Another shuttle or... ? AMD or Intel?

[Uncle Sick]

Alright... help old Sick out here for a second...

I want to build myself a new machine and pass my old shuttle
SG51B
PIV 2.66ghz
Radeon 9800 pro
2x 512 Kingston RAM sticks
80 gb HD
on to my wife in order to waste part of my tax returns on a new 'killer' system for myself.

Now - I love the shuttles. Small, nifty looking, quiet etc. but having spent several hours on tigerdirect.com I found this mother and the idea of a big, glowy (want to get UV lights'n'stuff) monster gives me a semi.. ie. it appeals to me. Lots.

What motherboard, what CPU? AMD?
They have a nice MSI mobo/cpu combo. I have always used Intel chips, so I can't really tell the difference but I heard great things about the Athlon 64 chipset.

Or should I shoot for this Intel board?

What would be better suited for my gaming needs? Both support 800 Mhz FSB... which ones is the better choice, though?
Are AMD machines still running on volcano heat, ie am I going to have 20 fans running at 200 db all the time?

The rest of the setup will be:
ATI 9800 pro (still top of the line and affordable, I really don't see a point in getting the x800 yet).

Seagate / 120GB / 7200 / 8MB / SATA-150 / OEM / Hard Drive with NCQ

Corsair TWINX Dual Channel 1024MB PC3200 DDR 400MHz Memory(2x512MB)

Cooler Master / JET 4 / Socket 478 / Intel Pentium P4 up to 3.4GHz / Duall Ball Bearing / 100% Copper / CPU Cooling Fan

Ultra / X-Connect / 500-Watt / ATX / Dual 80mm Fan / Titanium-Blue / Modular Power Supply

Have I missed anything? Good set-up? Or am I going a little bit nuts here?

Thanks for giving me your opinion on the whole thing.

 

[Rubber Bullets]

Hi Sick,

I would say if you're going with AMD 64 then you would be a bit nuts to use the socket 478 type.

If you go with the 939 it'll use the dual memory much better and be more future proof. The 3000+ to the 3500+ all come in Winchester type with 90nm architecture which means they run on less juice, and much cooler than the older chips.

As for mobo I think that the new nForce 4 boards look good, and I assume they'll work OK with Radeon graphics.

Hope it goes well

RB

 

[Uncle Sick]

Ahh... you mean the fan with the 478 type? My bad - see how Intel influenced I am? *sighs*

What about the difference in processor speed? Raw Ghz wise the Intel combo has more to offer. Or am I mistaken? I am somehow sure that I am.

 

[Rubber Bullets]

IN terms of pure clockspeed Intel has been ahead of AMD for ages,

But the Athlons do more work per cycle than the Inte, so the difference isn't that clear. I've been reading quite a lot recently to try and choose my own new system and it always seems that you get more bang per buck with the athlons.

Most of the review sites do hundreds of benchmarks and the Intel chips tend to win all the video encoding and music encoding ones and the Athlons usually win the gaming ones, but to be honest I'm not sure you'd really see the difference in the real world!

I just fancy the Nforce 4 board and the options it gives and I've been a happy user of and old Athlon chip so I see no reason to change next time round, maybe you feel the same way about Intel, there's no right or wrong.

RB

 

[Uncle Sick]

Thanks, RB. You have been extremely helpful so far.

 

[smurkin]

aye...same here .. athlon 64 all the way.

I cant say I share your taste in cases tho

 

[Uncle Sick]

aye...same here .. athlon 64 all the way.

I cant say I share your taste in cases tho

I'll post a pic once it's built.

I couldn't find any other cases that appealed to me (other than Shuttle systems) and I like the whole see-through idea.

 

[.Wilier.]

Only thing I will say Sicko is with that with that case, your going to need to do some serious cable management mate ie. sleeving ALL the cables. Otherwise it will look like an untidy shambles tbh.

Also, look at ways you can diffuse the CCFL, since a visible light really isnt attractive, think of it as a strip-light in a kitchen, a little too bright and "in yer face"

 

[Uncle Sick]

Yus... the more I think about it, I am glad I didn't make a knee-jerk decision on the case.

How about this one? Looks pretty sleek imo.

 

[Chilly]

as an owner of a side-windowed case I can safely say I feel a right tosser whenever someone walks into my room, on the other hand it does actually have a function other than cosmetic stupidness - you can look inside quickly to make sure fans are spinning, I have a small white LED fan on the back of my case so the interor is dully lit up, its actually very handy to have the window - but dont put 50 lights in it cos itl just piss you off. my case came with a load of lights and I just ripped them out after a few weeks cos they were getting on my nerves (I sleep in the same room as my puter and it is often left on over night).

I run one of the super-hot intel prescott chips (only 2.8ghz) but I manage to run my PC as quietly as my laptop - about 20db (loud laptop). If you are sensible with your cooling, there is NO reason you cannot have a silent or nearly silent solution - have you thought of liquid cooling, there are 100% fanless liquid cooling rigs about for fairly reasonable prices.

Personally I reccomend Zalman cooling products 110%, they have never let me down and have proven to be the quietest whilst still pushing a lot of air. Also if your into hardcore gaiming you may want to comsider a fan control panel as well so you can have it silent for "work" and other non demanding apps but crank up the cpu fan a little when playing 6 hours striaght of doom3.

I have direct control over my case fan, gfx fan and cpu fan and the PSU runs silently to boot - I am not regretting the £30 i spent on the fan controller 1 bit.