Help me build a PC (in Off-topic)

So, I've decided I want a desktop, and I'm going to build it. I have never built one before, but I'm fairly technical. I tend to favor intel over amd, but I'm open to both. I'm looking for a build that would be able to handle Battlefield 3, Skyrim, Diablo 3, and Starcraft 2 preferably on High or Max. My budget is around $900, but I'd prefer around $700. I'll need a case with it as well. Any suggestions welcome.

you might make sure sickone sees this thread, he tends to keep up with the newest components and offers great advice!

hmm.. go for dual I5. thats all i know :P

Yeah, I thought I might ask for him personally, but I figured might as well make a thread.

And I was thinking of going with an i7 Quyen.

Couple notes from looking at other threads. Would prefer an smaller SSD+ larger HDD; and I don't need a monitor.

Toms Hardware > Build Your Own, then ready a bunch of the different system builds and cherry pick what components you want. Check out the "current" ones plus the ones from the previous quarter.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/How-To,4/Build-Your-Own,16/

Doing the actual build is very easy, the only scary part for me is seating the CPU.

I went with 2 middle of the road video cards (with SLI for newer games) rather than one high-end monster, but mostly because I'm pushing 4 screens.

Don't skimp on a power supply, give yourself a little room to grow.

Pay attention to the CPU you get and the upgrade possibilities with the motherboard. I went with an i5-750 (like 2 years ago mind you) conscious of the fact that if I wanted to upgrade, I'd need a new motherboard; had I gone with a different socket type, my CPU upgrade path would have been more open.

Lifehacker has a good guide as well, particularly the "build" part. http://lifehacker.com/5828747/how-to-build-a-computer-from-scratch-the-complete-guide

dual i5 is strong enough to run most things, while staying way cheaper than a i7. i've heard that a quad i5 is cheaper than a i7 ._.

Here's a basic checklist of things you'll want to make sure you have, and the order that I personally pick out my parts to ensure the greatest compatibility with each other.

CPU
Motherboard
Ram
Video Card
PSU
SSD/HDDs
DVD/BR
Case
Accessories (Case fans, better CPU fan etc)

Putting everything together is a breeze and shouldn't be much of a problem. I've built about 4 systems total so far for my self, and a few others for friends.

I'd suggest going AMD over Intel for the Price/Performance ratio, but that's just me.

Yeah, that's what I've been thinking. I think I just have favored Intel b/c it's all I've ever used and I've never had any problems. I've been thinking about going with the new AMD FX, 8G of RAM ( I could always add more later ), I don't know much about PSUs/Motherboards, and I'm looking into graphic cards right now.

As far as the Mobo is concerned you just need to make sure it will be compatible with whatever CPU, Vid Card, and Ram you choose. It will be listed in the specs what its compatible with, and you could always double check here to see if its right.

The PSU really just needs to be powerful enough to run everything, I personally went with a 750w like 4-5 years ago and its still running strong and powering everything no problem. You could probably get away with much less, I got mine with future upgrades in mind and planned to go SLI with my GTX285 at some point.

Oh making sure it will all fit in the case is kind of essential.. Cases are not universal in the slightest, so you will need to check the case dimensions just to be sure everything will fit no problem.

I'm tempted to do a quick newegg build for you ~$800 to see what I can come up with.

That should say "I planned to go SLI at some point"

I tend to forget I've been through 3 different vid cards with this current rig.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboBundleDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.755235

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161372&cm_sp=Cat_Video_Cards_%26%2338%3b_Video_Devices-_-Featured_Brand-_-14-161-372

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827106335

~915$ total for the 3

A couple more notes:

I don't have preferences when it comes to graphics cards, as this will be the first desktop I have owned in like 8 years, have no real experience with any of them.

Also, I don't need anywhere near a 1TB HD. Probably 300G would be plenty, I have only used ~50 on my current computer and could delete tons of stuff.

There's not too much of a price difference on ~300 GB and 1 TB hdds to be honest (around 10-15$), unless you really just don't want the extra space.

Well, what if I get like a ~150-200G SSD and no HDD? I've got some external HDs if I need to store music or anything, which I never do, and I don't see me going over that mark. I could always get an HDD later right?

7200 RPM spinning drive minimum, SSD for boot is a must... personally I think it's worth the extra few bucks

Ok, I didn't even see that SSD in there Pit, yeah, I think I'll go with a smaller SSD to boot, then like 300-500Gb HDD; simply because anything larger would just be a waste of space.

Depends on if it fits within the budget. If he's aiming for $700, I don't see it happening with a 150-200 gig SDD. The shiny CPU and decent GPU will eat up a good bit of the funds. At $900, yes.

Ok, let's settle on a CPU first. I think I'm going to try AMD this time around because of price/quality.

Here's some I found, I don't know how much the differences in L2/L3 cache are going to make performance wise. Is anyone else more familiar with this than me?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103934

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103849

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103962

"SSD for boot is a must" 30 seconds to 1 minute is too long to wait?

waking up from sleep is 5 seconds at most for me too - on an hdd.

sorry, the vid card i posted was out of stock, heres another

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102945

Pit, I think I want to go with AMD instead of intel b/c of the price for performance, unless you think there's a good reason I should go with Intel instead?

i like the 8mb cache one, for the price that is quite a good deal in my mind.

That's what I was thinking.

Each side is better at some things than the other. As you want this for gaming I would suggest intel, a similarly priced i5 ~$180-200. Intel also seems to have lower power consumption as well. The below article shows some very good benchmarks of the 2 chip makers.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4955/the-bulldozer-review-amd-fx8150-tested

So, this would work this processor http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103962 right? How would it run Skyrim/BF3/D3?


Wait, can't I boot from like a 7200 16G SSD drive, then store stuff on an HDD?

If you are using win7 you'll want at least a 32GB SSD IMO. I don't like filling up storage devices close to their max, even if it is only the OS that is going on it.


That CPU will absolutely be fine, but the video card is far more important then the CPU as far as those games are concerned.

if most program caches still go on the boot drive then i would say a bit larger even to be safe.

^ I'd agree actually. My plan was to go with at least a 64gb SSD if I ever decided to switch over to one just for the OS.

For now though I'm fine with the 2TBs of space I have.. currently eating up ~60% of that.

Though my drives are a few years old now and I'd like to replace them soon with 64mb cache drives (mine are currently 32s)

Pit was right about the price of HDDs though, there is like a $20-30 difference between a 250gb drive and a 1TB.

I am out of town for about 2 days, leaving in a couple of hours, still have to pack and take care of a few things first, so I'll only leave you with a link :P

http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1559734

This is a thread made by me in the EVE-Online forum regarding how to pick and choose your components for a gaming PC, where budget is an important concern too, not just raw performance.
It explains it most for the beginner system builder (or even somebody who never built one before, if he's patient), but has info even some slightly more advanced builders can make use of.

It's a bit long, but you should at least throw a small look over.

http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1559734

There it is again :P

Thanks Sickone, I gazed over that a few months back, but I'll be sure to read it over completely this time.


What on the Earth are you saving that takes 1,400Gs of memory.... My gf is a film major, and she uses less than 3TBs, and that's only b/c she's working with tons of uncompressed video.

Another note for others and myself, I'm going to need an optical drive as well. And I've decided to up my budget to $900.

The third link in my original post was an optical drive

Lol, why for some reason I didn't even open that link, thanks Pit.

Lol, for*

What do you guys think of this RAM:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820104127

CPU - $210 i5 Sandy http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115073

Motherboard - $140 MSi z68 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130596

Ram - $85 Kingston HyperX 12G http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820104127

Video Card -

PSU - $70 Rosewill 700W http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182191

SSD/HDDs -

Case - $40 Rosewill http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811147023

Optics Drive - $23 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827106335

Total so Far: $568

Ok, this is what I'm looking at so far, the only thing I'm really set on is the CPU. I know that it will fit the mobo and ram. The concerns I have is will this be enough power from the CPU for possible upgrades 2-3 years down the road. Also, is an SSD really worth it, even if I go over my budget a little? How hard would it be to get an HDD to start with and get an SSD later. Finally, I literally know nothing about graphics cards. I'm searching for some benchmarks now, and I posted the games I wanted to be run well, any help would be greatly appreciated.

CPU - $210 i5 Sandy http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115073

Motherboard - $140 MSi z68 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130596

Ram - $85 Kingston HyperX 12G http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820104127

Video Card - $265 Radeon 6950 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102945

PSU - $70 Rosewill 700W http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182191

SSD/HDDs - $65 Seagate 1T HDD http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148697

Case - $40 Rosewill http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811147023

Optics Drive - $23 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827106335

Accessories (Case fans, better CPU fan etc) - None yet

Total so Far: $898

Alright, what do you guys think? I want to have decent upgradability 2-3 years down the line. Is this build suited for that? Also, is there anything that is too big that I could scale down, or too small that I should scale up? I'm pretty sure the graphics card can handle all the games I listed on at max pretty smoothly.

i am just curious about why you chose the intel over the amd?

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fx-8150-zambezi-bulldozer-990fx,3043.html

Along with Pit's link. Basically it seems when it comes to gaming, the i5/i7 Sandy are outperforming the AMD ones I was looking out.

looking at*

it looks to me like the amd, granted the better one than the one you were looking at but close, is outperforming the i5 but not the i7 in those benchmarks.

did you find any benchmarks comparing the two actual ones you are thinking of?

i would guess they would be pretty darn close most of the way and the amd is 30 bucks less.

Did you look at the games in that link? It appeared to me that the AMD one I was looking at outperformed on most Apps, but did worse in games, such as these:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fx-8150-zambezi-bulldozer-990fx,3043-18.html

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fx-8150-zambezi-bulldozer-990fx,3043-19.html

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fx-8150-zambezi-bulldozer-990fx,3043-20.html

never mind, i saw this which helps to compare:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/434?vs=288

the amd is really too new to have that particular one benchmarked. that in itself is enough reason for me to get behind the intel. new chips can sometimes be difficult.

for reference here is my processor compared to what you will be getting:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/55?vs=288

looking at the differences i think you are doing very well for the money spent and will really like your system.

You probably wouldn't believe me if I said I had almost 1000 games on this pc, dozens of 1080p movies, over a hundred thousand pictures, tons of music, and an ungodly amount of mods for Oblivion, Fallout3, FalloutNV, and many more games that are mod-able.

I'm a data hoarder, I refuse to delete stuff.

Xeno, stop hoarding data.

We need an intervention.

Bulldozer is what prescott was for intel. Performance is lower that previous generation with higher transistor count higher die size higher cost of production and just like prescott at a much higher temp and power consumation. AMD will have a hard time surviving the next 3 year.

deleting data is for the weak willed

2x 2 TB HDDs, 3.2 TB full. Mostly movies, some music, books...

So, what do you think of that build Sickone?

Phenon is half price of intel i7 and is very good

Sorry, was out of town and was just making a very quick comment.

On that build of yours, after some pondering, I would upgrade the 2500 to a 2500k for 10$ extra (220 instead of 210), not so much because of the unlocked overclocking (which I probably wouldn't use) but because of the integrated video (HD3000 instead of HD2000, with 12 pixel pipelines instead of 6)... and again, NOT to use as actual video card substitute, but for video transcoding (it's remarkably awesome for that).

For the motherboard, you can shave a few dollars off AND get a more upgradeable one with this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157271
Pretty solid Z68 motherboard, 125$ instead of your selected 140$, it supports 2x PCI-E 3.0 cards in x8/x8 mode (the one you picked initially has 2x PCI-E 2.0 cards, and not even sure it can do x8/x8 mode or just x8/x4).
Plus, it's an ATX card, which means you have batter spacing between CPU and video cards, which matters for airflow.

Overall, with the CPU upgrade and the MoBo change, you save 5$ and get (IMO) a slightly better performance.


For the video card, I would NOT bother with anything too fancy for now. Both NVIDIA and ATI are about to come out with a new video card series in LESS than half a year (which will be PCI-E 3.0 cards almost certainly), and you'll kind of wish you would have waited... all the current video cards will also get much cheaper, so even if you still buy a 6950, you'll get it for a lot less by the end of the spring or thereabouts.
Better get a rather modest video card until then (you'll still get quite a good performance with it, maybe not on maxed settings, but still).

For instance, go with a slightly (approx. +6%) factory-overclocked Radeon HD 6770:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150540
Costs only 110$ (instead of your previously chosen 6950 that costs 265$), comes with a free copy of Dirt3 (nice racing game, limited time offer, why not grab that too), and performance-wise, should be about on par with the price difference (so about 45% of the performance for about 40% of the price).

Take that 155$ you saved here and get yourself a nice FAST and reasonably large SSD - OCZ Agility 3, 120GB SATA III
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227726
Since you'll be using the SSD for OS+apps+games (120 GB should be quite enough for that), upgrade your 65$ 1 TB HDD to a 100$ 2 TB "green" HDD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136514
Since all you'll store on it will be movies, music and such things, you should not really care that much about its speed.

Oh, and even 8 GB of RAM is quite enough. You have selected 12GB of @1600 CL9 RAM.
However, the motherboards (both your previous one and the one I recommended) support RAM frequency up to @2133.
So why not get this instead:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231476
Exactly the same price, but @2133 CL9, "only" 8 GB instead of 12, 2x 4 GB sticks.
Later on you can buy 8 GB more of the exact same RAM if you want to (you still have free space on either of those MoBos) for 16 GB total. But honestly, I only have 4 GB of RAM now, and I seldom manage to fill it completely. 8 GB of RAM should be quite enough for a few years.

Hardly.

An AMD Phenom II X6 1100T (six-core at 3.3 stock, 3.7 turboboost) costs about 190$ and performance-wise, in almost any applications, is about in between a 190$ Intel Core i5-2400 (quad core at 3.1 stock) which is only about 3% slower and a 210$ Intel Core i5-2500 (quad core at 3.3 stock) which is about 4% faster.

Alternatively, you could look at a cheaper Phenom II X4 965 (quad core @ 3.4) for only 130$, but that one (performance score 4,289) is beaten performance-wise by a long shot by the slowest i5 Sandybridge, the Core i5-2300 (quad core @ 2.8), which is about 30% faster in almost every application... and it is even beaten by the 145$ Intel Core i3-2125 (dual core @ 3.3) by about 4% or so on average.

You also save a bit of cash on the motherboard, but not much.

In the long run however, the Intel CPUs consume less power for the same work, so you end up cheaper even if the CPUs are a bit more expensive.
Just stay away from the "top of the line" CPUs (which have a very poor price/performance ratio) and you'll be fine.

CPU - $210 i5 Sandy http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115073

Motherboard - $125 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157271

Ram - $85 GSKill 8G http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231476

Video Card - $110 Radeon 6700 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150540

PSU - $70 Rosewill 700W http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182191

SSD/HDDs - $65 Seagate 1T HDD http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148697

- $155 OCZ 120G SSD http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227726

Case - $40 Rosewill http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811147023

Optics Drive - $23 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827106335

Total so Far: $893

Alright then, this is my current build then. Made all the changes you suggested, except I kept at only the 1TB HDD; b/c realistically I'd never use over 2-300G. I have a film major gf to handle saving all the movies and such :). Also, the only concern I have is how the HD 6700 will do at playing D3. I'm sure it will play Skyrim on max from what I have read, but I haven't found much info on D3, for obvious reasons. I found some speculation that if you could run Crisis on very High you could max out D3, but that was just speculation. What do you think?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xE7b4thKv8I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFt3a12CJJ0

Those two videos should answer your question.
Remember that they're also recording while playing, so performance just playing should be even better.

Or maybe you meant Crysis 1 ?
That one will probably be a tad bit more problematic.

Yeah, I meant 1, but the admin that said it, said if you can run Crysis 1 on decent settings, you could run D3 at max, and I saw a youtube video of a 6700 on very high graphics, with worse processor, and it looked fine.

You could downgrade to a 60 GB SSD of the same model (95$ instead of 155$ for 120 GB) to save some additional money.
But... honestly, it's not really worth saving that amount of money unless you plan to use it as SSD cache instead of system drive (but that's a bit of a pain to setup and is not going to get you true SSD level performance).

Nah, I'm happy with spending the extra 60 to use it as a system drive.

Just make sure the SSD goes in a SATA-III connector.
The rest can go in SATA-II even if they're marketed as having SATA-III (you won't ever actually use a speed even close to what SATA-II is capable of with the HDD anyway).
You might even want to intentionally stick them in a SATA-II port, since that way you know for sure the SATA-III controller is only busy with the SDD ;)

:)

As for PCI EX 3.0 no current CPU support its.

The Ivy Bridge "shrinks" of the current Sandy Bridge Intel CPUs (which should also be due out early next year) should support it.
True, it's not that often that you upgrade both video card and CPU but not motherboard, but, eh... who knows.
Besides, the suggested motherboard was cheaper than the one with just PCI-E 2.0 support, so what the heck, why not.

If i am not mistaken (not check) sandy brige I7 39XX series coming early november will have PCI 3.0 support. Yes Ivy bridge will support its too but in the last Q&A after Q3 earning release intel did say ivy bridge is for spring. I am waiting for its to ''finish'' my computer.