New PC build (Sub 800 USD) Discussion

[Zachstar]

Hello everyone!

I had decided to get my first build idea refined on some of the more dedicated PC forums but before I went and got another forum account I have to keep track of. I would rather just try my luck here first.

I have a 22 inch Widescreen LCD that works well so I do not want to replace it.

My current PC specs

Base model: Gateway 500GR
CPU: Intel 3.2GHz with HT enabled
Ram: 1.5GB up from .5 base (huge improvement)
Video: Nvidia 7300Gt up from Ati X300 (HUGE improvement)

This PC was built I hear in 2004 I got it in 2006 and it has worked well till about this summer when I knew it just was not going to be able to keep up without hundreds of dollars of upgrades and even then it would need more next year.

For my next PC I am investing alot of money for several reasons.

#1 Quad core is here to stay. Games are only just starting to take advantage of it now and it is the ONLY way I have a snowballs chance in hell at making it "Future resistant" for about 2 years.

#2 It is going to do a number of things. Starting with games then moving to Games/DVR then Games/DVR/College work at the same time.

So my budget is 800USD with options for up to 400 USD worth of parts afterward starting about next year. Mid life upgrade at late 2009 is planned for 400USD worth of replacements.

I will divide this into 3 parts (Must Have, Want, Thinking about)

Must Have

This one is simple. I want an AMD quad core. So I picked a combo deal that saves me ALOT of money on a PSU http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103249

The main reason I want AMD is overclocking. I hear this CPU can go upwards of 3.2 on air! Tho I will not try that until I do LOTS of research into air cooling (Water cooling looks to be an expensive task that does not always guarntee sucess)

I am hearing lots of wonderful things about the Core i7 yet I hear that a 1000 dollar PC will be about minimum it can effectively use on just 2 cores. So I think I will wait 2 years and let it mature.

Also Must have is Windows Vista Premium http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16832116485 Yes I Frakking HATE vista. Yet getting XP back will be expensive and I need the Media Center. Also I have to have DX10 if I plan to play the next 2 years of games effectively. I am considering a dualboot with Mythbuntu http://www.mythbuntu.org/ but the recent virtual demise of OpenGL means I will be badly limited in what I can do with it. As I will NOT be installing Wine.

The PC after that will use Windows 7 or Ubuntu if M$ decides to port DX10 to Linux.

--------------

Wants

The big one here is the Mobo. As I WANT effective onboard graphics and I want energy efficiency.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128352

The main reason is the Hybrid platform. Which will easily make up for the 125W CPU by shutting down the core of the Card when you are on the net or doing small amounts of work.

For memory I am looking at this EDIT: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231166 with 2GB per stick it leaves me room to add in more later (I will likely go to 8-16 during the MLU) Tho I am quite open to your thoughts on this.

--------

Thinking about

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811147096 ok this case is just that, a case. I am not looking for anything crazy and I dont want 50 USD going into a case unless there is a DAMN good reason. Because the extra room in budget can be spent on a cooler.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16827151173 It reads and writes DVD-Rs and has not had its DL writing ability trashed by Starforce yet in my view. What more can you ask for at 30 bucks?


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16827136133 This is leaning towards the MLU catagory mainly because from what I can tell... Getting 7.1 audio out of a PC is a HUGE problem because of copy protection. Also I am afraid of what kind of processes it will add. I am likely much better off getting a PS3 or a dedicated Blu-ray player. Yet please discuss this!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136151 Ok obviously I will need a hard drive. And I really want 1tb but I really need some words on this one.

For video card. Well it will be AMD ATI obviously and in the 150 dollar range. So ideas? With the chipset on that mobo I get 180 percent performance.

Thanks for discussion and ideas!

[SUBMAN1]

First thing that comes to mind - get a 9950, not the 9850. 9950 should run you about $170.

-S

[Zachstar]

Originally Posted by SUBMAN1

First thing that comes to mind - get a 9950, not the 9850. 9950 should run you about $170.

-S

There seems to be a combo on that but I am hearing about heating issues. Of course there will be lots of heat with 125W but from what I am hearing.. even at base speed it will need a damn good cooler.

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by Zachstar

There seems to be a combo on that but I am hearing about heating issues. Of course there will be lots of heat with 125W but from what I am hearing.. even at base speed it will need a damn good cooler.

Even though you don't like me, I'll help you anyway here. The 9950 goes to 140 Watts, but in reality, it uses less power than the 9850 under load on both. What you must be careful of is that the motherboard you buy doesn't use 3 cent power transformers and say they are rated to 140 Watts. This is actually more a case with a 9850 than a 9950 however since these parts are more commonly found boards that don't support the 9950. Any board that naively supports the 9950 you will not have a problem with. Look for a newer product that starts out life with 9950 support and you are good to go.

-S

[SUBMAN1]

This article has a lot of info on what to look for and what not to look for I think. That is if its the article I read on the subject a while back:

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...oc.aspx?i=3344

-S

[Zachstar]

Originally Posted by SUBMAN1

Even though you don't like me, I'll help you anyway here. The 9950 goes to 140 Watts, but in reality, it uses less power than the 9850 under load on both. What you must be careful of is that the motherboard you buy doesn't use 3 cent power transformers and say they are rated to 140 Watts. This is actually more a case with a 9850 than a 9950 however since these parts are more commonly found boards that don't support the 9950. Any board that naively supports the 9950 you will not have a problem with. Look for a newer product that starts out life with 9950 support and you are good to go.

-S

You are not trying to deceive me so what goes on outside of this topic stays outside.

Anyway, From what I can tell the 9950 is 125W http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103291 and the mobo is new http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128352 yet I am NOT an expert at this so please tell me if 125W is going to burn this board out..

[SUBMAN1]

Check the board. I think that board is mentioned in the article.

[Zachstar]

Thanks for the info. Seems that my best bet tho is to stick with what I have.

The thing that is confusing me tho is I am hearing 2 different things. One says that you can coax only 100mhz more and one that says 3.2 Ghz is easy.

AMD CPUs are hot. I know that. Yet what is the deal? I am paying for black edition for the future OC ability.

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by Zachstar

Thanks for the info. Seems that my best bet tho is to stick with what I have.

The thing that is confusing me tho is I am hearing 2 different things. One says that you can coax only 100mhz more and one that says 3.2 Ghz is easy.

AMD CPUs are hot. I know that. Yet what is the deal? I am paying for black edition for the future OC ability.

The 9950 is where its at. I've heard of problems with 9850's and turning off Cool and Quiet. That is because of the 3 cent parts.

The black - not so much a fan myself of overclocking anything. I used to, but CPU's are so fast these days, it really doesn't matter. Back in the day where 100 Mhz was fast, there was something to be gained. These days, not so much.

-S

[Zachstar]

Originally Posted by SUBMAN1

The 9950 is where its at. I've heard of problems with 9850's and turning off Cool and Quiet. That is because of the 3 cent parts.

The black - not so much a fan myself of overclocking anything. I used to, but CPU's are so fast these days, it really doesn't matter. Back in the day where 100 Mhz was fast, there was something to be gained. These days, not so much.

-S

Seems the black edition has much more value in my view. The normal versions just do not seem much cheaper.

I want C&C to be enabled. There is no way I can keep the computer on if it is sucking a hell of alot of watts. This is important for more than a few reasons but one of them being I do not trust the ability for the wiring in the house to handle almost a KW out of one socket. Cost of each KW hour and I want to go partial solar once solar plastic makes it to mainstream market.

From what I hear C&C is finicky but it is like the kernel command that activates automatically when you load a linux distro that takes the CPU to 100mhz when idle. Basically just enough to keep the clock ticking and the connections humming.

It scares me that it seems to be causing problems in high load situations but atleast the situations do not seem to be gaming as much.

Also it seems these cpus may have been out for some time and thus the mobo may be able to compensate somewhat with new firmware in my view.

It is scary but not enough to drive me to Intel.

[Zachstar]

For the CPU core for now I am going to just defer that because it seems to require more research on my part and I would like views on the other parts.

For instance. Where is it at on hard drives?

[Hylander_1314]

There's a lot to consider here. If you plan on going with Vista, you'll be better off with this version : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16832116205 The 64 bit version allows for more memory than the standard 3Gb's that 32 bit support. It allows for future expansion, and is the same price.

Also, are you planning on using Crossfire or SLI graphics? As the standard recommendation is to use at a 1000watt psu.

For your memory, I would recommend this : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820145043 Because of quality, Corsair, OCZ, and Mushkin are your best buys.

I do realise you are on a definite budget, but try not skimp on components, since most of my problems in the past were due to settling for the cheaper parts, but they also can cause more problems since their quality isn't up there.

Because heat from all those high powered parts is a grave concern, you may want to think about something like this : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811129021 It comes with 4 fans in it already, including a big 200mm exhaust fan out the top of the case towards the back. If you opt for the other one, be ready to modify and add fans, and or a water cooling system to keep those parts down on temperature. Also, from my own experience, AMD / ATI components tend to run a little warmer than Intel and Nvidia, at stock settings. So, if you wish not to have potential heat issues, you may wish to consider something a little robust for cooling purposes.

But do research it a bit more thoroughly though.

Hope this helps!

[Zachstar]

Thanks for the info but I really REALLY need to stick to budget here. Otherwise I will run out of budget for the video card.

For cooling the tower I am getting is considered great http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811119047

Memory I have been told needs to be http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231166 so ill update the list to that.

Power supply is 900W

Cooling I know will be an issue but not a big one until I decide to overclock. Which will not happen until the PC has been running smoothly for a few months.

Tho just in case I plan to leave room for an extra fan. The one I am looking at on Newegg (120mm) can pull ALOT of air (So much air they say it causes noise from turbulence)

For Vista I confirmed it to indeed be 64bit http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16832116488 (Atleast it comes with a media center)

[silentrunner]

I would say that Micro$soft will never port DX to Linux. Just like annyother Micro$oft app. If a lot of popular apps get ported to Linux it will be more of a threat to Windows then OS X is.

[Zachstar]

Depends. I really think tho that MS will port DX to linux mainly to kill off OpenGL.

The future is games not OS.