Building my own PC

So after my laptop died I want to build my own PC. I’ve wanted to for some time, mostly for the experience (as one site said it, it’s a rite of passage for geeks). Now, I’ve found countless guides on HOW to build it, but finding what parts has been a bit harder.

So, after some research, I’ve come up with some parts I think are good. But I’d very much like some feedback and suggestions if you got them.

• CPU: Intel Core i7-960
• Motherboard: ASUS Rampage III Extreme
• Graphics card: EVGA Ge Force GTX 550Ti
• RAM: Corsair Dominator DHX DDR 3 1600MHz 8GB
• Hard drive: Seagate Barracuda® 7200.12 1TB
• Disk drive: Plextor DVD±RW Writer PX-L 890 SA
• Case: Cooler Master CM 690 II Advanced
• PSU: Cooler Master Silent Pro M700 700W

What I’m mostly concerned about is the power supply. It says the graphics card should have a 400W power supply, but I take it I need to power everything else too. How much wattage do I need?

Also, do I need to buy a CPU fan, or is the one in the box enough for now? I’m not planning on overclocking right now. Maybe I’ll do it later, but I’ll buy extra cooling then.

The PSU will get stretched.

I'd have gone on a different way, mostly because AMD and ATI give you more bang for your buck. AMD's six core machines are positively scary.

Motherboard: AMD Gigabyte 880ga ud3h Processor: AMD PHENOM II X6 1100T GPU: ATI ASUS HD 6870 PCX DDR 5 HDMI-2 DPORT HDD: SATA 3 SEAGATE 7200 64MB BARRACUDA XT 2 TB RAM: 8 GB ( 2X4 GB) DDR 3 2000 PATRIOT EXTREME VIPER PSU: 800W XILENCE. Cooling: AC FREEZER XTREME

Pick a gaming case of your liking (better case fans) and a Blu Ray writer if you can afford it.

edited 25th Sep '11 3:21:26 PM by SavageHeathen

Really, you'd go AMD? Intel's architecture has ensured AMD gets raped in every performance test I've seen for the past few years, there's a reason all their stuff is cheaper. But then again, I haven't looked into computer stuff for quite some time.

I'm not quite sure what to say, there's a definite "price point" for any and all computer components, beyond which prices start rising rapidly for small gains in performance. My strategy for buying computers involves finding something on the cusp of those price points. Which it appears you've done.

Thoughts:

• You may well need a bigger power supply. 700W probably works for what you have, but you've backed yourself in a corner as far as upgrades. A power supply is one of those things you could conceivably not have to upgrade for much longer than any other component, might as well splurge.

• Similarly the case, if you get a nice one, you won't have to change.

• You're probably going to need more fans than your case comes with. And I mean "need" as in "it'll make your other components last longer."

• The harddrive is going to be the bottleneck. Not quite sure of a good solution for this, since SSD's are still notoriously unreliable and sufficient RAID is prohibitively expensive. That said, I might still look at an SSD. Perhaps this for booting and frequently used data- just make sure to down the pagefile size, since the computer automatically mirrors however much RAM you have for pagefile use (and 8 GB is a lot of space to waste on a 64 GB SSD).

• Newegg. Have yet to find somewhere that beats their component prices, and have yet to be dissatisfied with their customer service.

edited 26th Sep '11 1:30:44 PM by deathjavu

I'd favour AMD over Intel as well, just based on personal experience. It's always seemed faster in practice to me, and in the benchmarks, Intel doesn't seem to hold that huge of a lead if my memory serves. Also, whoever has the best overall chip, usually seems to have worse performance per dollar.

As for the PSU, I'd always recommend getting a better PSU than you think you'll need because that overhead is nice.

We're talking about a monster of a processor here: Six 64-bit cores, running at 3,7 ghz out of the box. It has a sizable cache memory. With a decent board, the CPU wouldn't be a bottleneck.

When it comes to RAM, get inexpensive FAST ones. Test them extensively: If they survive the long memtest, they're golden. If not, get'em swapped for new ones (there's warranty). DDR 3 2000 CL 7 is the target.

I got an NVIDIA GTX 460, and I've grown to regret it bitterly, especially when it comes to Linux drivers and its broken (for several releases straight) vsync. NVIDIA's got a large number of crude hacks going on their drivers, and sometimes it shows. Things often clip when they shouldn't, too. Due to the general weirdness of my card's performance, I'm going to recommend you go ATI.

edited 26th Sep '11 2:50:31 PM by SavageHeathen

Yeah, my past experience says ATI is the way to go. if you need raw numbers, try GPU Review.com

edited 26th Sep '11 2:37:32 PM by Balmung

To be honest, I'd give upcoming AMD Bulldozer a chance. It's FX-8150 model to be exact IIRC. Really, unless you're doing some complex, CPU heavy stuff on your PC most of the time, you won't really need all that performance that Intel offers. AMD is good enough for gaming and some minor projects (video editing and what not) and for money you'll save, you could get GTX 580 and maybe better PSU if you're worried about power.

An SSD drive won't speed up texture streaming that much: After all, you won't be able to keep many games installed on one. I'd favor scapping the SSD idea entirely.

Get a SATA 3 HDD, and just make sure to enable ACPI and AHCI in the BIOS before installing Windows and Linux: On IDE mode, Sata 3 HD Ds are a bottleneck. With AHCI enabled, their performance grows significantly (The Windows Benchmarks will grade your machine from 5,x to 6,x if you make sure you get a SATA 3 drive on AHCI mode.

edited 26th Sep '11 2:50:08 PM by SavageHeathen

I did say put the OS on the SSD, didn't I? It cuts boot times to a fraction and all the background loading/tasts are much, much faster. No, it doesn't help as much for games since it doesn't have the storage space, but it keeps everything else running faster in the background. The obvious idea is to put the most frequently used programs on it- open office/office, chrome/firefox, and all smaller saved files. Even that leaves you with about 30 GB of SSD space.

The code problems encountered when running a Linux OS with an Nvidia graphics card doesn't strike me as something most people would worry about, I've certainly never had any problems with my Nvidia 260 GTX 216. The main reason I'd recommend Nvidia over ATI is that SLI is still vastly superior to Crossfire *

The other thing to consider besides price points is how long the component will last- how long can you keep the system or component before it becomes obsolete. That's the factor that leads me to recommend Intel i7's over AMD, they're just better processors in every test I've seen. Same with Nvidia, at some point it'll be a much cheaper, easier and probably give a larger performance upgrade to plonk in a matching graphics card in SLI, rather than buying a new one.

Oh, and this should go without saying, but make sure all your components are compatible- mostly this involves checking the motherboard specs. There's a lot of weird shit that can be incompatible.

edited 26th Sep '11 3:30:59 PM by deathjavu

Huh, last I checked ATI outperformed nvidia and was cheaper. I don't think there's that much difference between crossfire ans SLI any more.

As for the AMD vs Intel thing, I could still get passable performance out of an Athlon 64 x2 4200+ for most things as recently as last year, and that was a four year old mid range chip. I'm not sure what my point is, really, but I don't think that you'd be replacing that AMD chip any sooner than the i7. My experience with the i series has been underwhelming compared to the hype.

Put your 8 GB of RAM in two 4GB units, don't clog up all your 4 slots with 2 GB sticks. That way you can upgrade to 16 in the future.

Make sure your case has got a card reader integrated into the front panel: Overall, slots saved on your motherboard are A Good Thing.

I can't in due conscience recommend NVIDIA cards after my last card's individual weirdness: Gotta give this gen of cards to ATI.

edited 27th Sep '11 8:28:33 AM by SavageHeathen

I'd recommend the same on the RAM, except I sometimes get confused with "kits" and whether or not you have to have a full compatible kit to add more RAM. They certainly make it look that way, but it would be in their best interests to confuse the issue.

And my suggestion is, consider noise. I've seen the cooler that comes with a CPU by default referred to as the "stock cooler", that should help with finding information about this one.

Here's a related question (because, hey, we all have our dream machines that we grudgingly compromise with fiscal realities) - is the 8 gigs of RAM really all that necessary? The data that I've seen so far has shown that beyond 3 or 4 gigs, performance increases for single-task anything are essentially negligible. So, is this a case of anticipating multitasking needs, or anticipating potential growth in future RAM demands from software?

It just seems like, to me, a good place to save a few bucks that you could put into other components or just not spend at all, if there's not a very noticeable performance jump from four gigs to six or eight.

It'll only help single applications if they're 64-bit or support extended addresses, but it does wonders for multitasking 32-bit applications. Since I upgraded my laptop from 4 gigs to 8, multitasking really isn't ever an issue since I have so much RAM to throw at the issue. For instance, I can play Sins Of A Solar Empire unhindered without closing Chrome or my bajillion tabs.

Remember, Windows 7 still takes up the better part of a gig of RAM and add in various other processes like security software, and that's a fair chunk of RAM unavailable right there.

Also, RAM really isn't that pricey usually and is generally one of the best upgrades you can do.

edited 27th Sep '11 9:35:28 AM by Balmung

Nope. Entirely dependent on the motherboard, and 4, 6, 8 and 12 slot motherboards are much more common than, say, 3 slot motherboards.

Also no, the reason some people come to this conclusion is that Windows XP is incapable of recognizing more than 4 GB of RAM. Any later systems, however, can and will utilize the RAM- and W7 and Vista both hog an entire GB of RAM just running in the background, and complex games can take another 2 or 3 GB easily. More RAM= more multitasking, and besides- at this point you won't spend much upgrading from 4 to 8 GB, since 8 GB is around the "price point" right now.

Well, XP x64 (actually a repackaged version of Windows Server 2003 x64) does recognize 4+ gigs. Point is, there is a version of Windows XP that can recognize that much RAM, though driver support is rather lacking for it. You need the 64-bit version of Vista/7/Linux to use more than 4 GB with any of those, as well.

edited 27th Sep '11 11:13:49 AM by Balmung

Huh, really? I thought all editions of Vista/W7 had native support for more than 4 GB, but I guess if it's only the 64-bit editions...that's pretty stupid actually.

I thought there was a version of XP that was 64-bit, I just couldn't remember what it was. I then assumed I was just confused and there was no such edition. <_<

It's not stupid, it's that 32 bits can't address more than 4 GB.

It's stupid that they're still selling 32-bit editions.

Every processor nowadays is a 64-bit processor.

True, but the 32 bit versions take up less RAM and have spport for 16-bit applications which people evidently still use. Also, netbooks have no use for x64 OSs.

edited 27th Sep '11 11:44:26 AM by Balmung

Let's see:

• Do not get a bigger PSU, 700W is PLENTY for that. Do, however, get a better PSU; Cooler Master is not HORRIBLE but there definitely are more reliable PS Us out there. Corsair and Antec are very good (though Corsair is overpriced); also go look up Jonnyguru for PSU reviews.
  • Also, PSU calculator: http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp
• Are you going to use this computer mainly for gaming? If so, spend less on the CPU and more on the GPU. An i7 is much more powerful than a 550 Ti.
• Similarly, once you're spending enough for an i7 and a Rampage III, also get an SSD because mechanical harddrives are quite slow.
• Finally, unless you have some concrete reason to need 8 GB of RAM, 4 GB should be entirely fine.

Sorry about the late reply, been busy at work.

I want 8 Gigs of RAM because I somtimes use 3D software and do video editing. I remember working in After Effects with 2 Gig RAM and it was painfully slow at times.

I was thinking about using a SSD instead of a normal hard drive, but the size put me off it. But I might try using one in combination with a normal drive.

I thought we had a generic thread for this, but I guess not. Reviving this one instead as a generic one.

Essentially I'm in a bit of a pickle. I can build a pretty good PC right now. 8 gigs of ram, good video card, the whole nine yards. the problem is that the new consoles are going to be released in like a year and probably be damn near the exact same specs.

So yes, I can upgrade a PC, I can mod the games and I can do a dozen other things with it but if I'm primarily getting it for gaming and I can get the exact same machine for a third the cost, why buy a PC?

The generic thread is The Computer Thread.

And there are, as you mentioned, mods, it can do loads more than a console, you have a keyboard, you don't have to use a gamepad, you have a mouse, strategy games exist and shooters don't suck (both natural results of being free of the tyranny of gamepads), you can emulate shit. I could go on, but seriously, all of those should put a computer head and shoulders above whatever the PS 4 and nextBawks offer.

Oh, and you can play current generation games with about the same graphics the next gen games will have because the graphics aren't held back by the now rather anemic cards in the xBawks 360 and PS 3.

edited 22nd Mar '13 7:19:54 PM by Balmung