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building a new pc, asking adviceFollow

#1 May 15 2010 at 2:23 AM Rating: Decent
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Hello. I don't usually post, mostly lurk. This will be my first time posting in this forum. I'm looking to build a new PC because my single core PC just doesn't cut it anymore and wanted to ask for advice on the components I've been looking at.

Anyway, Here's what I have been looking at recently for the build.
Motherboard:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131644
CPU:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103849
Case:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119160
HDD:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136319
RAM:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145218
PSU:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817341010
Graphics Card:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161333
DVD Drive:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827106335
OS:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116754

Also, would I just be able to take my 1TB external drive, pop open the case, and format it and use it as an internal drive? I assume so but I'm new to this. This will be my first computer build. Any advice or tips would be much appreciative.

Thank you all for your time.
#2 May 15 2010 at 6:22 AM Rating: Good
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You have the weirdest combo I've ever seen (in a bad way). What is your spending limit?

What exactly are you using it for? Unless you're encoding video, drop the 6 core AMD CPU for an Intel. Intels are faster per core and games only use at most 2 cores due to expenses in making games multi-core. Also note: as of right now USB 3.0 and SATA 3.0 are worthless to gamers who plan on using more than 1 GPU as they drop the bus speed considerably. By the way, an Intel i5 750 is known not be a drag in the least bit. Anything greater than an i5 750 doesn't give any more frames per second unless your dumping in 3+ 5870's and even then you can overclock this baby with a good cooler to 4.0-4.1 mhz, not that mHz is a good indicator because same mHz ratings on Intel vs. AMD has Intel being much faster.

Why are you sticking a Xfire 4 motherboard and a HAF 932 full tower with a 600W power supply? Doesn't make any sense. Likewise you're sticking a 5770 on a crossfire 4 motherboard? Do you plan on having 4 of these things down the road? Not exactly energy efficient and your powersupply won't handle more than 2 of these. If you are buying a crossfire 4 MB, please get at least a 1000W power supply. Make sure it has an 80% energy efficiency rating. A 600W power supply would probably only have 2-3 PCI-E power modules.

If you are using windows 7, you can use the western digital green line (EARS) that has 64mb of buffer. It's still a little slower access than the black but you're not likely to notice the 2 seconds every time you hit a loading screen and will appreciate the extra disk space/dollar later on, just make sure it's on sale when you buy it.

It's best to give a dollar estimate on what you want to spend if you want proper information though.

My recommendation though is forget triple/quad crossfire/SLI and just buy a better video card. By the time you have money for 4 video cards of the same group, you could buy 2 of the upper group.

Drop the full tower for a mid tower HAF 922 and downgrade your motherboard as well. With the money saved, upgrade your video card to a 5850. You'll get much more performance that way for games.

Edited, May 15th 2010 8:26am by Aiph

Edited, May 15th 2010 8:29am by Aiph
#3 May 15 2010 at 2:01 PM Rating: Excellent
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Looks like a decent component set. I tend to prefer Intel over AMD myself, but for the price the AMD stuff isn't bad. The HAF case is a good case, may also want to take a look at the CM 690 version II advanced. About $40 cheaper, mostly the same internals. Different styleing. HAF does have some advantages in port placement and fan size though. With 64 Bit, make sure you grab 2 of those ram kits you have listed for the full 8GB. Can always add that later too though. Not a big fan of OCZ power supplies, but their RAM is the real crap. they do have a decent return policy. I'd agree with a larger power supply reccommendation on that board. Your existing component list won't have aproblem with 600 watts, but it will limit your future expansion somewhat. and they are a pain in the *** to swap out.

Hard drive, since you have a 1TB hard drive for data, may want to think about getting a 10,000 RPM hard drive instead of the 7200 RPM drive. They are spendier, but the performance may be worth it depending on what you are trying to do, sicne the hard drive speed will be the slow point of your build (not to say the build is slow, thats just the slower component of the one syou have specified)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=western+digital+10%2C000

Your external 1TB drive is either going to be a SATA or IDE internal drive in an enclosure. if it is IDE, you do have an IDE port on that motherboard so yes, you would be able to use it. SATA drive would plug directly in, IDE drive you may have to play with the jumpers. Either way, you will have to play with the boot order in Bios to ensure your computer tries to boot from the correct hard drive. Also, whatever you do, install windows 7 first, then install the second hard drive. There is a rare bug condition that can occur if you manage to plug the 1TB drive into port 1 of your SATA controller and the drive you will be installing the operating system on to a different port, occasionally the boot sector will get written to the wrong drive, leading your system to not boot unless you have the windows dvd in the disk drive.

Also, don't buy a western digital green hard drive. They are too damned slow for anything except backup data storage. which sounds like you have covered with the 1TB drive
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#4 May 15 2010 at 10:23 PM Rating: Default
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Dread Lörd Kaolian wrote:

Also, don't buy a western digital green hard drive. They are too damned slow for anything except backup data storage. which sounds like you have covered with the 1TB drive


Not quite true. The WD green line is slow when it parks the HDD head to conserve power. After it starts up and runs, it is close to the same speed as any other similar HDD.

It would be a car going from a full stop to 55km in a 60 zone while the black series goes 60 all the time without stopping and and taking up two lanes.

The reason why the blacks are fast is because they use 2 heads instead of one and they don't park.
#5 May 16 2010 at 1:56 PM Rating: Excellent
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Aiph wrote:
Dread Lörd Kaolian wrote:

Also, don't buy a western digital green hard drive. They are too damned slow for anything except backup data storage. which sounds like you have covered with the 1TB drive


Not quite true. The WD green line is slow when it parks the HDD head to conserve power. After it starts up and runs, it is close to the same speed as any other similar HDD.

It would be a car going from a full stop to 55km in a 60 zone while the black series goes 60 all the time without stopping and and taking up two lanes.

The reason why the blacks are fast is because they use 2 heads instead of one and they don't park.


I've benchmarked them. The WD green drives return crappy numbers.
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#6 May 16 2010 at 7:56 PM Rating: Good
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Post what you did. Did you put them in a RAID config? Linux? XP? Green drives have major problems if you're running anything other than the usual. Most standard real world working benchmarkssuch as 1 HDD system loading has the Greens slower than the Blacks by a few seconds loading up a cold boot of windows. Problems come from more advnaced configurations like setting up RAIDs.

Here's the a benchmark that lists it all too.

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=870&type=expert&pid=1

Caviar black looks good when you blow it up but note the actual amounts. Unless you're working a major resource center it's unlikely you're gonna transfer files like that.

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=870&type=expert&pid=6

This link is the one I care about. Using it in real world settings. The differences as most have noted, is only a few seconds for programs.

And most importantly about the benchmark

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=870&type=expert&pid=10

Depending on what benchmark you used, results are skewed on due to marvel controllers

Edited, May 16th 2010 10:00pm by Aiph
#7 May 18 2010 at 7:40 AM Rating: Decent
If you going with WD Id go with the Black series. The are almost as fast as the Velociraptors.

The Intel 6 core sis far superior to the AMD 6 core in almost every area.

As far as the graphic card go, unless you plan on running multiple high end cards, step down the mobo. One 5870 or better will likely do whatever you want it to.

As far as the case goes, I prefer full towers over mid towers unless your a magic worker with hiding wires. My antec 900 is pretty much maxed out with wires everywhere because the case is close to maxed out. As far as power supplies go, check our hardforums.com, they do the ebst reviews on powersupplies period.

I would also agree 600watts seems low, but 1k seems a bit high. I think an 850 should cover it just fine.
#8 May 19 2010 at 9:39 AM Rating: Good
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Alobont wrote:
If you going with WD Id go with the Black series. The are almost as fast as the Velociraptors.

The Intel 6 core sis far superior to the AMD 6 core in almost every area.



I really hope that is a typo (recommending an Intel 6-core considering the price)
#9 May 19 2010 at 11:45 AM Rating: Good
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I read it as a general statement. The Intel 6-core is indeed better than the AMD. As it costs several times as much, it better be.

Generally though, the Intel quad cores for the same money are better in a gaming machine than the AMD 6-cores. I'm not biased here, in fact, I built a machine for my brother using the cheaper 6-core AMD just a couple weeks ago. If you aren't using heavily threaded apps though, and most games aren't, then the Intel chips (or Phenom II x4s clocked higher) will be better for the money. The 6-core AMDs can offer great bang for the buck...but predominately if your primary usage is video encoding or 3D rendering n' the like. Not gaming.

Quote:
I would also agree 600watts seems low, but 1k seems a bit high. I think an 850 should cover it just fine.


It'd depend on the GPU. 600W, or even 500W is fine if he's just putting in a single 5770. Dropping a few extra bucks for some headroom is rarely a bad idea though.
#10 May 19 2010 at 12:45 PM Rating: Decent
Isiolia wrote:
I read it as a general statement. The Intel 6-core is indeed better than the AMD. As it costs several times as much, it better be.

Generally though, the Intel quad cores for the same money are better in a gaming machine than the AMD 6-cores. I'm not biased here, in fact, I built a machine for my brother using the cheaper 6-core AMD just a couple weeks ago. If you aren't using heavily threaded apps though, and most games aren't, then the Intel chips (or Phenom II x4s clocked higher) will be better for the money. The 6-core AMDs can offer great bang for the buck...but predominately if your primary usage is video encoding or 3D rendering n' the like. Not gaming.

Quote:
I would also agree 600watts seems low, but 1k seems a bit high. I think an 850 should cover it just fine.


It'd depend on the GPU. 600W, or even 500W is fine if he's just putting in a single 5770. Dropping a few extra bucks for some headroom is rarely a bad idea though.


While I realise that, im still iffy on 1k watt PSU's. Ive had bad experiences with a couple, but that was msotly when they started coming out. That comment is more of the lines that I know there are some bomb *** 600-850 watt PSU's that are sturdy and completely capable.

As far as the 6 core comment goes, its more of an observation, considering the price. I would never buy the AMD one, since I can get a normal i7 to perform the same if not better.
#11 May 19 2010 at 1:06 PM Rating: Good
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Aye, I'm not talking so much about going for a 1k W PSU (don't much see the point unless you're running multiple high end GPUs). More that I'd agree that a quality 600-750W or something is good, even if you only need a 500W.

#12 May 19 2010 at 1:49 PM Rating: Good
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About the 1k W Power supply, I was trying to figure out what he wanted to do. It seemed more than weird to bundle up a crossfire 4 motherboard (which is top of the line and supposed to handle 3 xfired video cards) and a full tower case with a 500W power supply, a 5770 and an AMD 6 core CPU.

I could not tell what he was trying to do at all but looking at the overall build it felt like a budget system but there were some parts that felt like he wanted it to be more. Throwing recommendations out there if people actually read my full post as to get a feel as to what he wanted to do and what was his budget. Comes from actually working in IT you know, you learn to gauge a persons buying power by asking them what they want to do and not just recommending one part over another without asking what they want to do or if they even realize what certain components do.

Edited, May 19th 2010 3:49pm by Aiph

Edited, May 19th 2010 3:50pm by Aiph
#13 May 19 2010 at 2:24 PM Rating: Good
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Yeah, you raised good points/questions there. It's not the first time I've seen someone put an odd mish-mash of parts together like that simply because they were more expensive, and thus, must be better.

An i5 750 with a higher end video card would definitely be a far better gaming machine for the money than what the OP presented.
#14 May 19 2010 at 8:43 PM Rating: Decent
Aiph wrote:
About the 1k W Power supply, I was trying to figure out what he wanted to do. It seemed more than weird to bundle up a crossfire 4 motherboard (which is top of the line and supposed to handle 3 xfired video cards) and a full tower case with a 500W power supply, a 5770 and an AMD 6 core CPU.

I could not tell what he was trying to do at all but looking at the overall build it felt like a budget system but there were some parts that felt like he wanted it to be more. Throwing recommendations out there if people actually read my full post as to get a feel as to what he wanted to do and what was his budget. Comes from actually working in IT you know, you learn to gauge a persons buying power by asking them what they want to do and not just recommending one part over another without asking what they want to do or if they even realize what certain components do.

Edited, May 19th 2010 3:49pm by Aiph

Edited, May 19th 2010 3:50pm by Aiph


We werent attacking you lol, I was jsut commenting on 1k PSU's. A lot of people have a strange mind set about owning a 1k PSU which in turn makes them leet or something, I dont know. Im rocking an older Toughpower back from before they got kinda crappy, but tis only a 750 I think.
#15 May 20 2010 at 6:59 AM Rating: Good
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Didn't think you were attacking, just trying to explain myself. I mean with a crossfire 4 motherboard I would expect someone to well, you know, use the full crossfire configuration (that is what the premium on that MB you are paying for) which mean an eventual huge power drain. If you're gonna dump 3 high powered video cards if I remember correctly running at 16x,16x,8x then a 1K power supply may be useful in the future considering the new generations of PCI-E cards use 2 PCI-E wires each instead of 1 (much to my surprise when I dumped a 5850 in my machine).

Sure, it is possible to run it at 750 watt but depending on other components you might want a bit more overhead. The logical step is to use a 1K watt power supply.
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