Luca is planning to build a new computer soon

[Luca Shoal]

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/zrIz

PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/zrIz
Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/zrIz/by_merchant/
Benchmarks: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/zrIz/benchmarks/

CPU: AMD Athlon II X3 450 3.2GHz Triple-Core Processor  ($69.99 @ Newegg)
CPU Cooler: SilenX EFZ-120HA5 86.0 CFM Fluid Dynamic Bearing CPU Cooler  ($29.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: Asus M5A99FX PRO R2.0 ATX  AM3+ Motherboard  ($139.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  ($47.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($54.99 @ Microcenter)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($79.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: Gigabyte Radeon HD 6670 1GB Video Card  ($56.97 @ Newegg)
Sound Card: Creative Labs Audigy SE 24-bit 96 KHz Sound Card  ($29.99 @ Microcenter)
Case: Cooler Master Storm Enforcer ATX Mid Tower Case  ($79.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: SeaSonic 620W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply  ($78.99 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-04 DVD/CD Writer  ($16.99 @ Newegg)
Monitor: Acer G236HLBbd 60Hz 23.0" Monitor  ($109.99 @ Newegg)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (OEM) (64-bit)  ($99.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $895.85
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-01-25 09:17 EST-0500)

any opinions from y'all? My main goal was keeping it under $900 since that's what my tax refund will be.

[CaffeinePowered]

After switching to Intel having always used AMD chips, I will not be going back...even as much as I hate installing their CPU fans

Id see if you can come up with a build that uses an i7 and has a z77 chipset but still fits within your budget

[Evil Cheese]

I'm still a proponent of there not being an adequate cost/benefit advantage of getting an i7 over an i5 for general use and gaming. If you're doing a lot of photo/video editing or plan on using other software that can take advantage of the extra logical cores, then that's another story.

[HeK]

I'm still a proponent of there not being an adequate cost/benefit advantage of getting an i7 over an i5 for general use and gaming. If you're doing a lot of photo/video editing or plan on using other software that can take advantage of the extra logical cores, then that's another story.

This.

The 3570K dominates the current market as far as gaming goes. I'm running mine at 4.5ghz with temps under 60c.

There is no reason to even look at AMD right now.

As for your other options, sound cards are really overrated now, on board is quite decent. You'll want to focus more money into a videocard if you are a gamer. You can save a bit going with a Gigabyte or Abit motherboard over ASUS.

Take the $1K Challenge PC, tone it down in places: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/zvvn

[Eightball]

I wrote a pretty long message on my laptop and then the battery shit itself despite displaying 15% remaining. Here's what I wrote in a nutshell:

Everything that HeK said: Don't need a sound card, don't consider an i7 (don't think you would have anyways). It was my understanding that some low-level AMD chips are still decent, but look into i5 series chips, I bet you can find one in your price range. In the event that you stick with this AMD chip, how does it overclock? Do you really need an aftermarket cooler? I feel like more people buy them than actually need them. Also, I would argue you're overspending on your motherboard given the price of your other components. I have a boner for ASRock for inexpensive but good motherboards, but I'm sure you can find Gigabyte and ASUS boards in the sub-$100 range that don't suck.

Why two physical hard drives? They seem to have pretty similar specs--the only apparent difference is a 32MB cache on the WD and a 16MB on the Seagate. I'm confident you can find a 1.5TB drive @7200rpm & 32MB Cache for cheaper than those two separately. You can partition it too if that's your fancy.

Don't rule out Antec cases: I think they're easily the most trusted cases among enthusiasts, and the Three Hundred is cheaper than the Enforcer. Not that I'm trying to diss on my CM, but I chose it mostly out of aesthetic considerations.

Can you salvage your old optical drive? The tech will not have changed so you may be able to save $20. What about your display? The reviews on that Acer aren't great, so if you have a not terrible monitor still, I'd hold off until you can snag a really nice Samsung or ASUS for cheap.

Just some thoughts. It's ultimately your build, so do as you wish.

[Chief]

CPU: Could probably get a better one after cutting some costs, i5-3750k should be the way to go
CPU Cooler: Could probably get a cheaper one from Cooler Master, but that's my opinion
Motherboard: Perhaps you should look into another one, most of what Eightball said (ASRock, Gigabyte, and ASUS). Perhaps this Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD3H for only around 10 dollars more? http://pcpartpicker.com/part/gigabyte-mo...gaz77xud3h
Memory: Nothing but boners for Corsair Vengeance, but if you want to get cheaper look at G.SKILL
Storage: You should only get one HD and make it WD Black in my opinion, or if you're willing to experiment, one of the newest Seagate Barracudas could be found for cheaper.
Video Card: Could go better after looking at some other costs such as getting rid of one HD.
Sound Card: Don't even consider it.
Case: What 8ball said, Antec makes simple but effective cases for cheap. I just chose my HAF XM because of coolness and coolness cause of multiple fans.
Power Supply: If you can, go with EVGA as you'll get a solid warranty, but you can definitely shop around a bit for that.
Optical Drive: Salvage or get the Lite-On for cheap
Monitor: http://www.prad.de/en/monitore/reviews.html and http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/ for reviews in case you haven't checked around

[Didzo]

CPU: I have a AMD Phenom 2 x4 965 Black Edition (currently $100 on Newegg). I built my computer 3 years ago and I've never had any issues with it (until completely unoptimized Planetside 2 beta). You shouldn't have any reason to go cheaper than that. I want to support AMD, but you can still do Intel at the <$1000 price point without much difficulty.

Cooler: Either stick with the stock (good enough for a year or two until you get more money) or get a cheaper Cooler Master.

Mobo (and RAM): This will depend on whether you stick with AMD or switch to Intel, but you can get close to the same features for less money than the one you picked. I found this one in only a few minutes of searching and it comes with a stick of 8GB RAM, all for $80. You can buy a second stick of the same RAM for an extra $40 for 16GB total. Now that is a deal.

Storage: Just get a single WD Caviar Black and be done with it.

Sound card: Only consider it if you're using headphones with high impedance and need some sort of amp to drive them. Otherwise, get rid of it.

Case: Do whatever can compromise your aesthetic needs with your budget. Lots of good cases out there at many different price points.

[FlyingMongoose]

I got a Core i7 3770 and love it.... I'm sure HeK thinks I wasted my money though.

[Didzo]

I got a Core i7 3770 and love it.... I'm sure HeK thinks I wasted my money though.

He's just trying to deny you the pleasure of stroking your epeen.

[FlyingMongoose]

[quote author=FlyingMongoose link=topic=6737.msg260913#msg260913 date=1359160478]
I got a Core i7 3770 and love it.... I'm sure HeK thinks I wasted my money though.

He's just trying to deny you the pleasure of stroking your epeen.
[/quote]

It is massive...

[HeK]

I got a Core i7 3770 and love it.... I'm sure HeK thinks I wasted my money though.

Depends on if you need the hyperthreading or not. If you do a lot of compressing, encoding, decoding, photoshop batch files, etc. The extra $100 is worth while.

If you are not... then it's a waste.

[Luca Shoal]

I had no idea if sound cards were even a necessary thing anymore. What I picked was all 4+ star rated. I will keep this all in consideration, since I <3 you all.

@HeK - I'm still stuck without an OS on that build...and I wanna upgrade my monitor :V. Plus that's kind of a tiny drive. Not a bad build though.

@Eightball - the smaller one was intended for OS and important things. The big drive for Steam, and piracylegitimately purchased audio files and the like. And I just like the looks of the Cooler Master case, really. I've wanted a case with lighting and a window and they're affordable. It was either that one or a Storm Scout. Optical drive...well, not really, sadly. If I go to rip a cd, it grinds loudly and that's worrying. And like I said about the monitor, I'm still using an old Dell LCD screen, 1280x1024, I wanna go widescreen and maybe dual monitor (this one is still usable perfectly fine, just uncalibrated)

I don't do any encoding or photoshoopery really. I just game and browse SA/FA 90% of the time, essentially.

[Eightball]

@Eightball - the smaller one was intended for OS and important things. The big drive for Steam, and piracylegitimately purchased audio files and the like. And I just like the looks of the Cooler Master case, really. I've wanted a case with lighting and a window and they're affordable. It was either that one or a Storm Scout. Optical drive...well, not really, sadly. If I go to rip a cd, it grinds loudly and that's worrying. And like I said about the monitor, I'm still using an old Dell LCD screen, 1280x1024, I wanna go widescreen and maybe dual monitor (this one is still usable perfectly fine, just uncalibrated)

Okay, sounds like you should go ahead with the monitor and optical drive then (seeing as that you do rip CDs and such). For what it's worth, I do really really like my enforcer. But again for the HDs, do you need to be able to swap the drives out? If it's purely for organization (keeping your OS separate from your other files), there are ways to accomplish that with one drive. Might only save you $20, but look into it.

[Luca Shoal]

Yeah, I know how to partition and all that. But I'd still like to keep the OS and essentials separate, just in case of HDD failure, unlikely as it is. If I could find a decent 7200 RPM, 16mb cache, 250gb drive for under $50..that'd be even better, but they don't seem to exist. A 128gb or so SSD would be even better, but they ain't cheap enough to be feasible.

[Luca Shoal]

alright talking to Didzo, and y'all, helped me out. I can probably get a good financing deal with Microcenter, increasing my budget. So here's a revised list, based off of HeK's, with input from Didz. There's no case because I couldn't find the ones he reccomended based on my tastes.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/zLCf

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU:  Intel Core i5-3570K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($189.99 @ Microcenter)
CPU Cooler:  Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler  ($29.99 @ Best Buy)
Motherboard:  MSI Z77A-G45 ATX  LGA1155 Motherboard  ($99.99 @ Newegg)
Memory:  Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  ($44.99 @ NCIX US)
Storage:  Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($84.99 @ Amazon)
Storage:  Samsung 830 Series 256GB 2.5" Solid State Disk  ($204.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card:  EVGA GeForce GTX 650 1GB Video Card  ($99.99 @ Microcenter)
Power Supply:  Antec Basiq Plus 550W 80 PLUS Certified ATX12V Power Supply  ($54.99 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive:  Lite-On iHAS124-04 DVD/CD Writer  ($15.98 @ Outlet PC)
Monitor:  Asus VH236H 23.0" Monitor  ($149.00 @ NCIX US)
Operating System:  Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (OEM) (32-bit)  ($89.98 @ Outlet PC)
Total: $1064.88
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-01-26 20:27 EST-0500)

[Chief]

I never got a SSD and my computer is still pretty godly, but that's entirely up to you. Otherwise shit's looking pretty good now

[Luca Shoal]

Fixed the OS version to 64 bit.

And ehh, if I have the option, I'll take the SSD.

[Eightball]

And I got a 128GB SSD and don't regret it. Saved me about $100


Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

[HeK]

One trick you can do with the Z77 chipset over the Z75 is Intel's smart response. You take a large hdd, like a two or three terabyte and combine it with a 64 or 128 gigabyte (the actual size combinations are somewhere on Intel's site) and it boosts the most commonly accessed files.

It's best of both worlds.


Personally I run a ssd raid 0, but I am crazy.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

[Vandamguy]

kinda repeating what others have said - im not sure the SSD is entirely nessecary .. you'll only notice the benefit with bootup time.

and it's like .. 20% of your total budget.

i'd axe it and put that 200$ into the graphics department  gtx 670 or 660ti

or axe it and save 200 bringin' it down to your original target butget