New Pentium 4 Desktop System Hardware

[MikeWill]

I'm looking for the cost effective and stable system using Pentium 4 w/atleast 512 MB RAM.

The main reason for upgrade is to use the Windows XP Pro (I tried to upgrade my operating system, but my current hardware didn't support it).

My basic needs are quite simple, I use ADSL hispeed connection to the Internet (USB modem), want to use Skype telephony, do some graphics, digital photos, MPEG movies and web design, connect my 4 MPixel digital camera via USB port, and at times play some games (mostly off and online backgammon). I have lots of software installed on my system, and often use many open windows/programs.

Reliable and stable system is my main concern, and I hope to built it for years to come.

After some checking, I'm considering the following:

1. CPU: Intel P4 Northwood, 2.80C GHz, 800MHz FSB w/512KB L2 Cache

2. Motherboard based on Intel 865G Chipset and Dual Channel DDR

Model: Intel D865GBF or D865GBFLK(w/built-in audio)

Specs:

6 PCI bus add-in card connectors (SMBus routed to PCI bus connector 2);

Dual DDR 400/333/266, 4 DIMM sockets;

Audio: ADI 1985;

I/O: SATA 150 and ATA-100;

USB Connectors: 8 USB 2.0 (4-Front, 4-Back);

AGP slot: 8x 1.5v;

RAM: 2.6 V (only) 184-pin DDR SDRAM DIMMs with gold-plated contacts;

Unbuffered, single or double-sided DIMMs with the following restriction:

Double-sided DIMMs with x16 organization are not supported,

Non-ECC DIMMs, Serial Presence Detect, DDR400/333/266 SDRAM DIMMs

Features: Audio and 10/100 LAN or Audio and Gigabit LAN

LAN Controller: Intel® PRO/100 or Intel® PRO/1000 CT

3. RAM - 1x 512 MB DDR/PC3200, CL2, Corsair XMS

4. Case/Power Supply: The Desktop Board D865GBF requires a power supply that complies with the ATX/ATX12V Power Supply Design Guide Version 1.2.

The ATX12V power supply required for the Desktop Board D865GBF has the standard 20-pin ATX Main Power Connector, and a 4-pin +12V Aux. The 4-pin +12V power connector has been added to enable the delivery of more +12VDC current to the desktop board. This connector is used by the board to power the processor's voltage regulator module (VRM).

Intel recommends starting with a power supply capable of providing a minimum of 1.5 Amps (2.0 Amps recommended) of +5V standby current.

5. Hard disk requirements: One of the features of the D865GBF is its ability to support larger ATA/100 capable hard drives with 48-bit Logical Block Addressing (LBA) within the BIOS along with all Ultra ATA transfer rates (i.e., 33/66/100 MB/sec). To realize a true throughput performance difference, a hard drive may need to implement higher spindle speeds, such as 7200 RPM, and a large onboard buffer size to take advantage of the increased bandwidth available on the IDE channel.

One of the options...

Model: Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 80GB 7200RPM 8MB Buffer SATA HDD

Those are just basic specifications that are able to handle verious add-ons, CDs, DVD-R/RW, and other peripherals...

Any comments?

Maybe someone can give the price estimation/offers.

If someome is considering purchasing a new system, maybe we can do it jointly.

[monty]

If you want to keep up to date with prices, following 3 sites wil give you a pretty good idea:

http://www.bangkok-computers.com/

http://www.famous.co.th/price/brochure.cgi

www.pantipprice.com

Don't have much experience with intel based systems as I prefer AMD. (I'm running a XP2500 Barton, overclocked to equal a XP3200! A lot of bang for the bucks, but not for the fainthearted, nor for people requiring a rocksolid stable machine..)

[francois]

hi'

I see that your RAM is in dual-channel, so why do you want to put only one memory bank?

you'd better put 2x256mb or even better 2x512, it does not cost much more

just choose a fast one (cl2 like you said)... ask the techy overthere

and why choose a motherboard with AGP as new PCI Express is arriving as fast as the wind ... in less than 2 years most of grafic card will run on PCI express.

for a good serial ATA choose western digital, turns at 10,000tr and at this speed it makes a big difference.

they exist in two capcity, 36gb and 80gb, the name should be something like "raptor".

avoid the co-existence of ide and Sata disc ... beside the problem to have a proper setup in the bios, you have better to get 2 SATA disc ...

and why choose a P4 northwood as some others gives you 1mb L2 cache size?

even if you choose 3ghz only [fsb 800 HT of course]

you don't mention any video card or sound card

and may be a good idea to go for a dvd burner ... getting handy these days

francois

[waldwolf]

Would agree with most of francois suggestions, except for the hard drive (HDD), I'd recommend you get the biggest one you can afford (250-300GB) if you plan to do a lot of video and digital photo work.

If money is not a consideration, the 10,000 rpm SATA drives are great, though slightly noisey. (The 7,200 rpm 8mb cache SATA's are considerably cheaper and quieter.)

As to the CPU and memory, have recently seen quite a few video processing utilities which are now recommending a minimum 3.0GB Pentium-4 and 1GB memory.

Would also suggest, as did francois, you look into a DVD burner. The price recently has fallen dramatically. For example, a SONY internal 16xDVD-R+R "Double Layer" (dual-layer) can be had in US for only $79. Price of DVD (single layer) blanks have also dropped to almost the same price as CD-R blanks.

One mfr (Gateway) is selling a P4, 3.0GB, w/1MB L2 cache, 800mhz FSB, 200GB 7,200 rpm SATA HDD w/8MB cache. 512MB DDR memory, Dual Layer 8x DVD -+R/CD-R/-RW burner, 48x CD-Rom drive for $845.00 (US). Add $200.00 and you'll also get a 17 inch flatplate monitor.

Sony has a similar model but with a DVD-Rom drive instead of CD-Rom drive, for about $995 (US). Another $150.00 will get you a larger HDD, TV tuner and nvidia video card with component video inputs/outputs.

Unless you have a specific requirement, don't think you can buy all the parts, assemble it and end up cheaper than a unit similar to above. Of course there's the satisfaction of building your own system, which means a lot.

Either way, good luck and have fun.

[Firefoxx]

A similar system was discussed recently, look here:

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=18043

I don't know why you would want the 865G chipset, with the superior 865PE chipset. An Intel board is the choice for a server, but I wouldn't recommend it for a desktop system. They usually perform middling at best, and don't come with all the bells and whistles.

If you have a lot of open programs (like me, I have about 16 open windows at the moment, and 20 opera panes, and it's rock solid), then you should go for a lot of ram. Two 512 sticks should do it, and as I've mentioned before, if you're not overclocking the ram, you don't need name brand memory.

The most cost-effective (price per GB) harddisks now are the 160GB and 200GB 7200rpm models (from whatever manufacturer). Get two if you want to do DV video editing.

Again for video editing, a dual head VGA card is very attractive. Most video editing programs use up a lot of desktop real estate, and using two monitors is the common solution.

A DVD burner is nice for video work, but it's hard to find a decent price in Thailand. I got a 16x pioneer dual layer burner in the US for $90, but it sells for around 9,000 baht here.

The system that I use is around 30,000 baht.

[Richard-BKK]

Hello Condo_bk,

Your selection of motherboard (Intel) is considered a nice choice, but if you need a bit more bang for your money I can advice some other manufacturers (Asus, Gigabyte, etc).

Selecting the right processor for your computer system is always a difficult issue, but I agree Francois that buying an “old” P4 Northwood processor is maybe not that great idea.

For what low-value CPU’s give what bang you can take a look at http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/sempron.html

To get up-to-date processor prices you can look at http://www.jib.co.th

(I see that people sometimes still post the web link of Bangkok Computers, is there anybody who can confirm that they are still in business? The last time I check there office it looked very empty?)

With kind regards

Richard

[monty]

Just went to TukCom in sri racha and noticed they are stocking the 64bit line of amd processers! Prices seemed ok, 6500 Baht for the 2800/64 and 9500 Baht for the 3000/64.

It's true the athlon xp series can't keep up very well with the latest P4's(with hyperttreading) but 64 bit amd's certainly are fast !

A Geforce 3 motherboard(supporting the64bit processors)came in at 4500 Baht, forgot which brand...

Please note the 64 bit AMD processers are probably the fastest for gaming, but in the light of the original poster requiring video editing power, Pentiums keep the performance edge on that task!

For the Linux fans, there is already a 64bit Linux platform around, and even games supporting 64bit linux (Think it was doom3)

[Bizz]

Learned some more reading thread, like what this company offer they are in UK.

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/home.html

[Richard-BKK]

Harbour House,

Hamilton Road,

Cosham, Portsmouth, PO6 4PU

ENGLAND

Is that not a bit to far to buy a simple +/-30.000Bht computer????

[monty]

Reasonably priced stuff at nova, unfortunately we can get most regular mainstream stuff over here, top end materials are either still very expensive or simply not available...

Once again, you want a gaming rig, you'll find most companies going for the AMD 64 bit stuff.

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/PCrange.html?NRE

Multimedia such as encoding video's and you're better off with intel (although at a more expensive price)

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/PCrange.html?ENT

[monty]

Richard-Bkk,

Seems you're right about Bangkok Computers

Phone numbers certainly are disconnected...

I've never been to their shop nor bought something from them, but found their website usefull to keep up to date about what's on sale in Thailand!

On the other links I posted you'll only find the most sold stuff, you need more exotic stuff and you'll have to pop over to Bkk to find out for yourself!

Newegg or dabs would come in very handy over here

[bkk_mike]

To be brutally honest, most of what you want to do can be done with just about any new hardware...

The only things that you're doing that would require a high-spec machine are MPEG video encoding and some games. If you're only doing a couple of home movies a year, don't worry about choosing a spec for the video stuff, just leave it running overnight. For backgammon it's a moot point as it isn't exactly heavy on the graphics card. Games would only affect what you should buy if you're planning on playing heavily 3D intensive games like Doom 3 - and even then, the processor is less of an issue than the graphics card. (and other than the graphics card, there's no real reason to move to PCI express yet, especially if you have some cards in your old machine that you might want to re-use).

For the MPEG 512Mb will work, although 1Gb would be better, and you do want to get two banks from the same manufacturer, rated to the same speed, rather than a single module. Intel says 566/800 FSB, but is only really 283/400FSB to an individual DIMM - you need to have a pair to get the quoted speed.

Going Intel, make sure the processor supports hyperthreading. - but choose which one when you're actually buying as chip prices change. - That 3.2GHz processor that's out of your budget now might be in it in 2 weeks time.

If you're doing a lot of video work, what you actually do is get two drives. One huge one for the data files (ie. 250Gb drives are fairly cheap. My brother runs a RAID array, but I think that's overkill), and a relatively small one that you have the operating system and applications installed on (your C: drive). i.e. 20-40Gb will do, but just buy one at the right price-point. Both should be as fast as your budget allows.

Also the two drives should NOT be master and slave on the same IDE cable...

Talking about cables - they're forgotten to a large extent, but make sure they fit 80-wire IDE cables to the optical drives (as well as the hard drive if using IDE), as it will greatly enhance the likelihood of DMA being usable for the drives.

Finally for DVD-R, they've started to release dual-layer media. (i.e. 9.4Gb, but not all drives are capable of supporting it, so you should check that, at least, the manufacturer promises a firmware upgrade. Last time I looked, only LG offered a drive that could write to dual-layer discs out of the box. - but things have maybe changed in the last couple of months.)

But remember, unless you're doing a LOT of mpeg stuff, this is all overkill - a half decent processor and half a gig of RAM will cover most things..., and money saved can always be put towards that nice new LCD monitor).

If you're really after a bullet proof system, get a surge protector, and a UPS (so that the power going into the box is nice and clean), don't overclock anything, and make sure there's enough airflow to keep things fairly cool... (i.e. Barring additional fans, or changing heatsinks and the like, air generally exits the case through the power supply, so make sure there's a gap behind the box so that air can exit easily. - Also air tends to come in through a grille on the front, so also make sure that's relatively clear, and clean it occasionally dust does collect there)

On a side issue, I'm a little surprised that you're existing hardware can't handle XP Pro. - I've got it running (just for a spare machine for web browsing and the like, on an 6 year old Celeron 333 - with no issues).

[Firefoxx]

To update BKK-mike's post:

Get SATA harddisks. They're one drive/controller, so there is no master/slave issue, and no interfering with each other. Faster, too. Get 915/925 intel chipsets if you also want native command queuing (but that requires a drive that supports it, like the Maxtor Maxline III series).

Most manufacturers have dual-layer DVD writers available now (I'm using a pioneer dual-layer drive myself). However, the media is still expensive, in the tune of about $10/disc (I saw verbatim dual layer at IT Mall for 550 baht). You can also get a maximum of only 4x on dual-layer media right now, compared to 16x on single-layer.

LCD monitors aren't actually all that great. They have less color gamut, are less vibrant, have limited viewing angle (I hate that), and are sharp only when they're displaying the recommended resolution (or multiples of). A decent CRT monitor is great if setup correctly. The advantages of LCDs are low power consumption, less radiation (which doesn't do much, or else 80% of the world's population would have cancer by now), and less space occupied. There are really great LCD monitors which pros use for photographic work, like the Apple Cinema Display, but those are waaaay out of budget. The typical 10k+ baht LCD won't display as good as the typical 5k+ baht CRT. I'd choose a CRT over an LCD any day, unless I had money to burn and I had little desktop space.