f13.net

Budget: ~$800
Need it to: Run EVE smoothly with multiple instances of FF in the background. During school I typically run excel, lots of firefox and multiple word, which tends to rape my RAM. Run quietly. Any suggestions for better fans, throw 'em in there.

Case: Antec Three Hundred Gaming Case (http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=018460&cid=CS.664)
CPU: Uh, don't know. I'll be playing EVE and I usually run multiple instances of Fire Fox with the occasional Photoshop, WinAmp and the new, hog like, live messenger.
Motherboard: Depends on the CPU, suggestions? (Don't need on-board video, on-board sound is good and don't need built in wireless)
PSU: Cooler Master Extreme Power 650W ATX 12V V2.01 Silent Power Supply (http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=013211&cid=PS.808)
RAM: Suggestions? Lower timings are better, but I can't find RAM under 5-5-5-15. Minimum 4, 8GB worth it?
Graphics: I see some people buying the ATI HD series, don't really know about the new NVidias.
[d]Drives[/b]: I'll just pick some cheap DVD-RW drive
HDD: Raptors worth the extra cost? Most I'll need is 500GB

I'll have to find out if I can get a discounted copy of Vista through my school.

Dunno if 8 gigs is really worth it. As for the CPU one of the Intel Quad Cores would do you nicely and they're all pretty cheap now.

RAM I never really care too much about since I've used various timings and never noticed much of a difference. Get something from a recognizable brand and thatll be fine.

As for GPU, I have no idea anymore. I'm out of the loop. My 8800GT is doing me just fine, but I hear some 4xxx series Radeon gives better performance for a better pricepoint. Still don't trust their drivers however.

I'm going to be trying to build a new rig (well, new Mobo/CPU/Ram/Case, everything else is getting transplanted from my current PC) and I'm still trying to figure out if the i7 is worth it.

I saw the i7 and was curious if it was worth the extra $, but I'm really waiting for Trippy or one of the other tech gods to bestow some wisdom on me.

Last time I heard about good ram was here and about 2 years ago. I remember someone pushing Mushkin and saying OCZ was overpriced crap.

When you say "multiple instances" of Firefox do you mean multiple windows/tabs or do you mean multiple separate installs/versions of the app (e.g. you run 2.0 and 3.0 at the same time)?

multiple windows running multiple tabs. Typically I have 2 separate ones open each with about 3 tabs open on each.

You can pick up an E8400 Wolfdale CPU from Newegg for 164 bucks as of right now, retail box. Best 164 bucks you'll ever spend. I know this is like the 4th time I've whored for this CPU on here but it's just solid as a rock. Runs fast, stable, and very very cool.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115037

for my MB I went with a Gigabyte for the first time and have had no issues with it whatsoever. Easy to work with, shitloads of overclocking features (if that's your scene) and frequent and stable BIOS updates. The link below is the one I'm using currently. Egg has it as deactivated, so it may be out of retail circulation.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128059

Personally, I think 8 gigs is overkill on RAM. I've been running 4 gigs with the above mentioned hardware and an 8800GTX Ultra with zero issues. I'm not sure I've come across an app, or a combination of apps, that has really put a heavy strain on my RAM.

My opinion, go with 4 gigs of ram and put the saved coin towards a higher end CPU or GPU. Much better bang for the buck.

Regardless of whether you go with 4 or 8 gigs of RAM, remember that you'll need 64-bit Vista to actually make use of it. Or 64-bit XP, but it's better to not speak of such things in polite company.

Personally I'd go with 4 gigs to start, and then if you find the thing chugging during your average session, upgrade to 8. You can always buy more. I run EVE on Vista 64, and I tend to have OpenOffice and Firefox in the background, on a box with 4GB and I haven't had issues. Although not with the same crazy amounts of documents and tabs you tend to have open.


I've been super happy with my Macbook Pro, but you pay a premium for them. Apparently they run Windows quite well, but I have no experience doing that. I know one of my former coworkers used his in a dualboot setup and said his ran XP with games just fine.

The Core i7 is the latest and greatest but it's been optimized to better compete with AMD in the server arena which has been kicking Intel's butt in terms of multi-CPU/multi-core performance for quite some time now. For game performance the i7 may or may not be faster than the equivalent Core 2 CPU. For highly parallel, multi-threaded apps the i7 performance is significantly better than the Core 2.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3448&p=1


For GPUs, the ATI/AMD RV770 GPU (4850/4870) is a much better design than NVIDIA's current offerings. It's roughly analogous to the ATI 9700 days when it was putting the beat down on NVIDIA's 5xxx design. Unfortunately ATI's driver *still* sucks (not counting NVIDIA's earlier problems with its 64-bit driver), especially if you were thinking of going with dual cards/GPUs.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3469


EVE does not support multi-cores/CPUs AFAIK so going with a quad-core CPU may be a bit of an overkill unless you have multiple accounts and are running multiple copies of the game on the same machine. E.g. even if Firefox/Photoshop/whatnot is consuming all the CPU cycles of a single-core, your EVE performance will not be affected cause it's using the other core (more or less, you can force it that way if you have to).

http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=965668

Of course there are games that can use multiple cores/CPUs and there will be more in the future. When I play City of Heroes, which makes very good use of a second CPU/core, I sometimes have to lower the priority on my browsers to stop them from eating so many CPU cycles (fucking Flash) when CoH is running on my dual-core CPU. If had a quad-core CPU I wouldn't have to do that.


There are people that swear up and down that the (Veloci)Raptor hard drive is significantly faster than the 7200 RPM equivalents with normal desktop applications (server applications is a different story). So far I still haven't seen any real-world benchmarks that show that. It is faster, but not by much. Personally I would much rather have the extra disk space but I also do a lot of video capture/editing/processing and have many terabytes of disk space storage sitting in my computer room currently.

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3303


For RAM my next machine will most likely have 8 GB. I really really hate the way Windows manages virtual memory so spending some extra money to keep it from swapping is worth it to me. 3D games will easily eat up 1 GB of RAM by themselves. I run Firefox and Opera and both together will eat up 1.5 GB+ of RAM. With the OS itself and other stuff running I'm easily using 3.5+ GB of RAM/virtual memory so even if I had 4 GB of RAM I would still be swapping to disk. If you don't mind the swapping then 4 GB of RAM should be okay unless your Photoshop files are very large.

I'd go with the i7 and an ati 48xx.

Unforunately going with a Core i7 will destroy his budget.

You're right.  I wasn't thinking about the price of an i7 mobo.

Christ, Catalyst is STILL shit? I've been hearing good things about their newest lines and was considering picking one up.

Based on your budget here's a "reference" system you can use to compare your options.

CPU: Going with a quad-core Core 2 will eat up quiet a bit of your budget. I'd stick with a dual-core for now. You can always upgrade later if you don't mind the uninstall/reinstall process.
$157 Intel Core 2 Duo E7300 Socket LGA775, 2.66 GHz (http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=019646&cid=CPU.84)

Motherboard: I'd go with the Intel P45 chipset. ASUS has a wide range of P45 MBs in its P5Q lineup:
$160 Asus P5Q (http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=018817&cid=MB.157)

RAM: 4 GB (2 x 2 GB) DDR2, you can add more later if you want
$88 Corsair XMS2 TWIN2X4096-6400C5 (http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=014664&cid=RAM.346.307)

HD: I prefer Western Digital, best blend of performance, power consumption, and quietness
$82 Western Digital Caviar (WD6400AAKS) 640GB SATAII (http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=018205&cid=HD.443.877)

Video Card: The ATI 4850 (a RV770 GPU) is just out of reach of your budget given everything else (by ~$30) so I'd stick with NVIDA for now:
$155 EVGA e-GeForce 9800GT 512MB (512-P3-N975-AR) (http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=019947&cid=999.243.390)

Your case + power supply is another $153.

Total: $795 (not inc. OS, DVD burner, and misc. items)

Here's a relatively recent example with Far Cry 2:

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3463&p=6

Nice, eerily reminiscent of the the problems I had with my 9700 pro like, 5 years ago.

I generally don't upgrade ATI drivers until a few weeks after their release, when any potential problemss have been noticed. So I skipped the 8.11 series entirely, and haven't had any issues.
I've only heard the 300 case on display at Fry's, but it was NOT a quiet case. Swapping out the fans for something quieter than the Antec Tricools would help. Like Scythe s-flex
As for 8GB memory, being able to tell windows swap to fuck itself has been well worth it. I had it set for 16mb for a while for a few games that wouldn't run without a swap, but have it disabled entirely right now.

<edit changed>

Video Card Option: 4850 from Newegg.ca, dunno how the $30USD rebate will apply to Canadia, but it's still listed so should come out close to the $155
$190 (-$30USD rebate) ASUS EAH4850 TOP/HTDI/512M Radeon HD 4850 512MB (http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121272)

NiX is in Canada.

That'll teach me to post right after waking. Fixed.

I think Trippy is spot on with those recomendations. But here are a few alternatives and thoughts:

Alternative with the ram with 4-4-4-12 timings (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820104043)
I've also been hearing really good things from people about G. Skill, but no personal experience with that brand yet. Honestly though, I haven't really seen a truly noticeable difference between 4-4-4-12 and 5-5-5-15, but for a $2 price difference I figured the faster timings would be nice.

For the Mobo, Gigabyte has been great to use in the last couple machines I slapped together. I was an Asus fan for a while until I got 3 DOA boards in a row. But the Gigabyte ep45-DS3R and DS3L models were great and a little cheaper normally then the Asus equals.
Comparison of the 2 Gigabyte boards (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Productcompare.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010200280%2050001314%20107172615%201071740132%201388027176&bop=And&CompareItemList=N82E16813128345%2CN82E16813128348)

I absolutely agree with Trippy on the GPU and the HDD, and for the same reasons.
I've pretty much become a WD fan for HDD, always been a quality product for as long as I can remember. Not a fan of the raptors and I personally think they are not worth the money. Congrats to those with them who can load a zone about 1-2 seconds faster.

For the GPU, I'm currently running with a HD4870 and have yet to have any complaints besides the heating (upped the stock fan from 30% speed to 50% but it's fucking loud now), but for your budget and what it seems you're trying to run, the 9800 series is perfect and does pretty decent even at larger resolutions. No reasons to really go for anything but the 9800 series


Edit: Doh, missed spaced out like a retarded monkey regarding the Canada part. The input is still the same, just different prices

NiX is in Canada.

:awesome_for_real:

Great to hear you're a fellow Canadian, NiX! That being said, I'm going to recommend a company to purchase your supplies from which bears a frighteningly similar name to your own, which hopefully works to score it bonus points:

http://www.ncix.com

I've used them for perhaps 7 years, and they're nothing short of amazing. They're based out of Vancouver.

Not sure if you still want/need more rig advice, but I had an excellent thread along the same topic on my guild forum. It is from September 2008 (well, started), but much of it remains relevant still, especially technical notes regarding things like RAM, CAS timings, shit like that. It can be found here: http://www.ogtguild.com/viewtopic.php?t=3582

One thing to note with NCIX, they ALWAYS have some sort of sale going on, click on the top banner in the middle of the frontpage to check out the various deals going on, you can usually build an entire system out of what you see there.

I'd heard raves here about NCIX as well and I'd fully intended to buy my new PC from them.  I used their PC builder feature and decided exactly what I wanted and then just for fun I got a quote from the PC shop that's half a block from my house. Their quote came in about 50 dollars cheaper than what I would have paid NCIX and I didn't have to pay shipping fees or deal with crappy mail-in rebates.

Maybe the Toronto PC market is just highly competitive or something.

Pro-tip: Don't use their PC builder. You're not getting any of the deals I mentioned in the above post.

Well that makes their PC builder effectively useless then. It was the best part of their site and they aren't technically savvy enough to hook it into their sales pricing?

I recently built a machine, but I'm not going to get involved with the tech talk. But I did go for more RAM for these exact reasons above.... but that all hinges on running a 64 bit OS, right? I was led to believe in my poking around the internet that unless you run Vista 64 (or OSX) anything over ~3.5 gigs is completely ignored by the computer. Running a 64 bit OS will let all your programs see the extra RAM, even though if they are 32 bit programs they can't actually USE all the RAM. Is that right?

yes. I run Vista home premium 64 bit with 8 gigs of RAM

So, I've been playing with what you gave me, Trippy and it I've tweaked it to better fit my range. Sadly, I've run into a huge snag, that being the video card you picked is only sold by NewEgg Canada who decided it's ok to charge $40 shipping on a single fucking video card.

Updated setup:

Canada Computers
--------------------------
CPU: $153 Intel Core 2 Duo E7300 Socket LGA775, 2.66 GHz

Motherboard: $160 Asus P5Q

RAM: $86 Corsair XMS2 TWIN2X4096-6400C5

HD: $61 Western Digtial Cavier 320GB SATAII

Video Card: $151 EVGA e-GeForce 9800GT 512MB (512-P3-N975-AR) - Can't find a replacement 9800 anywhere. No one has it in stock.

Case: $70 Antec Three Hundred Gaming Case

Power Supply: $76 Cooler Master 600W

Total: $606 (w/tax $685)

I built close to the exact same system with NCIX, Newegg and Tiger Direct. All of them required shipping which was enough to push the cost too high. Might as well just drive to Canada Computers and buy it there.

For a few buck more, there is a slightly faster version (650mhz compared to 600mhz) of that 9800 (http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=019391&cid=999.243.390) in stock online and in a few stores it appears.

BFG version of the 600mhz 9800GT (http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=019461&cid=999.243.390) in stock in a couple of stores, not online

Typically if it says 1, it's not there. General rule of thumb for that chain. Though the 2 in Richmond Hill has promise. I'll have to get my brother to go look.

I just bought the asus flavor of the ATI 4850 for $150 a few weeks ago and the E8400 was $165 (seems like a nice upgrade for an extra $8) is Nix in Canada and is the US vs. Canadian price difference what is throwing these out as options?

4850 is $190 (http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=018957&cid=999.243.272) and the E8400 is $205 (http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=017075&cid=CPU.84).

If anyone is looking at that site, the promotional cash price is cash, obviously, or debit/interac.

Check out the price of the E7300 on newegg.ca (http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115132&Tpk=E7300) in Canadian dollars, and newegg.com (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115132&Tpk=E7300) in American dollars.

As was told to me and another...


You get to inform the next person to quote USD prices of this fact though  :awesome_for_real:

By the way, when are you looking to make this purchase? I re-read your first post and realized that if you need to check with your school regarding discounted Vista, that it may be a little while yet. Stock levels today wouldn't mean much is the impression I'm getting, more importantly meaning that the EVGA 600mhz version of the 9800gt may be in stock. But at least now you have some backup versions to look at for the 9800 card.

Mostly correct. The 64-bit OS will allow your OS to allocate out chunks from the full 4+ GB of RAM. However, if you're running 32-bit apps on your 64-bit OS, each 32-bit app can individually address no more than 4GB of RAM. If you're running apps compiled for 64-bit, as a few games are these days, then they can address however much you can throw at them.

Well, up to 8 TB at least. And if you have 8+ TB of RAM in your system, then I phear your power bill.

Typically with Canada Computers if the stocks are all sitting at 0 except for 2-3 stores, they're discontinuing the stocking of that specific item. They stay well stocked on the stuff that sells well for them. They don't operate like most places where it's OOS for a week and back another. Frustrating as all hell, but their prices and staff are good enough to warrant putting up with it.

Oh and I'm probably picking it up early/late next week.

FIFY.

NiX, did you look at Dell Canada? The Studio desktop with that processor & a 9800GT is right at $800. If there's a special at the right moment, you could score a saving. Otherwise I'd just stick with BYO.

Does SATAII drives require a mobo with SATAII?

No, they are backwards compatible with SATA/150 controllers.

Ok, this is the plan now after looking at stocks and how consistent they are:

Antec 300 Gaming Case Core 2 Duo E8400 3GHZ Asus P5Q Corsair XMS2 4GB WD Cavier 500GB EVGA GeForce 9800GT Cooler Master 600W

$70 $204 $160 $78 $74 $170 $76

Total: $832 (w/ tax: $940)
Trippy, what would you suggest as a better video card that wouldn't push the budget too much? I'm giving myself to $1000 now heh.

You might want to consider waiting a couple weeks. Rumor has it that Intel has a price cut coming at the end of January in response to the PII launch. Unfortunately I don't know what lines the drops will be to.

Canada Computers is busted right now so I can't see prices but GTX 260 would be good if it's within the budget or an ATI 4870 if you are willing to go with ATI.

Don't forget you're going to need a copy of Vista 64 to go with that. Your system is exactly what I got a week ago except I went for a Radeon 4850 for an extra 30 dollars. One nice thing, they accidentally gave me an Antec 900 instead of the 300 and didn't charge me extra.

I'm going to be cheap and run the Windows 7 beta.

Hey, can I jump into this?  I am starting the re-education process in anticipation of building a new rig.

Those Nehalem are expensive, at least the 3.2GHz and 2.9GHz are, while the 2.66GHz is actually reasonable.  Doing a quick compare on newegg shows they are identical except for clock and QPI.  What is QPI?  I don't think I care a great deal and the cheap one (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115202) looks fine.  Am I missing something?

The motherboard seems dead-simple.  This EVGA (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813188039) gets lots of high marks.  The layout is a tad suspicious with the power leads on top of the RAM slots like that, but firstly it seems that is just the standard setup and secondly my experience with mobos is that the layout usually gets more retarded every cycle.  I suppose an alternate to the EVGA would be the standard ASUS P6T (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131359), but the EVGA looks better on paper.

ATi scares the crap out of me but I'm thinking of a random ATi 4870.  That's the one all the kids are going on about, yes?  The VisionTek (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814129113) has the good ratings.

The other bits are inconsequential.  Crucial RAM, WD SATA, some sort of trusted PSU.  Seems like I'm forgetting something, though.

Wait and see what comes out in terms of Dx11 support for video cards?  Or something?

Edit:  I don't know really.  I still kind of regret going quad core over dual core.  So, don't listen to me.

Reading up on these Intel rumors, it would seem only the Quad core line is expected to get a cut to compete with AMD's new Phenom chip. Worth waiting it out to see if anything happens?

Basically QPI is Intel's version of HyperTransport which AMD uses. I.e. they've finally moved away from sending everything up and down the FSB:

http://www.intel.com/technology/quickpath/

In the desktop single physical CPU world it's not that big a deal, at the moment. In the multiple physical CPU server world, though, it makes a big difference and it's one of the main reasons why AMD is so competitive in the server marketplace.

In terms of games is there likely to be much of an advantage in waiting a while and grabbing a slightly cheaper i7 or just go straight for a Core Duo (since the Quads don't seem to offer a huge advantage for gaming)?

From the download:


Obviously you've got some time, but I figure I'd mention it.

Depends on how low they drop the price. For current games at best there's a very small advantage with the i7.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3448&p=19

but the i7 vs. core 2 duo reviews show the i7 package solidly on top (in games and everything else), then again the difference between smokin fast and smokin faster isn't always perceptable to the end user.


If I was looking at a total rebuild drives and all i'd be mighty tempted to try out the 60g flavor of that new sandisk SSD for the OS drive and pair it with some cheap mass storage.

apparently these (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2338615,00.asp) are available for purchase now.

motherboard, cpu, vid card, psu, ram, hard drives...  maybe a case, dvd burner and an aftermarket cpu cooler.

I was recently deciding between the 4870 and the 4850 - I went with this 4850 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102770) when it was paired with a rebate a few months back (still waiting for the rebate though).  I chose this one over other 4850's because of the nice fan.  It is whisper quiet in my case, stays cool and runs Dead Space at full everything with no problems.

Here's a random question I have - does anyone have a recommendation for a good (in terms of range, responsiveness and charge duration) bluetooth keyboard and/or mouse?  I want to surf porn play games from my couch for under $100 total.  I'll live if there is no numpad on the keyboard, and if I have to go over $100 for good stuff, I will.

The 4870 is south of "hideously expensive" so I'll probably go with that for tech reasons, crossing my fingers and hoping the Catalyst version I get is not garbage... I haven't been accumulating ATi drivers for years.  Note that I did not mention a budget.


Oh, it's NUMA.  About time.  Maybe Intel or AMD will have a hypervisor by 2016.  Also "microarchitecture" is a funny word.  In any case, seems like I should get the cheap i7.  I can't think of a reason to get a 2-core instead of a 4-core, especially if there is such a reduction in memory/IO access overhead as the whitepaper suggests.


Tempting but I think I will save this bit of tech for the upgrade of my gaming rig.

$170 is insane for the 9800gt, heck even before MIR http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=34749&promoid=1088 it's $144.

Shop around a bit, you should be able to knock a bit off that price and NCIX should be able to pricematch parts, Looking at your quick list you will save at least ~$100 with them (dunno about the balancing out of shipping in your case, buy the heavy stuff locally?).

It's $160  before MIR. They're having a promo on where they knock off $15. It's really not that expensive considering it goes 9800GT(X), 260 and then 280. The 9800 is the new 8800 and people were paying ~$150 no more than 4-6 months ago for those.

How much difference is the average user going to see from this SSD stuff?

If I open up AoC, if the difference is a couple seconds, I can't see it really being worth it.  At what point does something else become the bottleneck?  Where's the benefit?  I'm genuinely curious about it. 

I would say that hard drive speed is the biggest bottleneck on most computers.  I suppose once they start exceeding what the SATA pipe can handle that will become the new bottleneck.  If the hype is to be believed this could actually happen at the consumer level this year.

edit: The current SATA standard is SATA 3Gb/s and has a throughput of 300MB per second.  There is a new SATA standard (SATA 6Gb/s) that will double that to 600MB per second but there aren't any devices that support that yet.

edit2: the other beneficial side effects are the huge reductions in size/noise/heat/power consumption.

Cool.  Thanks for the info. 

I'd been looking at stuff to upgrade my rig with even though I don't need to.  Just to do it, I suppose.  I haven't found a game yet I can't run on max and not see +30fps.  So this might be something to look at, along with another 4GB or RAM.

Or something.  I dunno.  Smart thing to do is to wait another couple years since there's really nothing on the horizon I've got on a MUST HAVE NOW! list.

The biggest benefit to SSD is the fact that there's no mechanical arm to move.  This gives it superior performance in seek times and random access reads/writes to your disk.  However, reads/writes to concurrent sectors on a disk are no better than a traditional HDD, and might even be slower.

I wouldn't consider power consumption to be benefit at this point, as a lot of SSD's require power even when they're not in use.

SSD is probably the future, but i won't be buying one until the price is more in line with HDD's.

You probably wont see a FPS increase with a faster hard drive.  You will see faster start up and level load times and anything that hits your swap file will be sped up.


The newer SSDs and stuff hitting within then mext 6 months have done a lot to overcome the "reads/writes to concurrent sectors" problems.  After decades of waiting 2009 looks like it might finally be the year of the SSD, who knows maybe we will see a large enough performance increase to shake the foundations of the PC industry.

In terms of case fans, I would swap whatever comes with the case with Panaflo or Scythe fans wired to run off of the 5V rail (or 7V between the 12V rail and the 5V rail).  I did a silent PC setup using Panaflo's @ 5V and they are damn near silent. 

I got a handful of the 92mm and 120mm fans and re-wired them to run off 5V.  They put out nearly the same airflow at 5V as compared to 12V, but run significantly quieter (nearly silent).

SilectPCReview maintains a list of silent fans (http://www.silentpcreview.com/article63-page2.html) that is a good resource.  Their PSU database is also very handy for making your PC quieter.

Cool, It's just where you had it listed at $170 :)

In regards to the price cuts


With nvidia also taking a pounding this quarter (40-50% revenue drop) pricing will probably drop even further across the board.

Well, fuck me, I just bought the system. Maybe they do price matching post purchase. Oh well otherwise. I'm happy!

If they don't just return it all and buy it again :awesome_for_real:

Hard to return a CPU that's already been put on the motherboard. Return policies up here aren't that lax.

Also, thanks to everyone who provided suggestions and advice!

One last thing: A monitor. I figure with the new graphics card and having a HUGE desk now, I want a bigger monitor.

Right now I'm using an Acer 19" widescreen (AL1916W). Want to move up to either 22" or 24" as I do most of my movie and TV watching on my computer. HDMI input isn't necessary, but would be a plus if I could get the monitor for under $400 with it, but I'm sure that's unrealistic. I really don't know the first thing about contrast ratios, bit depth or color ranges. I do understand refresh and viewing angle, knowing that the former is important for games/video and the latter for slouching.

Actually $400 puts you in the price range of a decent 24" wide-screen LCD monitor with 1920x1200 resolution, fast response time and good contrast. If you're an art freak and need better color and viewing angles more than you need size and resolution, you might want to consider a smaller S-PVA based monitor though.

Its about your budget, really. Most TN monitors that I've seen are not good for movie viewing. You'd want an IPS or PVA monitor, as Righ said. However, these tend to be a bit more pricy, and the trade off is that you don't get the lightning fast response time for video games (although ghosting is rarely an issue with any of them cept for some very high end ones that are meant for photoediting exclusively).

You're always reasonably safe with either a Dell or an NEC. That's just my opinion, however. Some folks here love their Samsungs, but I don't like how bright they are. Your best bet is to go out and look at some; its the only test that really matters. Monitors can say all sorts of things on paper, but the proof is in the pudding.

I really like my 22" LG monitor.  I am sort of sad that I cannot get CRTs anymore but that's life.  I have more desk space.

I've got the 24" Gateway, FHD-2400 (http://www.gateway.com/retail/fhd2401.php?rdr=v1470).  Love it.  Love love love love love love it.  Schild has the same one I believe.  HDMI, Composite, S-cable, DVI, VGA, 4 USB inputs, and Component inputs, 2 ms response.  The price looks to be a bit more than you want to spend, however.

Intel dropped their prices yesterday (Sunday):

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10145251-64.html

Dell monitors are probably rebranded monitors from another company.  They're still quite good.

BenQ.

Yay for Dell deals! I just ordered this (http://accessories.dell.com/sna/ProductDetail.aspx?c=ca&cs=cadhs1&image_flag=True&items_per_page=25&l=en&Page=productlisting.aspx&s=dhs&sku=320-7345&spagenum=1) for $250 CDN.

Also, despite the Intel price cuts, my processors price went up by $8 dollars. Go Canada!

Hah, now I don't feel so bad for buying my new PC two weeks before this current round of price cuts. Nice monitor. I've got a birthday coming up in March, maybe I'll treat myself to one like that.

I don't see any compiled ratings for socket 1366 heatsinks yet, which is bothersome.  Does anyone have any advice in the interim?  The stock set will probably be dandy but I'd like to make sure since I'm approaching this build as a one-shot deal, meaning I don't want to crack this case again once I have built it.

My advice is to first eyeball each motherboard first. I personally trust Asus and Gygabyte above all others, but ymmv. After you've seen some where the heatsink looks like it'd actually do a decent job without obstructing stuff, look up reviews for those particular motherboards.

Suggestions for non-Asus mobos around $100-150

Still limiting shopping options to CanadaComputers.com?

Unfortunately, shipping costs into and around Canada have spiked since the downturn. Don't know why.

Just assuming everything is the same, 1 gpu, c2d processor, 4-8gigs of ram or so and answer with the fact that I like the Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3L I'm currently using. The newer version (http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=019057&cid=MB.157) would fit your needs and price range ($130 CAD before rebates, $115 after). I was having some bad luck with Asus boards personally, otherwise I'd suggest something along the lines of the p5q model line.

NiX LOVES the p5q!

I have a version of the p35-ds3 in my server, does just fine. Gigabyte seems to have gotten better in the last couple years, their bioses have really come together. I still like DFI for their support though.

same. I have the p35-ds3 myself, and its been great. that said, others have not been so lucky with my board in particular, but that was because it was attempting to be a dual ram type board, and some clocking features for ddr3 were messing up.

btw, the onboard sound blows goats, even with my untrained ear. be ready to buy a pci sound card or put up with blechy sound

Isn't the p35-ds3 only a ddr2 board though? I don't think I've ever read/seen anything stating ddr3 was supported (even just went to their website and saw nothing there, they only show supporting up to 1200mhz memory, but that is officially overclocked memory)

That is weird about the sound. I'm using Logitech x-230 speakers (basic 2.1 setup) and have had no problem with sound between games, music, movies, and verious shows/animes/etc.

Its not really any 'problem', but the difference in quality is pretty big, at least to my ears. ymmv.

And I got a particular version of the p35-ds3 board, the GA-P35C-DS3R  (http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Motherboard/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=2749)

Same one I have, I see no reason for the ddr3 slots. It's a linux irc/torrent server for me, has been rock stable. I've no idea of the sound quality as it's running some shit speakers inside my monitor, so it would be tinny as hell anyway.

Interesting I'm using P35-DS3L (rev2) (http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Motherboard/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=2629) with no sound issues at all. Wonder if its the chip/driver issue (mines an ALC888).

Speaking of audio devices taking a look at http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/ it's amazing how much of the market creative has lost over the past few years.

Having used Creative cards since Ye Olde Soundblaster Days... it's not really amazing.

Well, most people have shitty 5.1s, why bother setting up a decent sound setup? Sure, mine was a little pricier than I wanted, but DD5.1 in hardware is what I prefer for gaming + movies. I could probably do 7.1 with my setup if I had the speakers.

I've never had a problem with Creative, other than the whole lack of support for a digital 5.1 stream from the card itself.

I had problems beginning in the post-DOS-5 era, but perhaps I am unique.

Just ordered, discuss amongst yourselves.

ASUS P6T Deluxe (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131346)
Sapphire 4870 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102810) because they seem to have sold out of the VisionTeks.
2.66GHz Nehalem (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115202)
2x2GB Crucial 1066 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148150)
Antec 430W (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371006)

Non-interesting bits omitted.  Planning on using one of these cases I have laying around.  Also I just noticed I forgot to put a hard disk in there.  I'm leaning toward a 1TB WD.

Edit: This one (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136284) looks dandy out of stock.  Maybe this (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136317) one.

That's a lot of t-shirt porn.

I'd get a bigger power supply, just in case. You are looking at ~200 Watts for the CPU at load and ~200 Watts for the GPU at load.

Any "real world" performance hit with the 2x vs 3x?

You mean using 3 matching pairs versus 2 matching pairs of memory sticks in the 'dual' mode?

Your post really makes me wonder how much more performance is sitting unused in my rig because I haven't set the bios up correctly.  Or some really obscure tweak or setting that I haven't messed with.

Ah well.

Hmm.  Looks like I failed to consider power draw of a quad core.  I suspect the 1TB WD will have higher than normal draw, too, so you are possibly right on.  The annoying bit is that I have a lot of PSU laying around, some with more wattage, but none are 20+4.  Maybe I should return it for a bigger one.  Harumph.

I also forgot to order a DVD drive.

Nah i7 starts off with three independent memory channels, from the reading on it you populate each channel with a single stick to run in 'dual' and now 'triple' mode.. I was wondering if there is any sort of penalty of running 2x2gb vs 3x2gb for example.


P6T manual (http://dlsvr04.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/LGA1366/P6T_Deluxe/E4262_P6T_Deluxe_V3.zip) on page 2.4 shows the triple channel configuration.

That's kinda cool, actually. This time, if you wanna upgrade from say, 2x1 gig you can just buy one more stick and you still have the dua/tripple channel functionality without having to buy a whole two new. Wel, it would have been more important back in the day when ram cost an arm and a leg.

I'm still of the mind to use fewer, larger sticks.  If my wife maxes out 4GB, I can just get another 2GB stick.

Not really. And actually the Green line drive you've picked is lower power usage than their regular "Blue" line.

Caviar Green 1 TB (http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=559) (click on specifications tab)

Caviar Blue 750 MB (http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=311)

Did I get the green one?  Neat?  They were sold out of the good ones so I picked the next 1TB WD I saw.  I'm still returning the PSU for something more like 550+.

FWIW, your planned system is very close to what I'm running now and our power specifications are very close. That said, I've been incredibly happy with Corsair PSUs and would suggest this one (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139002). The one I'm running specifically is only the 520w version (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139001), but for $15 more right now (got to love Newegg sales) the suggested 620w is available. Additionally, modular cabling (available on the X20 watt versions, sadly not the X50 watt) is so damn nice  :thumbs_up:

I don't know what modular cabling is but that 620W looks very nice.  Didn't want to drop $109 on it, so I will have to think.

Modular cabling = removable cables. Depending on who you talk to, this can be great or absolutely terrible.

I was hoping it was mis-named because I don't see the value in detaching power cables.

The inherent value is to have a neat case inside, without extra cables stuffed up inside some hole in your case since you don't need them. This is valuable if you run high-heat GPUs, multiple hard drives, etc, which bring up the internal heat in your box.

Spoilered, for the children.

What the hell is THAT?

Spaghetti Monster.

Such as the ATI 4870.

Edit: Inserting spoiler picture of modular cabling in use, using the 620w Corsair PSU to compare to that pic of a pile of wires and some metal surrounding it earlier

That's nice and clean looking.  I was quite pleased with my Antec 900 case set up, although I'd like a bit more room.  And I could do without the blue LED's, but meh, what are ya gonna do?

Mine uses a modular too:
(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3024/2639683781_76295fcece.jpg)

Mine's not modular, but with the p180 there's plenty of room to stash them along the side (no case windows).

(http://farm1.static.flickr.com/143/391165605_f1b61d2032_o.jpg)

You all overclocking or really don't trust OEM fans?

Oem fans tend to be weak and loud. And some people really hate Intel's current retention mechanism.

I overclock my game machine, and run the server close to silent, so both use alternate heatsink fans.

That is one massive heatsink.  Brand/model? 

I'm still in need of a better fan/hs and have finally convinced myself to not be so damn lazy and pull my case apart to put it in.

It kinda looks like a Scythe Ninja or Scythe Ninja Mini.  Hard to tell from that angle.

Am I going to have to break out my fanfic again?  That case still scares me.

I don't OC, but during the summer months, since I don't have AC, the temp in there gets kinda hot without good circulation and the CPU inches towards the 50s with a OEM heatsink. The heatsinks with the 120mm fans strapped to a side also help shove the air our as much as keep the CPU cool. Its a twofer for me. The rest of the year, keeping the room temp ~70 isn't problematic, so the heatsink isn't strictly necessary.

A winnar is yuo!

Nix, OEM CPUs don't come with stock fans.

Engels, which case do you have?  I like your internal drive cage.

Do what you want. :oh_i_see: I can upload a pic of the other side, which features the rest of the power cables and includes the short which allows the second PSU to run without being plugged to a mobo.  Say what you will, it works great and I can reach all of the organs with minimal effort.  Example: note the SATA cable hanging out the side, which is for Guest Disks.  They sit on the floor while being used. :grin:

Its this Lian Li PC-B25B case (http://www.lian-li.com/v2/en/product/product06.php?pr_index=136&cl_index=1&sc_index=25&ss_index=62). Its pretty, but the real reason I got it was that it had a bunch of features that are hard to get in any one particular case. Low noise, 3 120mm fans, ease of access (although that turned out to be only marginally true for this model), high capacity drive bay, and some other stuff that I can't remember right now.

not a modular power supply but zip ties are pretty cheap.

I have a fistful of zip ties but I am saving them for when civilization implodes.


I was looking at that thinking "man, you can get to most everything", so what are your particular gripes?  A case, to me, is something that has to be just right and I don't want to buy one without trying it first... which naturally keeps me from buying one even though I need one.  I also really like having two PSU and that sort of thing is hard to find.

Ya, I'm not sure about the dual PSU. The case is actually a mid-sized tower rather than a full, so I don't think that'll work. The ease of access issue is that although you can remove the back panel and can then put many wires on the back part of the motherboard tray, the space is rather tight, and I had to do some serious wrestling getting the back panel back ON after I had placed the cables where I needed them to go. Now, that said, the case is clearly designed so you CAN do that; the back of the motherboard tray even has a handy clip for you to slip the PSU/drive cables under so that you don't have to do some wierd 'hold them in place while slamming the back panel back on' manouver, but that's the intent. Getting your PSU cables, your hard drive cables, your IDE cables and your godknowswhatelse cables to all glide seamlessly across the back of the motherboard isn't gonna happen without some seriously planning, which I have little patience for.

The coolermaster HAF has spots for 2 psu, so you could mount one above and one below the mobo.

That is a seriously awsomage case. Here's a pretty informative review (http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cases/2008/10/16/cooler-master-haf-932/1)

Good lord!  That actually seems awesome because I can dig an easy-to-remove mobo.  I would not tuck wires back there, that's dumb.  Or maybe I am dumb, but there you are.  It's easy enough to keep the terminators out of the fan blades.

Your Lian Li looks good, and I like how the HAF 932 makes the mobo look like a postage stamp.  Can't decide.  Fortunately, I cannot afford one at this time.

Now that I have set up a machine with two PSU, I don't have quite the same nerd-on for doing it again.  My main is a 700W jobber, after all.

I really like my HAF, it has enough space behind the motherboard to fit even thick cables. But it is huge. And heavy.  Not quite as big as the Cosmos 1000 it replaced, but close.
My only complaint is that having the power button on top means it sometimes get trodden by a cat, and switches the system off.

Problem solved! (http://www.heavenlyswords.com/product.php?productid=16407)

Give the cat new toys to play with that it will inevitably end up hiding in your shoes or bed?

You don't have cats do you............

There are some cheapass swords on that site.

Also, those caltrops would definitely end up in your bed. My bed always surprises me with squeaky mice when I get in it. And then Bart comes flying out of nowhere to "protect" me. Or gnaw on my foot.

I have a cat, but he doesn't walk on anything he isn't supposed to.

Or so he lets you believe.

A cat has you.

Get a dog.

Problem solved.

What would you all recommend for CPU?

AMD Phenom 9950 Quad core http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103285 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103285)

or the Intel Q8500 Core 2 Duo? Both of them fall within my limited budget but the 9950 is about $20 cheaper where I was looking at these both. This will be my gaming PC if that makes a difference.

Only you know if you really need 2 extra cores on the quad. For pure gaming, at the moment, dual core with the faster clock speed is the way to go. Also if you are willing to spend the $20 extra dollars to go with Intel and you still think you might want a quad core CPU you should consider the Q6600. It's slightly faster than the Phenom even at the slightly slower clock speed and it's a much cooler running CPU.

If your on an AM2+ platform as your looking at the older phenom, AMD released the Phenom II X3 720 embargo yesterday. Check some reviews on it as its a really good bank/buck processor (long as you have the AM2+ to support it).

Building a new system so can go either way but on a pretty tight budget. Have about $450 to get the case/motherboard/cpu/psu. Stripping parts out of an older computer for everything else for now and will upgrade stuff later. Will probably just go with the Q8500 since this will be for gaming and have pretty much always used Intel so comfortable with it also.

Toying with the idea of building a new PC at the moment but it's a LONG time since I bought any PC hardware. I know very little about currently available hardware, anyone able to give me some pointers?

Rig will be primarily for gaming but also needs to be good for image processing (Photoshop and the like). Doesn't need to be a bleeding edge ninja machine, really want to keep the cost down, so I'm looking for price/performance sweet spots for processor & GPU really. I'm very ATI-averse due to a couple of exceedingly bad experiences with ATI graphics cards in the past.

I know that's vague, but I'd really appreciate any suggestions for current bang-for-buck winners.

My usual first question cause everybody forgets to mention it: what's your budget?

Well I thought about that and it's actually big. I've got savings that are earning nearly zero interest at the moment, in a bank that's failing and likely to be part-nationalised at any moment. I have zero ZERO faith in the UK government's promise to protect all savings under £50,000 so I'm thinking I either spend this money now or I run the risk of losing it completely.

I'm more interested in what the best value is right now. If the price:performance sweet spot means a PC that costs me £1500 to build, well so be it. For sake of argument though let's say my budget was £1000 (about er $1500 at the moment I'm guessing) but I'd like to get it lower. No peripherals needed at all, just the case & components.

An hour or so of research this morning is giving me the impression that the Core 2 Quad Q9550 looks like a very good processor point for the money and that a GeForce 9800 GTX+ would be a good GPU starting point. That sound reasonable?

Is a new monitor part of the budget?

Nope, I've got monitor already, and mouse/keyboard/speakers/etc. All I need is case, mobo, PSU, CPU, RAM, GPU, HDDs.

If you are using Photoshop it's kind of a toss up between the i7 920 and the Q9650. The 920 has a slower clock speed but the more efficient multi-threading makes up for that compared to the older Core 2 architecture. For games the Q9650 would still be better.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2333775,00.asp

For a video card the 9800 GTX+ is too low end for your budget, plus the new GTS 250 is a die-shrunk 9800 GTX+ so you might as well get that if you wanted to spend that amount on a video card. I'd recommend starting with the GTX 260 and going up from there if you can afford it.

Nice one thanks Trippy, gives me some starting points :)

So how's this look, comes to just about £1000 on the nose:


Plus, Vista, wtf? Which one do I want? There's like 30 different flavours of Vista ffs!

Well, with 6 gig of ram, you'd want to go 64 bit.

As far as vista varieties, here's the lowdown:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/compare-editions/default.aspx

Not as helpful as we'd like, but it something. Bottom line is:

Home Basic doesn't have Aero, the slick gui that hogs memory

Windows Media Center only on Home Premium and Ultimate (the only reason I see for this is that it'll give you a DVD watching Codec, whereas you would otherwise have to buy PowerDVD, WinDVD or another 3rd party software to get the codec. I recommend doing this anyway, since I don't like the WMC interface, but that's relative)

Business and Ultimate allow you to connect remotely to your computer from another machine (allowing that you've figured out how to do port forwarding on your home DSL/Cable modem and are comfy with that)

Other than that, there are some features that generally don't matter too much. Windows BackUp, for example is not very reliable.

Hmmm ok, well I will never watch DVDs on the PC, I'll always either play them on the PS3 or (if they're not region 2) rip them and stream then via PS3MediaPlayer. I don't care about the Aero GUI one jot and I am now able to walk so I can physically get to all 5 computers in the house so I don't care about the remote connection.

Home basic 64 it is then, awesome thanks  :awesome_for_real:

The tiny bit of money it costs to get Home Premium over Home Basic is worth it. Or at least, aero is so much nicer on the eyes that I think - alone - it's worth the upgrade.

I have not noticed it being a memory hog at all on my machine.

Also, I remember something about home basic's networking being totally gimped in some important way, but I forget how. I just remember everyone giving pretty great reasons for getting Premium over Basic, but not moving further up than that.

Fair enough, I was considering that cos as you say, it's a tiny amount more.

Especially if you can get it OEM. Of course, if you can't over there, anyone here can - no clue how bad the exchange rate is though.

£86.44 (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Microsoft-Windows-Vista-Premium-OEM/dp/B000MFIPDC/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=software&qid=1237128689&sr=8-3)

Never, ever, get a Home version of an MS operating system if you can help it.  They are always crippled in some fundamentally important way.

It's okay for your parents, if you don't have to provide their tech support, but anyone reading this board or building their own machine is well advised to stay away.

I've always had the home versions ever since Windows XP came out and never once missed any of the features that weren't available.

Well I've ordered Home Premium 64 anyway. When I was spending just north of £1k an extra £20 didn't seem that important  :drill:

IIRC XP Home was missing some basic networking functionality. It's been a while, but my friends and I had some difficulty LAN-ing games where I (having XP Pro) had to host since everyone else was running XP Home. They might've added this in a service pack (or we might have just been retarded), however.

XP home and XP Pro just use different networking methods. They are compatible, it's just a PITA to reset everything on one or the other PC. I don't see how it would affect lan stuff though. An IP is an IP.

It did, at least initially.  My attempts to get a Home and Pro machine talking to one another were nightmarish.  I do think there were some changes later, but I saw the same problems Rendakor had way, way back.

QOS wasn't editable in XP home I believe.

Well everything just arrived. Heh. That HAF case is a fkin monster. Really. Wish me luck assembling it all :drill:

Tech Report's CPU price/performance analysis:

http://techreport.com/articles.x/16570/1

Sorry to necro this post...

XP Home/Professional use the same network stack, they just "turn things off". A lot of LAN issues seems to be related to the way file security is held and user authentication on pro vs home. Home is simply dumbed down and allow guest browsing of shares etc where a professional would have to enable the guest account or give a username/password to all the clients.  Another issue is the limitation of the 4(I think) active share connections on home which can cause some issues say if everyone needs to grab files from a person who has the patches.

Besides that, there's no difference in the stack as most features of professional can be *cough* enabled on a home license (change a registry key, reboot, hit f8 and select start windows with last known good configuration). With that simple hack your limits on SMB connections, security tabs, and the ability to join an active directory domain re-appears. Note: I say most because some things are still missing software wise that professional has but can be patched in (like the ability to host RDP/terminal services), oh and one major thing it might fail a SP3 install.

Here's a challenge for you system builders. I only need the box:

$600-$700

Go.


 :grin:

Do you need everything inside the box (and the box itself) or are you going to reuse stuff?

My system is 6+ years old...

So yes.  :awesome_for_real:

I can only hope a new system could last anywhere near that long for what I would be trying to pay. My current rig was $1200 in 2002.

Any preferences between AMD vs Intel (CPU) and AMD/ATI vs NVIDIA (GPU)?

Best Bang for the money...but also reliability. I've heard AMD has pulled back to be pretty close to Intel, but wtf do I know. Not expecting to be close to bleeding edge

Also, I'd LIKE to stay with nVidia; I had 3 ATI cards all die from their fans crapping out in less than a year. BUT, if there is a good ATI card out there that seems reliable and is demonstrably better than a nVidia card at a similar price point (and if their drivers are usable  :grin:), then sure.

Really, I'm just looking for a decent PC that is reliable, can ACTUALLY run the shit that's coming down the pipe now, and has the capacity to be upgraded in the next year or 3 to stay somewhat current.

The PC is pretty much just for gaming; I don't do video work or anything, though I do like HD video (my PC can be chugish at times, not sure if that's an issue with new PCs).

At best, I could migrate my DVD-RW drive over, but it's IDE (I think they're all SATA now).

Since I've got Tom's Hardware open already from the tech questions page, the $625 Gamin PC (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/overclock-e5200-radeon,2144.html):

$99 Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 64-bit for System Builders - OEM
$119 Intel Core 2 Duo E7400 Wolfdale 2.8GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor Model BX80571E7400 - Retail
$87 ASUS P5QL PRO LGA 775 Intel P43 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail
$51 CORSAIR XMS2 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model TWIN2X4096-8500C7 - Retail
$60 Western Digital Caviar GP WD5000AACS 500GB 5400 to 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM
$130 XFX PVT98GYDLU GeForce 9800 GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Retail
$26 LITE-ON 22X DVD Burner with LightScribe Black SATA Model iHAS222-06 - OEM
$67 SeaSonic SS-500ET 500W ATX12V V2.2 / EPS12V V2.91 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Power Supply - OEM

$639 TOTAL

That leaves $61 for a case and misc. items not including tax (if applicable) and shipping. Items and prices are from Newegg but I intentionally avoided rebate items since 1) I didn't know if you like to deal with rebates and 2) the expiration dates all vary so they are dependent on when you make the actual purchase. You can obviously save some extra money if you are willing to get items with rebates. I also went with the better brands. You can save more money and/or get higher spec stuff if you are willing to go with the lesser brands.

The P43 chipset is the same as the P45 minus Crossfire support. Since you expressed preference for NVIDIA going with the P45 gains you nothing since neither chipset supports SLI.



This list is missing an OS so that'll bump the price up at least $100. Also, they skimped on the CPU in preference for a more expensive GPU. Given how much more of a pain it is to replace a CPU compared to a video card my preference is to spend the extra money on the CPU.

I bow to your superior knowledge of system building, I just copy'n'pasted mine  :why_so_serious:

Sir, you are a Wizard of system building.

And yes, I love me some rebates.  :grin:

One question: that's not the mobo that has been having energy saving problems, has it?

Ok lies, 2 questions: Case suggestion?

EDIT: Also, would there be a huge advantage, given my stated intent of use for the system, to try to scrounge up extra money for a Quad-core setup?

XFX is great on their warranty, plus some graphic cards come with game bundles, and I'm liking my Windows Vista x64 Home so far too, my recent build is a little more pricey though:

1   Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 Licensed for 3 PCs - Retail
Item #: N82E16832116135
$79.95

2   XFX GX260NADDU GeForce GTX 260 896MB 448-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Retail
Item #: N82E16814150310
30 Day Return Policy
$599.98
($299.99 ea)

 2   ESET NOD32 Antivirus Home Edition V3.0 - OEM
Item #: N82E16832114005
Software Return Policy
$59.98
($29.99 ea)

2   XIGMATEK HDT-S1283 120mm Rifle CPU Cooler - Retail
Item #: N82E16835233003
Standard Return Policy
$73.98
($36.99 ea)

2    ASUS 20X DVD±R DVD Burner with LightScribe Black SATA Model DRW-2014L1T - Retail
Item #: N82E16827135156
30 Day Return Policy
$71.98
($35.99 ea)

2    Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor Model BX80570E8400 - Retail
Item #: N82E16819115037
Processors (CPUs) Return Policy
$329.98
($164.99 ea)

2   Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 64-bit for System Builders - OEM
Item #: N82E16832116488
Software Return Policy
$199.98
($99.99 ea)

2   ASUS Xonar DX 7.1 Channels PCI Express Interface Sound Card - Retail
Item #: N82E16829132006
Standard Return Policy
$179.98
($89.99 ea)

2   Antec Twelve Hundred Black Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case - Retail
Item #: N82E16811129043
Standard Return Policy
$359.98
($179.99 ea)

2    ABIT IX38 Quad GT LGA 775 Intel X38 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail
Item #: N82E16813127033
Limited Non-Refundable 30-Day Return Policy
$439.98
($219.99 ea)

2    CORSAIR XMS2 DHX 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model TWIN2X4096-6400C4DHX - Retail
Item #: N82E16820145194
Memory (Modules, USB) Return Policy
$218.00
($109.00 ea)

2   PC Power & Cooling S75QB 750W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI NVIDIA SLI Certified (Dual 8800 GTX and below) CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Power Supply - Retail
Item #: N82E16817703009
Standard Return Policy
$299.98
($149.99 ea)

1   Western Digital Raptor WD1500ADFD 150GB 10000 RPM SATA 1.5Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM
Item #: N82E16822136012
30 Day Return Policy
$169.99

Total:   $3083.74 for 2!
   Would have had to add another $169.99 if I didn’t reuse my current hard drives.  Prices should be lower now, since this was bought in pieces over 1 & ½ years.  I love it, and so does my son, we both get classes that require a lot of research and typing, so 2 computers was easier to plan on than sharing 1.  Over kill, but worth it!

Dunno.

I prefer Antec but their cases are pricer than most.

For gaming right now a faster clock speed dual core is still better than a slower clocked quad for the vast majority of games. In the future that won't be the case but nobody knows at what point in the future it'll switch over. If you look at the gaming benchmarks in the Tech Report link on the previous page you can see a glimpse into the future. If you look at the HL2:EP2 benchmarks you can see the typical situation today -- faster dual cores beat the slower quad cores. However if you look at the UT3 and the HL:particle demo benchmarks you can see that the slower quads beat the faster duals.

If you are willing to go through the hassle of upgrading your CPU sometime in the future my advice is just to stick with a dual core within your budget right now and then upgrade to a quad core later.

If you aren't and you plan on keeping this machine around for 5 or 6 years like your current on then yes you might want to consider getting a quad core like the Q9550 ($275) if you are willing to spend the extra money.

Antec cases are quite nice, though some have some minor niggling issues (Some 900s have noisy fans, airflow on the p180 is weak with the front of the case closed) Zalman and LianLi look nice, and Coolermaster are good at cooling, though tend to be noisy and pricey. 

I usually find cases to be something people like to pick out for themselves. If they have no preference, I built them a Coolermaster Elite 330 (or the new/better 335) Toolless, small, decent, cheap (around 40usd at Fry's). No front esata or 1394, but 2 spaced usb, and headset/mic. Plenty of room for working, and the usual topmount psu, which means minimal cabling. I use one for my torrent/irc box currently.

I've got the Antec 900, and so far like it.  A bit louder than I'd like, and the fans don't have filters in front of them so they end up sucking in alot of dust.  It's a freakin' heavy ass case, too.  Not a big fan of the blue LEDs, but I live with them.  If there were filters in place, it would probably help tremendously with the noise level of the fans.

I'm currently using a Q6600 that's overclocked to 3.2Ghz, and has been for six months or more.  Since switching to a Zalmann fan, my temps have lowered to the high 20C's at idle,, and high 40C's/low 50C's under Prime95 load (ambient temp is 72F).  I've been tempted to yank it out and put in fast dual core, but decided to just keep what I've got and OC it.  I might fiddle with it and see if I can get 3.4 at acceptable temps.  Anyway.  I'd say get a quad core, and overclock it. 

So what's the current hierarchy of nVidia cards? They have the 9800 GTX+ nonsense, but also 200 series? Which ranks higher, or are certain 9000 series cards better than certain 200 series?

Nvidia is all over the place with nomenclature. The number at the front has little to do with the generation, they keep renaming shit to higher numbers. The 8800gt is the 9800gtx is the gtx250. Best bet, give a budget, and people can tell you the best card for that buck. At least until the first week of April when the ATI refresh (and possibly Nvidia refresh) hits.

The 9800 GTX+ is not a 8800 GT -- it's a faster version of a 9800 GTX which is a faster version of the 8800 GTS which is a faster version of the 8800 GT. The GTS 250 (not "GTX 250") is, however, a rebranded 9800 GTX+. The GTS 240 is a rebranded 9800 GTX.

You need to go to a GTX 260 (or 280) if you want something better than the single-GPU 8xxx/9xxx series cards.

Gotta buy a new rig from the contents of this list (http://www.master10.com.py/importar/arquivos/lista.master.txt). What I need: gpu = vga, cpu, ram = mem, motherboard = mb, and, should the energy requirements be elevated, psu = fonte. Money: 400.

Currently completely out of the loop, I'm thinking of:
MEM DDR2 2048MB 800MHZ KINGSTON                                |      23.00 x2
CPU AMD AM2 ATHL64X2 7750+ 2.7 2MB BOX                       |      85.00
VGA PCI EXP. 512 ATI SAPPHIRE HD3870 GDDR4 2DV+T         |     129.00

and at a complete loss for the motherboard.
Everything can be changed, only real requirement is 4 gigs of cheap ram. Don't have any prejudice against ATI, and usually go for amd because, hey, cheaper.
Help. Please.

My point was that it's the same basic chip (G92) despite generational number changes. And the GT(x)S250 was a typo. Nvidia's numbers no longer indicate generation.

And yes, the GTX 260 280 285 295 (and rumored 275 next week) are all latest gen chip.

I like nvidia's upper end products, but holy shit I wish they'd get their nomenclature in fucking order. It's been stuptarded for several generations and I think right now is the worst its been outside of the MX fiasco.

Seconded.  Their die nomenclature is even worse:  the show lower performance with increasing numbers (e.g. G92 > G96 > G98), and they constantly reuse the same die name across multiple generations of chip (e.g. G92), with wildly different marketing names.

I think ATI does this much better, but even that can be a real mess.

What's considered the best bang for the buck in the Core 2 Duo series?  Is it still the E7000 series Wolfdale processors?

Numbers haven't consistently represented generation since before the GeForce 4 MX which was a rebadged GeForce 2.

Edit: consistently

A rebadged shitty geforce 2. A friend had a GF4MX in an identical rig to mine otherwise (I built it, he 'upgraded' the gpu), my rig had a GF2 ultra with a 256bit pipeline. It smoked his card, I felt bad for the kid, because he wanted to show off his new card and ended up feeling like shit.

Not sure what the (B) represents but you want one of these MBs

If you prefer NVIDIA you can get this instead (comparable in performance to your 3870):

(B) means refurbished. Many thanks.
Grabbed the xfx 9600gt, looked at the 650usd computer in the previous page, and switched the cpu to an intel e5300, was planning on going with a xfx 9300 motherboard.
Factoring that m2n mx's price, though, could go back to AMD and use the remaining cash to get a 9800 gt (171) or gtx (193). Should I go with Intel or just grab AMD and the better video card?

If you like to run a very high resolutions (>= 1600 x 1200) I'd go with the setup with the better video card. Otherwise it's sort of a toss up. The late gen low end processors rarely get reviewed but if I had to guess I would say the E5300 is slightly faster than the 7750 despite the slightly slower clock speed.

If you wanted the Intel you could go with, say, the INTEL DG31PR board and still get a faster video card.

(http://images.paraorkut.com/img/pics/glitters/t/thanks-9952.gif)

Gah! Don't give Signe any ideas! :ye_gods:

Actually let me ask a follow up question.  Besides the CPU, I am looking for a mobo to go with the above CPU.  I need:

1) 6 or more SATA ports
2) DDR2
3) Onboard DVI output
4) At least 2 PCI slots

This is for a server-like setup:  a remote machine that does mostly transcoding and recording.

I found three boards that meet these criterion:

Intel BOXDG43NB LGA 775 Intel G43 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail
Intel BOXDP43TF LGA 775 Intel P43 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail
Intel BOXDP35DPM LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail

Keep in mind this will be running Gentoo, so I don't care about gaming performace (or even having a display connected other than for setup).

Anything else I am missing?

Why do you need DVI output then?

I only have a single display, and it only has a digital DVI input.  It would only be for checking BIOS settings, etc.  Most of the time it would not be plugged in.

Is this for both video and music or just music?

I would say 95% video transcoding (MPEG2 to XVID) for my MythTV setup.  5% music (going from PCM to MP3).

I guess with Gentoo being SMP aware, I might be one of the few who might benefit from moving to Core 2 Quad over Core 2 Duo.  However the price/performance may not line up.

Yes having the 2 extra cores will help with Xvid encoding, I would definitely recommend considering that if you have a lot of video to reencode. With 2 cores and sufficient CPU power you can encode Xvid at faster than "real time" (i.e. > 30fps) depending on the settings so if you only have, say, 4 hours of MPEG-2 video a day to reencode, you wouldn't need a quad core if this box was dedicated to DVR stuff. If you had, say, 8 hours+ of video a day you might want to consider it.

My 1.83 GHz Core Duo (not Core 2 Duo) can do about 23fps sustained reencoding 720p video down to 880 x 496 Xvid using "high quality" settings (vhq=2:bvhq=1:chroma_opt:quant_type=mpeg). If you aren't working with HD video it'll be quite a bit faster.

For a motherboard, something with the G43 chipset would be good.

I heard some people here having problems with installing XP while 4gb are in the system. Is that a known issue, or an isolated thing? Do i just need to install XP with 2gb in, and add the other stick after the install?

Also, not to double-post, but, I revised my build list. The price has ballooned somewhat (for futureproofing!), so I'll just buy the parts over the next few weeks. Plus, I'd rather just start with W7, if I can wait that long before putting this thing together. Anyway, anyone see any glaring errors?

    
Also, if I decide to put this together early, will I be able to reuse my current XP discs?

ASUS P5QL PRO LGA 775 Intel P43 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail - $86.99
XFX GX260NADFF GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 896MB 448-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Retail - $199.99
CORSAIR XMS2 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model TWIN2X4096-8500C7 - Retail - $50.99
LITE-ON 22X DVD±R DVD Burner with LightScribe Black E-IDE/ATAPI Model iHAP222-06 - OEM - $22.99
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 Yorkfield 2.83GHz LGA 775 95W Quad-Core Processor Model BX80569Q9550 - Retail - $274.99
Western Digital Caviar GP WD7500AACS 750GB 5400 to 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM - $59.99
SeaSonic SS-500ET 500W ATX12V V2.2 / EPS12V V2.91 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Power Supply - OEM - $65.99

Subtotal:     $761.93

I still haven't settled on a case.  :|

Think I wanted to get the Antec 300  (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129042). I see that the PSU mounts at the bottom of the case, so with the PSU I have selected, can anyone foresee any problems?

Everyone loves that ASUS set (P5Q's) but I have that exact board and have had two major issues in under a year.  I had a outright failure that forced an RMA (still not sure what happened, apparently something shorted) and recently I accidently put it into sleep (fuck you vista) and it wouldn't come out, BIOS corruption of some sort fucking bullshit, had to clear CMOS.  I'm not 100% that another component isn't causing me these issues but so far multiple sources keep pointing me at the mobo so for now I'm blaming it.

I had originally considered going with MSI but there was just so much more positive feedback about the ASUS line.

Your system is prettym uch the same as mine, except I went wit the Q6600 and I didn't go Seasonic with the psu even though I wanted to.  I have to warn you though, I feel like the issues I've had are power supply related and while I trust Seasonic above all other psu brands make sure you've got the necessarry juice on the 12v rail.  Which is a fucking annoying thing to figure out.  I hate psu documentation so much.

Antec is good but I would argue its not quite worth the money.  None of the expensive cases really are.

Case is shorter than the 180s so it shouldn't be an issue.

Not real crazy about the 300 cuz it has no front fans, but if  you live in an air-conditioned dwelling, its probably not a big deal as long as temps don't go over 75 or so.

I'm still very pleased with my COOLER MASTER Sileo 500 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119192&nm_mc=OTC-Froogle&cm_mmc=OTC-Froogle-_-Cases+(Computer+Cases+-+ATX+Form)-_-Cooler+Master-_-11119192) it was affordable, isn't too large and seems to be well made.

Don't foresee any problems getting the cables up to the CPU socket, or trying to get around the video card?


I'm buying a few extra  Scythe DFS123812-1000 120mm Case Fan - Retail to mount in the available areas

Normally you snake the MB power connector under the motherboard. That case is ~3 inches shorter than the P180s so the power connector cable should be long enough but if you are worried you are going to have to Google on it.

Was looking over the major stuff I changed in my build:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150329 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150329)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115041 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115041)

Currently set up with this for a PSU:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151069 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151069)

I'm worried that I am not going to have enough amperage on my 12v's because I saw nVidia saying for the 260 that you need 36A on the 12v rail. Is this correct, or should I just say fuck it and step up to something like this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151027 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151027)

The GTX 260 has a peak power draw of around 180W which is 15A at 12V (P=VI). When they say they recommend 36A on the 12V line they mean total for the entire system, not for just that card cause otherwise that would be a tad ridiculous (432W for just the video card  :uhrr:)

Having a single rail 12V line makes it easier to figure out if you are within that range but having multiple 12V rails will still work as long as they put out enough power. The Seasonic is kind of borderline at 17A so if you are worried you can get something with a little more 12V power.

Now, do you mean it's borderline because on any one rail, it's only putting out 17A?

Would something like this still be trustworthy, but more in line with my power requirements?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139004 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139004)

Or am I going to need to jump up to the ~$100 range to find a suitable PSU for the sort of system I am looking at building?

That's right.

Corsair's are good, and some of theirs are in fact made by Seasonic. That one happens to be made by CWT.

This one is made by Seasonic supposedly (it might be a CWT, based on a Seasonic design):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139005

if you wanted some more "headroom".

If you are jumping up to the $100 range get something like this: Silencer-610 (https://shop.pcpower.com/power-supply/silencer-610-eps12v.html)

Excellent selection, thank you Trippy.

I had some price shock for a moment there, until 1) I saw the nice discount and rebate, and 2) I remember last time I tried to shave money off by skimping on a PSU.


A more serious question: I don't think my new system is particularly ambitious - just a Q2c, a single video card, single HDD. Not running a whole lot else. Yet, I see that the Vast Majority of PSUs for sale on Newegg are simply not up to snuff. So really, the question is: Who is buying these things? I mean, are most people, in all honesty, underpowering their systems? Putting their components at serious risk due to the PSU not being able to pump out enough power?

I'm thinking to assemble my new pc after buying stock HP and Dell machines for a while and I was wondering the same thing, when looking at the boards you see people equiping 650+ PSU's while Dell or HP machines come with 350-450 PSU's. I talked to my HP sales contact about it and he told me their PSU's will crank out a whole lot more but HP tends to downplay the specs because most rigs don't require much more in actual use and PSU's are the only component that sell better to the general public through lower specs.

I was thinking about this:
ANTEC Sonata Plus 550 -EC case
GIGABYTE GA-EX58-UD3R or GIGABYTE GA-EX58-UD5
INTEL Core i7-920
Corsair DIMM 6 GB DDR3-1600 Tri-Kit
WD VelociRaptor 2,5" 300 GB SATA II 16MB
Nvidia 9800 GTX (got this one now but it bottlenecks on my 3 year old cpu)

Since it's been quite a few years since I've assembled a pc, I hope I won't run into trouble putting this together.

Most people, in this context, are not running bleeding edge systems.  I wish I could remember where I saw the source, but someone found that most systems are using integrated graphics, or the equivalent of integrated graphics on a card....not the most power hungry users out there.  The average integrated GPU draws on the order of 10W or so (or less!).

In fact, I would think that you could put together a budget system with less than 100W power budget with today's low power chipsets.

Having said that, there's power and there' clean power.  I bet if you busted open some of those dirt cheap power supplies you wouldn't see a ton of filtering going on in there.  At least with some of the better built supplies, you not only get more amps, you get a more stable voltage rail, at whatever load is being used.  This plays a huge role in system stability as well.

Don't see any obvious problems.

While I understand that most PC users are just using Facebook, email, and internet browsing, but I would think that Newegg would have a disproportionate percentage of  ....enthusiast users, so I would think they would stock more higher-end PSUs.

Or is it just a case of I'm building a higher-end system than I thought I was, and my PSU should reflect that?

Look at the Steam hardware survey:

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

That survey obviously includes very old systems as well as the latest and greatest but your system would put you at ~90th percentile (i.e. only ~10% or less of Steam players would have a machine as or more powerful than your planned build).

Heh, interesting.

Not to doublepost, but as an update:

New PC works like a charm. Thanks for all the help and advice here.

It's so nice to be able to just DO WHAT I WANT, especially with Windows 7. Everything just...works.