Wanting to build PC, got a few parts

So, a friend of mine gave me a case, power supply and hard drive. It currently has a motherboard in it, which he says needs to be replaced. It also doesn't have a vid card, RAM and also needs a CPU upgrade. I'm not a computer moron, but I've definitely never put a PC together. So, I need a little help decided how to move forward. I am on a major budget and will probably spend the next couple of months spreading out the buying of parts. So, I guess my major question concerns the motherboard. What to buy? Or maybe even find on CraigsList. I live in San Francisco, so I might could find a good deal that direction. Oh, and I'd like to game on this PC, although I know with budget restrictions I'm not going to be on the highest end, but that is my goal. From what I can see, the current motherboard is a EVGA X58. Any help would be appreciated. I'll also attach a photo of the case's inside. IMAGE(http://i46.tinypic.com/ei9sib.jpg)

I'd say if it works, and it's now a known bottleneck for whatever task you're crunching, leave the mobo/cpu as they are for the moment. Socket 1136 stuff may not be the latest and greatest, but it shouldn't be a slouch either. For the moment spend your money on the missing components to get a decent rig up and running, you can always upgrade the rest later.

The mobo isn't operational. So, that's kind of out.

The cheapest route is to keep the cpu you have and buy another LGA 1366 motherboard (I believe this is similar to yours, linking for reference). LGA 1366 mean you have an i7 or i5 CPU, which is hardly terrible.

The problem is that LGA 1366 is pretty old at this point, so coming up with a good board is difficult as they're most likely not being manufactured anymore. NewEgg has some in stock, but they're all pretty expensive.

Do you know the specific CPU you have?

RAM shouldn't be a problem. It uses DDR3 1600/1333, which is pretty cheap right now. Thing is that you've got triple channel memory going on, so you'll need a three pack. That leads me to believe you do in fact have an i7 in there. Anyway, you can get 12gb of DDR3 1600 for about $80 right now.

Also, that case needs to be cleaned. Blow all that dust and dirt out.

I bought a new X58 motherboard at the beginning of the year when I rebuilt my PC. I ended up going the refurb route which ended up being pretty cheap. I didn't really want to upgrade my CPU (i7 920) at the time because it wasn't worth it, but needed a new motherboard.

You might get a bad one, but you also might be just fine. Another option would be to try to get one used on Ebay. I'm pretty sure you can return the refurbs if they are non-functional.

The EVGA one I got was similar to this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc.... It cost $110 rather than the old list price of $400. I've been really happy with it. I'll probably upgrade after the successor to Ivy Bridge shows up. It's still not worth it as the i7 920 overclocked to 3.8 GHz will not bottleneck hardly anything. That particular motherboard would need to be researched. I haven't checked the specific details on it other than X58, SATA 6, USB 3.0, a couple x16 PCI Express slots, and ATX form factor (Looks like that previous motherboard is ATX).

If you do get a refurb, remember that it doesn't come with any cords or anything. You probably have everything you need in that case already, however.

Edit: Yeah, check what CPU you have as Garion mentioned. If it's an i7 920 which it probably is, you should just try and get a motherboard on the cheap. It'll be cheaper than upgrading to sandy bridge or ivy bridge and will be just fine for all games. Spend the extra money you save on a better video card.

Edit 2: How sure are you that the motherboard is actually dead? Did your friend maybe just upgrade to sandybridge/ivybridge and strip the memory and video card out of the build? He may have assumed that an i7 920 is crap just because it's older. Just checking to be sure.

If the PSU, CPU and motherboard are actually fine, that's a solid start for a build. All you would need is maybe a cheap aftermarket CPU cooler, memory, and video card. Most of the expense will end up being the video card.

Thanks so much for the help. I'm pretty sure the motherboard is dead. My friend works at google and was going to put some stuff together, just so I could have one up and running, but realized the mobo was shot, so he just gave me what he had so I could do it.

I just took the CPU out, but there is no information on the actual CPU. I scratched a bit of the thermal paste off to see if it was under, but that is a no. I tried to contact my friend this morning, but haven't heard back yet. While it is an aftermarket case, it has a Core i7 sticker on the front, along with a Powered by Corsair sticker, which is what the PSU is. So, I'm assuming it was probably pre-built and I'm pretty sure it is an i7, although I don't know exactly what model.

Right now, I'm thinking I go the least expensive route and find a refurb mobo like Tuffalobuffalo mentioned. RAM is easy, the PSU is fine, so I just need to find a mobo, decide on a video card and grab a monitor. (Don't think using my wall mounted TV is feasible, haha) I've been gaming on a Gateway laptop since 98 and while i've been shocked that it still runs games at a fairly high quality, it's starting to bottleneck pretty bad and it will be nice to have a desktop.

Well, that's weird that the CPU doesn't have text on it. Even if it's from an OEM, it should still have some writing on it to identify it.

It should look like this:

IMAGE(http://img.i4memory.info/reviewimages/cpus/corei7/920_3845b260/i7_920_3845b260_02.jpg)

As long as it looks fine, the i7 920 is the lowest model i7 that would be used with X58, so it's not like you're going to have anything worse than that. If you bought memory only, you could throw that in, put the CPU fan back on, and see if the old motherboard will at least POST. The BIOS will tell you what CPU it is. Or, your friend might remember what it is.

Worst case: You buy a used or refurb motherboard, memory, and a video card then you find out the CPU is bad. In that case, you can return the motherboard and get a new sandybridge or ivybridge MB/CPU. You can still use the memory and video card.

One thing to remember X58 has triple channel memory, so you would probably want to buy 3x2GB or 3x4GB DDR3 1600. You can use just 2 sticks, but you're not taking full advantage of the triple channel. You'd just be using dual. Not a noticeable performance difference really, but it's something to consider. Most of the sandybridge and ivybridge motherboard chipsets that you would end up considering are dual channel IIRC, so you could just buy an extra identical stick after the fact or just use 2 of the 3 memory sticks that you bought.

My bad, just didn't look close enough. It's the exact CPU as the picture above. Considering my limited knowledge, I'm thinking of just going with the refurb EVGA you linked from Newegg. I found this http://tinyurl.com/7ok4jjh with a quick Ebay search for LGA 1366 / x58. It's obviously cheap, but as far as quality or features, I have no clue.

The writing would be gone if he lapped the CPU before he put on a cooler

Or it could still have some thermal goop on it.

That looks like a surprisingly good board. It has dual Intel NICs. SuperMicro focuses on the server market, so that's probably a very well-built piece of hardware. The BIOS, however, probably won't be very good for overclocking. The i7s of that era would O/C a fair bit -- you could often get 3GHz out of a 2.66Ghz 920. You may not be able to do that on that Supermicro board.

When you eventually get tired of that machine and want to upgrade again, that will make a truly excellent server. It has scads of bandwidth, and will be easily able to push around huge amounts of data, if you need it to.

That's not a no-name, tuffalo, that's a SuperMicro C7X58. Looks like a good board.

(You probably don't know the name because they focus on server boards.... gamers like us usually don't buy them, because they tend not to have many of the bells and whistles that we usually like. In the server space, Tyan is much better, but Supermicro is pretty acceptable.)

I'd stay away from that Ebay one. That's a no name brand, so it'd be a toss up. Better to try and snag a used one that someone is ditching for cheap because they upgraded.

Brands to keep an eye out for: Asus, Gigabyte, EVGA, MSI, ASRock. That EVGA one is really nice assuming there is nothing strange about it. I need to look it up on EVGA's website when I have more time. It's very similar to the one I got.

One thing that might be weird about it is it might not support Crossfire. That shouldn't be a big deal to you, however. You should just go with Nvidia anyways.

I'll try and look for more motherboards when I get some more time. It could be a crapshoot getting a used or refurb, so checking the return policy is a good idea if it's gonna cost over $50.

Edit: And take Malor's word over mine on anything. It sounds like that could be a good board if you don't want to goof around with overclocking. The EVGA board should get you to 3.8 GHz easily with an aftermarket cooler. For some reason I couldn't get mine to 4.0 GHz, but I think I have a bum CPU. It was easy to get to 3.8 but over that I couldn't get it stable.

Malor wrote:

That's not a no-name, tuffalo, that's a SuperMicro C7X58. Looks like a good board.

(You probably don't know the name because they focus on server boards.... gamers like us usually don't buy them, because they tend not to have many of the bells and whistles that we usually like. In the server space, Tyan is much better, but Supermicro is pretty acceptable.)

Yup, you are correct. I didn't quite get my edit up in time.

Thanks to you both. After a little research, it seems that Malor is right, the SuperMicro board isn't great for overclocking. Being able to overclock would get me a little more juice without having to upgrade and considering that this is all about the most bang for the buck, I guess I have to decide whether I spend a little more on the refurb EVGA (or something similar) OR go with the great price on the new SuperMicro.

I looked at the EVGA Refurb board a little more closely, and I'm pretty sure it's what I got. It would do anything you need it to and has USB 3.0 and SATA 6 which is nice.

In case you decide to go that route, all it comes with is the board and the IO panel. You should already have all the cables you need.

This is nice to view what the features are: http://www.evga.com/products/pdf/132...
This is the manual which you will need: http://www.evga.com/support/manuals/...
Even though it's a refurb, I believe you can still register it with EVGA. I can't quite remember.

The big catch is that you can only return it for the exact same refurb board if it doesn't work, and that has to be done within 30 days. You can't get your money back. If, for some reason, your CPU is dead, you'd have to sell the board on Ebay or something. So, that's the risk with going refurb.

Newegg has an Asus Sabertooth open box board here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc.... It's a bit more expensive ($140) and probably about as nice, and you CAN get your money back if it doesn't work by returning it in 30 days. It should have all the features you would need.

Those look like the only reasonable ones on Newegg if you wanted to go that route. I started looking on Ebay but realized it's going to take a long time to sift through to find a good deal. There are a lot of non-working/parts boards that I don't see a way to exclude in the search. Maybe just go with that SuperMicro one.

Do you have a budget set up? I'm just curious how much you're willing to dump in. If you only wanted to spend like 300 bucks or so, you would probably want to keep the motherboard price down to $70 at the most.

I want to hear more about how in the hell you're playing games on a 1998 Gateway laptop. Actually, I kind of want to know how you're able to even surf the net with that thing.

awakerevolution wrote:

Being able to overclock would get me a little more juice without having to upgrade and considering that this is all about the most bang for the buck, I guess I have to decide whether I spend a little more on the refurb EVGA (or something similar) OR go with the great price on the new SuperMicro.

Since it is older, you might as well overclock it as much as possible. I don't know what the exact performance gains are from putting mine from 2.6 to 3.8, but I'm sure they help out once in awhile. You would need to invest $20-$30 in an aftermarket cooler, though. The i7 920 isn't hard to overclock, but it's more difficult than the Sandybridge and Ivybridge CPUs.

If you went with the SuperMicro board, you could just use that stock cooler (you should probably get fresh thermal paste, though). That would save you even more money. You probably wouldn't notice a difference in most games.

Definitely figure out your budget. Chances are, you're gonna want to save as much money as possible on everything so you can dump it into a video card.

garion333 wrote:

I want to hear more about how in the hell you're playing games on a 1998 Gateway laptop. Actually, I kind of want to know how you're able to even surf the net with that thing. ;)

LOL...long night last night. 2008, not 98. Oops.

As far as my budget. If I could get this thing up and running for $300, I would be happy. Then six months down the road, I could start upgrading some more. So, that SuperMicro board is looking better. Probably another $80 on RAM. If I was trying to stay within $300, that would leave $150 for a video card.

Well, the overclocking on that generation of i7 isn't that dramatic... it's not like Sandy Bridge. If that's an early i7, it may barely OC at all. I had a very early 920, which would run at 3Ghz, but didn't like it, running VERY hot. It's much happier now that it's at stock clocks, on server duty. You may be losing a fair bit of performance by going with the SuperMicro, but then again, you might not.

What resolution is the monitor you plan to use? $150 is pretty skinny for a video card, but it could work if you don't want to crank resolution too high.

I'm actually going to have to pick up a monitor. We don't have to factor that into the budget right now, there's a chance a friend will have one. But I'd say 1920x1200 max. I'm not locked down to $150 for the vid card, but would like to stay under $200 if possible.

Well, 1920x1200 is fairly difficult to drive well. It takes a lot of video card bandwidth to do full-screen effects when the card has to sample so many pixels, each frame. Typically, you want a a 560Ti or a 6950 at that resolution, which are usually around $200, maybe $225. You can do kinda okay with a 6870, but it's really too weak for that resolution.

Overall, a 6870 will give you 40ish frames per second in most games at 1920x1200 with fairly good settings, the 560Ti will give you low 50s, and the 6950 will give you high 50s. But AMD's drivers haven't been as good for awhile, so I'm presently leaning toward NVidia as my default recommendation. For the last couple years, it's been the other way around, but I got frustrated with the constant ATI driver problems.

I just looked, and I see 560Tis at $210, where the lowest 6950 is about $250. So I'd definitely go NVidia. This card, for instance, looks pretty good... Zotac (which is a cheap brand), but 1 gig of memory, and clocked at 950/1900 instead of the 820/1640 of most of the other cards. So not only is it one of the cheapest options for a 560Ti on Newegg, it should be faster than cards that cost a fair bit more.

If you want a top-tier manufacturer, this ASUS card is very similar, at $230.

If you're sure you can't do $210, then this is the cheapest 6870 I see right now, at $180.

Basically, if I didn't explain this well enough, when you're building a gaming PC, the proper place to start is with your monitor resolution. You pick a video card that suits that resolution well, and then buy as much other stuff as you can afford. The CPU matters in a few games, but in the great, great majority, it's all about the video card.

If you were buying the whole PC from scratch, I'd tell you to drop back to a skinny little i3 chip on the cheapest motherboard you could find, in order to get the proper video card for your resolution. But that obviously doesn't make sense in your case, since you've already got a nice CPU.

Most of the time, when you're building a gaming PC, the video card will be the most expensive thing you'll buy. You can cut a lot of other corners a surprisingly long way, but video card matters a LOT.

Malor wrote:

Well, 1920x1200 is fairly difficult to drive well. It takes a lot of video card bandwidth to do full-screen effects when the card has to sample so many pixels, each frame. Typically, you want a a 560Ti or a 6950 at that resolution, which are usually around $200, maybe $225. You can do kinda okay with a 6870, but it's really too weak for that resolution.

Overall, a 6870 will give you 40ish frames per second in most games at 1920x1200 with fairly good settings, the 560Ti will give you low 50s, and the 6950 will give you high 50s. But AMD's drivers haven't been as good for awhile, so I'm presently leaning toward NVidia as my default recommendation. For the last couple years, it's been the other way around, but I got frustrated with the constant ATI driver problems.

When Malor says "fairly good settings" he's talking about having high texture settings and those sorts of things along with AA and AF enabled (say, 4x and 8x, respectively) while still push out a smooth framerate.

Well, that's typically not maximum settings, usually something like 75% of max. Depends on the game.... something like TF2 will run like buttah at 1920x1200 on a 6870, but the Batman titles, or Battlefield 3, or other really amazing looking games will get kinda choppy at 19x12 with a 6870 and pretty much any kind of full-screen effects.

I think I'll go with more expensive card considering everything. I'm considering the ASUS that Malor linked, but I also found this EVGA for the same price after rebate. It has really good user reviews and more importantly to me, a lifetime warranty, but is clocked at 850/1700 as compared to 900/1800 on the ASUS.

And again, thanks for all the help. Love me some GWJ.

Malor wrote:

Well, that's typically not maximum settings, usually something like 75% of max. Depends on the game.... something like TF2 will run like buttah at 1920x1200 on a 6870, but the Batman titles, or Battlefield 3, or other really amazing looking games will get kinda choppy at 19x12 with a 6870 and pretty much any kind of full-screen effects.

That was my point exactly.

Well, right, but I'm not going crazy, demanding that Crysis 1 run at maximum everything or whatever. The idea is for games to look really good, without going for that last little bit of visual quality, which is so expensive to deliver. If you're building a new gaming computer, by gum, you shouldn't have to settle for Medium.

awake: EVGA is a good company. I'm running one of their cards myself. Remember that to get the lifetime warranty, you have to register the card with them. If you don't, you only get three years.

ASUS does not have as good a customer service, but their manufacturing muscle is seriously impressive. The board itself is likely to be slightly better from ASUS, but if you have a problem after buying, you'll probably much prefer EVGA. You get either a slightly faster card, probably built better, or better customer service.

I honestly don't know which way I'd go, myself. I bought EVGA this time because they were the only 680s in stock when I looked.

edit: after thinking about it, I'd probably cross my fingers and buy the ASUS. I've had good luck with video cards, so I'd roll the dice to try to get a slightly better one for the same price.

Hey guys, wanted to give you an update. My 30th bday is actually Friday and my amazing parents came through with the mboard and ram. I picked up 3x4gb of ram and the refurb EVGA mboard. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...

I decided on the ZOTAC AMP 560 ti vid card. It's factory overclocked and with my limited experienced in overclocking, I figured it was a good choice. Some users have had some heat problems, being in San Francsico, my place doesn't usually get too hot and it the case I was given has 3 fans in it. Should be good. Plus lifetime warranty once i register it. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...

I'm keeping that i7 I have for now and eventually will upgrade the mboard and processor.

AND, with NewEgg is partnered with Shoprunner who is like an Amazon prime for other stores. 30 day free trial. But I went to go ahead and cancel so I wouldn't forget and be charged and they offered me 90 days free, no auto renew and if i use it 3 times I get it for free for a year. If you guys use NewEgg or their other partners a lot, you should definitely do it. It's free!

So, everything is showing up tomorrow. Since my parts are compatable, I'm thinking of dual-booting as a hackintosh for some iOS development. Now to watch some Youtube videos on putting it all together and installing Lion.

If you guys still have thoughts for me, I appreciate it. GWJ FTW

Let me know if you have any issues with the MB. Since I just did the same thing, I might be able to help with that. The 560 Ti will be a really nice card to go with that processor.

That should be excellent. 12 gigs should be very comfortable, and hopefully you'll like the video card.

The biggest thing to pay attention to is mounting the motherboard. Count the holes in the motherboard, and then make sure you have exactly one standoff mounted in the case per hole, all aligned into the correct spots. Nine holes is most common, but there could be fewer. However many you have, you want the standoffs to match exactly, both in count and in position. You do NOT want brass standoffs shorting out against the motherboard!

Also remember that the motherboard has TWO power connectors, not just one. If you forget the little one, near the CPU somewhere, the board will not boot up, and you will be upset. Nothing will break, you won't hurt anything, but all you'll get is a black screen.

Oh, one more thing: in this generation and later of boards, it can take a good ten or fifteen seconds after applying power before you get a video signal. Newer motherboards seem to take a long time initializing themselves before they actually start the CPU working.