New PC!

Darthn3ss

Ordered to night:
Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 v3.3 P965 Express Core 2 Extreme/Core 2 Duo 1066FSB LGA775 DDR2 ATX Motherboard w/Audio, Gigabit LAN, RAID/Serial ATA
Intel CPU Core 2 Duo E6420 2.13GHz FSB 1066MHz 4M LGA775 Retail ***Free Shipping***
2GB Corsair (to be upgraded to 4GB secretly. windows XP only supports 4gb right? not 8?)
ATI Radeon X1650 PRO PCIE 512MB DDR
Segate 7200RPM SATA 300 160GB hard drive
Windows XP Pro (MY FIRST LEGAL COPY! [that didnt' come with a laptop])

Can't wait. the parts will be by friday and hopefully it will be operational by early next week.

royal

Nice, sounds like a good system. And yes, XP 32-bit supports up to 4GB of ram. You'll only see approximately 3-3.5GB of it, however. Read here to find out why. XP 64-bit supports up to 128GB of ram and you will see all 4GB of your memory. Enjoy the system!

Treg

Looks good.

Only critisism is the relatively small HDD. With low prices of HDD these days, it might be only 50 bucks more for double space. HDD space fills quick these days.

royal

In my ideal hard drive configuration, I'd have 2 150GB WD Raptors in Raid 0 for the OS and have 2 bigger data drives in Raid 1. That's just me though. A bit too much for most.

Darthn3ss

Treg wrote:

Looks good.

Only critisism is the relatively small HDD. With low prices of HDD these days, it might be only 50 bucks more for double space. HDD space fills quick these days.

don't need it, plus i have another 180GB on hand if stuff gets critical. plus, i'm giong to add more in the future.

NinjaBoy

Darthn3ss wrote:

ATI Radeon X1650 PRO PCIE 512MB DDR

Just wondering mate, how come this GC? The rest of the PC sounds like a gaming rig (more or less), why not the x1900, etc?

-Ken

(Specs look very good )

Ahriakin

royal wrote:

In my ideal hard drive configuration, I'd have 2 150GB WD Raptors in Raid 0 for the OS and have 2 bigger data drives in Raid 1. That's just me though. A bit too much for most.

Just overhauled my own last week, moved the old drives an CPU to a lab machine and setup 4x160GB SATA-IIs in Raid 5....it's never too much

Ricka182

Very nice......I should upgrade too, but then what to do with my st00pid Rambus modules....I suppose the system could be a part of my lab.........

Megadeth4168

Nice! I wish I could afford to upgrade these days! I doubt that I will be keeping much play money even after my wedding...

Darthn3ss

NinjaBoy wrote:

Darthn3ss wrote:

ATI Radeon X1650 PRO PCIE 512MB DDR

Just wondering mate, how come this GC? The rest of the PC sounds like a gaming rig (more or less), why not the x1900, etc?

-Ken

(Specs look very good )

mostly because i'm not a huge gamer and i'm assuming that'll get me by. oh, and the better cards cost more. Since my current 4 year old (probably more) nvidia 64mb graphics card satisfy me for HL2 and CS:S, and hell, WoW, i'm sure the one i picked out can't be worse. :-p.

As far as hard drives, yes, i will be adding more as money permits. My father and i are going half and half on this system.

GRR now that you guys have me looking maybe it'll pick up another one. I could get a 250gig for $83 and i also need another DVD drive.

bastids.


edit:
What should i be looking into as far as antivirus and firewall software. I DO NOT want norton or mcafee. Preferably free. I had Norton 360, it was pretty much junk. wasted $60 on the it.

Darthn3ss

Update: We got a GeForce 8500GT 512MB because best buy only had the AGP in 512MB.

panik

Darthn3ss wrote:

edit:
What should i be looking into as far as antivirus and firewall software. I DO NOT want norton or mcafee. Preferably free. I had Norton 360, it was pretty much junk. wasted $60 on the it.

I've tried McAfee and Kaspersky, and wouldn't recommend either.

At the moment I'm trying NOD32: http://www.eset.com/

It is definitely less annoying and resource intensive, but doesn't include a firewall.

You can download a 30 day trial copy for free.

royal

Speaking of Nod32, I've been using it on Vista x86 for several months and so far so good.

jvax

Darthn3ss wrote:

What should i be looking into as far as antivirus and firewall software. I DO NOT want norton or mcafee. Preferably free. I had Norton 360, it was pretty much junk. wasted $60 on the it.

I've been using Avast and it's been great. And it's free, altough you need to register once to get your free license code.

For the firewall, you don't really need one if your PC is sitting behind your broadband router. But that's just me...

Darthn3ss

thats a good point on the firewall. i wish there was a way to see whats happening, when its happening and who doesit. i could mod it but if i screw it up i'm screwed . (not raelly, i'd just use a cisco 2620 and 2950 switch)

jvax

Darthn3ss wrote:

i wish there was a way to see whats happening, when its happening and who doesit.

I am sure every firewall, cisco or not, stand-alone or router-built-in, has logging capabilities.

Ahriakin

Firewall: Comodo (Absolute best software firewall out there in every vendor neutral test, plus while it sets up as easily as any other you can program it's access lists as you would a corporate firewall if you want that granularity. It also includes a basic HIPS and real time logging. One nice thing too is each module can be independantly controlled so if you don't want the std. firewall just turn off network monitoring but you can keep application monitoring on so you can still control app. internet access to compliment a hardware firewall).
AV: AVG Free
Spyware: Ewido, Adaware, Spybot S&D

All freebies

Darthn3ss

Wow, this computer is fricken awesome. i'm jealous of myself.

Dannybear

Spec sounds good for what you want it for mate...

AV i swear by AVG, never had a problem...touch wood!