Why is it cold?

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• SeraphsSati - Sunday, December 14, 2003 - link

  P.S. I also obviously need a new case; the one I have now is a companies which is specialy built and I can't remove motherboard from it.
  
  The cases I've been looking into are sub $100, one in particular is ThermalTake.

• anand lal shimpi - Sunday, December 14, 2003 - link

  SeraphSati
  
  I'd say the 2500+ Barton is a very good solution; pretty much the best you can get under $100.
  
  PC2700 (or DDR333) is fine, but if you want to try overclocking you may want to look at some DDR400 instead. As long as you don't go after the insane low latency stuff, the price difference should be minimal (and you can always reuse the DDR400 if you should decide to go the Athlon 64 route later).
  
  As far as features on a motherboard go, I'd really just look for something with on-board sound, a SATA controller, and on-board ethernet. Everything will have USB, and unless you're an iPod owner or a DV cam enthusiast you'll find very little need for Firewire. Shuttle makes some fairly cost effective boards that are very basic in their feature set, and then there's always ASUS who has one of the best nForce2 boards out there.
  
  As far as cases go, I'd take a look at some of Kris' case coverage to help you out there. I'm very minimalist in terms of what I look for in a case, I really just want something quiet - not flashy.
  
  Take care and let me know how the system turns out when you get it built.

• SeraphsSati - Sunday, December 14, 2003 - link

  P.S. I also obviously need a new case; the one I have now is a companies which is specialy built and I can't remove motherboard from it.
  
  The cases I've been looking into are sub $100, one in particular is ThermalTake.

• SeraphsSati - Sunday, December 14, 2003 - link

  Alright thanks a bunch Anand.
  
  For CPU, you would recommend the 2500 barton?(I'm not too into overclocking, its probably because I don't know how and I'm scared to, lol)
  Memory ddr 2700? Motherboard is what always gets me because It comes with so many features I don't know which I need and which I'm paying extra for.
  
  And yes the bottleneck is the CPU and hard drive on my system so I'll get a new hard drive as well, SATA? or Ultra ATA?
  
  Thanks for the help :)
  
  

• anand lal shimpi - Sunday, December 14, 2003 - link

  Hmm the HTML stuff didn't seem to make it through in the last post, sorry about that guys :)

• anand lal shimpi - Sunday, December 14, 2003 - link

  <b>SeraphsSati</b>
  
  The main bottlenecks in your system are the CPU and your hard drive. You've got more than enough memory and your graphics card is faster than most of today's midrange selection, granted you have no DX9 support but there are also no real uses for a DX9 card these days :)
  
  The problem is that you can't upgrade your CPU to something much faster without really going for a new motherboard. And unless you already have DDR memory, you'll need new memory as well.
  
  I'd say a new motherboard, CPU and memory should set you back around $300 if you want a comfortable boost in performance. A new hard drive would be another $80 (see my <a href="http://www.anandtech.com/christmas.html">C... Wish List</a>). So for under $400 you get a good boost in performance.
  
  Then, after all the new stuff has been out for a little bit, you spend another $600 upgrading you even further and you've got two good upgrades out of it all.
  
  And yes [b]ViRGE[/b], it's snow, I just miss the 50F temperatures of NC during this time of year :) Frozen pavement isn't fun either, the tires no-likey the lack of traction.
  
  Have a great weekend guys.

• SeraphsSati - Sunday, December 14, 2003 - link

  Ok, middle of next year. See the problem I have with that is, you spend around a grand. Then six months later you buy the expensive new technology right? What do you then do with the $1000 system?
  
  I have a pentium 3 800mhz, 512ram, G4 Ti4200, 30gb seagate system right now.
  
  I don't see any way to upgrade my system more, and I believe buying budget system is not economical for me, given that I would be purchasing xpress,ddr2 and btx when they come out.
  
  What would you make of this case?

• Anonymous - Sunday, December 14, 2003 - link

  WOW! Anand thank you so much. My dilema is finaly over. Yes! It helped a lot, because as you said my system is very slow(00' DELL pentium 3). And again you said it right, I'm looking into several specific game titles which need a high end system to run it.(Matrix Online has some kind of evolving graphics engine)
  
  I'm going to college after this summer so It's my last chance to be a gamer, and I'm putting all my money into this sytem, so unlike my DELL, I want this system to last. :)
  
  Thanks for taking the time Anand, appreciate it.

• anand lal shimpi - Sunday, December 14, 2003 - link

  As far as release dates go, PCI Express and DDR-II should be on motherboards in the middle of next year on Grantsdale platforms for the Pentium 4. BTX should be around the same timeframe.
  
  Take care,
  Anand

• anand lal shimpi - Sunday, December 14, 2003 - link

  PCI Express won't do anything great for a while, but I'd hold off on buying a truly expensive graphics card until you can get a PCI express version simply so it'll work in all future motherboards.
  
  I don't expect DDR-II to be a necessity until the end of 2004 at the absolute earliest. If you go AMD, you won't have the option of DDR-II until 2005 anyways.
  
  BTX will be nice, however I do think there is room for an intermediate upgrade between now and when BTX is available. If you have a horrendously slow system now, I'd upgrade to one of the CPUs that came out on top in our <a href="http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1927&q... CPU Shootout</a> with a cheap motherboard and a decent midrange card if games matter, then upgrading again later once BTX, DDR-II and PCI Express are more prevalent.
  
  Hope that helped :)