Was just browsing tech reviews and came across this bad boy:



http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1577/1/

What a beautiful case. Not sure how practical it would be for liquid cooling though.

 

I had this typed up, and even copied, then navigated away for something, and copied and pasted something else...:facepalm

Anyway, I do apologize if this is the wrong topic, but since it is about system specs in general I thought it would fit. I'll take it elsewhere if necessary.

With that being said, my Pell Grant money for next semester, after tuition and books, will leave me with roughly $900(+). I've been considering getting a computer that can actually play games that have released within the past five years, and thought that it would be a good time to do so.

My current computer has served me well, and does what it needs to do, which mostly amounts to internet, previously the occasion Diablo 2, and currently the occasional Guild Wars session. That said, it only has a half a gig of RAM and a CD drive... It's definitely aged, but then again, my father did get it from me from his architectural office for $50, back in 2005.


So, my intended price ranged is $500~$700, with a maximum potential of $800~900, including a decent replacement monitor and such. It would bit into some existing funds, but could be worth the investment, as long as it isn't beyond such an amount.

Currently, I'm looking forward to Diablo 3(could benefit from high specs, but is specifically designed not to need it), Heroes 6(should need better than Diablo 3, but might do well enough), and Guild Wars 2(can definitely benefit from high specs, but again, supposedly can do well on moderate).


While I have a general idea of what is good, it has been a fair while since I have personally been in the market for something good. I was hoping that I could partake of the good will of my fellow DLP'ers to provide me with some suitable recommendations within either of my provided price ranges.

A hearty "Thank you," in advance.

 

Intel Core i3-2100 Sandy Bridge 3.1GHz - $125

GIGABYTE GA-H61M-D2P-B3 LGA 1155 Intel H61 Intel Motherboard - $80

SAPPHIRE 100314-2SR Radeon HD 6870 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 - $180

Mushkin Enhanced Silverline 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 - $50

SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive - $60

SAMSUNG CD/DVD Burner 22X - $19

Antec Three Hundred Case - $60

RAIDMAX HYBRID 2 RX-730SS 730W ATX12V V2.2/ EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready Modular Power Supply - $60

Hanns-G HW-191APB Black 19" 5ms Widescreen LCD Monitor - $90

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-bit - OEM - $95

Total is $724.

I've assumed you've got a keyboard, mouse, and a USB wifi dongle. I also haven't included extra fans for the case. All these are pretty cheap though.

If you want to spend a bit less money you could downgrade the graphics card. If you wanted to spend a bit more I'd upgrade the motherboard to increase upgradability. Or upgrade from an i3 to an i5.

This should be able to play most games. The i3 is dual core, not quad core, but that doesn't matter really with most games, as they're not designed to take advantage of quad cores yet. The 6870 is a good card. 8GB RAM should be enough. I was hesitant to go with a brand I hadn't heard of, but that RAM has lots of good reviews.

Unfortunately this maxes out the mobos RAM capacity at 8GB. I've had to sacrifice upgradability for price. That said, the mobo is the new SandyBridge architecture, so you've gome some upgradability there.

Others: feel free to say my build is shit lol.

 

(First off, thank you CheddarTrek, a link that I found in your thread, provided some food for thought, apparently updated as recently as July 28th: http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/af150/The_FalconO6/CurrentLogicalPCBuyingGuide/Guide.png)

Aside from that, I appreciate your ideas Taure. While an excellent power supply is hardly a bad thing, it was a curiosity, since according to the link above, it functions almost in the "Exceptional" range, for a "Great-to-Outstanding" range's price.
The one thing that did somewhat confuse me, was the recommendation of a motherboard that falls under the "Modest" category, when almost everything else is in the "Great-to-Outstanding" range.

Anyway, at the very least, I forwarded the general idea that you provided, to my brother, who will hopefully direct it to a friend of his that builds computers for a living. If it does get to him, I'm sure he will have a few ideas of his own.

Once again, thank you.

 

They're not kidding about do your own research. While that guide is fairly accurate, some of its recommendations have been pants on head retarded and it takes ages to convince him to change it. Motherboard failures in particular, and some major disagreements about the lower tier mobo/cpu combinations. A lot of it can be attributed to stupidity of the people following the guide(overclocking shit cpu's on shit motherboards with barely adequate power supplies), but you should still ask around for opinions on your final build before you order.

 

My PC's specs.

Chassis: Cooler Master HAF 932
CPU: Intel Core i7 920 2.66GHz (Quad Core) Overclocked to 3.33GHz
Motherboard: Intel X58 Chipset
Memory: 6GB DDR3 1600MHz
Power Supply: 750W (Not sure what brand)
Hard Drive: 1TB Western Digital (7200 RPM)
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 2GB
Windows 7 Home Premium

It's not new, but it still blows the shit out of most people's I know.

 

I've been tempted to build my own pc for a while but a friend of mine showed me this.

I want a quality rig and I dont trust myself to build it while spending £760 on parts. Do you guys think its worth it?

 

Lol, 12GHz, what a joke. From the looks of that page, they've pooled together a load of inferior quality parts with nice numbers and have presented them disingenuously.

For example, having dual graphics cards is nice and all, and the page really wants you to look at the nice big "8GB RAM" number, without looking at the actual models and finding out that the cards are actually quite old.

Similarly, it talks about quad cores and clock speeds (quoting it at 12GHz, which is nowhere near the same thing as 4x3GHz cores) but it's an AMD which is inferior to the Intel i series.

For £760 I'd go for something more along these lines:

1 x Intel Core i5 2310 2.90GHz Socket 1155 6MB L3 Cache Retail Boxed Processor £116.65

1 x Gigabyte GA-Z68A-D3-B3 Socket 1155 7.1 Channel Audo ATX Motherboard £65.82

1 x Corsair 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1600MHz Vengeance Memory Kit CL9 1.5V £59.67

1 x Sapphire HD 6870 1GB GDDR5 DVI HDMI DisplayPort PCI-E Graphics Card £143.34

1 x Samsung HD103SJ Spinpoint F3 1TB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 32MB Cache £34.15

1 x Samsung SH-B123L 12x BD-ROM DVD±RW DL & RAM Lightscribe SATA Optical Drive - OEM Black £39.99

1 x InWin Ironclad Full Tower Gaming Chassis E-ATX 22cm LED Fan £70.82

1 x Arctic Power 700W PSU - 4x SATA 1x PCI-Express £36.65

1 x Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium w/SP1 - Licence and media - 1 PC - OEM - DVD - 64-bit - English £61.26

All of these components are superior. You don't have Crossfire, but the mobo has support for Crossfire so it's there for the upgrading, and you've got a much more recent card in there. You've also got 2 spare RAM slots for expanding memory.

Though if it were me buying a computer, I'd skip the Blu-Ray and spend the extra on a slightly better motherboard. While this mobo supports Crossfire, the slots run at 16x/4x. I'd want to get that 4x up to 8x.

 

Thanks Taure but now that Im thinking about it I might shy away from building my own PC - I need a decent Gaming PC and I'd rather not build my own and fuck up.

The amount of flak I would get... xD

 

Fucking up is quite hard, especially if you prepare correctly (e.g. wear an anti-static wristband). And if you turn on your machine after building it and some component is blown, you can always return it as Dead on Arrival. I've done that for a motherboard before. I have no idea if it was dead on arrival or if I blew it, but I got a replacement free of charge within 5 days.

 

Hmm fair enough. Where did you get those prices from Taure? I looked over and I cant find them that cheap -.-

 

If you've never built a computer before Kang, there's some good videos/data on the web.

Three part video series that go step by step on how to put together a computer. Was very helpful for my first attempt.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPIXAtNGGCw&feature=relmfu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_56kyib-Ls&feature=relmfu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxaVBsXEiok&feature=relmfu

Also a nice chart for help on picking some good components.

tinyurl.com/falconguide

 

Kang: the website I use is www.ebuyer.co.uk

 

Thanks guys, this is the revised edition of the specs.

Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro rev 2 Socket 775, 1156, 1155, 1366, AM2, AM3 Heatpipe CPU Cooler @ £15.15

Arctic Silver 5 High-Density Polysynthetic Silver Thermal Compound Thermal paste 3.5gram @ £6.57

Corsair 8GB (2X4GB) DDR3 1600Mhz Blue Vengeance Memory Kit CL9 1.5V @ £53

EXDISPLAY Coolermaster CM 690 II Advanced All White Case *Special Edition* @ £60.84
Corsair 500W CX Series PSU @ £44.97

Intel Core i5 2500K 3.3GHz Socket 1155 6MB Cache Retail Boxed Processor @ £163.31

Gigabyte GA-P67A-UD3-B3 iP67 Socket 1155 7.1 Channel Audio ATX Motherboard @£104

Samsung HD103SJ Spinpoint F3 1TB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 32MB Cache £40

Xenta SATA 2.0 to right angle SATA 7-pin Cable (Red) 46cm / 18" @ 1.92

Sapphire HD 6870 1GB GDDR5 DVI HDMI DisplayPort PCI-E Graphics Card @£142

Coming to a grand total of £631. Windows 7 isnt on there I can acquire it in a different manner.

What do you think?

EDIT: Shit add a Samsung SH-B123L 12x BD-ROM DVD±RW DL & RAM Lightscribe SATA Optical Drive - OEM Black for £48 for £679 rig.

 

Are you planning on over-clocking your processor? If not, you can safely ditch the CPU cooler and thermal paste. The fan that comes with the processor is fairly good and is perfectly fine for cooling a non-overclocked i5, which runs very cool.

I have an i5, not over-clocked, and it idles at around 35 Celsius with stock cooling. That's just over 10 degrees above room temperature, which is ridiculously cool.

Other than that, it looks okay, though I find it odd that a motherboard priced at £100 doesn't support SATAII. Especially as it's a recent model (it has to be, to support Sandy Bridge architecture ). It might be an error on the tech specs. I'd look around to see if it's correct or not.

Edit: I looked it up, the mobo supports both SATAII and SATAIII. 4 SATAII slots, 2 SATAIII slots. See http://www.pricerunner.co.uk/pi/35-...gabyte-GA-P67A-UD3-B3-(rev.-1.1)-Product-Info

You don't need that SATAII to SATA cable, then.

 

I'll start off and say that it's pretty hard to fuck up building your computer. Getting the parts is by far the hardest part, and from there it's very simple. On the other hand, if something doesn't work and you have no idea why, it can be very frustrating (I've had that happen before, and it took me a while to fix since no one could tell me what was wrong with it). I recommend it though, it's a nice feeling to know you built it yourself, and it will impress the technologically retarded.

If you're ordering Windows 7, then I recommend you use this, it's the student deal which will give you Windows 7 for $29.99.

 

In the event of a fuck-up, the easiest way to identify which component is the problem is to put that component into another machine and see what happens. Of course, not so easy for the processor or mobo...