PCA Forums

hey guys. building this system for a customer this week (havent ordered yet). I need this system to be as reliable as possible as he lives with a bunch of mac freaks and they think its gonna have all kinds of problems.


Athlon XP 2800+ 333mhz FSB barton
Shuttle AK35n-Ultra (onboard lan and sound)
Alpha PAL 6035MUC to cool it
NEC 8x DVD+/- RW
WD Special edition 80gb 7200HD with 8mb cache
Kingston 512mb PC2700
Sapphire Radeon 9600SE 128mb
Hitachi 17" LCD (20ms refresh, other specs are reasonable)
MS optcial mouse
Logtich Z-340 speakers (2.1)
Epson Stylus C84 printer



So can you guys see any big problems that there might be? All gonna be running WinXP.

This is mainly gonna be a gaming rig, with price in mind.


thanks for your opinions.

Nope. I had to RMA an An35 Ultra just a couple weeks ago. Once they are running, they are just as stable as any other system.

excellent. yeah I've always had good luck with shuttle boards. I swear I'll never buy another epox though. I bought one, it last a year. Bought another of the same kind and it died in 6 months. I need longevity in my hardware. My shuttle i have now has been going strong for at least a year and a half running nonstop.

i think the only problem thats gonna arise is gonna be software related

Looks like a nice rig. I have the same mobo in my kidz system and it's rock stable at 10.5x211 FSB with a 1700+ running @ 2.21 GHz for like 7 months now.

Only thing I'd wonder about is the 9600SE. Is he going to be doing any heavy DX9 gaming?

probably not too heavy. why, is it a shit card?

I'd consider another heatsink that takes a 80mm fan. like the alpha 8045, or sk7, volcano 12, etc.. I believe that 6045 takes just a 60mm, but I may be wrong.

Otherwise, I think it looks good. I use that shuttle in my main system and building another using that mobo for a friend.

Originally posted by CaterpillarAssassin
probably not too heavy. why, is it a shit card?

Here's a review that's pretty comprehensive.....
http://www.tweaknews.net/reviews/9600se/


PROS

· Quiet fan
· Low price
· VIVO
· Less intensive games will play well

CONS

· 64bit memory bus means only 3.2GB/s bandwidth
· Newer, powerful games will hate this card

...he lives with a bunch of mac freaks and they think its gonna have all kinds of problems.

From experience, nothing will satisfy the Mac guys. They typically have such a massive inferiority complex that any opportunity they have to "prove" the dominance of Macs won't be passed up. You just have to tolerate them and accept that they are clueless on most things.

SE is the problem, go with a 9600 pro for a few bucks more

i see one problem

i cant pick it up till next week



me