Building a Computer

[Ryex]

So, now that I have a job and I just got a 504$ check for a weeks work I'm planing on building a computer this summer

I'll keep this topic running with my current thoughts and options i'm considering.


I'm thinking for  CPU and GPU I'll be Useing AMD mostly for price reasons but if somene can point out a more powerful nvidia card that's very close in price to what I'm looking at in the AMD side I might go for it as I have3 very little experience with ATI cards. I think I did that myself lol. plus My research tells me that nividia has better driver and product support across the board.

First off I'm building around THIS processor is's great balance of power and price and apparently overclocks like a boss

PROCESSOR:
AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHz Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor      

GPU:
EVGA 025-P3-1579-AR GeForce GTX 570 (Fermi) HD 2560MB 320-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card  

RAM:
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory

Motherboard:
GIGABYTE GA-990XA-UD3 AM3+ AMD 990X SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard

Case:
Rosewill CHALLENGER Black Gaming ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

PSU:
OCZ ModXStream Pro 700W Modular High Performance Power Supply


HDD:
Western Digital Caviar Blue WD3200AAKX 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive

CD-Drive:
ASUS 24X DVD Burner - Bulk 24X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 12X DVD+R DL 24X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM Black SATA Model DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS


This build is coming in at $882, just over 1K with shipping and tax
honestly I would love to cut down the price a bit, if you guys can suggest alternative parts the would drop the price but not drop performance all that much I would be glad to know.
I'm aiming to almost never have to buy most of these parts again and only up grade one or two parts at once every 3 to five years

[Blizzard]

I'll give you the same links I gave nathmatt the other day.

Here: http://www.videocardbenchmark.net
You want to check out the mid-range benchmarks, the common card benchmarks and the best value benchmarks. Remember that the value chart is not a performance chart, but a chart for performance/price. I took a quick look at it and from what I can see, Radeon HD 6850 and GeForce GTX 480 are really worth your money for a slightly higher price.

As for a CPU, a quad-core at 3+ GHz was common 3 years ago and CPUs haven't improve much since then. You have the option between Intel's iX series or a cheaper (but weaker) AMD model. Again, remember that you will need an appropriate motherboard for the CPU as well. I also suggest you get a motherboard with DDR3 RAM support and get DDR3 RAM. DDR3 is probably now cheaper than RAM with older technologies. This PC should hold out for 3-5 years without problems.

EDIT: For comparison of specific cards: http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php

You can probably get a better GPU for less money.

EDIT: GTX 570? You already checked those charts, didn't you? >_>

EDIT: You can cut down a bit of the price if you have an older HDD that's still good/big enough for your needs.

EDIT: Mid-end ATI GPUs are usually cheaper. But since you're going for the high-end stuff, that doesn't apply to you.

[Ryex]

actually I selected the 570 by comparing power and feedback  and price on newegg, I then found those charts. I was initially looking at the HD 6970, and while that card technically has better power it doesn't score as well and ATI has bad driver support especially on lynix computers.

I changed the case and got down to $860.85

[Blizzard]

Hm, you know... I think a 500 GB HDD with 5400 RPM might be cheaper than your 320 GB with 7200 RPM. HDDs with more than 5400 RPM tend to be quite expensive. I've always worked with 5400 RPM HDDs and I rarely feel that they are slow or too slow. So you could consider that as another point where you could cut down on the price. You can even go with a 320 GB HDD with only 5400 RPM if you're desperate to get down the price as much as possible.

[Ryex]

actually I CAN'T find a cheaper 320GB drive even by going down in RPM's I did however drop blue ray for plain old DVD, I won't buy or rent blue ray anyway

[ForeverZer0]

I did that for my PC (going with DVD instead of BD), and I have no regrets.
I play movies on my television via a portable HDD, so have no need of Blu-Ray movies anyways. Aside from movies, unless you need the larger disk space for burning files, there isn't really much need of it. You won't miss it one bit.

[Ryex]

I changed out the ram and PSU with the mail in rebates I'm down to $793.92 looking good

[Blizzard]

actually I CAN'T find a cheaper 320GB drive even by going down in RPM's

That sucks. ._.

I did however drop blue ray for plain old DVD, I won't buy or rent blue ray anyway

Good thinking. I have bought my laptop about 2 years and I got one with a DVD drive as well. No regrets. Heck, I don't think I even burned more than 5 CDs/DVDs. And I use it so rarely. Flash drives are what I use much more often.

Also, I had no idea that Corsair's RAM was one of the more expensive ones. Here Corsair is basically in the same price range as other manufacturers.

[Ryex]

useing a desktop feels a bit strangeafter all this time having a laptop.
I got my parts to day and as you can see the build id up and running. there was a little scare during build where it wouldn't post and it did the EMERGNECY SOMETHING IS TARIBLY WRONG! beep on the case speaker, turned out one of the power plug on the video card had come unpluged. but once that was corrected it posted fine and I havn't had any problems yet. I havn't had a chance to put it under any real load aside form the windows exsperience testing.

here are the results of that btw:


Component Details                                        Subscore         Base score
Processor AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 965 Processor    7.4                   5.9
Memory (RAM) 8.00 GB                                     7.5
Graphics NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 7.9
Gaming graphics                                              7.9
4095 MB Total available graphics memory
Primary hard disk 674GB Free (699GB Total)          5.9
Windows 7 Ultimate

System  
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 Manufacturer Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
 Model GA-990XA-UD3
 Total amount of system memory 8.00 GB RAM
 System type 64-bit operating system
 Number of processor cores 4



I can already tell that this is going to be a great computer.

I had a little trouble with cabel managment and getting the side panel to close, ended up having to put more cable through the main compartment insted of hiding it behind the mother board than I would of liked. and the CPU power cable on the power suplly is extreemly short. but other than that I'm really liking this build.

I'll be sure to post some picutures and  the results of my game testing over the week end.

[Landith]

Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz                 7.6              5.9 
Memory (RAM) 8.00 GB                                                         7.6
Graphics NVIDIA GeForce GTX 555                                          7.4
Gaming graphics 4095 MB Total available graphics memory        7.4
Primary hard disk 61GB Free (930GB Total)                              5.9

We have similar scores, being the only major difference being the gaming graphics (but I can still run Crysis on High Settings so you should be pleased with yours), and I promise you won't be disappointed lol

Plus I guarentee you payed less than me lol because I'm an alienware fanboy

[Ryex]

well, I just played some skyrim on ultra. the system did well. no frame skipping really smooth game play. frankly I've never played a game with such an incredible level of detail and beauty. the detail was almost too beautiful as my eyes hurt a bit from looking at it.

let me add that emulating the game cube version of Twilight princess at this speed is a dream come true

[Ryex]

so, I recently added a hyper 212 evo cpu cooler to my rig, initial assessment is that it run much cooler and mush quieter under load I'll be posting temps later.

(Edit: I idle around 32 C and my max was 46 C under load.)

I also got a 120 GB SSD OCZ agility 3 (94$ on sale) but I'm not entirely sure how I should go about making it my main drive.

should I re install windows?
slim down and clone my main drive and then re-aline it for the SSD?

[azdesign]

I'm kind of hardware guy so I'll just put my thought here :

CPU : If I were you, I would choose sandy bridge's i3 (price are the same, around 130), the main reason was the power consumption, temperature and general performance. Phenom are quad-core, and believe me, many application still unfriendly with multi-cores, resulting the potential hidden in quad cores wasted on those application, for example RMXP lol. More cores are supported and optimized for design application such as 3d, architecture and movie editing software.

GPU: Well this is subjective, I'm no AMD fanboy but If I were you, I invest in AMD 7870 for better price/performance. Not to mention AMD has better multi-gpu support for future upgrade. In the other hand, NV has PhysX, which in several games, can boost the game visual (subjective). PhysX is emulated if not using NV cards, but requires far more processing power = lag. To take a note here, If you're running any games in 1440x900 and below using $250++ cards, you're just wasting your money and power.

M/B : No comment here. M/B are just for features, brand, and color. The truth is, I buy M/B for the looks. Of course not just looks. I have to make sure it support future upgrade, current technology trend and have god support and price.

RAM : Maybe you should buy faster 4GB ram (more frequency and less latency) which will bring better performance, your board support up to 2k hz. If you're not doing serious photo/movie editing, big database import/export, 3d rendering, i guarantee (for now) that 4GB would suffice, even for latest game with highest texture quality (non-MOD). I MOD my skyrim using insane texture and seem that my 4GB memory not suffice. Else than performance issue, just like M/B, design and colors matters (at least for me)

PSU : GTX570 with phenom should be around 500-550 full load. 700watt are.. hmm, not a perfect choice if in the future you're going SLI. if not, then its just enough. You should be buying Seasonic M12II-620 (modular or not up to you) which has better quality than that.

HDD : HDD less than 1TB are gimmick, why ? the price between 350 vs 500 and 500 vs 1TB are very small. If you want performance, go SSD. Do your computer runs on long term non-stop ? if so and you like to store many tihngs, go for WD RED, yes, WD red the NAS edition. Ok, if you don't have money to buy SSD and you want fast HDD, then considering buying samsung F4 or WD black, though for me personally, those are gimmick (high price with slightly better performance than standard HDD. Not to mention their lower durability and higher temperature). NEVER touch 15k/10k rpm wd raptor, those are utter gimmick even though some people report those in RAID provide competitive against SSD.

SSD : No No No ! I don't recommend you use any SSD else than : Intel 330/520 (120GB and higher, 60GB has slower performance), Crucial m4, and Samsung 830. Reason ? Speed, durability, and support.

CASE : up to you, I recommend those with bottom PSU location, space in the back for cabling support, USB3, and positive pressure cooling air flow

ODD : no comment, I rarely used my optical drive. But hey, Blu-ray drives are getting cheaper and it'd be wise if you invest in that, for maybe in the future you need to read from blu ray

btw, hyper212 was a great choice  
and, if you think your ultra setting skyrim was beautiful, try this : http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/11. I did and the result... well you'll see when you try it.
Hope it helps  

--- EDIT ---

Don't forget to turn off win7 auto defrag if you're using SSD as main drive (newer windows update should do this automatically if it detect the main drive as SSD, just to make sure). SSD could suffer from durability by defrag, its lifetime determined by how many data were re-written inside each block in SSD. Defrag is useless in SSD as it using different data-read-method compared to HDD. HDD seek the data in specific location in the platter, the data are frequently changing places and defrag was used to re-align those data so "seek" process become faster. While in SSD works like RAM, call the data based on addresses so its absolutely no need to defrag. Use drive monitoring application such as HDTune to check the condition of your SSD