Computer hardware opinions please? Thanks. I have around $1170 to spend.

[imtim83]

Athlon XP 1800+ (I already own this and bought it about 6 to 9 months ago but not sure if i should upgrade the processor any)

Here is the list of the other parts.

http://members.cox.net/imtim2/newegg.com%20hardware%20parts.htm

Should i get better ram to beable to overclock my athlon xp 1800+ if i wanted to ? Should i go instead the intel p4 route ? If i keep my Athlon XP 1800+ processor will it limit my video card performence a lot if i game at 1024x768,1280x1024, or even 1600x1200 with FSAA and AF on ? Like at 4x FSAA and 8x AF at least.

*Also will my Antec 330 watt true power series power supply be enough?*

Any other suggestions are appreicated.

Thanks.

[dohcmark8]

Everything looks good, i would get rid the the crappy IBM hardrive and look at Seagate for ultimate reliability and quietness, or Western Digital, the Seagate Barracuda V 120gb has 8mb cache. Your 9700Pro should be ok for now, it won't bottleneck too badly, FSAA and AF won't be affected, infact you won't notice a difference in performance when it's on due to having a cpu bottleneck. The Antec 330 should be enough. For the CPU, i would only upgrade if you can afford a 2500+ or higher, so you will notice a performance boost. If you wanna overclock the 266fsb Athlon, then PC2700 is fine, if you get a 333fsb Athlon, i would recommend PC3200 then. What about cooling, you need good cooling to OC, is it a tbred?.

[kyleb]

funny, i have used at least a dozen ibm drives wtihout issue, either in my computers or ones i buit for family and friends. it seems to me that they got a bad rep out of one bad batch they everyone went apesh*t over despte the fact that it can happen to any hardware manufature and the important part is that they honor their waranity, something ibm is good at.

[dohcmark8]

If you value your data, then get Seagate, they have far fewer failures per thousand units according to one large PC manufacturer, than WD or Maxtor, and IBM stopped making their own drives, didn't they?.

[Smokey]

I would just add, that if you want to overclock, I would change the cpu, get either a T-Bred B 1700+ or a T-Bred B 2100+. Both these are known as great overclockers, on air, even with low voltages, and both these cpus should be cheap ;)

[Riptide]

Kyleb, IBM is great when it comes to customer service and honoring their warranty. The deskstar fiascos are well known and those drives are widely regarded as trash.

I bought an ultrastar 36lzx. It failed IBM's smart defender test. I sent it back. The refurb I got in return was fine for a week, then started failing their smart defender test. I got another refurb. Guess what? Two weeks later it also started failing smart. So they let me talk to their second level support for failure analysis. They analyzed the last drive I sent back, could find nothing obvious that was going wrong there with regard to my system causing it to fail (ie, from heat, etc.). So they sent me a 73LZX which is still in my system. Guess what? It is failing their drive defender smart test. I am *not* impressed with IBM's disc drives at all. I gave up, and am currently still using the 73LZX even though it still fails smart. I just don't keep critical data on it.

Before anyone goes and says it must be something in my system causing this, it's not. I have a seagate cheetah x15 that has been A-OK from day one and it's running on the same controller. Passes smart every time I test it with seatools, and has been a dream of a drive for over six months now. IBM's customer service is great, but their drives SUCK.

[demonized]

like smokey said, buy an xp 1700 or 2100. I just got mine and its at 2ghz already with only 1.7 volts. If your going to overclock i suggest to get atleast a 400 watts PSU.

[Smokey]

Originally posted by demonized
like smokey said, buy an xp 1700 or 2100. I just got mine and its at 2ghz already with only 1.7 volts. If your going to overclock i suggest to get atleast a 400 watts PSU.

Damn nice overclock mate :eek: whats a 1700+? about 1.4GHz, that makes me happy to see, as I should be getting the same memory and have the same MB that you are using, damn I cant wait :D

[gmontem]

Haven't had any problems with my U160 UltraStar drive for nearly two years now. Do you guys provide enough cooling for these 10k rpm beasts, that is are there fans blowing directly to those drives?

[kyleb]

Riptide, i am honestly not familair with the test however i am running on two 75gxps in raid 0 at the moment that have been in constant operation sence i got them about 14 months ago, furthermore i have two 60gxps on my secondary machine that i have been running in raid 0 for about 3 years now. on top of that, durning that time, at least up untell the fiasco i used them exculsivly in the systems i built for family and friends. i layed off for a while after the intial scare but have sence went back to useing them due to considerations of price/preformace ratio as well as the fact that not one has has come back to haunt me. now i am not saying you are wrong for going elsewere after haveing the experice you did, simply point out that it is not nesscarly par for the course.

[demonized]

Originally posted by Smokey
Damn nice overclock mate :eek: whats a 1700+? about 1.4GHz, that makes me happy to see, as I should be getting the same memory and have the same MB that you are using, damn I cant wait :D

that 1800+ really needs to be replaced. it makes ur system ugly :D

[Riptide]

Originally posted by gmontem
Haven't had any problems with my U160 UltraStar drive for nearly two years now. Do you guys provide enough cooling for these 10k rpm beasts, that is are there fans blowing directly to those drives?
10,000 RPM drives do not require active cooling. Only the 15,000 RPM units *require* active cooling.

[Riptide]

Kyleb, you can download IBM's drive defender software from their website. It is their analysis tool, like Seagate's Seatools. You can use a boot floppy version or one that runs in the system tray.
Both versions reported SMART failures on every IBM ultrastar drive I've used in my system.

I'll say this much: I sure *hope* my experience isn't anywhere even close to typical because it was downright ridiculous to have that many drives fail SMART on me. Even the IBM second level tech was pretty much scratching his head...

[kyleb]

fair enough, acutaly i keep promise fastcheck running constantly sence i switched over from a highpoint controler about a month ago. it claims everything is fine and have had no stablity or data integrity issues at all so i am not exactly worried about the situation. however thank you for mentioning the program as it may come in handy someday.