advice for my friends computer

Last edited by krazykaveman on Sat Dec 31, 2005 8:34 pm; edited 1 time in total

k my friend works for a marketing agency so, people will come in from cars dealers ect wanting commercials, ads, websites ect. so he does 3d rendering photoshop, flash, director and all that stuff currently he has

2 pentium3's 1.0GHZ

3GB's of PC133 SDRAM

Geforce FX 5700

It is very old and slow and crashes alot under the stress he puts it under so he's looking at building a new computer so i chose a layout and i want your guys advice.

GIGABYTE GA-2CEWH Dual Core Opteron/2LAN/EATX Server Board     $398.95
\"AMD Opteron Processor Model 244 940-pin, Retail\"     $178.75
\"AMD Opteron Processor Model 244 940-pin, Retail\"     $178.75
DDR400 1GB Kingston Original Memory     $84.35
DDR400 1GB Kingston Original Memory     $84.35
DDR400 1GB Kingston Original Memory     $84.35
DDR400 1GB Kingston Original Memory     $84.35
Sapphire ATI Radeon X1800XT 512MB Dual DVI/VIVO PCI-Express Video Card     $469.65
Western Digital WD2500SD 250GB SATA 7200RPM 8MB RAID Hard Drive     $100.00
Antec Titan 550W EPS Server Case     $170.70
BenQ DQ60 16X DVD+/-RW Drive w/NERO (Black)     $38.90
Seasonic S12 600W P4 / Xeon SLI ATX Power Supply     $119.20

                                                                         \"$1,992.30 \"

What is his budget?

$2500 max i think.

Last edited by Josh on Fri Dec 30, 2005 11:29 pm; edited 1 time in total

Last edited by Predator on Fri Dec 30, 2005 11:28 pm; edited 1 time in total

Last edited by KoolDrew on Sat Dec 31, 2005 8:48 am; edited 1 time in total

A quality 550w is more then enough. However, I wouldn't suggest that Antec. Get a Sparkle FSP550-60PLG.

Also, is he even going to be doing any gaming at all? I think 8GB of RAM is overkill. 4GB should be enough. Also, with the saved money you could get some SCSI drives which would help a lot.

Split rails are a detriment to me.

Also, I'd grab a Fortron 650 (although, 36A 12V is pretty dang good). That RAM and dual CPU system will suck a lot of juice. Or, better yet, look at the PC Power and Cooling power supplies.

It is certainly a useless feature as their is no need to adjust the rails. If the power supply has good regulation the voltages should not drop even if you are heavily loading it. Also, the dropping voltage with load is the symptom, not the problem. The problem is the supply is nearing its maximum output, and just cranking up the pots doesn't make the supply more powerful.

If you have a supply of adequate output with competent regulation, the only reason you would ever have to set the pots would be if they were set incorrectly to start with. If you have to crank the pots up to get the voltages reasonable with the load you are driving, you are overloading the supply.

If you want really quiet PSU that performs well, I'd take a look @ the Seasonic S12-600:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16817151025

The OCZ PowerStream 520W SLi is also a good performer:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16817711002

2 rails mean not as much of the total can be used. You may have to run one rail at 17A and the other at 17.5 (because another device would take either over the max of 19), where you could run 36A out of 38 with a single rail solution.

That means 34.5A vs. 36 useable amps.

Predator, did you even read the THG review? The article was written almost 2 years ago and all they measured was maximum wattage, noise level at min & max load, and efficiency. Also, although mentioned in the beginning, the article doesn't give much detail of how tight the rails are under load, which indicates stability. PC P&C is known to keep 1% voltage regulation while true control is 3%, other standard PSUs are 5% on the +3.3V, +5V, and +12V rails.

Overall it is a really poor PSU review.

Last edited by krazykaveman on Sat Dec 31, 2005 8:41 pm; edited 1 time in total

yeah it's no emergency i think he'll wait till '06 to see who comes out on top for processors.

he uses an external hard drive for backup.

If he can wait, it is best to do so.

and when you were talking about amd duel core processor's which ones the opterons or the X2's.