the full retail version. Only drawback is that you gotta install Windows twice. But, how many times a year do you install Windows?

Also check the "Overclocking Websites" pinned at the top of the Basement section. Read through some of the forums and you can get an idea of what to expect from certain hardware.

Hope this helps...have fun.

And welcome to the TWC...

[napoleonic]

don't buy Intel at this time

They're gonna use 945/955 just few months again instead of 915/925/925XE, u won't be able to use dual core ---> faster in workstation and multitasking section

2006 ---> Intel gonna use Dothan based dual core Pentium for Desktop ----> your 945/955 (even if you buy that later) will be move to trash

remember i850 and RDRAM cases........

[squeaky]

for apps like that, you really don't need too much stuff.
For RAM, I run Adobe premeire and photoshop cs at the same time with 1 gig of RAM and it never gets close to all being used.
For the video cards, ATI and Nvidia are both set to release stuff soon, but it's all just added RAM tech (stacked RAM)

If you're serious about app working, you may want to run RAID 5, gets you extra speed and is safe, but costs 3-4 HDs

for the CPU, go northwood!!! wooooooooot!!!
really though, get a socket 478 based motherboard with a CPU at 3.2-3.4 ghz and that's just as fast a a 550 or 640, and northwoods are better *tongue*

[Pent uP Rage]

I would have to agree on the Northwood...sig.

[napoleonic]

then HE CAN'T UPGRADE........

[Portuguese Rebel]

Originally posted by napoleonic@Apr 19 2005, 02:32 PM
then HE CAN'T UPGRADE........

By the time he has to upgrade the 550 or 640 will be history too.

[Pent uP Rage]

Originally posted by napoleonic@Apr 19 2005, 09:32 AM
then HE CAN'T UPGRADE........

No, but with a good 3.0c, he can OC the crap out of it and still not HAVE to upgrade for another year or more. And ALL 3.0c's will do at least 3.6Ghz. Just depends on your RAM speed. Matter of fact, my NW 3.0 is faster at 3.5Ghz than a brand new, stock 3.6Ghz Intel...FASTER.

And actually, yes he CAN upgrade. There's always faster DDR RAM(PC4400+). Not to mention that the AGP slot still has plenty of life left in it with new offerings coming down the road soon.

OC'ing isn't in mind at the moment but would be a nice option entertain in the future if all goes well with the build.

That system that we've configured (depending on the chip stepping & RAM speed) should be good for at 3.8-4Ghz on air. More if you watercool.

[squeaky]

make sure you have a decent mobo for that kind of stuff while you're at it.
generally you can squeeze more out of your cpu if you cool your mobo better (northbridge mainly). If it doesn't have one already, it may be a good idea to invest in an active cooler for your northbridge. The thermaltake "orb" is one of the best out there.

[spartan_phalanx]

Hey fellas, thanks alot for all your input. I just got back online with a crappy 1.2 cp just to check out your suggestions. I'll do a little more research on what you guys have suggested and get back to ya and let ya know what I decide. If you guys think of anything else feel free to post.

[napoleonic]

upgrade for common people is in 2-3 year, by that time can u sure today's pheriferal can still be find easily?

By the time he has to upgrade the 550 or 640 will be history too.

that's right, 1 year again and even i955 will be dead........

overclocking can only speed up the pheriferal but not adding new features....

[squeaky]

Socket 478 was around for most of P4's existence, it lasted for a really long time.
I just looked at Steam's hardware-survey results, and most people still have processors under 2ghz, but they run fine. The 1ghz barrier was breached years ago and quickly progressed to 2ghz, so many people are still gaming on their machines that are over a year or two old. Technology doesn't become unuseable once it drops from the cutting edge

[spartan_phalanx]

I would just like to thank everyone for there input and suggestions. I woulda like to have responded earlier but the temporary CP that I was using in place of my original that died also died. Anyway I decided to wait till the end of the year to build the PC I want, but in the mean time I also decided to throw out $400 bucks for a 'get me by' pc. I'll just end up giving it to the wife when I build later this year so it wasn't anything special. I went with Athlon 2800+ XP, MSI K7N2 Delta2, 1 gig Kiingston DDR 3200 and the GeForce FX5200 card.

With that said I have one minor problem that I'd appreciate any input on. I went with the Athenatech ATX case with the 350W supply, but the computer randomly just restarts. Initially it did it twice while playing a low end game, once playing RTW and now 4 more times while just serfing the net and or using frontpage. My temps are reasonable, low 30-Low 40c range, so I am guessing it might be the PSU??? Do you guys think thats what could be causing this?

Again thanks for all input you guys have given.
----------------------------------------------------------
EDIT:

Ok I googled the problem and it seems there could be any number of causes. But one thing I found is some errors in my system log. It seems at the time that every restart happens I get three consecutive errors logged. They are DCOM, Service Control Manager, Service Control Manager and in that order. I found numerous other single error logs of the DCOM. ANy ideas?

[Pent uP Rage]

PSU's that come with cases are generally crap. If possible, try the PSU from one of your dead PC's(as long as it's 350W minimum.)
As for your errors, I'm a little confused. What exactly are the errors saying? Is it not loading these services? If you can, go into MSconfig/services(Start->Run->type"msconfig") Go to the services tab and see if the Control Manager and DCOM are enabled/disabled/or automatic. If they are disabled, try enabling them.

[krazykarl]

For the Hard drives, 10k RPM drives are not woth the price premium, you are better off to get 2 7200 RPM SATA drives and (assuming you have a motherboard with RAID, which intel controller in the ICH works quite well on my board with the ICH-5) put them in a RAID 0 striped array. I recomed the hitachi deskstar line of drives, I have 2 of themy myself and they are quite fast and reliable.

[Pent uP Rage]

:wstupid

Hitachi drives are THE best quality HD's currently available on the market. And avoid Western Digital like the plague. Ask me how many WD HDs I've been through in the last 2 years. 5 The drive I bought crapped out and every RMA'd replacement has died in similar fashion. Now I use Hitachi and Maxtors. Although Seagates are 2nd to Hitachi.

#1-Hitachi
#2-Seagate
#3-Maxtor
#4- WD

And BTW...Did you get your errors figured out?

[spartan_phalanx]

Hey pent,

Yeah the errors I was referring to were logged in the 'event viewer' under 'system'. I also noticed I had some errors showing up under the applications section as well. After researching a little I think you were right about the errors... I had disabled those services when I went through an optimization guide a little while back.

As for the PSU I'll have to order one in cause my others are 3.5 years old and only 200W supplies. I realize that the PSU's that typically come with the cases are crap but I only spent $400 USD on the entire system so I thought it would get me by.

And I went in and change the setting so now whenever it randomly shuts down and restarts it shows me the blue screen and the info on what occurred. It always says 'Page_Fault_In_Nonpaged_Area'. Are you familar with what that refers to?

Again thanks for the help.

[Pent uP Rage]

'Page_Fault_In_Nonpaged_Area'

I believe this is referring to Virtual Memory. It is attempting to write a page file to a sector on the HD that hasn't been set aside for such files. Run CHKDSK (Start->Run->type "Chkdsk") Then try again.
If it's still there, right click on "My Computer"->Properties->Advanced->Under "performance" click "Settings"->Advanced->under "Virtual Memory" click "Change"
Report what it says or take a screeshot and post back.

And as for the Power Supply(or lack thereof), if you have a Best Buy in your area(and can afford it) just go pick up a 400+ watter. Take it home, test it out. See if that relieves any problems or not and return it. Then you'll know. I realize this isn't really ethical, but sometimes the poor (like me)just have to do what they can to get by. Otherwise Pricewatch is the way to go.
Antecs are the best quality PSU for the money.

[spartan_phalanx]

I went ahead and took a screen shot of my memory window (1 gig in the system). http://www.captivatingcollectibles.com/VM_SS.jpg

I ran into a new blue screen error just this morning upon first booting up the PC. It referred to 'win32k.sys' and after three consecutive times I thought I was in for it. I decided to go and look at the boot sequence for my drives and although I don't think I changed anything it booted up after that.

[Pent uP Rage]

Looks as though you may have TOO MUCH Virtual Memory. I know this sounds a little weird, but if your system has 1Gb or more of physical RAM AND a large page file, windows (for some reason beyond me) puts a higher priority to the virtual memory which slows performance slightly and over time can cause your HD to fail because the memory is being split between VM and physical RAM(You want to use more phys. RAM and less VM)
Run the previously mentioned scans and allow the system to manage the VM on the drive containing the Windows installation.