New Computer Build, advice requested

[Numtini]

Thanks everyone who contributed to my pc. I switched to the Intel i5 and I am looking into a better cabinet. I love the smell of a new PC in the morning.

If you smell something funny when you turn it on in the morning, you're probably going to be filling out an RMA form 

[Mosesandstick]

Here we go! And from a UK site (why is everything so expensive here?)

i5 750

MSI P55-CD53

2x2 Corsair DDR3 1333

Corsair 650W PSU

ASUS HD5750

Hitatchi Deskstar 320GB

Silverstone TJ06S

Sony funky DVD RW

Thoughts? I'm thinking that eventually I might upgrade and up the RAM, buy a SSD and maybe a new GPU. Also, 320GB is fine for me for an internal, I rarely have that much kept on a hard drive (I'm currently working off a 60 gig...)

[Kageh]

Looks okay from the links - haven't checked prices - but:

(small complaint) Why not a bigger hard drive? Those things are cheap and 320GB is very 2003.

(big complaint) Are you a gamer? You want a big upgrade, get a 5850 over a 5750. It's the most important piece of your gaming rig, and it's about €90 over a 5750 for a very noticeable performance boost.

[Mosesandstick]

POOR. Actually I just re-checked prices. I'll probably get a 500/640 instead. The thing with the GPU is that we're talking over twice the price, and unfortunately I don't game anywhere near as much as I used to.

Generally if I game I do two things, either old games or up to date MP games. When it comes to MP games I usually turn things down anyway because I want the performance boost. Nobody's going to be nabbing my items in D3  . It's really an issue of buying a more expensive card now, or upgrading in two years (I think).

Edit: Obligatory thanks!

[Kageh]

Alright, makes sense. If you want to optimize though, you can safely pick a noticeably smaller PSU *and* have enough power/money for a 5850 left, I think.

I'm currently running an overclocked i7-920 and 2*GTX 260 SLI with 650W. I think you can run i5-750 and a 5850 on 500W easily, as long as you get enough amperage on 12V.

[Mosesandstick]

I'm down  with that, I was just thinking that if I upgraded I'd keep the PSU and need some juice spare for more power-hungry components. Good idea?

[Kageh]

Yes, but (a big BUT), God only knows what the computer manufacturers will be coming up with in about a year's worth.

My guess is that 650W is probably enough for the next big single-GPU thing and the next CPUs, since they move down to 32nm/40nm production and that should bring power usage down. It's most likely a tight fit or not enough for lower-end SLI setups (I'm predicting we're gonna see lots of them x2 cards in the near future) and certainly not big enough for high-end SLI.

[Mosesandstick]

New technology 

I should stick to console gaming. Anyways, thanks! Future-proofing is tough.

[Hoax]

My thoughts, ignoring prices because I'm not sure if they pound = 1.5 dollars even holds any more and I don't know if you guys get screwed like Aussies on part prices or not.

-I think you might want to do a tiny bit of research and shopping on the VGA, personally it bothers me when cards don't vent out the case these days but its not something to get bent out of shape on.  I crunched numbers 2 weeks ago and went with a 4890 because fuck DX11 and the benchmarks for appropriate games seemed to be much better then the 5770 which is what I had been thinking of putting in.

-If you're happy with the HD size, who cares, but make sure you can't double the storage for $10 because usually you can at those levels.

-Corsair PSU's are generally quite good, their Ram is still the best.  I have one of their PSU's and its quiet, not SeaSonic quiet but passable.

-MSI mobo worries me a tiny tiny bit.  Aren't they usually considered a power user brand?  Sort of flaky/funky BIOS but if you tweak them they will outperform competition in the price bracket?  That's how it was a year ago when I was looking into Quad Core boards, so just read a few specific reviews for that board and make sure its not going to be too much of a hassle for you.  I say this because it sounds like your not exactly the type to want to fuck with flashing your BIOS and then fiddling around for the first week making sure everything is kicking ass.

My opinions are just that, opinions.  Listen to anyone else before me.

[Mosesandstick]

Thanks for the thoughts. I just re-checked prices again, and I can get a 1 gig 4870 for around the same price as a 5750, so I'm going to go with that.

I've checked individual reviews for that MSi board before and it seems OK, I've used an MSI board before and that was not fun (wiring problems in the mobo --> cpu fan wouldn't start --> fried cpu), but I'm competent enough to tackle any issues. It's just been a long time since I've done this.

Time to order!

[Kageh]

I've seen good and bad boards from all the major manufacturers, and the BIOS quality varies heavily with chipset or a particular board model even if from the same manufacturer. Yes, some of the "bigger" names like ASUS and Gigabyte tend to be rather prompt and trying with the BIOS quality, it is however nothing I would decide on a general basis. MSI is a solid enough choice. Just look up your particular board for reviews on the net and see if it does what you expect it to do.

[AutomaticZen]

I'm futzing around with getting a 4870 or 4890 as they outperform or outprice their NVIDIA equivalent (GTX 260).  The 5850 is too rich for my blood as I tend to spend $200 max on a video card.  I'm lending towards a 4870 as it's slightly cheaper, and I intend to replace it in the summer once NVIDIA's 300 series comes down the pipe in mainstream revs.  That's either be a great set of cards at a decent price or it'll push ATI's prices down further within my range.

The 5770 doesn't impress me much because by time DX11 has a noticeable improvement in the games I play, the card will be gone from my box.  Add in the underperformance graphics-wise and the 128-bit mem controller, and it's just not for me.

So thoughts?  4870 or 4890?

[rattran]

The heavily overclocked (factory) 4890/1gig beats the pants off my old 4870/512m. But I play games at 1920x1200 with AA/AF, so your mileage may vary. I would suggest going with a Sapphire Vapor-x, it's a much quieter cooler than any of the others I've played with.

[Kageh]

Yes, 4890 for sure. Vapor-X is cool, but kind of pricey though, isn't it?

[AutomaticZen]

For a 4890?  Not really.  It's actually around the price of a GTX 260, which it outperforms.  Newegg has it for 194.99, versus the 164.99 for the Vapor-X 4870.

But that helps.  I usually go with an after-market GPU cooler, but the Vapor-X card should do nicely.

[Stewie]

I'm putting together a new system and am planning on going with win 7
I was just going to with a i7 920 and 6 gb of ram(3 stick of 2), but since I changed my mind to go with a i5 750 and saved a bunch,  I may spend a bit more on memory and get 8gb.

Will I need it? Should I just stick with 4gb (2x2)?

[Kageh]

Depends on what you want to do. If you are mostly gaming, 4 GB is usually enough. Even if you use a 64-bit OS, which you probably will, you need natively compiled 64-bit games to address more than 2GB of ram, and those are few and far between.

EDIT: Something else to consider, DDR3 prices are inflated quite a bit at the moment, since retailers were stockpiling DDR3 for the i5 platform release. I think prices should go down for christmas or after christmas at latest, if you can wait that long.

[Trippy]

I'm putting together a new system and am planning on going with win 7
I was just going to with a i7 920 and 6 gb of ram(3 stick of 2), but since I changed my mind to go with a i5 750 and saved a bunch,  I may spend a bit more on memory and get 8gb.

Will I need it? Should I just stick with 4gb (2x2)?

How many memory slots does your motherboard have?

For people here I would recommend at least 6 GB these days. 4 GB is barely enough to keep from swapping, if you only have a minimal set of apps open at once. 3D games can grab well over 1 GB these days. Let's say 1 GB is for the OS and related stuff. Firefox is still a memory hog and can grab ~1 GB for itself. That leaves less than 1 GB for everything else.

[Stewie]

My MB uses dual channel. 4slots total.
I got 4 gb for now. Only cost me 124. I may get another 4 gb later.
The memory is pretty fast as well with 7-7-7-7 timing

[Stewie]

So I just built a new comp and I told myself for once I will make sure that I would do proper cable management.
I really was bound and determined to make it look nice and clean. That being said, once again the inside of my comp case looks like a rats nest.
Why must I suck?

[AutomaticZen]

So I just built a new comp and I told myself for once I will make sure that I would do proper cable management.
I really was bound and determined to make it look nice and clean. That being said, once again the inside of my comp case looks like a rats nest.
Why must I suck?

Did you use cable ties?

[Stewie]

yup, I even routed some of the power cables between the back panel that you mount the mb on and the outside panel.
I found the cables that seem to be making the biggest mess are the little hd led and powerswitch type cables plus the 2 6pin power cables that go to the Video card and the front audio inputs.
I just couldn't figure a neat way to organize them as they all come from different locations and go to different locations.
Either way, I'm not really to concerned about it as it all works fine and once I have the side panel on no one will ever see it.
Just irks me when I see peoples nice clean builds and mine looks like shit.

I do gotta say that this is by far and away the quietest comp I have ever put together.

[Viin]

I think I'm gonna get me one of these if I have a small windfall of money anytime soon:

http://computershopper.com/desktops/reviews/maingear-shift

Processor:  3.3GHz Intel Core i7-975 Extreme Edition (overclocked to 3.98GHz)
Memory: 6GB DDR3
Storage : Two 80GB solid-state drives (RAID 0); one 2TB hard drive
Optical Drive: BD-ROM/DVD±RW combo
Monitor: None
Graphics: Three ATI Radeon HD 5870 cards (1GB DDR5 on each)

That would be an awesome system to continue to upgrade on. Getting a little sick of my current case, with the PSU at the top and stuff ...

Edit:  Also, whats with this trend of providing only 3 DIMM slots for memory on i5/i7 mobos? Is there a new triple channel memory thingy that I'm not aware of?

[Murgos]

Edit:  Also, whats with this trend of providing only 3 DIMM slots for memory on i5/i7 mobos? Is there a new triple channel memory thingy that I'm not aware of?

Yes.  Set's of three now.

[Ingmar]

i7-9XX are triple channel. i7-8XX are dual channel, and I thought all the i5s were dual channel but I could be wrong about that.

[Kageh]

i7-9XX are triple channel. i7-8XX are dual channel, and I thought all the i5s were dual channel but I could be wrong about that.

i7-8xx and current i5s are both Lynnfield, only dual channel, yes.

i7-9xx are Bloomfield generation, so triple channel controller.

@Viin: You can OC D0 i7-920s to 4Ghz quite often if you're willing to burn power. Since they allow for 20x multiplicator, all you need is 200 Mhz BCLK. i7-965 is a waste of money unless you want to do watercooled overclocks for some insane frequencies.

[Draegan]

Random question.

Can anyone suggest an inexpensive sound card, but decent quality?  Don't need anything fancy.

[Viin]

@Viin: You can OC D0 i7-920s to 4Ghz quite often if you're willing to burn power. Since they allow for 20x multiplicator, all you need is 200 Mhz BCLK. i7-965 is a waste of money unless you want to do watercooled overclocks for some insane frequencies.

Nah I'm going with the low end i5 for now (I'll wait until the i7 prices come down). I can overclock that a bit and get decent performance for the $$ without getting crazy. I usually don't get the top top processor because of the very fact that you can normally overclock the process one or two steps below and get almost the same performance for less.

[Stewie]

I ended up going with the i5 750.
and yeah the i5's have dual channel.

Draegan, I went with a auzentech prelude x-fi 7.1. This may be much more than what you wanted though but it got pretty good reviews.

[Sky]

Hope that auzentech works out for you. I had horrible luck with their drivers, a few games were completely unplayable do to occasional blasts of full-volume white noise (Oblivion is the one that comes to mind). I ended up going with a creative X-Fi and the creative home theater attachment, which is ok for games but sucks for bluray because it breaks the digital chain. I'll have to rebuild my last pc with the auzentech to do HD movies with dd5.1.

Mine was an auzentech xplosion, iirc.

[rattran]

I have an xfi titanium (pci-e version) that's been a continual annoyance in vista and win7. It'll 'detect' front panel mic/headphones (not even hooked to the card ffs) occasionally and mute the speakers and rear-mic, changes settings randomly, and will on occassion just start outputting crackly static. A reboot always seems to fix the crackling, and Creative support is 'unhelpful' Seems if you get any sound at all out of it, they consider it a success, and advise updating drivers when they become available.

So, I'd suggest staying away from the xfi titanium line. I'm awfully close to just using the onboard realtek hd.

[Sky]

Mine's a zo,mgfatal1ty x-fi xtreeeeeeme gamer. Love it, no problems.

[Draegan]

I have an xfi titanium (pci-e version) that's been a continual annoyance in vista and win7. It'll 'detect' front panel mic/headphones (not even hooked to the card ffs) occasionally and mute the speakers and rear-mic, changes settings randomly, and will on occassion just start outputting crackly static. A reboot always seems to fix the crackling, and Creative support is 'unhelpful' Seems if you get any sound at all out of it, they consider it a success, and advise updating drivers when they become available.

So, I'd suggest staying away from the xfi titanium line. I'm awfully close to just using the onboard realtek hd.

I've been using my onboard realtek and I've been getting those detect popups which is why I need a sound card.  I've had no other issues otherwise.

[Stewie]

so far my auzentech seems to work pretty good, installed drivers and everything is fine.
That being said I have only tried borderlands and dragon age and both sounded great.

I was reading that on the i5/i7 mobo you need to turn on xmp (?) in the bios for it to recognize the memory correctly.
For example on my memory it is DDR3-1600 7-7-7-7 and if I don't enable that it will treat it as 1333 8-8-8-8.
I will do this today when I get home for work, I may upgrade to 8gb though

[Sky]

I wanted to bump up to 8GB when I installed W7, but prices jumped up too steeply. I paid $47 ($67-$20 MIR) for 4 GB in March. The same pair would cost me $89 ($96-$7 instant) today.