Custom computer, w00t Options

[mipadi]

Since I'm going to grad school and need a more powerful, but less portable, computer, I'm selling my iBook G4 and building a custom PC. Here are the specs (below).

Whaddaya think?

This post has been edited by mipadi: Jul 9 2008, 04:10 PM

[--DANNY--]

Personally, I wouldn't trust a Rosewill product at the base of my system. Maybe a Rosewill peripheral like a microphone or network card, but not for a Power Supply. They are made cheap to be sold cheap.

Rosewill gets great reviews from buyers because the people who buy their products are cheap and don't know the difference, and are too happy that they saved $10 to realize that they're new SLI Gfx cards could go up in flames from poor manufacturing of their PSU. lol

I'd go with a power supply that's well documented as being efficient and a great psu all around.
Like the Antec Earthwatts EA500, which is currently on sale for $59 from it's regular $90 price tag.

If you're gaming, you may want to consider a gfx card that has 512mb memory, but that should do fine for most games at decent settings.

Personally, I'm not a fan of cheap 5.1 sound setups. They usually sound like their price would indicate.
In most cases, you would be better off spending the money on a 2.0 or 2.1 speaker setup. You could get some really nice 2.1 active desktop speakers from a great brand for not much more, like the Swan M-10 speakers.
But that's just personal preference, some people don't really care if they get the clearest audio as long as they can hear the explosions behind them while watching Die Hard 4, or that sneaky gamer coming up behind them with a knife.
Just some food for thought.

Other than that, the build looks pretty good all around

[mipadi]

I'd go with a power supply that's well documented as being efficient and a great psu all around.
Like the Antec Earthwatts EA500, which is currently on sale for $59 from it's regular $90 price tag.

I guess I'll go with that... I'm a little bit reluctant to go with a 500W power supply, since I have to pay my own electric bill, and 500W translates to 11% energy usage than 450W, but I guess I can swing that.

If you're gaming, you may want to consider a gfx card that has 512mb memory, but that should do fine for most games at decent settings.

Don't plan on doing much gaming. I'm using the gfx card for two purposes: 1) to drive multiple large monitors (eventually), and 2) I do research in computational science, which often uses intense visualizations.

Personally, I'm not a fan of cheap 5.1 sound setups. They usually sound like their price would indicate.
In most cases, you would be better off spending the money on a 2.0 or 2.1 speaker setup. You could get some really nice 2.1 active desktop speakers from a great brand for not much more, like the Swan M-10 speakers.
But that's just personal preference, some people don't really care if they get the clearest audio as long as they can hear the explosions behind them while watching Die Hard 4, or that sneaky gamer coming up behind them with a knife.

I've spent ~5-1/2 years dealing with shitty iBook speakers; anything is an upgrade from those.

[--DANNY--]

I'm a little bit reluctant to go with a 500W power supply, since I have to pay my own electric bill, and 500W translates to 11% energy usage than 450W, but I guess I can swing that.

In actuality, the 500W Power Supply would use LESS energy than the 450W power supply because it is more efficient. And that rating just means that it can output up to 500W, not that it will run at 500W constantly. For example, I just built a new file server for my home and I used a 450W PSU but it only uses about 105W of electricity while running (I used a Kill-A-Watt to test).
A cheap off-brand power supply would be highly un-efficient so it could take up to 200W of actual electricity to output 125W of power to your computer. New and more efficient power supplies like Antec's are more efficient, so they might take only 135W to output 125W to your computer, so technically you could save in the long run on your energy bill since it's more efficient and you're computer only uses as much energy as it needs, not the full amount of the Power Supply.

Don't plan on doing much gaming. I'm using the gfx card for two purposes: 1) to drive multiple large monitors (eventually), and 2) I do research in computational science, which often uses intense visualizations.

Ok, then you'll be perfectly happy with the 8600GT 256MB

I've spent ~5-1/2 years dealing with shitty iBook speakers; anything is an upgrade from those.

Haha ya you should notice a good increase in sound quality then