Building a new b0x

[~Void~]

Ok, so I've decided I'm going to do things right this time and actually build my next computer instead of buying it at the store, to save money and to get a better computer. The problem is, I don't know shit about computers; what parts to buy, where to buy them from, etc. Can anyone help me out here?

I don't want to have to spend too much money, but I want an up-to-date computer that will run new games.

 

[Gilles]

You're in the US correct? Well I'd post on a computer hardware forum for a more professional opinion, but we can help you too. Perhaps if you can poke Samuraid out of inactivity to help you, he basically guided me through my build.

You'll want to use this site for your ordering. http://www.newegg.com/
Don't trust the reviews on that site though. Google the parts for a much better review from somewhere like Tom's Hardware.

First off, what is your budget? Second, do you have an old computer to salvage parts from?

 

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

The newegg customer reviews are mostly just to know if the power supply will explode after three months or not.

 

[Gilles]

Even then, it's a newegg review, who knows what they mean by exploded.

 

[TheDivineBoss]

Void, first off all:

What is your estimated budget?

 

[Reaper2008]

Best get a Radeon, 4670 is perfect/low budget.
DDR2 ram, about 4 gigs.
Core 2 duo, or if you don't want efficiency and you can afford it PHENOM. Or else i7, but theyre expensive.
A good soundcard is Creative Sound blaster.
Also, you'll want a big HDD, and the best Optical drive you can get.

 

[Gilles]

Best get a Radeon, 4670 is perfect/low budget.
DDR2 ram, about 4 gigs.
Core 2 duo, or if you don't want efficiency and you can afford it PHENOM. Or else i7, but theyre expensive.
A good soundcard is Creative Sound blaster.
Also, you'll want a big HDD, and the best Optical drive you can get.

Don't bother giving out ideas until we have a budget.
Also there's no need for a sound card. As far as I know, Void doesn't do anything that would require it. A big HDD is not at all necessary. This is a gaming rig, so you might as well save on HDD space, and spend it on a better card. Optical drives should not cost more than $30, not sure what kind of drive is the best. I would say Blue Ray is, but obviously thats probably not in his budget.

 

[Dr Super Good]

You can get 1 TB HDDs for only like 50$ nowdays from the right supliers, one of those and your all set. If you need performance for gaming you could RAID1 two of them together for nearly double read speed or you could set up an RAID3 with 3 of them (depends on how much you want to spend on storage).

Well for actual core you could have 2 approaches, the one is trying to get a cheap setup uing an intel I7, probably with only 3 GB RAM, the other is a 4GB ram setup using a highend quad core, you do not have to get all the RAM at once and could probably get more when it is needed.

For graphics, I adivse getting eithor a very low end geforce 200 series like the 250 or probably a geforce 9 card as they are going to get cheaper as production of them has stopped. I do not know ATI well so I can not recommend you any from them but a geforce 9600 will be ample to play a lot of modern games decently at the high end of settings.

For OS I advise vista but with upgrade voucher if you can get hold of a copy. Yes you will be stuck with vista for a while but in a few months you will get the ability to upgrade to windows 7 for free. Whats better is if your not in europe, you can even do it without reinstalling the OS (unlike me who will have to (stupid EU)).

A simple DVD reader or write should be enough, as all modern games run from HDD and do not need to actually read the disk so speed is only a once off concern.

You may also wish to wait a few months, as componets only get cheaper due to becoming dated fast, thus when the next generation come out towards christmass the current will fall inprice so you could save up to get a good christmass present for yourself with specs far superior to what you can aford currently.

 

[~Void~]

Void, first off all:

What is your estimated budget?

Um... around $500-600 with 1000 as a rough maximum.

Anyways, what would a sound card do? I listen to and make a lot of music, so maybe I should get one... if that's what it's for.

 

[Dr Super Good]

A sound card has a processor dedicated to sound based operations and also generally has a much higher bit rate output than normal integrated soundcards on motherboards. However this is only important if you make music, as the standard bitrate of songs downloaded is far below that which even ones integrated into motherboards are capable of these days so no difference would be heard.

Soundcards do not load the CPU as much as integrated sound does so you do get a performance boost. However almost every modern game is not optimized to take advantage of them so you would get better performance just by spending that money on the next model of a processor.

Infact windows vista and 7 do not even support sound cards directly (DX10 has no interfaces for them) and so even with one, your CPU will still generate the sound. To top this they often have compatibility problems with games causing them to run slower if not at all than they could if you just stuck to integrated sound. Thus in short unless you are specificly creating music using high bitrate parts, then you will have wasted the money and energy getting a sound card as it does shit all for your games.

You can get some I7 rigs for 1000£, but that is a little bit more than 1000$ so you will probably have to stick with the core2 quad range with ddr2 and geforce 9 series.

 

[Deathcom3s]

I wouldn't recommend that you get an i7 build if you want to stay below $1000, because if you get an i7, you might as well get DDR3 to go with it, which will increase the price considerably.

 

[Dr Super Good]

you might as well get DDR3 to go with it, which will increase the price considerably

He has a choice? The I7 only works with DDR3 memory so if he gats an I7 he has to get DDR3...

 

[Deathcom3s]

Meh, i just worded it wrong.

 

[Gilles]

Here's a build for you. Grabbed off another site I used to hang around.

Mobo/CPU Combo: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.205339

RAM/HDD Combo: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.199064

Case/PSU Combo: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.197377

GPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150359

That should put you in the $600 range. Definitely a good build.
Might want a bigger PSU though. That would put you at about $650. If you need an Optical Drive, that'll be another $20.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Obviously he needs an optical drive? Almost all games still come with a disks. . .

 

[busterkomo]

Well, a lot of people re-use their optical drives from a previous computer.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Oh yes, he could do that (DOH), if it is supported that is. Remember that some hardware may give trouble on new OS if it is too old.

 

[brayden430]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.205337
for most games triple cores will do
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153052
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145184
there are cheaper GPUs but if you want to play crysis warhead with good grpahics
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150360
this is asumming you take your optical drive and hard drive from old comp

 

[Gilles]

Well all the deals I posted are done, so that mobo/cpu brayden430 posted would be good. A lot of people are going with that combo these days.

That PSU is sketchy. I know the Thermaltake (Purepower 450 watt) is a no-no. Not sure about the 500. I wouldn't suggest buying it. The Tough Power series is a much better supply.

For the RAM, I'd pay a little extra for these guys.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231209

 

[BlargHonk]

>.< Gilles, brayden

That motherboard is DDR3 ONLY

So yes, you did infact, recommend the wrong type of memory.


Also, look how many PCI-E connectors that PSU has? Now look how many the 4890 takes -.-

Here is what I think:
Mobo/CPU
PSU
Video Card
RAM


Can't recommend a 4850X2 due to it requires 650watts at least with an X3 720

 

[Gilles]

Heh, good catch.
I'd change the motherboard not the RAM though.

 

[Shados]

Save a few hundred more and spend ~$1,500. You'll be happier for it.

 

[BlargHonk]

Why change the board?

4gb of DDR2 costs about $40 for a decent set, and that board is $55 off with the CPU, there is a DDR2 board for $15 more with the CPU however, but why not get DDR3 anyways? The DDR3 ram is $75, so $20 for more performance I think is good.


And if you think he should go for Intel, the closest Intel in performance is the Q6/Q8/E8's and last time I checked, the cheapest out of all of those is still $50 more.

Although, I just found something really good on Newegg, for $30 more you can get can get this Mobo/CPU and pair it with this RAM and get a hell of alot more performance.

That CPU is about equal to a Q9550

 

[Dr Super Good]

If you get DDR3 RAM, you should really think about an I7 build.

Anyway, may I remind you that void has not replied in over 2 weeks to this thread. . .

 

[BlargHonk]

Indeed, might as well though

I like looking at tech ^^

 

[The Reborn Devil]

I would recommend getting a lot of RAM. I'm going to upgrade my computer soon and I'm planning to give it 8GB RAM. RAM is pretty cheap too.

 

[TDR]

If you don't do 3d modeling/rendering or video editing that much ram would just go to waste.

Also lol at "Last edited by GOD; Today at 06:66 PM.. Reason: I don't need a reason."

 

[The Reborn Devil]

I do a lot of stuff that needs a lot of RAM, so for me it is required.

You like my signature? XD
Did you notice the 666 in it too? ^^

 

[TDR]

Oh shit that was your sig hahahah; had me fooled ...damn I have the dumb

 

[Deathcom3s]

Indeed, I recommend you get a maximum of 4GB of RAM unless you're into heavy 3D modeling and the like.

 

[Dr Super Good]

There are only 4 Major common RAM eaters.
They are professional audio editing / creation which as someone told me can use well over 8 GB due to ultra high def audio fragments being hundreds of MBs a piece.
High quality rendering of computer generated images, whereby due to the render process GBs of image data can be produced and modified at the same time resulting in the need for huge ammounts of RAM for efficent use. Fractals are one example of this.
Virtual drives, where by whole areas of RAM are mapped as backing storage for ultra fast use for soe scientific purpose (Not really a common use).
Servers, whereby alrge ammounts of data has to be buffered and cached for optimum preformance.

I have 6 GB of RAM and generally I have not used over 2 GB of that currently, even with windows vista eating up 1 GB of it and running a 64 bit OS (which uses double the RAM for some tasks based on code).

Also if you want to use over 4 GB of combined RAM (graphics and normal) then you will need a 64 bit OS. XP 32 only maps 3 GB while vista 32 4 GB, with any excess being unmapped and wasted. Thus instead of plonking in umpteen GBs of RAM, rather resort to installing a nescescary ammount of faster RAM. Although 8 GB sounds nice and powerful, you get no preformance gain from using only 2-4 GBs of it. If you install 6 GB of faster RAM on the other hand, yes preformance drops if over 6 GB are used, but for when functioning below that it will preform better as RAM speeds does help improve system speed slightly.

Thus it is a good idea not to overdo RAM, yes 4 GB is a modern minimum for vista that nearly every PC should have, but anything above that only will be used if you do something that needs that much, which 95% of people do not.