nexidus Posted January 9, 2008 Share Posted January 9, 2008 Planning on running a dual boot Vista x64 / OSX 86 setup. This is a result of a lot of reading for the past 2 months between this board, osxscene, and a few other boards. I wanna see what people think about this setup. Motherboard: $159.99 GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3P Rev 2.0 Ultra Durable 2, Ultra Cooling Intel Motherboard CPU: $82.99 Intel E2160 Allendale 1.8GHz Dual-Core Model BX80557E2160 (Overclocking to 3GHz++) **I am going with this chip because I plan on upgrading to a high end 45nm chip just as the 32nm chips come out. If you wait till the end of a line and skip every other line when upgrading you can make out really well. This should give this whole system a 4 year lifespan. Memory: $114.99 G.SKILL 4GB(2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1000 (PC2 8000) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F2-8000CL5D-4GBPQ **I am starting with 4GB and I MIGHT upgrade to 8GB of the same memory in the next 6 months to a year. I wanted the extra headroom for overclocking so I read great reviews on this RAM as a small cushion for not much more than DDR2-800. HDD: $129.99 Western Digital Caviar RE2 WD5000ABYS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s **I am going with the enterprise drive for future RAID support. I plan to disable TLER while using it as a single drive. Later I will get another one of these drives along with a sil3132 controller card. Video Card: $269.99 EVGA 512-P3-N801-AR GeForce 8800GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 HDCP Ready SLI **People are making headway with this card so I figure I would do this instead of a 7-series GT card. Futureproofing if you will. CPU HSF: $48.99 ZALMAN 9500A 92mm 2 Ball CPU Cooler **Okay, I only picked it because a couple thousand other people picked it. Anyone have any other suggestions? My wife has this model in her set-up and it's quite, but she doesn't overclock at all and I plan to break 3GHz. DVD-Burner (x2): $57.98 Sony NEC Optiarc 20X DVD±R DVD Burner Black SATA Model AD-7190S **Supposed to be very quite drives. Floppy Disk Drive: $7.99 SONY Black 1.44MB 3.5" Internal Floppy Drive **So yeah, I haven't owned one of these in a while and I think it's time to have one as a back-up for flashing purposes. Case and 6-month old 550W Power supply I already own. No need to upgrade those. TOTAL PRICE =~ $873 Any recommendations are greatly appreciated. I am going to purchase very soon (when the motherboard is back in stock). I am replacing just about everything because my current system is all PATA and AGP. Current system: AMD Athlon XP 2100+ (overclocked to a 2600+ 15x multi, 145Mhz FSB) Gigabyte GA-7VAX socket A motherboard 1GB PC2700 (actually 256 PC2100 & 256/512 PC2700) Nvidia FX5500 AGP 256MB (core:270, mem:400) 2 PATA DVD-burners 20GB PATA 7,200 RPM WD 30GB PATA 7,200 RPM WD Linksys Wireless G w/Speedbooster (woohoo!, oh wait I gave my compatible router away, D-link now) This system isn't terrible, but Athlon XP chips are only SSE1. I am about to start editing about 30 years worth of home movies and this upgrade was a requirement I set forth upon accepting the task. I game with my daughter (Urbanterror and Orange Box) and pull 50-70FPS. Not bad, but not good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
socal swimmer Posted January 9, 2008 Share Posted January 9, 2008 thats baller. seriously, thats a nice system. One thing: I have that DVD drive, and its not quiet. I'm not sure how quiet normal drives are, but that one is pretty loud. those are very good choices. on the 8800GT, you can probably get it for like 230 at amazon.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nexidus Posted January 9, 2008 Author Share Posted January 9, 2008 Thanks. I really hope I can get a decent OSX 86 box running off of this stuff. Your tutorial is actually what really made me start putting the system together. Tom's Hardware gave good reviews on the Sony Burners, but come to think of it I don't believe it was the same model. I could really use some suggestions in this category. My computer whines like you wouldn't believe right now. My wife's computer is dead silent in her Lian-Li case with all large fans. As for Amazon, I found the card $10 cheaper, but since everything else is coming from Newegg I might as well just pay the 10 bucks. Interesting though when I was on Amazon I saw the Gigabyte 8800GT card and realized it is the exact one that the new Mac Pro would have. Do you think the firmware would be more OSX compatible with the Gigabyte versus the eVGA? I guess I could always flash the eVGA card with a Gigabyte bios if it would help. Worried about fan issues doing something like that though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Synaesthesia Posted January 9, 2008 Share Posted January 9, 2008 No, but support for the 8800GT should improve when the new kexts or id's or whatever come from the new Mac Pros. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nexidus Posted January 10, 2008 Author Share Posted January 10, 2008 Woohoo! The motherboard just came back in stock and it's $10 cheaper. Yet another reason to buy this highly compatible board. ***** Edit: Nevermind...went to add it to my Shopping Cart and it pulled it right back out. I only want one invoice dangit! And now we wait... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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