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Glibmute
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re: New Computer

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VERY late last night a few fellow Saints were kind enough to help me in getting a better idea for parts and whatnot for a new computer that I hope to purchase in a month or two (gotta save another couple hundred bucks). They suggested that a few other folks might have some valuable input, so I'm putting down the results of my morning research and opening it up for comments.

Case: CoolerMaster 690 II - 79.99
CPU: AMD PhenomII X6 1100T - 229.99
Motherboard: GigaByte GA-870A-UD3 AMD 870/5850 chipset - 104.99
Memory: 8GB DDR3 1600MHZ Kingston Hyper-X - 79.99 to 99.99
Video Card: AMD Radeon HD 6950 2gb - 274.99
Power Supply: Cooler Master Silent Pro M700RS-700w - 89.99
HD: 2TB SATA-III 6.0 GB/S 119.99
Drive: Samsung SH-B123L Blue Ray + DvDr/rw - 64.99
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate - 0-10 bucks through work

I was thinking of having a SSD drive to boot/play games off of, but think I will wait for the price to drop and/or size to increase. I'm getting the faster HD instead. Was debating two cheaper video cards instead of one hefty one, decided on the latter since the price is comparable, and leaves the option of dropping in a second hefty one later to extend the lifetime of the rig. Went with a power supply from the manufacturer of the case to make sure there are no compatibility issues.

After shipping the parts and the mail-in rebates it comes out between 1000 and 1100 bucks, which is 400 bucks under budget.

Are there any compatibility conflicts I missed? Any poor choices? PARTS I missed? For example, do I need a CPU cooler if I'm not going to overclock? Is there an ethernet port on the motherboard or do I buy and install that seperately? USB ports?


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Chantalina
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The motherboard has the ethernet port should be a 10/100/1000. For that cpu the cooler that is the stock unit should suffice for normal use but if you plan to overclock then you might look into a 3rd party cooler with either a large capacity copper tube heatsink or a liquid cooled unit. I have a large capacity copper tube unit on my box and have no overheat issues with overclocking but some people won't touch overclocking without liquid cooling. The 1100t runs so cool anyways that unless youare overclocking up to the top of the scale you could even do it with the stock heatsink and fan setup.
The only thing I would change is the power supply. I am a fan of the manufacturers who offer a lifetime warranty because when I have ever had an issue with anything going bad in any of the pc's I have built it has been with the power supplies. Any of the mfg's top end units are technically good enough to do what you need, but only a few offer the lifetime warranty and you have to figure you will proabably replace one smoetime during your new PC's lifetime. I have had some hard drives fail in my pc's but not that often. Power supplies are another story. so over the last 3 pc's I have built I have gone only with one that comes with the lifetime warranty. I got tired of spending the money on them.My preferred mfg is Ultra but there are some others. The Ultra units are more reasonably priced though.

Food for thought. You have mentioned you are looking at a 2 terrabyte drive. I had a conversaiton with one of our former members, player named Deadkat who our Kat's Tradeskill Korner is named after. Kat left this world way too early but I remember this conversation had developed around some tech issues I was having and he told me this: Whit hard drives, being a mechanical device and having phiysical limitations, there is a performance peak that must be considered. He said that although mfg's can build them to hold huge amounts of data like at the time 1 TB, the issue of peak performance takes shape at about 500MB. The reason he said is simple. The size of the disc can only be made to be so large based on the 3.5" design. Once you start cramming so much data onto the discs they become less reliable performance wise. There is a great chance of losing data due to having som many sectors crammed in a limited physical space. He felt that based on bench mark tests he thought that anything over 500MB was pushing it and opening yourself up to problems. He always recommended using mutliple drives to solve the space use problem. Since that conversation I have kept my drive purchases under the 500 MB theory and have had no issues with data loss or indexing issues. I keep them defrageed and don't try to go so big that it is overkill. Especially when I probably won't use that much space to run programs. I have yet to fill a 400gb drive with anything I have and I run 2 businesses on mine and play warcraft and rift.. Just food for thought but if I were you I would do some research on hard drive benchmarks to see if technology has advanced past Kat's theories to benefit buying a 2TB drive.

I will be happy to help you with anything you need when it comes to getting your new PC built and set up.


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Chantalina
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re: New Computer

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not sure why I can't edit my own posts here. But I tried to correct spelling a bit and couldn't. Might be a permission issue that needs adjusting. We should have edit ability to our own posts.

Also I would assume some of our other Saints will have other opnions on this subject. My statements are based on my experiences although I may disagree with their choices I would have to say their opinions are just as valid and should be looked at with much consideraton.


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Peneloperose
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I don't see an option to allow me to give people that ability Chant, sorry. If someone knows how, please let me know.


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Gerhart STC
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I have built my own computer and helped Penny pick parts for hers. Currently she is running the AMD 1055. I think the power supply you have is a little small, and I agree with Chant's analysis of the manufacturer. It would be my preference to move to 800 or 850W because of the draw of video cards. I have a 650W which recently had trouble with a video card because of the available number of pins and volatage requirements. If you want a power supply that you do not need to upgrade as quickly, go with a little bigger.

I have read that one single video card is better than two. While you can "trick" out your computer with two, getting one better video card seems to be more sensible.

As for hard drives, I think 1 TB max for some of the same reasons Chant already stated. Penny is running a 120G SSD drive for booting and it loads quicker than my computer (mine is older). She is quite happy with how it runs.

Here are Penny's components:
Thermaltake Armor A90 Gaming Mid-Tower Chassis With Cable Management Water Cooling SSD Support And Tool-Less Installation VL90001W2Z

ASRock 870 EXTREME3 AM3 AMD 870 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard

CORSAIR HX Series CMPSU-750HX 750W ATX12V 2.3 / EPS12V 2.91 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS SILVER Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply

AMD Phenom II X6 1055T Thuban 2.8GHz Socket AM3 125W Six-Core Desktop Processor HDT55TFBGRBOX

OCZ Vertex 2 OCZSSD3-2VTX120G 3.5" 120GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

G.SKILL Flare 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1800 (PC3 14400) Desktop Memory Model F3-14400CL9D-4GBFLS L

LITE-ON 24X DVD Writer Black SATA Model iHAS-324-98B

MSI R5870 Lightning II Radeon HD 5870 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card

Feel free to ask any questions.
Chantalina
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re: New Computer

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looks like when Frad set it up the ability to edit, delete, or vote in polls is not available. I have no issue with vote or delete but edit ability should be always availabel to the poster in all forums.


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Lightmy...fire

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re: New Computer

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My suggestions:

Look at a larger power supply. This is what I have in my system.. it's a bit pricy, but a power supply can last for years and it's nice to have the extra wattage as a buffer.

Consider a CPU cooler depending on where your system is set up. You can do without one if you have a number of good case fans, an unenclosed area for your tower and a room that's not too warm.

I agree with Gerhart about one video card being superior to two. Cheaper, no performance loss, and it's a huge pain to cram two cards into a midtower case.

You didn't specify hard drives specs but spring for one at least 10000RPM if you're not going solid state.

My only additions would be a good sound card (if you have a speaker system for your PC) and a large monitor (if you don't already have one).


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Lachdaon
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re: New Computer

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This is my Item list for the Computers I just built.
All Items came from NewEgg and I waited until all were discounted without Mail In Rebates.
I tend to agree with the earlier posts No reason for a giant 7200 HDD they just store more data that has to be sorted through.
I personally just bought another XFX HD 4850ZNFc and 4GB same Ram and I crossfired them with marginal FPS gains. So I think one good Card is better than 2. I really got a good deal on Case ans Power Supply combo but I would have liked the Ultra Lifetime Warranty better but NewEgg doesnt cary them so I setteled for the not so great CM700w.
On the Main Board if you think you are going to SLIC or Crossfite later on I might select a Board that has 2 PCIE X16 Slots instead of 1 16X and 1 2x.
But I built on a budget I had a 500Gb WD Blue Hdd and I started building on that I think I had about $650.00 in my original build. It is very stable and runs WOW like a breeze very happy with the machine especially for the money. Chant posted his opinion earlier and I want to thank him for all his guidance during my build process. Chant is very proficient in selecting components and building a computer.

3 Kingston HyperX 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
$149.97
($49.99 ea)
3 COOLER MASTER eXtreme Power Plus RS700-PCAAE3-US 700W ATX 12V v2.3 Active PFC Power Supply
$254.97
($84.99 ea)
3 Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit 1-Pack for System Builders - OEM
Item #: N82E16832116754
$299.97
($99.99 ea)
2 Western Digital Caviar Blue WD3200AAJS 320GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
$89.98($44.99 ea)
3 Sony Optiarc CD/DVD Burner Black SATA Model AD-7260S-0B - OEM
Item #: N82E16827118039
$53.97
($17.99 ea) 3 AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Deneb 3.2GHz Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor HDZ955FBGMBOX
Item #: N82E16819103808
$419.97
($139.99 ea)
3 GIGABYTE GA-870A-UD3 AM3 AMD 870 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard
Item #: N82E16813128443
$314.97
($104.99 ea)
1 XFX HD-485X-ZNFC Radeon HD 4850 1GB 256-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card
Item #: N82E16814150482
VGA Replacement Only Return Policy
$89.99
3 COOLER MASTER HAF 922 RC-922M-KKN1-GP Black Steel + Plastic and Mesh Bezel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
Item #: N82E16811119197
Standard Return Policy
$329.94($109.98 ea)
Subtotal $1,793.73
Tax $0.00


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Jethaya
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re: New Computer

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i look at all your builds all very nice machines but is there a reason no one goes for intel cpu's

i am not looking to start the old cpu war i am just wandering

i always used intel cpu and honestly i think i choosed intel last time by force of habbit


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Franky

Intel is the winner performance wise, but at a huge price premium. AMD isn't that much of a performance loss over Intel, but their processors are considerably cheaper.


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Chantalina
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ya...big thing is price but there are a few things with perfomrance also. If one wants to overclock there are certain setups that actually allow the AMD systems to outperform the Intel Systems. Not necessarily due to the processors but mainly due to the boards availiable to the Intel Chips. Also the i7 is the only intel chip that is worthy of gaming use that can compete with the AMD Phenom in terms of performance and they actually outperform them a bit in speed, but the idea is are you willing to pay almost $235.00 more per frame rate gain when playing WoW because that is where the benchmark tests lay things out. Think of it this way: If you gain 10 frames per second that means that the frame rate cost per frame drops to 23.50 but if the gain is from 50fps to 60fps do you really see that change from the human eye anyway. Impossible. The human eye loses the frame rate change at about 23fps so the fps gain issue makes the cost of going with Intel chips prohibitive. The cost issue makes anyone building a PC more likely to go with AMD. The boards offered for the AMD chips are also a bit more gaming oriented since their market push for the past 4 or 5 years has been in gaming. Intel is still the best choice for intense task oriented computing such as for developers, heavy graphics design, and workstation use due to their speed out of the box and the hyperthreading capabilities that lend to those types of applications, but for gaming AMD offers a highly competitive option.


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Glibmute
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I had always used intel, and it was actually my first instinct. The main reason for that, though, is that Intel processors, at least around here, have a better reputation for handling massive computations more quickly. I switched up because most of the work I do at home now has more to do with presentations, document and video editing, and writing. I use the university computers for anything that's particularly computationally taxing because the gear here is optimized for that and I just don't have that many tasks that demand it anymore.


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Peneloperose
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re: New Computer

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I think I fixed the problem with being able to edit your own posts in this forum.


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Chantalina
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Aye. My edit button is now available.


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Peneloperose
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Yay! I did it!


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