Joined: 25 Sep 2006 Location: Teamblackistan Posts: Over 9000
Posted: Tue Sep 15, 2009 2:20 am Post subject:
Building a PC need feedback.
A friend of mine is trusting me to get a gaming PC together for him,so being that he's trusting me with this much money, I want to make sure I'm not screwing anything up.
I asked him a price limit, and he said "no limit" which is making me even more cautious. I'm aiming between $1000 and $1500 to be safe. All he needs is the rig itself, he's already got a monitor, mouse, keyboard etc.
I looked at stuff with the highest ratings for a non-ridiculous price.
Things I want to make sure are technicalities, like can the power supply power all this, are there enough hookups in the motherboard for everything, is it not going to overheat on him, and most importantly is it going to play everything on max GFX with no lag.
Considering everything on his list beats the crap out of my own PC, and my PC already plays all my games max GFX no problem, There's probably no reason to worry. This is my first time building a rig though so I want to double check with more experienced people. _________________ The Fall of Hammerfest - Epic Tiberian chain story
Tiberian Odyssey mapping department. Discord The Team Black Index QUICK_EDIT
Ummm, you do realize you have a Phenom processor (socket am3) and an Intel socket LGA 1366 mobo right? Thats just a bit incompatable . I would stick with the Phenom II at that price. Only thing I'd recommend over it would be an i7, and they are all fairly more expensive. Also, may I suggest this video card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121308. Considerably better performance for the same price, and if you want a good amd socket am3 motherboard, I'd suggest this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128377. Other than that, it looks good to me, and I make and fix computers as a side job. Your gonna tell him to screw Vista and just install the Win 7 RTM right? Also, why such a large hdd? QUICK_EDIT
Screw AMD. They're falling behind. An i7 will give you more bang for your buck. Definitely the Nehalem for the money. It's a little more expensive but you'll have a bit better performance and be future proofed.
For video, I recommend XFX over EVGA. XFX cards just seem to perform a teeny bit better but EVGA is not a bad choice.
Case looks good but I recommend LIAN LI and Modsalot would recommend the new Corsair case that just came out I'm sure.
Your hard drive situation could be improved. I recommend large drives for storage purposes instead of being the primary. I've been recommending the SSD primary and HDD storage drive setup for most people. SSD acts as the primary where your OS and core apps would reside. Then put in more drives to hold, games and additional applications, one for movies, music and media and one more for additional in-house storage for whatever. Then an external for redundant backups.
I recommend this and this. You'll need the dock; trust me. Then just pick whatever amount of HDDs you think you would need but I recommend 320GB for games, 500/750GB for media and 1/1.5TB for additional then a 320/500 for backups.
That should make for a better rig. If you do get the SSD, explain to him that he will NEVER need to defrag that thing. Ever. Then point him to the OCZ forums for tips on keeping performance. QUICK_EDIT
Joined: 25 Sep 2006 Location: Teamblackistan Posts: Over 9000
Posted: Tue Sep 15, 2009 8:01 pm Post subject:
OK I updated the list, swapped out the GFX card, processor, and memory with the reccommendations. I also put a 1TB drive instead of a 1.5TB, you're right that it's a lot of unneccesary space. I've barely gotten half full on my own 650 gig drive.
I'm still not familiar with the connections ofprocessors to the motherboard. If I use the reccommended i7 will it be compatible, or should I just try a different motherboard?
That motherboard is compatable with the i7. Solid state disks have the advantage of being much more reliable than traditional hdds (no moving parts) as well as very fast, although they are considerably more expensive. If you decide to get a solid state disk, I would get a small one and use it as your boot disk, and for a few key apps that you want to run very fast, and then use a traditional hhd for the rest. QUICK_EDIT
Joined: 25 Sep 2006 Location: Teamblackistan Posts: Over 9000
Posted: Tue Sep 15, 2009 8:18 pm Post subject:
oh I get it; it uses flash memory, nice. The price is a little steep, for the storage, even though I'd expect the performance would be incredible _________________ The Fall of Hammerfest - Epic Tiberian chain story
Tiberian Odyssey mapping department. Discord The Team Black Index QUICK_EDIT
I'm still not familiar with the connections ofprocessors to the motherboard. If I use the reccommended i7 will it be compatible, or should I just try a different motherboard?
PROTIP - Socket Type. That's how you know; however, for more granular CPU support, you have to check the motherboard manufacturer's documentation. For example, my mobo has LGA 775 and it can run some dual cores but not others. However, since this mobo is brand new, it should run any i7 on the market at this time.
Team Black wrote:
Also, that solid state disc, I'm not familiar with, what does it do?
A solid state drive is basically a flash drive, but with much larger capacity. Like The Raven mentioned, it is considerably more expensive to buy a larger capacity drive so I recommend a 60GB since those seem to have the best read and write speeds, and offer the best bang for your buck. They are much faster than traditional hard disk drives and are more reliable. Again, Raven is dead on.
He detailed, as I had in my last response, how best to use an SSD for a rig being built today. Just ask Sir Modsalot - the boot time reduction is astonishing.
However, I recommend smaller drives for applications and media because if your big one fails, all of your data goes with it. At least with multiple drives, that becomes less of a concern, especially if you make frequent back ups of necessary files. The mobo you chose has six SATA ports, I would make use of them. QUICK_EDIT
Joined: 22 Aug 2006 Location: somewhere south of the north pole
Posted: Tue Sep 15, 2009 8:50 pm Post subject:
Perhaps a 1TB x2 in raid 1?
Also, if money is not a problem, go for 2GB x 6 RAM. The more ram, the better I got 6 GB, and I would love to have some more.
Also: If time isn't an issue:
Wait 1,5 month. Then ATi 5870 will enter market. It kicks 4890 ass! I got the 4890 myself, and it's great, but nothing compared to 5870!
And for the love of god:
Get a good CPU cooler! I got i7 920 myself, and from 2,66GHz standar, mine is clocked to 3,8GHz rock stable! Just with an air cooler.
By rock stable I mean 2,5 hour with prime 95 torture test max heat.
Also: Does he need a card reader? Some need it, some don't. I need it, many of my friends doesn't _________________ This is a signature QUICK_EDIT
Please do not suggest this. This is 100 percent unnecessary for a consumer level desktop computer. RAID1 has a high chance of data loss so I can't recommend this and neither should you. The performance boost is negligible and the lack of redundancy to keep from losing data really doesn't give anyone a good reason, in a home PC, to use RAID. QUICK_EDIT
While I am not as familiar with the various RAID arrangements, Templar seems to know at least as much if not more than me about building rigs, so I'd definitely heed his advice. _________________ QUICK_EDIT
Joined: 22 Aug 2006 Location: somewhere south of the north pole
Posted: Wed Sep 16, 2009 5:20 am Post subject:
Dark Templar X wrote:
Dupl3xxx wrote:
Perhaps a 1TB x2 in raid 1?
Please do not suggest this. This is 100 percent unnecessary for a consumer level desktop computer. RAID 1 has a high chance of data loss so I can't recommend this and neither should you. The performance boost is negligible and the lack of redundancy to keep from losing data really doesn't give anyone a good reason, in a home PC, to use RAID.
Are you sure you don't think of RAID 0? RAID 1 is mirroring all information over two disks! Always instant backup?
Team Black wrote:
edit: I talked to him he wants all six.. What on earth is he going to do with 12 GB RAM lol
If he works with images or 3d! ( a image of 5000x7000 needs a lot of RAM ) If it's only gaming, then 6GB is enough _________________ This is a signature QUICK_EDIT
RAID1 still doesn't have parity, which keeps the data in tact in the event of a drive failure in the array. Hence why I don't recommend RAID. That and I'm paranoid about data loss. QUICK_EDIT
1TB is more than enough for the time being. The thing is that for a fixed price, over the course of the last few years the disk space you can buy for it has increased much, much more in comparison with the size of an average load of files. It's almost 2010 and we use low-quality, artifact-ridden JPGs instead of 24 or 32bit BMPs for cameras, nearly all files sent over the network are compressed to hell and we make heavy use of portable disks and drives. They may not be as fast as an internal drive, but I on't think you'll be accessing the myriad of files spread over 4 1TB drives at once.
Also, 12GB of memory is pretty much overkill unless you plan on either running some sort of server on your home computer or some pretty heavy multitasking. Also, don't forget you have virtual memory as well... Not a single 'normal' app requires 10-12GB to run properly, even 6GB is a lot. Even I don't have problems with that and I keep photoshop and Acid Pro online on the background while playing Bioshock with about 4GB of physical + virtual memory in total (that's about average I think, using recommended VM settings). I mean, the real bottleneck there is your CPU or even the data transfer rates between the hardware components themselves. Get a better/an extra CPU (or even another GPU?) instead of overkill memory, you'll get more bang for your buck that way.
It's not like dumping in 16GB of memory will magically make everything run faster, it will only allow you to run more at once without the computer having to switch between physical and virtual memory (virtual memory is just a swap file on your hard disk to which junk is written, which is much slower than actual memory, but is cheaper and abundant (why? 1TB is more than 16GB)). QUICK_EDIT
Joined: 14 Feb 2006 Location: Flying into hostile territory
Posted: Sat Sep 19, 2009 6:35 pm Post subject:
You should go with the Gigabyte Mobo on newegg a fair bit cheaper. Also I prefer EVGA cards because they have very lucrative warrenties _________________ QUICK_EDIT
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Building a PC need feedback.
. I would stick with the Phenom II at that price. Only thing I'd recommend over it would be an i7, and they are all fairly more expensive. Also, may I suggest this video card: 
I got 6 GB, and I would love to have some more.
) If it's only gaming, then 6GB is enough
