The Official Unofficial Frau Kaleun Destroys The World* Thread

[frau kaleun]

--UPDATED 8/10/2011--

*Actually, I'm just building my own computer. But then I ask myself: what's the worst that could happen?

So here's where I will be listing what I have and what I'm looking at getting, and taking suggestions and advice and - once all the parts are in my possession and Pinky and I begin putting the plan into action - begging for qualified, semi-qualified and/or any available assistance.


Acquired/On Order

Motherboard: Asus M4A79XTD Evo
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_AM3/M4A79XTD_EVO/

CPU: AMD Phenom II x4 965 Black
http://products.amd.com/en-us/Deskto...&f11=&f12=True

Case: Rosewill Challenger ATX Mid-Tower
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811147153

PSU: Corsair CMPSU-850HX 850-Watt HX Professional Series 80 Plus Certified Power Supply
http://www.amazon.com/Corsair-CMPSU-...3027696&sr=1-1

2 x Kingston Technology HyperX 8 GB Kit (2x4 GB Modules) 8 Dual Channel Kit 1600 (PC3 12800) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM KHX1600C9D3K2/8GX
http://www.amazon.com/Kingston-Techn...2754140&sr=8-1
Wow, looks like I ordered this at the right time. They were $65-70 a kit when I initially picked them out, then dropped to $54.99 each so I went ahead and ordered. Today they're back up to over $65 again.

2 x Western Digital Caviar Black 2TB 7,200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive
http://www.microcenter.com/single_pr...uct_id=0347356
Wanted one for music, one for games. Size is not overkill for music given the collection I've already got. Could be for games, but the sale price was too good to pass up even if it did take 2 months and an irritated email from me to get them shipped. Plus my multi-installs of heavily modded SH3 are eating up the games drive I've already got, and I haven't even put my other games on it yet.

GPU: Sapphire Tech ATI Radeon HD5770 Vapor-X
http://www.sapphiretech.com/presenta...&pid=305&lid=1
Already have one, decided to see what Crossfire is like.

SONY Black 12X BD-R 2X BD-RE 8X DVD+R 5X DVD-RAM 8X BD-ROM 8MB Cache SATA Blu-ray Burner BD-5300S-0B - OEM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827118050

Surge Protector: Tripplite TMC-6
http://www.amazon.com/Tripp-Lite-TMC.../dp/B0000AKA90

Allsop Metal Art Monitor Stand (Black)
http://www.amazon.com/Allsop-Metal-M...2753786&sr=1-2


Migrating from the current rig:

Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive, will probably remain the boot drive
http://www.microcenter.com/single_pr...uct_id=0347355

AcomData PureDrive 1 TB USB 2.0/eSATA Desktop External Hard Drive, for some storage and all backups
http://www.amazon.com/AcomData-PureD...2755264&sr=1-1

Sound card: ASUS Xonar DX
http://www.asus.com/Multimedia/Audio_Cards/Xonar_DX/

Speakers: Logitech X-540 5.1 Surround Sound Speaker System with Subwoofer
http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Surro.../dp/B000JJM8XE

Plus a basic 56K Voice/Fax Modem PCI card (LSI SV92PP Soft Modem) as a back-up in case my DSL service goes down and I need to use the dial-up connection to get on line.


Still need to order:

Keyboard and Mouse
http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Natu...2755755&sr=1-1
Had the MS Natural Ergonomics wireless stuff before and loved it, except for some drop-out problems which I know I solved as far as a mouse is concerned. Still wondering about whether or not to risk getting the combo or getting the wireless mouse and wired version of the kb separately.

UPS
Don't know if I'm going to get one of these or not. Probably a good idea, but not critical ATM. The local computer shop has some decent used/refurbished ones for sale so I may look there first when the time comes. Recommendations on wattage I should look for would be helpful.


Cost of new stuff to date:
Mobo - $89.99 (after $10 Asus rebate), TigerDirect
CPU - $119.99 (after $20 promo code discount), Newegg, free shipping
Case - $49.99, Newegg, free shipping
Surge Protecter - $29.99, Amazon, free shipping w/ Amazon Prime (and I had a $25 gift certificate
HDDs - $239.98, Microcenter online store
GPU - $147.99, Amazon
RAM - $90.17, Amazon (after rewards points discount)
Blu-ray burner - $99.99, Newegg
Monitor stand - $22.97, Amazon
PSU - $164.99, Amazon

[the_tyrant]

wow, you have such huge storage...

for the 2 new drives i would recommend sata 6gb, its so much better

link them up using RAID 0, your games would literally start in 1 second

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by the_tyrant

wow, you have such huge storage...

for the 2 new drives i would recommend sata 6gb, its so much better

link them up using RAID 0, your games would literally start in 1 second

I'm pretty sure I checked and the mobo only supports Sata 3Gb. I'm okay with it. *shrugs*

1 second wouldn't give me time to go powder my nose and refill my glass, lol.

I got all the storage because I wanted to move all my music onto an internal drive, now that I'll have room for more internal disks. It's currently on the external drive, but taking up more than half of it and the collection is only get to get bigger... not to mention the fact that all my pics and most of my documents are on there as well. I started out just intending to stick with 1TB drives, but the bigger ones were on sale over the holiday.

[Arclight]

Going from 'SATA2' to 'SATA3' makes nearly 0 difference for a mechanical drive. They can't even saturate bandwith on SATA2, so doubling it won't do any good. It's for SSD.


Right, I have to ask: at this point in time, and while considering technology will move forward quite a bit in the time it takes to build this system, is it really wise to buy into such an old CPU?

AMD's Bulldozer architecture will be available Q3 this year, a few months from now. You're buying into tech that's about to be phased out. Phenom was the Core2-killer: Core2 has come and gone, replaced by i5 and i7, which in turn are on the brink of a new generation.

I have Core2 myself, but I bought it 3 years ago. Not a chance I would pick up a Core2 CPU nowadays.

[Gerald]

Nice,stuff

[Sailor Steve]

Let me know what it ends up costing, minus the speakers as I only use headphones. I'm still considering having iBuyPower build me one through Amazon, but your experiment looks tempting.

[Herr-Berbunch]

One thing, that I think is quite important to building your own rig, that I've not seen listed yet - OS?

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by Herr-Berbunch

One thing, that I think is quite important to building your own rig, that I've not seen listed yet - OS?

Win7 64-bit. Bought the full OS outright when I switched from XP.

I've already ordered the Sony Optiarc OEM drive. It got 5 out of 5 stars in reviews at Amazon and either Tiger Direct or Newegg. At one of the latter it was only getting four out of five. I read through all the reviews there and it seemed clear that the bad reviews responsible for bringing down the average were written by people who don't know what "OEM" means.

[Herr-Berbunch]

I'll shut up then and just crawl back into my corner

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by Herr-Berbunch

I'll shut up then and just crawl back into my corner

Don't do that, I'm sure I'll be on here in a couple weeks begging for help. From anybody. Even you.