The 'Build Me A PC' Thread

[MisterNoisy]

Better cooling for the CPU so you can OC the bejeezus out of it + a new video card (7950/7870), perhaps?  If you can roll it over, I'd wait a bit and just do a whole new build, but I'm weird that way.

[Zetor]

Interesting, thanks for the input folks! Looks like video card (GTX 660 Ti 2gig - any preferred manufacturers, btw?) + RAM + maybe a faster CPU is the best option, and they do seem to fit in the budget fine.

Unfortunately I can't roll the $ over - that'd probably be the best option, yeah. That, or not having wasted a lot of my allowance this year on stuff like a new phone, various tech gifts for birthdays, etc. Alas, too late for that now  

[Trippy]

Yet another fucking new desktop CPU socket from Intel:

http://www.neowin.net/news/intel-next-gen-haswell-cpu-line-up-leaked-core-i7-4770k-the-flagship

Fucking Intel.

[rattran]

They are getting a bit nuts again with it. I was talking my boss through options for machines, and when he asked if he'd be able to upgrade the processor in a couple years I laughed out loud.

[Chimpy]

Just wait until Intel decides to go BGA only as the rumor mill was all in a tizzy about last week. 

[Hoax]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121660

versus

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121653

The cooler on the Asus looks good if I'm giving up on getting lifetime warranty b/c even EVGA doesn't seem to want to offer it anymore.

[Trippy]

If you are running at 1080p or higher I'd go with the 660 Ti.

[Nebu]

Where is the current line on bang-for-buck video cards?  I have a GTX 460 that needs an upgrade (along with mobo and cpu)

[Trippy]

What resolution do you play at?

[Sky]

DUal 460s are doing pretty good in my machine right now, but if you;re doing a full monte, may as well grab a better single card. (at 1080p)

[Nebu]

What resolution do you play at?

1680 x 1050

[Yegolev]

I have a similar question, but for 1920x1080.

[HaemishM]

What resolution do you play at?

1680 x 1050

I'm running a 460GTX in my machine at this resolution now. Unless you got $150-$200 burning a hole in your pocket, I'm not sure what you'll gain by upgrading.

[Nebu]

I'm running a 460GTX in my machine at this resolution now. Unless you got $150-$200 burning a hole in your pocket, I'm not sure what you'll gain by upgrading.

That's what I was wondering... thanks Haemish.

I may still pop for a new mobo, cpu, memory, and a SSD.  If anyone has any suggestions on an Intel quad that is decent bang-for-buck, I'm all ears.  I currently have a 2.6 GHz dual core with 6 GB memory. 

[MisterNoisy]

I'm running a 460GTX in my machine at this resolution now. Unless you got $150-$200 burning a hole in your pocket, I'm not sure what you'll gain by upgrading.

That's what I was wondering... thanks Haemish.

I may still pop for a new mobo, cpu, memory, and a SSD.  If anyone has any suggestions on an Intel quad that is decent bang-for-buck, I'm all ears.  I currently have a 2.6 GHz dual core with 6 GB memory.  

i5 3570K with the Z77 board of your choice.  If you're looking for bang for the buck, the Biostar TZ77 XE3 or ASRock Z77 Extreme4 would be my top picks for a board - possibly take a look at the Biostar Hi-Fi Z77X as well.

[Nebu]

i5 3570K with the Z77 board of your choice.  If you're looking for bang for the buck, the Biostar TZ77 XE3 or ASRock Z77 Extreme4 would be my top picks for a board - possibly take a look at the Biostar Hi-Fi Z77X as well.

I'll check them out.  Thank you so much for taking the time!  

Question: Tom's Hardware recommends the 3540.  What am I getting by going to the 3570? 

Also, what's the point of onboard graphics when I'll most certainly be using a separate video card? 

Thanks.

[MisterNoisy]

Question: Tom's Hardware recommends the 3540.  What am I getting by going to the 3570?  

Also, what's the point of onboard graphics when I'll most certainly be using a separate video card?  

Thanks.

I'm not sure I know - the only current Intel proc with a 3540 in the name I can find is a Xeon and the 3450 (assuming a different typo) is a lesser beast that can't overclock, and would only save you $25 versus a 3570K.  The 3450 isn't a bad CPU, but the minimal cost difference isn't worth losing the ability to OC to 30-50% faster than stock, IMO.

The onboard gfx are pretty much useless for gaming purposes relative to a discrete GPU, but can assist with non-gaming/video tasks - either way, they're not what you're spending the money for in a desktop proc unless you're building a HTPC.

[Sky]

With my MSI mobo's push-button OC feature, I pressed a butan and 4GHz on that CPU (the 3570k). Fuck Tom anyway.

[Sheepherder]

Also, what's the point of onboard graphics when I'll most certainly be using a separate video card?

RMAs take a while, having a computer in the meantime is nice.

[Trippy]

i5 3570K with the Z77 board of your choice.  If you're looking for bang for the buck, the Biostar TZ77 XE3 or ASRock Z77 Extreme4 would be my top picks for a board - possibly take a look at the Biostar Hi-Fi Z77X as well.

I'll check them out.  Thank you so much for taking the time!  

Question: Tom's Hardware recommends the 3540.  What am I getting by going to the 3570? 

Also, what's the point of onboard graphics when I'll most certainly be using a separate video card? 

Thanks.

Well if your MB supports something like Virtu MVP you can actually use the onboard graphics with the video card GPU at the same time in games for a potential speed or graphics boost. Otherwise, if your motherboard supports on-the-fly switching between the onboard graphics and the dedicated GPU you can use that to conserve some power when you aren't playing games or doing other graphics intensive work.

[Chimpy]

And the real point of on board graphics at this time is that finding a desktop CPU without an integrated GPU is pretty much a snipe hunt now.

[Salamok]

Is there some reason why on-board graphics disable themselves when a graphics card is in use?  It would be great to be able to run 3 or 4 monitors w/o getting an eyefinity or 2nd card.


edit - On a side note I ordered the shiney screen dell 27" ips 1080p monitor.  I have been stuck on the fence not wanting to give up ips and yet not sure the cost of a wqhd screen was worth it for my aging eyes.  Hope I am not disappointed.

[Trippy]

I have that Dell. Screen is very glossy as you've probably seen in the reviews. Color calibration on mine out of the box is very good --  I haven't even bothered to calibrate mine with my colorimeter yet. Color uniformity is also better than the new Asus IPS 27" 1080p. That one has a noticeable color shift towards blue on the right side of the panel.

[Draegan]

I'm looking to build/buy an NAS for my home.  Does anyone have any suggestions?  Looking for something around 8TB and I've got around $1k to spend or so.

[Trippy]

8 TB? That's puny

What sort of redundancy requirements do you have? Can you handle Unix/Linux?

Edit: also do you need Mac/Time Capsule support?

[Draegan]

Questions I don't know how to answer., but I will try my best.

1) 8TB?  I guess it's puny, but a quick glance at newegg prebuilt units peg me at that price.
2) Can I handle Linux/Unix?  I never had to before so I don't know, but it doesn't scare me.
3) I don't know what your edit means, but I assume that's a Mac thing or a Mac backup system.  No, my home network is running Win7/8 soon to be all 8.

I need a system that can host video/audio media as well as storage for my wifes collection of photographs all on a central unit.  I also run PLEX media off my desktop PC and wish to use the NAS to store the files so I can stop using my two external HDs as storage.

[Draegan]

Oh and while anyone's at it  I'm looking to pick up two 27" monitors that are relatively inexpensive that look great side by side so the more seamless the better.  These will operate as secondary and tertiary displays.

[Trippy]

Questions I don't know how to answer., but I will try my best.

1) 8TB?  I guess it's puny, but a quick glance at newegg prebuilt units peg me at that price.
2) Can I handle Linux/Unix?  I never had to before so I don't know, but it doesn't scare me.
3) I don't know what your edit means, but I assume that's a Mac thing or a Mac backup system.  No, my home network is running Win7/8 soon to be all 8.

I need a system that can host video/audio media as well as storage for my wifes collection of photographs all on a central unit.  I also run PLEX media off my desktop PC and wish to use the NAS to store the files so I can stop using my two external HDs as storage.

If you've never done any Unix/Linux sysadmin I wouldn't recommend any of the Unix-based "homebrew" NAS solutions. Not needing to support Mac backups (Time Capsule) gives you slightly more choices since not all the prebuilt solutions support that.

Your basic options at this point are to buy a dedicated NAS server with enough drive bays to fulfill your storage requirements or build some sort of Windows-based box and setup the drives and storage yourself.

A dedicated NAS server would be something like a 4-bay Synology or QNAP box. 4 4 TB hard drive using RAID 1 will give you 8 TB of available storage. You can get more available space or the same space with fewer/smaller drives if you are willing to use something like RAID 5 instead. With these boxes you can have one big logical volume (if that's what you prefer) rather than multiple volumes.

If you want to build your own Windows box you'll need to pick a version of Windows, which is more complicated than you would expect. Microsoft wants to you buy Windows Server Essentials 2012 for this sort of thing which is $500, blowing half your budget right there. Microsoft used to sell something called Windows Home Server (not the 2011 edition) which had an interesting drive extender feature. That let you pool drives together into a single logical volume and also mark individual folders for duplication. That drive extender technology had issues, though (it was basically a hack), and Microsoft abandoned it in the 2011 version. Some of the features of that drive extender technology were rewritten and incorporated into Windows 8 as the "Storage Spaces" feature. That technology also has issue, however (i.e. MS really really wants you to buy Windows Server Essentials).

You can of course simply forgo the single logical volume stuff and build a basic Windows 7 or 8 box with, say, 2 4 TB logical volumes, each made up of 2 4 TB drives in a RAID 1 configuration (4 4 TB drives). Or, since you aren't as constrained in the number of drive bays when building your own box, and if you are willing to have more volumes you could do, say, 4 logical volumes of 2 TB each using 8 drive bays (8 2 TB drives total).

Unfortunately the non-server Windows don't allow you to use RAID 5 within Windows so you are stuck with RAID 1 for redundancy unless you cough up the big bucks to MS.

Ars Technica has a write up on Windows 8 Storage Spaces. If it doesn't sound too confusing it's worth considering despite its issues:

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/10/storage-spaces-explained-a-great-feature-when-it-works/

If you do want to build your own Windows box to act as a NAS I can give you some tips on what sort of hardware to consider.

[Trippy]

Oh and while anyone's at it  I'm looking to pick up two 27" monitors that are relatively inexpensive that look great side by side so the more seamless the better.  These will operate as secondary and tertiary displays.

What resolution do you need? 2560 x 1440 or 1920 x 1080?

[Draegan]

I need to place an order today or tomorrow before years end so I'm not too picky.

As for the NAS I'm just looking for a simple solution and I appreciate the info. I'll look into the details later today and come back with more questions.  

For the monitors, probably 1920s. My main display is 2560 and these two are going to be used for visual displays or messing with extended resolutions in gaming. So I'm looking for inexpensive but quality. I was looking at the newer dell s series monitors at 27". At 370 ea. But I'm sure there is something out there that can be something like 80$ less.

[Salamok]

I paid 309 from Dell a week ago.  If you are willing to buy them from another vendor best buy has the S2740L's for 299 at the moment.  Are you going to run these off a 2nd card?  IIRC eyefinity requires everything be the same resolution.

[Draegan]

I'm going to be buying two new cards to go with it.  Looking at two evga gtx 660 tis right now, but I'm not settled on them right now.

Best buy has them for 309?  Interesting.  Ill have to take a look.  I don't care about vendor.

If I will play with eye infinity, can you not just downgrade the resolution of your one monitor to match?

[Draegan]

Regarding NAS:

Tell me if I'm retarded (thanks for the Ars Tech link).

Box: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822108126 or http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822107064

Then 2-4 drives:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148844

[rattran]

Regarding NAS:

Tell me if I'm retarded (thanks for the Ars Tech link).

Box: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822108126 or http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822107064

First box is an expansion for a Synology system. Second is a nas box that would work.

[Draegan]

Ok, going for the second one with either 3 or 4 of the 3tb drives.  Can't decide if I need all of it just now, but I could probably just be ok with 3 of them and use my 1tb and 2tb externals to supplement.