Advise on new mobo : suitable for JF (incl. hitachi) flashing AND gaming

[idog]

Since I've been out of PC's for a while (just have a stripped old p4 with PCI sata card for flashing and use Mac for everything else) I would like some advice.

I'm about to buy a new PC, for gaming only. Since I have some trouble with flashing Hitachi's on my old P4 and the space on my desk is finite, I was thinking of using the new PC for flashing as well.

So, what mobo would you guys advise that works perfectly with the latest Jungleflasher (onboard sata) AND is very well suited for an extreme gaming pc.

Love to hear your thoughts on this.

Thanks !

idog

[gigabite]

well it depends on your budget, and if your only asking for a mobo, or you want advice on other parts also

gigabite

[jelle2503]

i'd have a look for motherboard with nforce southbridge

[idog]

Budget for the pc itself is 1000 euro, cheaper is ok. Advice on other components is of course welcome.

@jelle : nforce southbridge : any brands in particular ? I checked at a (I think) good online shop in our country and found 47 mobo's with nforce on it... (http://www.4launch.nl/shop/winkelwagen/3587#p-3-specificatie-nForce). Taking my gaming 'needs' into account

[gigabite]

HOLY $#!t....ok this will be the best dam PC you can get (well, assuming you can get stuff as cheap as I can where you are)

all prices listed are in $AUD

Motherboard: Asus Striker Extreme 2  -  $515
CPU: Intel Q6600 (overclock it, that's the point)  -  $315
GFX Card: ATi 1GB 4870 (even though i'm an nVidia man myself)  -  $359
Hard Drive: 300GB Veloci Raptor  -  $459
RAM: Corsair (4GB) C4DHX  -  $129
PSU: Antec TPQ 850W  - $289
Heatsink: Zalman 9700 CNPS LED  -  $73

If you cut down the HDD to a little lower spec (as in went for one that isn't the absolute cream dela cream of HDD's in the world) you could re invest that money into a bit better RAM

$167 over your budget (depending on the HDD you might have some money left over to make up the difference even with buying better RAM)

that, overclocked.....would be an absolute BEAST

gigabite

[neonpolaris]

Isn't that HD a bit excessive?  Can't the same performance be achieved with 2 much cheaper drives in raid 0?  Hell, you could stripe 4 1TB's for the price of that drive.  (I'm not saying that you should, just highlighting the excessive price of the VelociRaptor)

A couple 500GB drives would be cheapcheap, if you need performance.

---

Edit: I completely failed to read about the prices in AUS.

[idog]

Thanks gigabite! That Striker mobo really looks nice. Also good suggestion for power and harddrive (although I don't know if it's a noticable bottleneck if I have a more conventional 7200rpm 1tb HD ? ).  I have to check on the rest though. GTX260 nvidia sounds better than the Ati.

But thanks for taking the time

edit : @neonpolaris, think that's more up my alley, not that much of a performance loss ?

Damn, need a case as well

[neonpolaris]

After glancing over to TomsHardware.com's harddrive benchmarks:

Looks like the 300GB Raptor's average read throughput speed is about 102MB/s (for $230)
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/3.5-hard-drive-charts/Average-Read-Transfer-Performance,658.html

The the 7200.11 series from Seagate has average read speeds as follows:
500GB - 81.90MB/s - $65
1TB - 82.3MB/s - $90
1.5TB - 99MB/s - $130

As you can see, the 1.5TB drive approaches the read speed of the Raptor, not by extreme RPMs but by higher data density.

Also, consider that when you place two drives into raid 0, you get just about twice the read performance.
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/raid-matrix-charts/Average-Read-Transfer-Performance,218.html

So that would equate to:
500GBx2 - ~160MB/s - $130
1TBx2 - ~160MB/s - $180
1.5TBx2 - ~195MB/s - $260

Remember that with raid0 you get to keep the combined storage space. That is, two 500GB drives essentially gives you a 1TB drive.

I'm not saying that you need über speed, just that I don't think that a single Raptor is cost effective for speed or storage.

I'm also oversimplifying the sitation as I've ignored seek times, write speeds, etc.  But the gist of what I said is still true.

BTW, all prices are in US dollars from newegg.com

[idog]

Ok, just configured a system. Kinda went overboard, but hey, you only live once

http://www.4launch.nl/shop/winkelwagen/1953

Remarks or is this a good system which can keep up for a while ?

@neonpolaris : I'll use the 2 drives in raid0 then, had some bad experiences with seagates, so I went with WD this time. Thanks for the comparison !

[gigabite]

I knew you wouldn't like the HDD being so expensive (well it's the top of the top) but that site you said...$263 (AU) for a 640GB SATA HDD - I can get a 1.5TB for $217 (AU) (Seagate) and if you go 2 TB (as in 2 x 1TB WD Drives) it would be $310 (AU).

As for the rest (apart from being a rip off no offense), your kind of going with old stuff - you sounded like you wanted a TOP spec PC...but you go for a GX260 ? (yeah i'm an nVidia man myself but the Ati 4870 is better) and then you go for a E8400, but if you went for the Q6600 you could overclock it....this board is made for overclock'ers (seriously look it up). 

If your not going to overclock or more or less use the full potential of the board (an expensive board might I add) then i'd probably go for something lesser...also a 650w PSU : / cutting it really thin. Oh, just to add insult, I can get the same monitor (actually the HS not the HM, so better) for $384AU 

Sorry to be so...negative but that's just my opinion/point of view

gigabite

[idog]

I knew you wouldn't like the HDD being so expensive (well it's the top of the top) but that site you said...$263 (AU) for a 640GB SATA HDD - I can get a 1.5TB for $217 (AU) (Seagate) and if you go 2 TB (as in 2 x 1TB WD Drives) it would be $310 (AU).

As for the rest (apart from being a rip off no offense), your kind of going with old stuff - you sounded like you wanted a TOP spec PC...but you go for a GX260 ? (yeah i'm an nVidia man myself but the Ati 4870 is better) and then you go for a E8400, but if you went for the Q6600 you could overclock it....this board is made for overclock'ers (seriously look it up). 

If your not going to overclock or more or less use the full potential of the board (an expensive board might I add) then i'd probably go for something lesser...also a 650w PSU : / cutting it really thin. Oh, just to add insult, I can get the same monitor (actually the HS not the HM, so better) for $384AU 

Sorry to be so...negative but that's just my opinion/point of view

gigabite

I appreciate your opinion. Like I said, I've been out of PC's for quite a while. However, I'm not looking to overclock. I asked for a good gaming mobo which also works great with JF, and you suggested that mobo, if you have a cheaper one which will also suit me fine (again, not looking to overclock), I'll be glad to hear it.

The online shop (which to my knowledge is the cheapest here in the NL, if anyone knows cheaper (IN THE NL), again, let me know), doesn't sell the Q6600. And since the E8400 gets good reviews, I figured to go with that.
As for the videocard, that stuff devaluates faster than african money, so I'm not going to shell out 400+ euro's seeing that in 6 months I'll be paying half that for it. I can always upgrade later.

And the HM is better than the HS (the shop also sells the HS at 40 euros less).

I'll upgrade the PSU to 700 then, didn't know the machine needed that much power with just one videocard ?

[gigabite]

Nah that's cool mate I started to assume you didn't want to overclock...

all prices listed in $AU

then i'd suggest the following:

Motherboard: Asus P5Q Deluxe  -  $245
CPU: E8400 (like you said)
RAM: Corsair (4GB) C4DHX  -  $129  (still recommending that) - DDR3 is a waste IMHO
GFX: your choice.....for me though, there is only $12AU difference between the GTX260 and the 4870 (both 1GB)
HDD: again your choice, but just to let you know..a WD SATA 2 HDD (500GB)  -  $93
PSU: Antec TPQ 850W  - $289 (I am still highly recommending that)

all that gives you 3 things:

* The possibility to upgrade for some time

* The potential for a still decent overclock haha (well i'd get the Zalman cooler I recommended before if you went down that route....overclock  !!!)

* A good gaming pc

only recommendations, not guidelines or anything 

oh and my bad about the LCD...

gigabite

[jelle2503]

ik heb ondervonden dat azerty.nl altijd erg scherpe prijzen heeft in vergelijking met andere websites zoals 4launch en alternate. maar ga es kijken/vergelijken.

700W voor een enkele videokaart is nergens voor nodig

ik zelf heb e8500 op 4ghz , asus p5e3, 2 gb ddr3, 5 hdd's + 1 extern (1800gb), 2 CD/DVD-rom, en Asus 9800GT TOP met een 420W voeding. dat was toen goedkoop voor aardig goeie hardware, en het draait Far Cry 2 en alle nieuwere games goed zat. toen zat ik op 700euro geloof ik

[idog]

ik heb ondervonden dat azerty.nl altijd erg scherpe prijzen heeft in vergelijking met andere websites zoals 4launch en alternate. maar ga es kijken/vergelijken.

700W voor een enkele videokaart is nergens voor nodig

ik zelf heb e8500 op 4ghz , asus p5e3, 2 gb ddr3, 5 hdd's + 1 extern (1800gb), 2 CD/DVD-rom, en Asus 9800GT TOP met een 420W voeding. dat was toen goedkoop voor aardig goeie hardware, en het draait Far Cry 2 en alle nieuwere games goed zat. toen zat ik op 700euro geloof ik

Great, bedankt voor de link, zal es gaan vergelijken. Jouw P5E is toch geen nForce chipset .. en toch geen enkele prob met JF ? Zodra ik eruit ben, laat ik de final config nog wel even zien

[jelle2503]

ik heb intel ich9 maar deze pc gebruik ik niet voor flashen. in ander pc heb ik via en nforce zitten werkt prima

[gigabite]

talk in english

and get a VIA card for flashing (sorry forgot to say that)...

gigabite

[idog]

talk in english

and get a VIA card for flashing (sorry forgot to say that)...

gigabite

We talked about a Dutch shop, but you're right, it's not polite

And I have a VIA 6421a card already, using that for years, but Hitachi and the new JF is buggy as hell on my regular 'flashpc' (even with the via drivers removed).

[jelle2503]

im a little anxious flashing hitachi with JF... there seems to be modders, that never bricked hitachi but now brick them quite easily. especially this one dude who was flashing for 2-3 years, done over 100 drives, never had one brick, but now with JF he bricked a v47 and v79 in one day.
i'm waiting for flashix.bat, and updated FWTB48 (suppose updated fw/tb isn't coming)

[idog]

   Antec Big Tower Nine Hundred ATX No PSU   
    Antec Powersupply NeoPower Blue 650W   
    Asus Striker II Extreme nForce 790i SLI, SATA2   
    Asus Videokaart PCI-e Radeon HD4870 DK 1GB DDR5 2xDVI/HDCP   
    Corsair 2x2GB DDR3 SDRAM PC10666 CL9.0 XMS3 DHX   
    Iiyama TFT Monitor B2409HDS-B1 24", HDMI, Speakers (zwart)   
    Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3.00GHz 1333 6MB Box   
    Logitech G11 Keyboard   
    Logitech G9 Laser Mouse   
    Logitech Speakerset Z-3e 2.1 (zwart)   
    Pioneer DVD-/+RW DVR-216D 20x/20x/5x (wit)   
    Sony Floppydrive 1,44MB 3,5" (zwart)   
    Steelseries Muismat 5L (zwart)   
 2x   Western Digital 640GB SATA300 32MB, WD6401AALS   

That's what I just ordered (at 4launch.nl btw, azerty was more expensive, thanks Jelle nevertheless). Decided to go for the better mobo, for future's sake. Who knows, maybe I'll be an overclocker someday.
For now I went with the 650W, which is abundant for just 1 videocard. If I decide to go SLI someday, I'll toss in a 850W.
2 hd's in raid0, thanks neonpolaris.
And, especially for gigabite, hd4870 (No, kidding, went over the specs on several sites and decided to go with this one until the gefore 295 becomes affordable ).


Everyone, THANKS for your suggestions !

[gigabite]

cool that set up's not bad

gigabite