So after much waiting and fussing I have decided instead of waiting for the “great deal” to show up, im building my own shit. If you can suggest anything, or maybe better prices please let me know.
Case- No biggie, Simple rosewill that holds all i need. $20
CPU- Intel Q6600, quad hotness. $189.99
GPU- nvidia 8800GT, been told its proving to be best bang for the buck out of anything else. From what i’ve read it seems to be true. $114.99 AR
PSU- Corsair 750w. $119
RAM- Corsair 2gigs that is faster than the 4 was . $27.99 AR
mobo- ASUS P5N Premium, can go up to 8gigs ram, NO SLI, wifi, just a better board. $159.99
HDD- Seagate 320gig ULTRA-ATA- 69.99
Optics- LITE-ON 20x, cheapest I could find. $23
So for a grand total of $797.93 I seem to have a monster on my hands. Any comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated because I have not a clue on whats “good”, only reviews and some help from friends
Not bad,rosewill power supplies are shit though.I bought a brand new cheap rosewill case from newegg w/ 300 watt psu and it was DOA.I didn’t plan on using the PSU so I opened it up and it had a few blown caps.
I wouldn’t trust rosewill to power a $700 rig.
This however is a great PSU that isnt too far off in price…
Other than that,system looks pretty decent and you could always add another 8800gt down the road if it needed.Dont forget a HDD and optical drive.
pcp&c make the best psu’s (750w silencer psu maybe?). Silverstone are also pretty good from what I hear, but ive had no personal experience with them. System doesn’t look bad. Im a big fan of the evga brand mobo’s tho. If something ever breaks, you can get an rma fairly easy. I hear Asus has poor support, but Ive never had to deal with them. I can just vouche for evga being top notch in that category. My gpus and mobo are evga. 8800gt is still a great card for that price range. If you plan on overclocking get a good hs. I had a q6600 G0 for my last chip and hit 3.8ghz with a zalman 9700. 2 8800 gt’s with 2 full speed lanes, and an overclocked q6600 can get ya some quality gaming longevity. So if you plan to get a 2nd 8800gt at some point, and overclock your cpu, dont go cheapo on the psu!
I would up the psu, thats about the only concern i would have. Also as said above, dont cheap out on the brand. (read reviews of them)
And don’t forget about your hdd/dvd drive. So you up to about 900$ with those unless you have something else your going to use, and that’s not including a more expensive PSU. I’d also recommend 2x160gb drives in raid0 (or 320’s) for the os, and a 500 or whatever for files. You will notice a difference from the os loading/running from a single drive to a raid config, especially with that setup.
But a few other questions that would help with possible recommendations:
What os do you plan on using? (xp/vista, 32/64, legal or not)
Do you plan on OC’ing anything (gfx/cpu/ram)
Whats the absolute most your willing to spend. Not that stretching yourself to the limits is good, but so you can see a few different builds and possibilities.
I’ll also hopefully see him tomorrow and get back with you on the other computer…
why don’t you get 2 video cards that will potentily be better than 8800gt and put them in sli my friend has a 8800gtx and he’s not impressed with it anymore… lmk what you looking to spend and i’ll give you an ideal of what you should get, lmk what your looking to use the computer for too…
KK, ill look at different PSU’s, I like the one Jon posted, anyone have any problems with that?
My price does come with 2 HDDs (1 160gig and another I have laying around) and zee optics.
I want to use XP64 but have been told it is not needed for what my applications are (mainly gaming) so I may just stick with 32 and take the hit on RAM, or maybe try vista, but it seems to still be in the air.
I don’t plan on OC’ing anything, I have no clue what im doing and im spending this much so I don’t need to OC anything.
I want room for expansion, but a 8800GT will suite me just fine untill I decide I want to go bigger.
MKE- Im the type of guy that wants to do things and do them right. I planned on keeping it around 500, but looked at what I could get and now Im at 750, Id like to not go much higher than this unless I am really missing out on something that you could point out/improve.
That power supply is quite poor, a single 8800GT is a cost effective card, but wont be nearly enough power to play any real game anything above 720P. Dont expect to be able to play crysis, bioshock, UT3, etc… Unless you find 20 fps playable… I like 100+
And do you plan on overclocking the Q6600? Its a good processor for the money, but its getting old, and dosent have the punch the newer 45nm quads do at the same clocks, and it can be power hungry. If you want anything above 3.0ghz, you NEED a better cooler, i would recomend the thermalright ultra 120 extreme, its the best air cooler around, and beats most cheap liquid setups when lapped with mid to high flow fans. A quad at 3.0ghz is ok, but for a mid end pc, its bare minimum. With a TRUE and some light overclocking knowledge, you should be able to get 3.4 ghz no problem, 3.6 is common, and 3.8 will be difficult, dont even hope for anything beyond that unless you really know what youre doing.
What do you plan on doing with the computer?
And the memory, is that 2x 2gb corsair dominator? Whats the speed on that mem? Those sticks are ok, they will run cool, but wont overclock that great. But i dont think you can handle memory overclocking, its very tricky to get right.
again, NO OC’ing, I dont know what im doing, and I dont plan to play any of those games, but I didnt know they could be played on HD, that may make me get a HD monitor. I changed the PSU to this:
edit- heres what the mem is Vtek, It doesnt say dominator so I guess its not
One single card thats almost as good as two in SLi is a MUCH MUCH better route to take vs two crappy cards in SLi that are about the same performance. Some games cant use SLi, SLi sometimes scales like shit, and a 8800GTX isnt a baseline anymore, its old technology that can nowhere near keep up with the insanity of todays high resolutions and impossible to play games.
That is a very good PSU, and if you dont want to OC anything, keep the stock intel cooler, but make sure its running at 100% 24/7, the mobo will run it at very slow speeds by defult to keep it silent, but its barely audible at 100%, and keeps the CPU much cooler.
If you dont plan on gaming, the 8800GT is a great card.
Im sorry, I DO plan on gaming with it, but I don’t need 100+ FPS for all my games. I have never even played crysis before and don’t plan on it. I do not know how to change that intel mobo thing your talking about, but I did add on 2 case fans to screw on and help. If you think its not worth it, please let me know.
edit again- while on the subject, what would you guys suggest instead of the 8800GT, I was told it has the best bang for the buck currently.
Let me tell you what im moving up from before crazy suggestions are made:
Intel 1.83 duo core, 1gig ram, 256 geforce 7600, all in my 3 year old laptop. I love the thing, but with the games coming out that Im gunna want to play, time to give her a break and put the burden on another machine
What kind of games do you want to play? And at what resolution?
Building a computer yourself isnt always the most cost effective or reliable choice… If you put good components in and dont overclock to the extremes, you can expect it to run much longer than you need it to. After a few years youre going to want a new one anyways.
If you are going to build a gaming rig, they why wouldn’t you want to be able to play something as demanding as crisis.
Think about your computer lasting you 3-4 years… Sure you can swap out the video cards, but look at the upgrades that happen… PCIe x16 now… PCIe 2.0 In 2 years the video card socket you have on the mother board is going to be probably out dated . might as well get something to play the best now to be mediocre in the future.
Instead of mediocre now, mediocre in the future. Sure you don’t have to pay some retarded premium on the best card for it, but just don’t get something crappy and regret it later when you are spending more money then.