Going to be first-time computer builder, need advice/help

Here's a minor personal preference:

I've had a few LiteOn drives with surprisingly short lifetimes. There may be better inexpensive choices (Samsung, LG).

zzz2496 said:

I suggest you change the Soundcard to some other maker, Creative's driver's quality isn't exactly top notch these days, and X-Fi is a complex, feature rich audio processor, bad driver = bad headache... I suggest you use Asus's Xonar series, the driver is way better than X-Fi, because it's simpler than Creative's, simpler = less prone to problems...

zzz2496

On the other hand, I haven't been impressed by the driver updates for my Xonar DX (the cheap one). I presume that Asus is dependent on CMedia for drivers.

Has anyone produced a soundcard yet that's really made for Vista or Win7? The X-Fi seemed to be built for DirectSound, which is no more.

Ok, I got the Xonar D1 7.1, plus it was cheaper than the X-Fi one too! I'm still looking into the CD burner though.

Sanvean, sorry, I'm not 100% what a socket cooler is? I googled them and it came up with Thermaltakeusa » Cooler » CPU Cooler » AMD Socket AM3 / AM2+ / AM2. Is this right? Or is a socket cooler something else.

zzz2496 said:

bobkn, Xonar series is simply an audio I/O, it doesn't contain any processing capability. As you can see in my specs, I use Asus's Xonar HDAV 1.3, as a sound card, it performs remarkably. No driver headache, sounds wonderful, no feature you confused on, no weird modes, no wuss, nice card overall, nice driver overall. It doesn't hinder standby/sleep, it doesn't crackle (DPC latency issue) and never had it crashed on me yet (~a year of ownership). Driver is ~15MB, way smaller than Creative's, eats very small amount of memory too. I rarely open Xonar control panel these days, once set, you never open it ever... That my humble opinion... :)

zzz2496

I guess the Xonar DX worked OK for me, with the exception of the Creative EAX emulation components. That was mainly an issue with some of the later Win7 X64 betas (ones not released to the public). The latest drivers still give trouble on sites that use MS Silverlight, not that most people will care about that. One work-around was to not install the EAX emulation at all. ("HSMgr" related stuff.)

I tried the Xonar because of the poor driver support for my old PCI X-Fi card under Vista. Whether Creative has since cleaned up their act, I can't say. Their habit of storing megabytes of stuff in the Windows Registry never appealed to me.

At the moment, I'm using my onboard sound (ADI Soundmax 2000B). Sounds different from the Xonar DX, but not always worse.

For Brood619: I'm not Sanvean, but "socket cooler" is another name for CPU heatsink and fan. There are many third-party ones available, and Thermaltake makes some good ones. Thermalright and Noctua are others, but there are many more. A lot of people who aren't extreme overclockers (and who don't want to spend a lot) seem to like the Artic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro:

Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev. 2 w/ PWM Fan - (Sockets 1366 / 1156 / 775 / AM3 / AM2+ / AM2 / 939) - FrozenCPU.com

My own DVD burner is a Samsung SH-S203B. I don't use it heavily, but I've been happy with it. I belive that it's no longer available, but I hope that its replacements are as good.

Might I add my recommendation for CPU cooler?

Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus:

Review

Review

And on Amazon:

Cooler Master 212 Plus

Great bang for your buck cooler, fits in my midsize case (Antec 300). A Guy