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I may be building a new system soon. I have my own ideas on what I want to build, but it obviously all depends on pricing and what not when I actually have the funds.
I know prices are coming down on a lot of processors in July and some interesting things are going on with video card prices.
I'm curious at what you people would put together for an intel based system at this point and time, from the ground up, case and all. Keep it at the $1000 mark. I'm not building a supercomputer, but it is for gaming. I have no real preference on ati vs. nvidia at the moment.
Like I said, I have my own ideas, but mostly I'm bored and want to see what the general concensus is these days.
Key things are sli or crossfire, or single card p45 board, etc and so on. As well as your reasons why. Also 64 vs 32, ddr2 or ddr3, what speed, how much ram, hard drive preferences, etc. Not to worried about optical drives, they are a dime a dozen.
Enjoy, have fun with it.
edit: keep in mind that I am running a 19" lcd with 1280x1024 resolution, I don't plan on buying a new monitor in the near future. With that said, I don't care about ultra high resolution performance, since I'll never see it anyway. I need solid performance at the 1280x1024 level.
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Motherboard - ASUS P45 - $150
Vista Home Premium 64 bit - $95
RAM - 2x2gb G.Skill DDR2 800 - $85
Hard Drive - WD 640gb - $100
Processor - E8400 - $190
Video Card - ATI 4850 - $200
Power Supply - Corsair 550vx - $100
DVD Burner - Your Choice - ~$30
Case - Your Choice - ~$70
It goes slightly over budget (its at $1,020), but that all depends on how much you end up spending on the case really.
I choose 64-bit vista because it does leave room for upgrading, you can throw in another 4 gigs of RAM in there anytime you feel the need. DDR3 is still a bit too expensive for your budget in my opinion, thats why I chose DDR2.
Going with the P45 board also gives you room to upgrade because you can throw in another graphics card in there anytime you feel the need. You will have plenty of power with the corsair power supply.
As for the hard drive, I have never deemed raptors worth getting to be honest, the WD 640gb drive is among the fastest 7200RPM drives out there and will give you plenty of space.
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Desktop - AMD 8450 Tri Core, 3 gigs of DDR2 800 RAM, ATI HD 3200 Graphics, Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit
Laptop (Dell Latitude E6400) - Intel P8400, 2 GIGs of RAM, Intel X4500, Windows XP Professional
Yeah, that's almost exactly what I came up with. Any reason other than price to go with the Gskill over OCZ or Corsair?
I'll most likely be overclocking and tweaking the system quite a bit.
The PSU seems a bit low, I was considering aiming in the high 600 range, most likely a corsair or ocs/pc power and cooling supply.
Basically, I need to have enough juice to be able to overclock the vid card processor and RAM.
No reason for the G. Skill ram, corsair and OCZ are fine choices as well.
I've seen a person have a quadcore and 2 8800GTS on a 520 watt corsair and still have enough juice to overclock them, but I suggest the 610 watt silencer from PC Power and Cooling if you want to have a bit more power.
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Desktop - AMD 8450 Tri Core, 3 gigs of DDR2 800 RAM, ATI HD 3200 Graphics, Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit
Laptop (Dell Latitude E6400) - Intel P8400, 2 GIGs of RAM, Intel X4500, Windows XP Professional
Yeah, a lot of it depends on what deals are out at the time. The good thing is that e8400 will drop to about $160 in July, so that gives a little room to play with.
I'm curious as to how the Gskill handles overclocking, if at all. I know it's good value ram, but I'm trying to squeeze as much performance as possible out of it.
Yeah keep in mind I was trying to stay in your budget, I am sure OCZ or Corsair will OC better than G. Skill, I was just pressed to fit the budget.
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Desktop - AMD 8450 Tri Core, 3 gigs of DDR2 800 RAM, ATI HD 3200 Graphics, Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit
Laptop (Dell Latitude E6400) - Intel P8400, 2 GIGs of RAM, Intel X4500, Windows XP Professional
Budget isn't set in stone..but will be around that. I may have to settle for a couple cheaper parts initially and do stealth upgrades to avoid wife aggro over a couple month period.
Here is how I would go right now without taking future additions into consideration.
Total Price: $1247.43 (Not including Tax/Shipping/Optical Drives)
I would like to add 3 more HDD, another HD4850, 4 more GB Ram, A radial PSU heatsink, and an Asus Xonar Sound Card with a 7.1 Surround Sound speaker system. However, that will put the budget into the $1500 range. The reason for the HDDs is for effeciency and a slight performance increase. Its nice seperating applications, operating system, and data files across difference hard drives. Also putting the applications HDD in RAID for faster application speeds.
The reason for the HD4850 is because you can't sli with a p45. The e8500 because it combos with the case, the case because it needs a strong airflow over the video card since it will run hot without a new cooler. The PipeRock Power Supply because... it looks cool (Actually it was a frivolous expense that probably incured $100 more in costs.)
The reason for the OS is because Vista Home is kinda annoying since administrator locks. Not sure if Premium gets rid of them. Ultimate is kinda expensive, Home Premium though offers some nice extras without the cost. The reason for 64-bit is because you can't really progress any further with 32-bit. Also a 32-bit Vista OS will perform like crap. Vista over XP because of the power behind DX10 and Crossfire won't perform well in XP.
I am a little skeptical of the motherboard since it has no reviews as its a new arrival. The other choices though were Asus, MSI, and Biostar. Asus has really been dropping in quality over the last year, MSI really doesn't make good Intel Boards (Kickass AMD boards though), and I was close to choosing BioStar but its board had a critical issue. Also the board uses Heatpipes which has been starting to see use since it transfers heat better. The 1600 mhz FSB also offers an upgrade future into Nahelhiem.
The reason I chose OCZ is because I like thier memory. Also it uses a heatpipe.
One thing in particular I was looking at in this build is limiting any type of bottle-necking. Its very easy to choose the best most kickass processor or video card, but then try and stynge out on the memory and create a bottle-neck. Also I tried to keep in mind what other reviewers have been saying about certain products, like the HD4850 running hot.
From the choices so far, if I go with a p45 board (which I probably will over a crappy nvidia chipset...hearing too many issues with them) I'll probably want the ability to crossfire down the road (figure cheaper upgrade than buying a $400 card later, plus I've never built one, for myself, just for others...cool factor +1)
any particular reason for a E8500 over an E8400? It doesn't seem like that much of a gain for the price difference. I believe the '85 will be right around $200 in July though, and the '84 will be at $164, something like that. I figure the E84 would be plenty to run at stock (though I'll probably overclock it anyway.)
I like the OCZ memory too, the reapers are some nice stuff. I've heard of issues with them and MSI boards though. Something about the heatsinks getting in the way of proper installation. I've been considering some Mushkin RAM recently though, mostly because I've heard good things about them and they have been bundling 3d mark software with it lately. (I figure it's worth an extra $15-20 for some fun software)
Airflow is definitely a priority when I get my case..but there are plenty of sub $100 cases with awesome airflow out there.
I love hearing your guys opinions, most times I just nod my head and agree, sometimes I disagree, and sometimes I go "what did he just say?" and do a mad google scramble to catch up on whatever tidbit you caught that I missed, heh.
Thanks for all your ideas, keep em comin..and I'll let ya know if I ever actually get the scratch together and get my stuff.
I had my system parts ordered a month ago and my wife ninja ganked me and cancelled it, citing a need to spend the funds elsewhere...so hopefully this time I can spend it before she finds a reason for me not too, heh.
He chose the E8500 because of the $50 discount with the case combo, I still don't really think its worth the extra money over the E8400 even with the discount, but to each his own.
And which MSI board are you considering?
Oh yeah, 3d Mark Vantage only costs $5 for the basic version, so unless you wanted something more, its not worth the extra $15-20.
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Desktop - AMD 8450 Tri Core, 3 gigs of DDR2 800 RAM, ATI HD 3200 Graphics, Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit
Laptop (Dell Latitude E6400) - Intel P8400, 2 GIGs of RAM, Intel X4500, Windows XP Professional
I'm actually not considering an MSI board at the moment. I was looking at them for the 750i chipset a couple months ago, but I think I'll be going with the p45 chipset, especially since ATI/AMD finally started coming out with some awesome cards.
I don't like the newest Nvidia offerings...they seem like powersucking crap piles to me. They'll probably rock after they die shrink em a couple times though.