Silent Warrior
Spaceman
This looks like it'll be a long one... but I believe in having my bases covered.
It's nearing that time, again. I mean to build this thing around a soundcard (I'm just funny that way - I've also asked for opinions on soundcards at another forum, so you probably won't need to concern yourselves with that), but as for the rest I would appreciate input from (mostly) innocent bystanders like yourselves.
For the sound-setup, I'm planning something fairly wild, but I'll keep the details to myself for now. But the centerpiece will likely be ASUS's Xonar D2. Besides that, I have the following guidelines:
Low wattage
Environment-friendly (I know, consumer PC hardware is just not the forum for it, but IF POSSIBLE)
Lasting driver-support
For the wattage, I mean to say that if I can get a CPU using 95W while being slightly slower than a CPU using 125W, I'm fine with the slower one. I've noticed that AMD has nearly equal performance on their low- and high-powered CPUs anyway, but what of Intel?
On the GPU-side, it seems Nvidia's later offerings are just not an option (and, well, the games I play today work pretty well on their 9600GT, anyway). ATI, on the other hand, seem to have made their 5750 and/or 5770 for this requirement especially. At least, I've spotted some reviews pointing that way. I don't mean to be ATI-exclusive, though - I'll listen to any suggestion.
Eco-gear... Yeah, well, at least ASUS market their motherboards as compliant to some kind of standard, which Gigabyte doesn't. (ASUS, Gigabyte and Asrock appear to be in biggest supply in stores near me, but don't let that curb your imagination.) Samsung's Ecogreen HDDs seem to be in supply (and I'll probably need to get one regardless), and there are 'green' PSUs by Antec (at 380W and 430W - their wattage-calculator suggested a sample-system I threw at it would get by on 350W). Have I missed anything? Any RAM-manufacturer cleaner than the other?
As for the support's longevity, I actually hope to make this a Windows Post-7-setup - which, I know, is a precarious exercise so soon after 7's release - so I guess that would mean fairly recent hardware. And a flat 'Nay' to anything older than ATI's HD3xxx. See, I'm not sure I actually want 7, nurturing hopes the next release will suit me even better (and if it doesn't, THEN I'll get 7 in the blink of an eye). I like the idea of using 64-bit CPUs to their full capacity, though, and XP 32-bit's getting a bit tarnished by age. Runs like a dream, though.
Now, the ubiquitous question: Intel or AMD? (If Intel, LGA1156 or 1366?) I hear/read a couple of things about how the i5/i7s beating the Phenoms on just about everything - except price, depending on your perspective. Technically being a poor student sways me considerably towards AMD, but I'm not opposed to Intel at all. (Well, maybe they have some shady market-practices that I might file under 'ecologic concerns', being sued for essentially poor capitalistic sportsmanship and the like...) Well, I just haven't quite managed the 'poor' bit yet - but I'm working diligently on that.
Also: Dual- or quad-core? The games I play TODAY don't all use even two cores, no idea when quad-core will actually explicitly help me in that field, and I don't do anything exotic on my desktop that an Athlon X2 can't manage. I don't know what the future holds, though. I suppose it would be nice to give Winamp its very own core while I run X-Plane full tilt on the others, but... Maybe wattage should decide this. I may overclock, but I'm... apprehensive. If the how-to is good, and the procedure straight-forward...
So, what say you? I'll select RAM according to the motherboard I end up getting, but I suppose DDR3 would be a better choice (than DDR2) for future upgradeability.
It's nearing that time, again. I mean to build this thing around a soundcard (I'm just funny that way - I've also asked for opinions on soundcards at another forum, so you probably won't need to concern yourselves with that), but as for the rest I would appreciate input from (mostly) innocent bystanders like yourselves.
For the sound-setup, I'm planning something fairly wild, but I'll keep the details to myself for now. But the centerpiece will likely be ASUS's Xonar D2. Besides that, I have the following guidelines:
Low wattage
Environment-friendly (I know, consumer PC hardware is just not the forum for it, but IF POSSIBLE)
Lasting driver-support
For the wattage, I mean to say that if I can get a CPU using 95W while being slightly slower than a CPU using 125W, I'm fine with the slower one. I've noticed that AMD has nearly equal performance on their low- and high-powered CPUs anyway, but what of Intel?
On the GPU-side, it seems Nvidia's later offerings are just not an option (and, well, the games I play today work pretty well on their 9600GT, anyway). ATI, on the other hand, seem to have made their 5750 and/or 5770 for this requirement especially. At least, I've spotted some reviews pointing that way. I don't mean to be ATI-exclusive, though - I'll listen to any suggestion.
Eco-gear... Yeah, well, at least ASUS market their motherboards as compliant to some kind of standard, which Gigabyte doesn't. (ASUS, Gigabyte and Asrock appear to be in biggest supply in stores near me, but don't let that curb your imagination.) Samsung's Ecogreen HDDs seem to be in supply (and I'll probably need to get one regardless), and there are 'green' PSUs by Antec (at 380W and 430W - their wattage-calculator suggested a sample-system I threw at it would get by on 350W). Have I missed anything? Any RAM-manufacturer cleaner than the other?
As for the support's longevity, I actually hope to make this a Windows Post-7-setup - which, I know, is a precarious exercise so soon after 7's release - so I guess that would mean fairly recent hardware. And a flat 'Nay' to anything older than ATI's HD3xxx. See, I'm not sure I actually want 7, nurturing hopes the next release will suit me even better (and if it doesn't, THEN I'll get 7 in the blink of an eye). I like the idea of using 64-bit CPUs to their full capacity, though, and XP 32-bit's getting a bit tarnished by age. Runs like a dream, though.
Now, the ubiquitous question: Intel or AMD? (If Intel, LGA1156 or 1366?) I hear/read a couple of things about how the i5/i7s beating the Phenoms on just about everything - except price, depending on your perspective. Technically being a poor student sways me considerably towards AMD, but I'm not opposed to Intel at all. (Well, maybe they have some shady market-practices that I might file under 'ecologic concerns', being sued for essentially poor capitalistic sportsmanship and the like...) Well, I just haven't quite managed the 'poor' bit yet - but I'm working diligently on that.
Also: Dual- or quad-core? The games I play TODAY don't all use even two cores, no idea when quad-core will actually explicitly help me in that field, and I don't do anything exotic on my desktop that an Athlon X2 can't manage. I don't know what the future holds, though. I suppose it would be nice to give Winamp its very own core while I run X-Plane full tilt on the others, but... Maybe wattage should decide this. I may overclock, but I'm... apprehensive. If the how-to is good, and the procedure straight-forward...
So, what say you? I'll select RAM according to the motherboard I end up getting, but I suppose DDR3 would be a better choice (than DDR2) for future upgradeability.