P5AD2-E Premium 925XE recommendations

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ross
  • Start date Start date
R

Ross

Hello all....

After 3.5 years of 24/7 with my Abit BX-133 RAID 0 (C900), I'm taking the
big plunge up to the P4 world and am building totally new.

Thus far I have a P5AD2-E Premium 925XE, P4/3.4 GHz 800M LGA775 and a
Coolermaster Praetorian case (ATC 201,PAC-T01) and would like some
recommendations on how to round this machine out with some undecided items,
mainly HD's and Videocard.

Currently I'm planning on replacing the four, 80 mm case fans with some
Vantec Stealth (s) or my personal favorite, Panaflos and the power supply
(again with a personal choice of power supply, PC Power and Cooling), 470
ATX (mostly because of the decibals and keeping in mind the 24 pin
connection)

Burner: I love Plextor and the 716 looks great although I'm undecided if I
should get the 716 SA/SW (problems with the P5AD2-E Premium SATA?) or the
716A/SW (?). I will also get another DVD-ROM to throw in there as well.

Memory: Totally undecided but know I want at least 1 GB (2 x 512 better for
this board?). I love Mushkin memory but am open to anything.

HD: Another open undecided area. I am looking at the Western Digital Raptor
(80 gig) series but again am undecided whether to use them in a RAID setup
(is there a big difference when using SATA in RAID?) vs just throwing in a
couple of 80-120 gigs (or bigger)as singles?

Video: the big open void! 6800GT, 6600GT, X800 ??? totally open!

CPU HSF: keep the retail or get something else?

Any other suggestions for anything would be great. I am not looking at
overclocking initially and will use the machine for playing DOOM3 and World
of Warcraft as well as the usual surfing and MS Office stuff.

I know there is a considerable amount of overkill for what I'm using it for
but in the past my machines have always limited my options such as MP's,
video editing, storage etc and the time is now to rectify some of it!

I will not say that money is not a deciding factor but I'm not adverse to
paying $300 for a video card keeping in mind what I'm using it for vs
spending the money on other things like HD's memory etc. Looking for a
balance for everything...

Also will be sticking with XP Home....machine is everyones use for now...

I know this is long but I really appreciate everyones time for any
recommendations and/or experiences

Thanks!

Ross
 
Not enough information to give good recomendations.

I like Nexus fans and Seasonic PSUs for Quit.

I suspect your gaming based on your post though you don't seem to say
that.
Go with the nVidia cards in that case.

If your ever want RAID on the ICH6 then set it up from the start. Once
you set up windows with the controller set at Standard IDE, Windows
won't boot if you change it to RAID. There is also the SIL3114 SATA
RAID controller that can be used for this as well.

The Raptors are fast, hot and small. WD recently switched over to
Flluid Dynamic Bearings in the Cavier SE and RAID RE drives. They seem
to be getting good reviews for noise. Having had a couple of Hitachi's
die on me I can't recommend. Seagates carry 5 year warranties on the
Barracuda though the new 7200.8 drives are reported to be louder than
the 7200.7 series that preceeded it. Not much on Maxtor, but the
Maxline IIIs seem to do well.

In memory, I think the board supports up to 733 DDR2. Mushkin, Corsair
and Crucial all seem to do well. Definitely pair up the sticks as the
board supports dual channel memory interleave.

Board also supports Dolby Digital Encoding. Not as nice as the NFORCE2
hardware, but not as CPU intensive as many suggest.

Good Luck.
 
I have the P5AD2-Premium board with a P4 3.6 GHz processor and I went
through the same research you are going through right now. I found the
best nearly silent fans and nearly silent power supplies from Silenx
(http://www.silenxusa.com). I had a PC Power and Cooling PSU, but the
noise was too much for me. I put 4 GB of Corsair PC4200/533 in my PC,
but beause of the chipset, it only appears as 3.2 GB. I had 74 GB
Raptor drives in my PC, but replaced them with Seagate drives for much
lower noise level. I am running a RAID0 stripe on two Seagate drives
that I boot off of with the ICH6R controller and another RAID0 stripe
on four Seagate drives on the Sil controller. For video card I got the
ASUS ATi Extreme AX800 XT, which has been stellar. I record HDTV on my
PC and have no problems with it at all. I am not a gamer so I can't
offer any advise in that department. For my case I went a bit extreme.
I got the Zalman TNN 500AF
(http://www.zalmanusa.com/usa/product/view.asp?idx=151&code=020) which
is totally silent! It has a built in power supply, but because of the
high horsepower my components require I had to use a 600W Silenx PSU. I
am running one fan inside the case because my processor produces so
much heat.
Good luck with your system, it sounds like your on the right track.
 
You're looking for quiet,so I'd recommend something other than the stock CPU
cooler, which has a pretty noisy whine when it's running full speed. The
better ones like Thermalright, have a back plate assembly that must be
mounted on the motherboard before installing it
 
Back
Top