Building a friend a PC - advice appreciated

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Hi Ronilar,

The personal preferences aside, I think it will be a real good system for a long time. I agree with others that if no overclocking is going to be used, then the stock heatsink will be fine. If he changes his mind, well then you know what to do!

As for the choices. My only other comment is the new 150GB Raptor drives are out. They are more money, but the advantage is more space. Here's a link to one of many reviews:
http://www.storagereview.com/

One last thing. I love the fact I have two CD-ROM/DVD drives. If you're going SATA with the hard drives, then using the Primary and Secondary IDE channels on the motherboard for the CD/DVD drives works real well. You can copy directly from one drive to the other, quickly. Just a thought...

I hope this helped,

Thanks for the input guys. Sccr as you probably know (and from my builds) I'm a converted AMD guy. I used to be all intel but joining here in the last year moved both my systems to AMD. I actually suggested a dual core amd initially but he's of the mind set that I was , say a year ago that AMD was inferior. i would much prefer to build him an AMD based rig. A couple of clarification points though; He will never upgrade this thing. I built him a P1 233 about 5 years ago which he is still using stock. He can afford a decent investment but has refused to upgrade. It's likely that after I build the box, I won't see the interior of it again until he buys a new one (or unless something goes boom). The dual cd drives is something I used to be a big fan of as well but he will really only be ripping the occasional DVD (for backup purposes of course) and backing work files up onto blanks (rarely) as he uses a memory stick. My concerns regarding cpu cooling is that he never shuts his pc off. He accesses it remotely from his office while away (just as I do) and as such, I thought a stronger cooling option would ensure no hiccups.

What are reasonable temps of the D930 under load and what are its safe limits?

by the way, the 150 gb raptor for primary is a good idea. He will need a fair amount of space and the raptors rule. thanks for the tip, I had heard about them but forgot.

Intel D930 3 Ghz - Too slow in my opinion as it is mismatched to a SLI based system, you do really need a clock speed of 3.6GHz for a single core or 3.2GHz for a dual core/SMP system. I would thus recommend the 940 to improve performance with tasks, specifically higher end gaming.

OCZ DDR2 PC2-5400 667 Mhz 2 x 512 MB Dual Channel 4-4-4-8 - No problems there, timings are a bit high, but this does not make a huge performance impact as pure bandwith is favoured with Intel.

Asus P5N32-SLI - For overclocking this board is very poor, however for operating at stock settings it is fine. One point that I would warn you about is that the Northbridge gets very hot with prolonged use, it can even reach 60C or higher on occasions. This is due to the poor implementation of the ASUS cooler on it which can not remove the heat fast enough.

Dual BFG 7800GT's - No problems at all, I would recommend (if there are extra funds avaliable) to get two 7800GTX's as the extra 4 pixel pipelines each will really shine in SLi.

Seasonic S12 600W - Nothing wrong there, a decent amount of power and from a decent company

NEC 3550 DVD-Burner - No problems there either, all DVD burners are usually fine.

74 Gb Raptor Primary, WD 250 GB Sata-II backup - No problems here. However I would recommend that he reconsiders his position with RAID as for HDD data transfer it really helps, especially with game loading times.

SB Audigy 2 Zs (he wouldn't know the difference for the X-FI) - Fine, a very good card

Antec P160 Case (tried to recommend the 160W with window but he's not interested but definitely likes the other aspects of the P160W I own). - Never heard of this case but I would expect it is fine providing it has decent airflow space.

Temperature limitations for the 930:
Recommended Limit: 60C
Actual Limit: 63.4C

thanks for the input manual. Thats the kind of info I need before recommending to him. If not the A8N32, which Asus board would be ideal for SLI? He definitely won't shell out the dough for 2 x gtx. Also which dual intel chip would you recommend. I doubt he would mind spend another $200 or so but not much above that. the attached pic is the 160W with its side door detached. 2x120mm fans (front open intake, a must in my book).

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Even with the problems it faces it is still ASUS's best SLI board in my opinion. The only thing I would change is the CPU, and that would be from your 930 to the 940. An increase of 200MHz will help with gaming and will help a bit extra with multi-tasking tasks also. I would have to advise a better cooler for it unless he wants his room to get fairly hot as they do dish out quite a bit of heat.
I would also advise a good chipset cooler for the motherboard or else it will get very hot in there, especially with two 7800GT's emmiting heat into the case also.

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July for the Conroe. I'll admit, it's tempting, but you're right, I don't think any of the current chipsets will support Conroe (maybe with a revision to the BIOS, but who knows) and the chipset they have designed around the Conroe is supposed to be released at the same time......

Too many questions and unknowns to hold off on a new system till then, IMHO.