One of the projects I’ve been working on over the Christmas break is building my first PC as my old PC which was over 4 years old started acting up. It’s gone really well and I’ve run a few tests to compare the performance between the old PC and the new machine and there is no comparison between the two. I’ve even managed to do some decent overclocking which wasn’t as scary as I thought it would be - more on this later.

I finally settled on the specification below. My planned PC specification changed a bit at the last minute as I couldn’t locate some of the components I planned to buy.

Here’s my full spec:

OS: Windows XP Media Center Edition
Case: Gigabyte Aurora
CPU: Athlon 64 x2 4200+ Dual Core Processor
Cooling: Gigabyte Aurora 3D Galaxy Water Cooling
Storage: 2x Samsung Spinpoint P120S 250GB SATAII
Memory: 2GB Crucial DDR400
Motherboard: Asus A8R-MVP
Graphics Card: x1600PRO
TV Card: Hauppauge WinTV-PVR150MCE
Monitor: Samsung 913N
PSU: Seasonic S12-600
WiFi: Netgear WPN311

The total cost of all this kit was around £1200. I checked on a few websites and an equivalent ready-made machine would have cost nearly twice this much so building my own machine has definitely paid off.

Building my own machine has also allowed me to build a machine that is easily upgradable and it has also allowed me to design a machine that meets my own needs e.g I needed a Windows Media Center Edition Machine that could power a couple of Media Center Extenders easily, as well as being fast at encoding DVDs and converting media files.

Building The PC

Building the machine was a doddle. I’d read up on loads of sites such as this great site from AMD beforehand so that I was confident, but to be honest I didn’t need to. The documentation that came with each component was fantastic and all I had to do was follow the stages in the manuals, particularly the motherboard manual. Whoever is the technical writer at Asus deserves a pat on the back, as the manual walked me through every step and gave me total confidence. Everything worked first time which was really reassuring.

Case: Gigabyte Aurora

I was originally planning on getting a Antec P180 Case but at the last minute I decided to save few pounds and go for the Gigabyte Aurora. I’m so glad I did as the case is so sexy and is designed for simple tool-less construction - I didn’t even need a screwdriver. It has 3 120mm fans built in which give off a cool blue glow, and the chassis has lots of inbuilt clips so that cables can be managed easily.

CPU: Athlon 64 x2 4200+ Dual Core Processor

I was originally going to get a Intel chip as they are apparently better at encoding, but I decided to go for a Athlon 64 x2 as they are better all-rounders and don’t run as hot so are easier to overclock. So far I’ve managed to get my 2.2Mhz chip up to 2.66Mhz (280×9.5) and I think there is more to come as more bios updates come out for my A8R-MVP board.

Cooling: Gigabyte 3D Galaxy Water Cooling

At first I ordered a standard heatsink as I wasn’t going to have a serious attempt at overclocking, and then I changed my mind at the last minute as I thought it’d be mad to have a spec designed for overclocking and then to not have a go. Also, once I decided on the 3D Aurora case it made sense to install the 3D Galaxy Water Cooling, as the Aurora case has slots built in for the 3D Galaxy to slot into. Plus the 3D Galaxy was only £80 - 30 quid more than my chosen cooler.

Installation was very simple, albeit a bit nerve-racking. All I could think about was getting a leak and frying my new sexy computer! When I first switched the unit on nothing happened which was a bit scary. I eventually worked out that I hadn’t connected the power (doh!). On the second attempt watching the water shoot out of the reservoir to fill the tubes was quite cool and I wish I’d filmed it as it will only happen once.

The performance of the unit is amazing. Under torture tests at my overclock speed of 2.66Mhz, the temperature of my 4200+ CPU only reaches 38C if I run the cooler at full speed (a bit too loud though - sounds like a banshee gone mad) or 42-43C if I run it one notch up from idle. Without the cooling my 4200+ was clocking around 58-60C. Massive difference.

Motherboard: Asus A8R-MVP

Installing my Asus A8R-MVP board was very simple. Some of the front-panel power connections were quite hard to get to, but otherwise I had no problems. The manual for the board was amazing - very well written and around 100 pages. This is basically what I used to build my machine. If I have to recommend a board manufacturer to any other newbie builders I will definitely recommend Asus just for the manual.

The bios is very easy to navigate and is designed to make overclocking easy. It even has a automatic setting where the bios will try to overclock the CPU by up to 30%. I didn’t have much joy with setting and it was only good for about a 10% overclock.

By manually overclocking I’ve managed to get my 4200+ up from 2.2Mhz to a comfortable 2.66Mhz so far. Given that the current fastest Athlon X2 only runs at 2.4Mhz and costs £200 pounds more I’m quite happy about this.

I think there is more to come as lots of other A8R-MVP users have been complaining about the lack of voltage control in the bios which hopefully Asus will eventually fix as the bios matures. I’m setting a myself a target of 2.75Mhz. I think I’ll make it.

Memory: 2GB Crucial DDR400

I originally was going to buy some more expensive ram but in the end I decided to go for this value ram to save money. At first I thought I’d made a mistake as I couldn’t seem to overclock the ram to match my overclocked FSB/HTT and I actually had to slow my ram down to about 133Mhz to get it to work with the overclocked motherboard.

After a bit of help in forums I managed to get this up from 200Mhz to 221Mhz using a 166Mhz memory timer. In the latest 0402 bios that Asus released last night a new 188Mhz timer option has been added. I’m going to see if I can use that today which if successful will get my ram up around 250Mhz (I’ve managed 245Mhz when I just clock the ram), which I think is very good for supposedly budget ram.

Graphics Card: X1600 PRO

I was originally going to get an X1600XT but then I saw a X1600 PRO card on eBay for half the price so I went for that. What I intend to do is use the case I’ve saved to buy a second X1600 card as my motherboard supports CrossFire which allows two graphics cards to be run in tandem for improved performance.

I’ve managed to overclock the Core of the card using ATI Tool from 500Mhz to 631Mhz and the Memory from 400Mhz to 432Mhz. Overall this has given me an extra 30fps using the supplied measurement tool.

I think CrossFire is a better solution than Nvida’s SLi technology as with SLi you have to run 2 identical cards, whereas with CrossFire it just has to be in the same series. I’m keeping my eyes peeled for a good deal on a X1600 card - if I see a X1600 XT card for the same price as my X1600 PRO I’m going to snap it up.

The main reason I went for the ATI card was because of the promised Avivo technology recommended by Martin from gHacks. Avivo XCode encoding tool uses the power of the GPU to reduce video encoding time. Although Avivo isn’t officially out yet I managed to find a beta version of Avivo and it is amazing.

I created a 1.6GB XVid file from a DVD using AutoGK set to maximum quality and I then used Avivo XCode to convert the file to MPEG2, again on the maximum settings(the format needed by the Xbox 360 Extender). How long did it take? 9.5 MINUTES! On my old machine that would have been an impossible task - at least 6 hours and it would have crashed before completing anyway. Once I get my second card I’ll hopefully reduce this by a few more minutes.

I did the same task using Videora Xbox360 Video Convertor (same quality settings) and it took 38 minutes - 4 times slower. Avivo is bound to get even faster as ATI continue to work on the code.

TV Card: Hauppauge WinTV-PVR150MCE

I was going to get the PVR-500MCE as it has two tuners built-in but I decided to save some cash and get a PVR150MCE as I only have one set-top box at the moment, and I thought I could buy another card if this changes in the future. Unfortunately my 3D Galaxy is blocking my last PCI slot so if I do get a second set-top box (no current plans to) I’ll have to replace the card.

Setting up the card itself couldn’t have been easier and the set-up process in Windows Media Center Edition was very quick once I’d solved a few problems.

The IR receiver had problems picking up the signal from my Telewest infra-red remote. I think this was because Telewest remotes use IRDA which is some kind of weird infra-red signal. I managed to get around this by telling MCE that I didn’t have a remote and then using the built-in profiles within MCE for Pace set-top boxes.

The second problem I had was watching Live TV which started crashing my machine within 10 seconds of selecting it. Haulage told me it was either because of a IRQ conflict or because my DVD Decoder. After wasting time trying to fix the IRQ conflict I downloaded NVidia’s PureVideo Decoder and it did the trick.

Storage: 2x Samsung Spinpoint P120S 250GB SATAII

I wanted to get the latest Hitachi Deskstars as these came out top in all the tests I’d found, but when it came to ordering I realised these wouldn’t be available until late Jan so I went for the Samsung Spinpoint P120S SATAII drives instead. I can’t really comment a lot on these yet as I haven’t run any tests, but they don’t seem to be holding my machine back.

Monitor: Samsung 913N

I went for this budget monitor to save cash. Even though it only supports 1280×1024 this is enough for me as I’m not a mad gamer. If I do see a monitor going with a higher spec for a good price I might snap it up as I’ve always wanted a multi-monitor setup.

WiFi: Netgear WPN311

I decided to upgrade my wifi card from a Dlink card to a Netgear WPN311 to match my Netgear WPN824 router so that I’d get the strongest signal possible as I didn’t want patchy TV pictures on my Xbox Extenders. I’m glad that I did as in tandem the two are absolutely amazing as the WPN311 card takes advantage of the Extended Range function on the WPN824 router. My PC is about 20 feet away from my router in another room but I’m getting 95-100% signal strength CONSTANTLY when I connect at 108Mbps.

Overall, as you can probably tell I’m very happy with my work. If you want to give overclocking a go, later on this week I’ll write up my overclocking experiences along with links to the best guides I’ve found.

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