You’re in the fi nal stretch.
The penultimate chore
is to power up all the
components. One fea-
ture of our $1,500 rig
we’re particularly happy
with is the PC Power &
Cooling power supply.
Usually, one of the fi rst
compromises you make
when building a budget
box is with the PSU. The
Silencer 610 is quiet and
gives us reliable power
output under all condi-
tions. We can’t say that
about other inexpensive
power supplies, some of
which have faded on us after 18 months of duty.
First, make sure the PSU is not connected
to the wall socket. Now, begin by plugging
the main power connector into the mother-board (image A). This 24-pin connector is
keyed and cannot be inserted incorrectly. You
should hear a soft click as it locks in place.
Make sure it’s fi rmly in place—double-check
by gently trying to pull out the connector. A
common building error
is to have the plug just
slightly off kilter, which
will cause booting
problems or a failure
to boot at all. Now
grab the eight-pin ATX
power connector. You’ll
plug this into a socket
on the mobo, southeast
of the CPU (image B).
Failure to plug this in
is another common
error, which will also
cause the system not
to boot. Next up is the
GPU’s power. The PSU
includes one cable with
a six-pin connector,
and another with a dual
six/eight-pin connector.
You can use either, but
we opted for the six-
pin, as it looks neater.
The pin will click into
place in the back of the
GeForce 8800 GTS 512
board (image C). Now
plug the power cables
into the SATA drive and
the optical drive. OK,
you’re done with the
hardware; it’s time to
turn this suckah on!12
ADD POWER TO ALL PARTS
Trying to confi gure a new
PC can be a massive mind
bender. You’ll have to not
only fi gure out what CPU
you want and what CPU
you’re going to eventually
upgrade to but also factor
in the GPU choice and its
potential upgrade path.
We originally consid-
ered Nvidia’s stupendous-
ly cheap and fast GeForce
8800 GT card. When our
budget allowed us to step
up, we reached for the
GeForce 8800 GTS 512
model. Mind you, that’s
the new, faster GTS, not
the older one. In the end,
we decided that having
the single fastest card we
could afford today made
more sense than factoring
in an SLI upgrade.
As much as we love
SLI, its utility is best left
for ultra-high-resolution
gaming. And then there’s
the fact that it doesn’t
actually run faster until
the drivers are updated
for the games. That’s
always been a problem for
dual-GPU confi gurations
in the past.
No, as sexy as it is to
pack multiple cards, we
think it actually makes
more sense for a budget
buyer to buy one very fast
card. In 18 months, when
it’s time to upgrade again,
your money is better spent
buying the fastest new-
generation card, which will
likely be faster than your
older card in SLI mode.Nvidia’s
GeForce
8800 GTS
512
WHY WE CHOSE
30 MAXIMUMPC | APR 08 | http://www.maximumpc.com
A
B
C
$1,500 PC