Help Me Build My PC Catch-All

I recently bought a refurbed ASUS box for a reasonable price (sub $800), as I'm tired of building my own.

i7-920
9 GB RAM
1TB drive
GTX260 (216 core) video card
etc, etc.

It came preinstalled with Vista64, but I dropped my Win7 pro upgrade on it.

At some point, I'm going to add an SSD drive and a better video card. Ideally, I'd like to spend less than $300 on the new card. Recommendations? 5850? Wait for the next gen Nvidia chips to push existing card prices down? The GTX260 seems capable of pushing decent framerates at 1920x1200, so I'm not in a true hurry to upgrade. I also know it has a 550W powersupply in it, but I imagine it's not exactly a top of the line unit. Ideally, I'd not have to replace it for the card upgrade.

I finally got my new computer fully assembled and up and running! I just have one thing to say to anyone else that somehow finds themself in this one situation like I did:
Windows 7 Home Premium will not install to a hard drive formatted as a dynamic drive and if you have it split into 2 partitions for some reason, that basically means you have to wipe both of them out and then redefine the drive as 'basic'.

Tyrian wrote:

At some point, I'm going to add an SSD drive and a better video card. Ideally, I'd like to spend less than $300 on the new card. Recommendations? 5850? Wait for the next gen Nvidia chips to push existing card prices down? The GTX260 seems capable of pushing decent framerates at 1920x1200, so I'm not in a true hurry to upgrade. I also know it has a 550W powersupply in it, but I imagine it's not exactly a top of the line unit. Ideally, I'd not have to replace it for the card upgrade.

What power supply do you have?

I think that if it's able to push a 260 it'll push the 5850. The 5850 is amazing in how little energy is uses, though, admittedly, you would probably be pushing the power supply to its limit. If it's a crappy power supply, you might be better bumping up.

garion333 wrote:

What power supply do you have?

I think that if it's able to push a 260 it'll push the 5850. The 5850 is amazing in how little energy is uses, though, admittedly, you would probably be pushing the power supply to its limit. If it's a crappy power supply, you might be better bumping up.

It's a Delta 500W, (not 550). A brand I've never heard of, at least in terms of power supplies.

I suppose it will serve for now. If it starts acting flaky, I'll replace it with a PCPaC unit (I'm not terribly concerned about noise).

Some comments about the case I used in my build (very happy with it so far). The NZXT LEXA S (LEXS-001BK) which is the case I got is pretty quiet, with 4 fans (3 120mm, 1 140mm) especially compared to my old machine with 2 80mm case fans.

One more impressive feat is that I have to strain to hear the hard drives read / write. The two drives are a Seagate 500GB 7200.11 and a Seagate 1.5TB 5900RPM. I can't hear either of them unless I put my ear right up to the front intake (where a 120mm fan is running between my ears and the drives).

Still, the case is a pain compared to my old one. I had to use screws (thankfully they provided plenty of thumb screws) to install the optical drives. The old case had permanent rails for each drive bay that let you slide a drive in and lock it in place. Any overlap of wiring on the provided back side of the case for routing makes putting that side panel on impossible. The openings for the wire routing were a bit too small and made getting power connectors through pretty tough. The side panels are kinda hard pull off, especially the main one as it doesn't have anywhere to leverage. The power supply at the bottom of the case, while they included isolating rubber resting feet and it's nice for heat dissapation, made the motherboard power connections a bit of a stretch with my particular power supply. The extra exhaust fan port on the top of the case is just left 'open' with nothing behind the perforated metal so anything small enough can fall down into the case, while they took the time to add foam to the optical drive bays that are concealed behind a pretty well built drive bay cover. I'm also not a fan of having to remove the right hand side cover to disconnect and reconnect hard drives. But at least they provided a caddy for a 2.5" SSD. The built in fan controls to the built fans that have to be connected by provided hard-wired connectors do not seem to do anything. I can't notice any sound level difference when I turn the knobs.

Also, the thing looks like a 3 blue eyed droid from Star Wars. Thankfully the blue glow isn't overpowering.

That's a whole lot of negative there. Guess it really could have been better in a lot of ways... Still, it functions well enough where it needs to and keeps things cool and quite without blinding me with light. I just wish the drive bay / access panel stuff was better thought out.

Don't really need help building... But I've been mulling over an incremental upgrade.

My current system is a Core i7 940, 6 GB RAM, 750 GB HDD, nVidia 9800GTX, Vista Ultimate 64.

Quite honestly, I'm not happy with it. I'm not upset with it either. But there are days when it gets on my nerves.

It has a very slow startup. The time from post to Vista Desktop is pretty short, but you're crazy if you think you're doing anything in those first five minutes. And that hard drive? Pretty much always running. I'm actually concerned about a mechanical failure. Worst part is that the little removable HDD rack in my case is touching the frame of the case somewhere and it makes it sound like someone's constantly turning a pepper mill under my desk.

So, I'm considering a secondary storage and OS overhaul. I've had this idea for a while but wanted to wait until things dropped in price a bit.

Step one is acquire an SSD. Intel, as far as I know, is pretty much the only way to go right now. Anything else is apparently worthless. So this was my choice. And just to make life easy, and no stupid adapter bracket, the ICY DOCK.

Step two, replace my large storage drive. I've been a Seagate guy for years, but I'm thinking of going Western Digital this time. Lots of reviews for this one, so this is my first pick.

Step three, operating system.

First question: Anyone have their finger on the pulse of the SSD market enough to know whether or not buying this now is a waste? I could live with waiting until summer for this upgrade if there will be a significant price drop.

Question Two: Western Digital experiences - Help me out here, are they decent again? I can remember they went to the crapper a few years back, which has kept me solidly in the Seagate camp... But I also remember when WD drives were the picture of quality. Just curious if they went back to that.

Question Three: OS choice - Basically, I'm wondering if I should go OEM or Retail. I used to do frequent wipes and reinstalls years ago, but I haven't been doing that as much anymore. Am I safe with an OEM should the situation come up where I want or have to do a full wipe and reinstall? How strict is the licensing BS on the OEM over the retail? Is there a real advantage to going retail besides the licensing crap?

Thanks.

I always buy OEM for Windows and I've done multiple installs and hardware upgrades with XP and Vista (only one install on my W7 right now, so ...). Microsoft may have changed their policy, but after using the OEM software a number of times I have had to call them before Windows would authenticate the new install. It's a 3-5 minute call. Super simple and they've never not given me the ok.

SSDs with an Indilinx controller are nearly as good as Intel, if you get a good firmware (you have to kind of educate yourself a little), and are cheaper. There's a pair of new controller chips that will ship within a month or two that are supposed to be a little faster than the Intel G2s, and are within the same price range.

All that said, a five-minute bootup is screwy. Have you checked to be sure your drive cables are in tight, and that you're in DMA mode? That buzz you're hearing could also be an indication of a vibration problem, which slows drives down a heck of a lot. Remounting it so that it doesn't buzz could improve matters.

Prices probably aren't going to drop much until Q3 or Q4. It looks like the competing chipsets to Intel are going for high price/MB, counting on their performance to move units.

As far as your storage drive goes, anything should normally be fine. I've had good luck with the 1TB Samsung drives. They're nice and quiet, and have very good large-file transfer speeds. They're not as good at multitasking as other drives... if you often use more than one application hitting the drive at once, the WDs will probably be faster.

Malor wrote:

Have you checked to be sure your drive cables are in tight, and that you're in PIO mode?

Wait, I thought PIO mode was bad. Clarify, please.

That buzz you're hearing could also be an indication of a vibration problem, which slows drives down a heck of a lot. Remounting it so that it doesn't buzz could improve matters.

Well, it's not a buzz actually. It's just that the removable HDD rack in my case is touching the frame of the case somewhere and transmitting the sound of the drive when it's seeking. Really, all I need to do is open up the case and adjust some screws, and stick some rubber or foam pads in the right places to get rid of that. It's just annoying.

Well, alright then, these answers are satisfactory. I think I'm going to pull the trigger.

Ok, I've decided to re-join the PC gamer collective, when my tax refund gets here. Below is a rough outline of what I need/want, pick it apart ohhh Great Goodjer Enablers, help me finalize a shopping list for NewEgg.

Will be used for HTPC (mostly stuff like Hulu, and online content) HDMI plus audio to my 42” LCD TV, mid-range gaming (I'm not a graphics whore), Occasional Blu-Ray player. Would like more than a dual core, with 6-8 gigs of RAM (whatever is appropriate for the # cores I get).

Not Needed: Monitor, keyboard, speakers/sound card (need optical out, plus audio over HDMI, I'm toying with the idea of using the optical out to feed my X41's that I use on my 360)

Price range $800 will need a copy of Windows 7 (this doesn't have to be in the budget, I can go higher)

Brands: MoBo: Gigabyte (also like Asus), PSU: Seasonic (heard good things, not locked into them if something better would be cheaper), HDD: Western Digital (don't need a ton of storage, I don't rip dvd's and such 1TB should be plenty, also don't need/want SSD)

CPU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...

HDD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...

Mobo
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...

PSU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...

RAM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...

Vid Card:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...

Case is up to you, I think.

Ultimately that will take you $31 over budget without the case (which could add another $50 to $100 depending on your choice). There's some stuff on there you could downgrade, but that will give you a solid PC and a decent start to your list. If I were you though, I wouldn't downgrade the CPU, the Core i5's are so close in price it's silly just to save $5.

Hey everyone! My first time building a PC, and my first new PC in at least 8 years. Excited .

This is my first foray back into gaming-capable PCs since 2000, so I worked with a friend to put together something in the $700 range that would get my everything I want (pretty minimal, L4D2 and TF2 kind of games, and going to play a lot of the backlog of games I missed over the last few years). I would have prefered something cheaper as, well, I'm a cheap bastard. But I was willing to pay a bit more for components with higher reviews and better anecdotal history from my friends so that it will be as hassle free as I can get it once I put it together. Not planning to overclock, or upgrade anytime soon.

Forgot to check here first, but I'd be happy to hear your thoughts! From what I am hearing in this thread, I have way more than I need. Of course, I'm still thrilled to be building my own PC and I'll be just fine if it's more power than I originally wanted at that price.

Western Digital Caviar Blue WD5000AAKS 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive$55.99

Kingston HyperX 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 Desktop Memory Model KHX8500D2K2/4G$99.99

Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300 Yorkfield 2.5GHz 4MB L2 Cache LGA 775 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor$149.99

RAIDMAX SMILODON Extreme Black ATX-612WEB 1.0mm SECC Steel ATX Mid Tower Foldout MB Computer Case $74.99

ASUS PCE-N13 IEEE 802.11b/g/n PCI Express Wireless Adapter Up to 300Mbps Wireless Data Rates 64-bit/128-bit WEP, TKIP, and AES WI-Fi alliance WPA, WPA2
$39.99

LG Black 22X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 22X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 12X DVD-RAM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM 2MB Cache SATA 22X DVD Burner - Bulk LightScribe Support
$25.99

ASUS P5QL/EPU LGA 775 Intel P43 ATX Intel Motherboard
$79.99

OCZ StealthXStream OCZ700SXS 700W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready Active PFC Power Supply
$84.99

Geforce 9800GT $Free (gift from the friend who helped me put it together, after he upgraded to a new card)

Windows 7 ($104.99)

As the Graphics card has not arrived yet, the rig is not put together and fully operational, but I'm having a blast ordering it and putting it together in general.

NSMike wrote:

edited by TigerBill:
Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB 7200 RPM--$109.99
Intel Core i5-660 Clarkdale 3.33GHz LGA 1156 Dual-Core--$206.99
CORSAIR CMPSU-550VX 550W ATX12V V2.2--$109.99
XFX HD-577A-ZNFC Radeon HD 5770 (Juniper XT) 1GB--$169.99
ASUS P7P55D LGA 1156 Intel P55 ATX Intel Motherboard--$149.99
CORSAIR XMS3 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)--$104.99

Not listed:
LITE-ON Black 4X Blu-ray Disc Reader SATA Model iHOS104-08 ($69.99)
Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-bit OEM ($139.99)

Grand Total $1,041.92

OK, time to trim some fat out, this doesn't even include a case yet. Too bad I really like this build, what about a AMD build?
Also I won't know my final budget till this weekend when I do my taxes, might be a little higher than the $800.

Ah, forgot about an optical drive... I barely use mine anymore thanks to Steam.

And I excluded Win 7 since you said it could be outside of the budget.

Also, is the blu-ray really necessary? If you don't have a blu-ray player, you're still going to have to buy blu-ray player software on top of it. Might be better to just drop down to a good ol' DVD drive and get a standalone blu-ray later, if you really feel the need for one.

If you want some advice on trimming the fat more, you could probably save some cash on the RAM and the mobo. Maybe even on the HDD, as a terabyte is a ton of space. I could only really see the need for a terabyte if you've got a lot of media (music and videos) and maybe a hefty Steam catalog. Otherwise, you could probably go with the 500 GB Jolly Bill used.

My $750 build (w/ shipping & thermal paste) would easily have been $900 if I'd needed to pay for my own graphics card, and I'm lowering the price quite a bit by getting the Core 2 Quad instead of the i5 or i7.

Say you take NSMike's suggestion and lower the BlueRay to DVD burner ($-45) and get the 500GB hard drive ($-55) and go for the OEM System builder pack for Windows 7 instead of Professional ($-35). For some reason my 700W PSU is ($-25) less than your 550W PSU, not sure if Seasonic or Corsair is particularly better than OCZ. Altogether that could potentially save you ($-160) off your dream build there. Still puts you at $880 or so. Beyond that you start to compromise on your CPU/Mobo/Graphics Card/RAM wishes, so I hesitate to look at what you would trade off there, since I'm such a beginner at this. Mostly I'm just doing some math for you

Edit: Forgot there were a couple rebates in there, too. My PSU will only cost $59.99 after rebate. Gets good reviews on Newegg and from my friend, for what it's worth to you. Maybe that makes it more manageable.

Well, I picked top-o-the-line speedy RAM. He could go for the middle ground and get slightly slower, less expensive RAM. The motherboard might have some things he doesn't really need, too, and he could go for a cheaper ASUS alternative, or Gigabyte.

If you really want to drop down, you could try for a Core 2 Duo or Core 2 Quad, but I'd stick with the Core i5, personally.

Grand Total $1,041.92

You can get Windows 7 OEM for cheaper and it works just fine. Do you really need 1TB hard drive? I recently got a 500g for 50 bucks at newegg.

I'm fine with dropping Blu-ray all together, I have a perfectly fine dual layer dvd burner now. I always like getting the pro version of OS's for some reason. The RAM I have no problem dropping down a little. I think I'll stick with the i5; what features did the mobo have you think I might not need (I didn't look too closely at all the specs). If that PSU is of comparable quality I would definitely go for it for future power needs, oh and cheaper price.

Tigerbill wrote:
NSMike wrote:

edited by TigerBill:
Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB 7200 RPM--$109.99
Intel Core i5-660 Clarkdale 3.33GHz LGA 1156 Dual-Core--$206.99
CORSAIR CMPSU-550VX 550W ATX12V V2.2--$109.99
XFX HD-577A-ZNFC Radeon HD 5770 (Juniper XT) 1GB--$169.99
ASUS P7P55D LGA 1156 Intel P55 ATX Intel Motherboard--$149.99
CORSAIR XMS3 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)--$104.99

Not listed:
LITE-ON Black 4X Blu-ray Disc Reader SATA Model iHOS104-08 ($69.99)
Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-bit OEM ($139.99)

Grand Total $1,041.92

OK, time to trim some fat out, this doesn't even include a case yet. Too bad I really like this build, what about a AMD build?
Also I won't know my final budget till this weekend when I do my taxes, might be a little higher than the $800.

The i3 is also an option. Their value for money ratio is very solid, I'm not sure that the socket 1156 i5 are worth the extra. They are the same processor with turbo-boost, otherwise they are largely identical.

Tigerbill wrote:

I think I'll stick with the i5; what features did the mobo have you think I might not need (I didn't look too closely at all the specs).

For example, you could go with this motherboard and lose an IEEE 1394a, and eSATA port, neither of which you're likely to need. In all honesty, that's probably the motherboard I should've linked you to in the first place.

If you want to get even slimmer you could go down to this Gigabyte, since you seem to like their brand. I have no experience with them, but I like and use Asus myself. It's not too different than the Asus, though, just a few less frills and another $20 cheaper.

Don't have any experience with Gigabyte, just wanted to try them.

What about this build? (Just some random crap I threw together)

GIGABYTE GA-MA785G-UD3H AM3/AM2+/AM2 AMD 785G HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail—($89.99)

AMD Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition Deneb 3.0GHz Socket AM2+ 125W Quad-Core Processor Model HDZ940XCJ4DGI - OEM—($140.00)

CORSAIR XMS3 8GB (4 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Model CMX8GX3M4A1600C9 - Retail—($274.99)

CORSAIR CMPSU-650TX 650W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC- Retail—($99.99)

SAPPHIRE 100283L Radeon HD 5770 (Juniper XT) 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready- Retail—($169.99)

Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive—($99.99)

Total $874.95

Not sure how the Phenom II's compare to an i5. I prefer Intel's but I'm not opposed to trying an AMD.

Still missing Case & OS (which I'm sure you know), but looks fine to my uneducated eye

I take it by the lack of commenting that my build is... good?

Jolly Bill wrote:

I take it by the lack of commenting that my build is... good?

Does it work and play the games you want? If so, it's good! It's that simple, really.

I don't see anything there of particularly dubious quality. The only thing that makes me pause is the OCZ PSU, because I know zip about their PSUs. That doesn't mean it's bad, though, just means I don't know. I don't think the OCZ is a good idea generally because it's not single-rail.

I do know and trust Corsair, and the one I linked is single-rail. And the Corsair you picked, Tigerbill, in that build of yours is the same one I'm using right now.

Tigerbill wrote:

Not sure how the Phenom II's compare to an i5. I prefer Intel's but I'm not opposed to trying an AMD.

My current Core i7 is my first Intel build in about a decade. AMD makes good stuff.

Here is a benchmark comparison of the two I found (unfortunately it compares it to the quad core... Can't find much about the dual core I recommended originally). Don't know what that will tell you, but for me, it basically means either will work, and if the AMD will save you some cash, it's not like you'll regret going for it.

Hey GWJers,

I'm attempting to build a new PC to replace my 5-year old, out-of-the-box Dell machine.

I've never built a PC before, but I've come into a little graduation money and am looking at between $900-$1,000 to spend. Because this is my first time, I want to make sure that I'm fully equipped to handle this project -- because I'm tired of getting package "deals" from Dell, HP and the like. This is a little pet project that I want to get right first time.

The PC would be used for gaming -- games like ME2, for example -- (but I don't mind if it doesn't run games better than ANYTHING out there on the market) and plenty of multitasking without the slow down. My current desktop takes about three days to open Microsoft Word and about four days to open iTunes. I'd also like to be able to do video-captures and editing down the line.

Based on my bumbling research, this is what I've come up with.

Case: Antec Twelve Hundred or HAF 932
Motherboard: ASUS P7P55D PRO LGA 1156 Intel P55 ATX Intel Motherboard
CPU: Intel Core i5-750
RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB
HDD: Samsung or SeaGate
PSU: Antec TruePower New TP-750 Blue 750W
Video Card: XFX HD-485X-ZDFC Radeon but I am very open to other suggestions =)
Monitor: No idea where to start, but was thinking this: ASUS VH226H Black 21.5" 2ms HDMI Widescreen

If anyone can improve upon it, I'd love to see your ideas and opinions.

Bare in mind I've never built a PC before! No idea how the assembly, etc will go, so be gentle!

Thanks in advance =)

Bleak Harvest wrote:

PC Build

Once again... Get a single-rail PSU. You may not realize it now but you'll be grateful. The one you picked has four rails. That means a lot of juggling of power management that you have to figure out. I've been building PCs for... 15 years? That's something that scares even me. Single rail takes all of the guess work out of it. It's also less failure points.

Also, I'd watch out for open-box stuff. I believe you're covered for 30 days and that's it. I don't know about how the MFG's warranty would cover you, but it's a risk that I would personally pay more to avoid.

Building an HTPC isn't like building a gaming machine... you're trying to get decent CPU and very solid video decoding, while focusing with laser intensity on keeping total power requirements down, and buying excellent fans and a good case to keep it as silent as possible.

You might want a Micro-ATX case and motherboard. Less expandability, but it's a lot smaller, and you can get nice horizontal cases that fit well into a rack. You'll often be somewhat power-constrained in those small cases, so you have to shop smart. Silverstone makes some full-ATX cases that use a riser card to turn the cards horizontal, so that you can fit into a much more rack-ish form factor. They also look dynamite. But they're fairly expensive.

Make sure your 5770 has an HDMI out -- that's pretty convenient for HTPCs.

Overall, Phenom IIs are about equivalent to the Core 2 Quads. They are, however, very hot parts that take a lot of juice, which means it takes significant cooling to keep them happy... which means noise. Noise is death in an HTPC. You'll probably want to drop back to dual-core, and you want to try to find a chip with as low a TDP (Thermal Design Power) as you can, within a reasonable performance level. You usually want at least 2.4Ghz for HD decoding, although the newer graphic cards are offloading a lot of the work now.

They're fairly expensive, but if you really do want the quad cores, Intel has some Core 2 Quads that run 2.6Ghz at an 85W TDP, which is extremely good power efficiency. They'll be much quieter in your entertainment center. But those things are quite costly, because they're not high-volume items, and they're very hard to make.

Jolly Bill wrote:

I take it by the lack of commenting that my build is... good?

It's ok, taking into account NSMike's very wise comments.

But I would be hesitant to buy a DDR2 based system now. DDR3 is becoming cheaper, DDR2 will only become more expensive if you need to expand, and the Core i3 is a good performer at a great price. You don't get a quad core option, but that's not really a loss in most situation.

If you are on a really tight budget then the AMD Socket AM3 chips come in many tasty flavours and are a little more future proof.

Basically: don't rush into an HTPC without significant thinking time. It takes real attention to do one well. Usually, you're building for noise level first, and then squeezing as much performance in as you can manage on your budget. Your case, power supply, CPU cooler, and fans will be substantially more expensive than normal, leaving less room for your remaining parts. And a low-TDP processor is usually quite a bit more expensive, if you want it to run at a normal desktop speed.

You can build a very nice regular PC for $800ish, but it'll usually cost at least $1K for a quality machine for the family room. And I wouldn't be a tiny bit surprised by hitting $1250 when all was said and done. Making a computer both fast and quiet is pricey.