Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!

Trying to build a PC, please help

2»

Comments

  • XthosXthos Member UncommonPosts: 2,739
    Originally posted by Quizzical
    Originally posted by Xthos

    I do not know AMD that well, so here is something quick, but using a cpu/mb combo they have up, I dont know AMD well enough to help you there.

     

    I5-3570K/ASUS P8Z77-LK combo $290

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.1270852

    Corsair 500 W 80+ bronze ps $69.99 (plus 20 rebate, to make it 49.99 after rebate)

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139050

    Rosewill Challenger case $49.99 ($10 mail in rebate also, had good reviews for price)
     
     
    The HD and memory you chose $116
     
    The second gfx card you chose was $199
     
    So that comes to: 724.98 before rebates, and 694.98 after.
     
    If you want to stretch it, and do 824.97 before, and 794.98 after you could upgrade to a
    7950 gfx card, I know a lot of people on here are high on it being a good value for the price.
     
     
     
    They have different ones, and one with 'boost' that is $10 more after rebate...So not much over your $750 but probably a lot better from what people say?
     
     

    You're completely missing an OS and optical drive, and that will push you way over the stated $750 budget.

    I was going with the assumption that they had it covered, since they didn't post it in the original.

  • ShakyMoShakyMo Member CommonPosts: 7,207
    Originally posted by grafh

    I am a computer technician, and i can tell you dont waste your money. for 750.00 your going to be building something that will make the new games you want to play run like crap.

    I can offer advice on parts but i cannot act6ualyl look for them on newegg for you as i am at work.

    Optical drive- doesnt really matter to be honest. only major diff is if its bluray or dvd.

    HDD- 500gb hdd would be your best bet just to be safe- try to get western digital or seagate. Hitachi is terrrible

    PSU- i tend to go with corsair as i have had the best customer service experience with them. 750w would be more than enough for future upgrades, but you may be able to sneak by with a 650w

    CPU- i dont know much about AMD as im intel person. IMPORTANT! IF YOU PLAN TO OVERCLOCK, DO NOT GO WITH THE STOCK CPU FAN THAT COMES IN THE BOX. I WOULDNT USE THAT THING EVEN IF YOUR NOT PLANNING ON OVERCLOCKING. JUST BUY A NEW CPU FAN. thermlake has some good ones. MAKE SURE YOU USE ARTIC SILVER THERMAL COMPOUND.

    Case- This depends on how much your willing to spend.

    GPU- This is where you want to spend the most money IMO. Get a good one that will last you for a good while. The MSI 660ti Power edition cards are monsters! They work so well. If your going with amd graphics cards, Find a place that has the card you want, but gives you free games with it. I know some locations offer bioshock infinite and tombraider when you buy a 7850 or 7950. Cant remember cause i dont know about amd much.

    RAM - Corsair is still the best at ram imo, but kingston is good as well. Read reviews and then judge. You wont need more than 8gb. There are hardly any games that will utilize more ram than 6gb, but i say 8 just to be extra certain.

    Motherboard - I'm an asus fan. Make sure your board is compatable with your chipset. Please dont fall for all this random crap about pci 3.0 and let people try to sell you 3.0 boards and cards. There is no need for them at this point, and games that will utilize that speed are probably still way off. Some companies offer discounts on boards with the CPU. So take a look for deals like that. I know microcenter has deals like that.

     

    If its your first computer, i say wait till you have 1200. Do massive amounts of research before you buy anything. Then once you have read reviews, looked into all aspects of what features a motherboard has that you would use and not use, same with the graphics card, case, and everything about your build, THEN start building your computer. Dont be sucked into people recommending parts and stuff when they only have basic experience about how to build a computer.

     

     

    the stock AMD fans are considerably better than stock Intel fans.  He will need a better fan if he overclocks, but if he doesnt the stock AMD fan is fine.

    also i would use a non silver but still quality thermal paste.  doesnt matter if you put too much on then, but silver paste will short circuit if it seeps.

    660tis are very bad value for money in comparison to cards around them - 660gtx, 670gtx, 7850, 7870. 7950.  7950 probably offers the best pixel per buck at the moment, especially on factory clocked editions, but they aint cheap.

  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,347
    Originally posted by grafh

    I am a computer technician, and i can tell you dont waste your money. for 750.00 your going to be building something that will make the new games you want to play run like crap.

    I can offer advice on parts but i cannot act6ualyl look for them on newegg for you as i am at work.

    Optical drive- doesnt really matter to be honest. only major diff is if its bluray or dvd.

    HDD- 500gb hdd would be your best bet just to be safe- try to get western digital or seagate. Hitachi is terrrible

    PSU- i tend to go with corsair as i have had the best customer service experience with them. 750w would be more than enough for future upgrades, but you may be able to sneak by with a 650w

    CPU- i dont know much about AMD as im intel person. IMPORTANT! IF YOU PLAN TO OVERCLOCK, DO NOT GO WITH THE STOCK CPU FAN THAT COMES IN THE BOX. I WOULDNT USE THAT THING EVEN IF YOUR NOT PLANNING ON OVERCLOCKING. JUST BUY A NEW CPU FAN. thermlake has some good ones. MAKE SURE YOU USE ARTIC SILVER THERMAL COMPOUND.

    Case- This depends on how much your willing to spend.

    GPU- This is where you want to spend the most money IMO. Get a good one that will last you for a good while. The MSI 660ti Power edition cards are monsters! They work so well. If your going with amd graphics cards, Find a place that has the card you want, but gives you free games with it. I know some locations offer bioshock infinite and tombraider when you buy a 7850 or 7950. Cant remember cause i dont know about amd much.

    RAM - Corsair is still the best at ram imo, but kingston is good as well. Read reviews and then judge. You wont need more than 8gb. There are hardly any games that will utilize more ram than 6gb, but i say 8 just to be extra certain.

    Motherboard - I'm an asus fan. Make sure your board is compatable with your chipset. Please dont fall for all this random crap about pci 3.0 and let people try to sell you 3.0 boards and cards. There is no need for them at this point, and games that will utilize that speed are probably still way off. Some companies offer discounts on boards with the CPU. So take a look for deals like that. I know microcenter has deals like that.

     

    If its your first computer, i say wait till you have 1200. Do massive amounts of research before you buy anything. Then once you have read reviews, looked into all aspects of what features a motherboard has that you would use and not use, same with the graphics card, case, and everything about your build, THEN start building your computer. Dont be sucked into people recommending parts and stuff when they only have basic experience about how to build a computer.

    I don't know if you're really a computer technician, but even if so, you certainly didn't learn much about modern gaming hardware there.

    1)  So an FX-6300 together with a 2 GB Radeon HD 7850 isn't going to be able to run games well?  Can you name a single game that won't run well at high (not necessarily max) settings on that hardware, without being the sort of badly-coded game that won't run smoothly on any hardware at all?

    2)  Very few gaming systems have any plausible use for more than 650 W on a power supply.  CrossFire/SLI rigs and extreme (e.g., liquid nitrogen) overclocking are about the only ones, and the latter really isn't a gaming use.  Yet on a $750 budget that you think isn't enough to get anything decent, you want to push for a 750 W power supply?

    3)  Different thermal compounds basically amount to a rounding error in cooling performance.  For that matter, the cooling difference between Arctic Silver 5 and household mayonnaise is basically a rounding error, at least on the first day.  (Though you shouldn't use mayo because it won't last as long.)  If you want to spend more on better cooling, then you put the money where it matters:  namely, the CPU heatsink and fan.  But on a $750 budget, it's absurd to overbuild the motherboard and power supply so that you can overclock the puny CPU that still fits in your budget after spending too much on other stuff.

    4)  Among current generation cards, the GeForce GTX 660 Ti is probably the single worst value for the money from either vendor in the $130-$400 price range.  Picking that one out for a recommendation is just silly.

    5)  The PCI Express version depends on what platform you get.  A modern Intel CPU will have PCI Express 3.0, while a modern AMD one will have PCI Express 2.0.  All else equal, you'd rather have 3.0, but on a $750 budget, the difference will basically amount to a rounding error.  And even if you do need the extra bandwidth for an SLI or CrossFire rig, an AMD 990FX chipset motherboard with two PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots has the same bandwidth as an Intel Z77 chipset motherboard with two PCI Express 3.0 x8 slots.  An X79 motherboard offers more, but that's way, way out of a $750 budget.  And probably not sensible on a $2000 budget, for that matter.

  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,347
    Originally posted by Thomas2006

     


    Originally posted by Quizzical

    Originally posted by Thomas2006 The ASRock 970 Extreme3 is a good mobo. Its what I use on my machine and I have had no issues at all out of it. So far your build does not look that bad. I would go with a 700 Watt PSU for like $60-$70 and then pick out a case you like within your budget. Raidmax is a good PSU. But I have had issues with the power cable being crappy in the latest one I bought. My machine I run a Raidmax 700 Watt PSU, 970 Extreme3 Mobo, Duel 7870's in Crossfire, 8 gigs of DDR3 16000 Ripjaws, 160gig SSD Drive, 2x300 Gig HDs, with Phenom 2 x 6 at 3.3Ghz. So far its been a good machine.
    If a "700 W" power supply is $70, it's probably a piece of junk.  If it's Raidmax, it's probably also a piece of junk, regardless of the price and nominal wattage.

     

    Mine was abit more then 70$ and so far it hasnt been a piece of junk. It runs two 7870's in crossfire without any issue what so ever. So I dont know how you can say its a piece of junk when it does the job and has been for some time without any issues.

    Its 109$ now http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817152043 That is the one I have.

    $116 is not the same as $70.  You can build a nice 700 W power supply and sell it profitably at $116.  $70, not so much, apart from the rare special deal.

    Just because your power supply hasn't exploded doesn't mean that it's really good.  If a power supply has a 60% chance of working without causing problems for you and a 40% chance of frying your system, then it's a piece of junk.

    The one you link might be all right, as it doesn't have any real red flags other than the Raidmax brand name and being an "850 W" power supply that only offers 732 W on the +12 V rails.  But you don't want to buy a power supply that might be all right and might be junk.  You want a power supply that is definitely good.  When power supply vendors have a good product, they send it to reputable review sites for independent testing.

  • DihoruDihoru Member Posts: 2,731
    Originally posted by Quizzical
    Originally posted by Thomas2006

     


    Originally posted by Quizzical

    Originally posted by Thomas2006 The ASRock 970 Extreme3 is a good mobo. Its what I use on my machine and I have had no issues at all out of it. So far your build does not look that bad. I would go with a 700 Watt PSU for like $60-$70 and then pick out a case you like within your budget. Raidmax is a good PSU. But I have had issues with the power cable being crappy in the latest one I bought. My machine I run a Raidmax 700 Watt PSU, 970 Extreme3 Mobo, Duel 7870's in Crossfire, 8 gigs of DDR3 16000 Ripjaws, 160gig SSD Drive, 2x300 Gig HDs, with Phenom 2 x 6 at 3.3Ghz. So far its been a good machine.
    If a "700 W" power supply is $70, it's probably a piece of junk.  If it's Raidmax, it's probably also a piece of junk, regardless of the price and nominal wattage.

     

    Mine was abit more then 70$ and so far it hasnt been a piece of junk. It runs two 7870's in crossfire without any issue what so ever. So I dont know how you can say its a piece of junk when it does the job and has been for some time without any issues.

    Its 109$ now http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817152043 That is the one I have.

    $116 is not the same as $70.  You can build a nice 700 W power supply and sell it profitably at $116.  $70, not so much, apart from the rare special deal.

    Just because your power supply hasn't exploded doesn't mean that it's really good.  If a power supply has a 60% chance of working without causing problems for you and a 40% chance of frying your system, then it's a piece of junk.

    The one you link might be all right, as it doesn't have any real red flags other than the Raidmax brand name and being an "850 W" power supply that only offers 732 W on the +12 V rails.  But you don't want to buy a power supply that might be all right and might be junk.  You want a power supply that is definitely good.  When power supply vendors have a good product, they send it to reputable review sites for independent testing.

    There's a feedback tab on newegg for a reason. True they're not "from reputable sites" but that feedback can only be doctored so much by paid reviewers, I only skimmed the feedback but the general feel is: good bang for your buck but you have a chance of getting one that's faulty (bout as much as any other manufacturer, christ I've gotten a bad gigabyte motherboard on my 2nd pc, on my 3rd the corsair ram cards were dying the moment they got put in, on my 4th they managed to put the wrong motherboard into the right box, etc).

     

    My advice is look on tom's hardware if they have a review, if they do and said it's crap and I mean utter crap, drop it, if they do not have a review of it look on the feedback/review sections on sites that sell it and look at at least 50-100 people's reply discouting ones which repeat (paid reviewers do that), if the general vibe is positive then it's a good PSU, if not then it's a good indication to keep looking. I do this with all components as even reputable reviewers are biased by their own views no matter how much they try because they are not machines.

    image
  • Thomas2006Thomas2006 Member RarePosts: 1,152


    Originally posted by Dihoru
    Originally posted by Quizzical Originally posted by Thomas2006   Originally posted by Quizzical Originally posted by Thomas2006 The ASRock 970 Extreme3 is a good mobo. Its what I use on my machine and I have had no issues at all out of it. So far your build does not look that bad. I would go with a 700 Watt PSU for like $60-$70 and then pick out a case you like within your budget. Raidmax is a good PSU. But I have had issues with the power cable being crappy in the latest one I bought. My machine I run a Raidmax 700 Watt PSU, 970 Extreme3 Mobo, Duel 7870's in Crossfire, 8 gigs of DDR3 16000 Ripjaws, 160gig SSD Drive, 2x300 Gig HDs, with Phenom 2 x 6 at 3.3Ghz. So far its been a good machine.
    If a "700 W" power supply is $70, it's probably a piece of junk.  If it's Raidmax, it's probably also a piece of junk, regardless of the price and nominal wattage.
      Mine was abit more then 70$ and so far it hasnt been a piece of junk. It runs two 7870's in crossfire without any issue what so ever. So I dont know how you can say its a piece of junk when it does the job and has been for some time without any issues. Its 109$ now http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817152043 That is the one I have.
    $116 is not the same as $70.  You can build a nice 700 W power supply and sell it profitably at $116.  $70, not so much, apart from the rare special deal. Just because your power supply hasn't exploded doesn't mean that it's really good.  If a power supply has a 60% chance of working without causing problems for you and a 40% chance of frying your system, then it's a piece of junk. The one you link might be all right, as it doesn't have any real red flags other than the Raidmax brand name and being an "850 W" power supply that only offers 732 W on the +12 V rails.  But you don't want to buy a power supply that might be all right and might be junk.  You want a power supply that is definitely good.  When power supply vendors have a good product, they send it to reputable review sites for independent testing.
    There's a feedback tab on newegg for a reason. True they're not "from reputable sites" but that feedback can only be doctored so much by paid reviewers, I only skimmed the feedback but the general feel is: good bang for your buck but you have a chance of getting one that's faulty (bout as much as any other manufacturer, christ I've gotten a bad gigabyte motherboard on my 2nd pc, on my 3rd the corsair ram cards were dying the moment they got put in, on my 4th they managed to put the wrong motherboard into the right box, etc).

     

    My advice is look on tom's hardware if they have a review, if they do and said it's crap and I mean utter crap, drop it, if they do not have a review of it look on the feedback/review sections on sites that sell it and look at at least 50-100 people's reply discouting ones which repeat (paid reviewers do that), if the general vibe is positive then it's a good PSU, if not then it's a good indication to keep looking. I do this with all components as even reputable reviewers are biased by their own views no matter how much they try because they are not machines.


    Oh I always look at the newegg feedback and compare it with hardware review sites. The first red flag is always when your getting a high bad rating on newegg. The PSU I listed did not have any red flags that I could see. No more so then any other PSU on newegg. The good feedback to bad feedback was acceptable.

    Like you, I have had quality name brand stuff go out also. I have had two Asus 560 TI graphics cards go out within a 1-6 month time period. Lucky they replaced them without any issues. But you dont have to go big or go home. Thats the beauty of the internet. You can always look into what you are getting. Just because its not a big name product does not mean its instantly a bad product.

  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,347
    Originally posted by Thomas2006

     


    Originally posted by Dihoru
    There's a feedback tab on newegg for a reason. True they're not "from reputable sites" but that feedback can only be doctored so much by paid reviewers, I only skimmed the feedback but the general feel is: good bang for your buck but you have a chance of getting one that's faulty (bout as much as any other manufacturer, christ I've gotten a bad gigabyte motherboard on my 2nd pc, on my 3rd the corsair ram cards were dying the moment they got put in, on my 4th they managed to put the wrong motherboard into the right box, etc).

     

     

    My advice is look on tom's hardware if they have a review, if they do and said it's crap and I mean utter crap, drop it, if they do not have a review of it look on the feedback/review sections on sites that sell it and look at at least 50-100 people's reply discouting ones which repeat (paid reviewers do that), if the general vibe is positive then it's a good PSU, if not then it's a good indication to keep looking. I do this with all components as even reputable reviewers are biased by their own views no matter how much they try because they are not machines.


     

    Oh I always look at the newegg feedback and compare it with hardware review sites. The first red flag is always when your getting a high bad rating on newegg. The PSU I listed did not have any red flags that I could see. No more so then any other PSU on newegg. The good feedback to bad feedback was acceptable.

    Like you, I have had quality name brand stuff go out also. I have had two Asus 560 TI graphics cards go out within a 1-6 month time period. Lucky they replaced them without any issues. But you dont have to go big or go home. Thats the beauty of the internet. You can always look into what you are getting. Just because its not a big name product does not mean its instantly a bad product.

    New Egg user reviews are more useful for some types of components than others.  Power supplies fall firmly in the "others" category.  Trusting a user review of a power supply on New Egg is like trusting a video card review from someone who never tries to run any games on it and whose most demanding use is watching videos on YouTube.  Even if you could aggregate a hundred such reviews, it doesn't really tell you much.

    If you want a power supply review to be worthwhile, the bare minimum is that you have to pull the nominal wattage from the power supply.  If that doesn't fry the power supply or make it shut down, then you also need to measure voltages and ripple while pulling the rated wattage.

    How many of the New Egg reviews are from people who even pulled half of the rated wattage from that power supply, even for a brief period of time?  They're probably a small minority.  If you buy an "850 W" power supply and never pull more than 200 W from it, the power supply might work fine, but it was still a waste of money when you could have bought a 450 W power supply instead.

    Furthermore, if a power supply does run out of spec, would you be able to tell?  You said that you had two video cards die.  How do you know that it was the fault of the video card vendor, as opposed to the video cards being overtaxed and ultimately damaged by the power supply?  Any time any internal component fails, the power supply could have been the real culprit.  Any time the computer crashes, the power supply could have been the real culprit.  Now, often it isn't, but how can you tell?  If you can't measure the voltage regulation, you have no clue whether the power supply caused the problem or not.

    Additionally, people who would buy a low quality power supply tend not to know any of this; if they did, they probably wouldn't have bought the low quality power supply.  They would be able to tell if the power supply dies outright, and likely if it gets unduly noisy.  But any other problems it causes would probably be blamed on other components or on software.  So when you read user reviews of power supplies for units that haven't been favorably reviewed by a reputable site, you're trusting your computer to a self-selecting group of people who have no idea what they talk about.  Is that really what you want to do?

  • DihoruDihoru Member Posts: 2,731
    Originally posted by Quizzical
    Originally posted by Thomas2006

     


    Originally posted by Dihoru
    There's a feedback tab on newegg for a reason. True they're not "from reputable sites" but that feedback can only be doctored so much by paid reviewers, I only skimmed the feedback but the general feel is: good bang for your buck but you have a chance of getting one that's faulty (bout as much as any other manufacturer, christ I've gotten a bad gigabyte motherboard on my 2nd pc, on my 3rd the corsair ram cards were dying the moment they got put in, on my 4th they managed to put the wrong motherboard into the right box, etc).

     

     

    My advice is look on tom's hardware if they have a review, if they do and said it's crap and I mean utter crap, drop it, if they do not have a review of it look on the feedback/review sections on sites that sell it and look at at least 50-100 people's reply discouting ones which repeat (paid reviewers do that), if the general vibe is positive then it's a good PSU, if not then it's a good indication to keep looking. I do this with all components as even reputable reviewers are biased by their own views no matter how much they try because they are not machines.


     

    Oh I always look at the newegg feedback and compare it with hardware review sites. The first red flag is always when your getting a high bad rating on newegg. The PSU I listed did not have any red flags that I could see. No more so then any other PSU on newegg. The good feedback to bad feedback was acceptable.

    Like you, I have had quality name brand stuff go out also. I have had two Asus 560 TI graphics cards go out within a 1-6 month time period. Lucky they replaced them without any issues. But you dont have to go big or go home. Thats the beauty of the internet. You can always look into what you are getting. Just because its not a big name product does not mean its instantly a bad product.

    New Egg user reviews are more useful for some types of components than others.  Power supplies fall firmly in the "others" category.  Trusting a user review of a power supply on New Egg is like trusting a video card review from someone who never tries to run any games on it and whose most demanding use is watching videos on YouTube.  Even if you could aggregate a hundred such reviews, it doesn't really tell you much.

    If you want a power supply review to be worthwhile, the bare minimum is that you have to pull the nominal wattage from the power supply.  If that doesn't fry the power supply or make it shut down, then you also need to measure voltages and ripple while pulling the rated wattage.

    How many of the New Egg reviews are from people who even pulled half of the rated wattage from that power supply, even for a brief period of time?  They're probably a small minority.  If you buy an "850 W" power supply and never pull more than 200 W from it, the power supply might work fine, but it was still a waste of money when you could have bought a 450 W power supply instead.

    Furthermore, if a power supply does run out of spec, would you be able to tell?  You said that you had two video cards die.  How do you know that it was the fault of the video card vendor, as opposed to the video cards being overtaxed and ultimately damaged by the power supply?  Any time any internal component fails, the power supply could have been the real culprit.  Any time the computer crashes, the power supply could have been the real culprit.  Now, often it isn't, but how can you tell?  If you can't measure the voltage regulation, you have no clue whether the power supply caused the problem or not.

    Additionally, people who would buy a low quality power supply tend not to know any of this; if they did, they probably wouldn't have bought the low quality power supply.  They would be able to tell if the power supply dies outright, and likely if it gets unduly noisy.  But any other problems it causes would probably be blamed on other components or on software.  So when you read user reviews of power supplies for units that haven't been favorably reviewed by a reputable site, you're trusting your computer to a self-selecting group of people who have no idea what they talk about.  Is that really what you want to do?

    I'd read past the second paragraph but you've already committed a cardinal sin: You've not checked your sources, quite a few of the newegg reviews you're bashing state system specs as well some of which well surpass the 450W mark :) ergo you've kinda wasted our time reading even half your post.

    image
  • jacktorsjacktors Member UncommonPosts: 180

    I will give you the best advice.  Go to www.ibuypowerpc.com and have them bulid you that dream computer for the price within your budget.  I have two good reasons for this:

     

    1. If you build your own computer, you are responsible if you fry anything. If you are an advanced rig bulider, this does not apply

    2. Save yourself a ton of time and possible heartache 

    I will probably get flamed from the elite gaming rig builders, but I know my own limits and although I probably could have build my own computer myself, I felt that for the few bucks more I paid Ibuypower, it was worth the stress of messing things up for myself. I have purchased 3 custom gaming rigs already.  I got one about 5 years ago, and another for myself this year.  I also got one from WWW.cyberpowerpc.com  for my son about 4 years ago.  All of these computers still work fine.  And the comfort of having a good warranty and technical support in my corner was worth every penny.  

     

    Good Luck

  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,347
    Originally posted by Dihoru

    I'd read past the second paragraph but you've already committed a cardinal sin: You've not checked your sources, quite a few of the newegg reviews you're bashing state system specs as well some of which well surpass the 450W mark :) ergo you've kinda wasted our time reading even half your post.

    If you really want to wander that far into the weeds then, well, you asked for this.  Let's look at the builds listed.  Most of the user reviews don't list a build.  But among those that do:

    Amd FX6300 (oc 4.5ghz)
    2 gtx 680s
    Asus 990 sabertooth MB
    zalman water cooler
    6- 120mm fans
    2 barracuda 7200 hd's
    8 gigs 1866 sniper memory
    Raidmax 850AE PS

    That one could well pull 425 W under a suitably heavy gaming load.  It's likely that the user has never hit a particular gaming load that would make it pull 425 W, but under a stress test, he may be able to pull 600 W from it.

    AMD FX-8320 OC'd at 4.6Ghz
    GIGABYTE 990fx-UD5
    EVGA 550ti
    G.Skill RipjawsX 2x2 4gb

    Not much chance that that will ever pull 300 W from the power supply.

    -i7-3820
    -64GB DDR3-1600 Ram Gskill (8x8gb)
    -Cooler master hyper 212 evo cooler
    -Cooler master RC-692A-KKN5 mid-atx case
    -WD Blue 1TB HD
    -Asrock x79extreme 2011 board
    -Raidmax 850ae gold psu
    -Single Nvidia GPU 1GB

    So much detail there that he doesn't even know what video card he has.  But 1 GB probably isn't a high end card, so it's likely that he's never pulled 300 W from it.  The highest wattage 1 GB card ever made is either the GeForce GTX 280 or 285, both of which were long off the market by the time the CPU launched.  Next is probably the GeForce GTX 460 or GTX 560 Ti, but either of those in a build isn't going to get you to 400 W even under a stress test.

    AMD FX-8320 processor
    2 x 4gb Ripsaw ddr3 1600 ram
    GIGABYTE GA-970A-UD3 mobo
    PNY 250 GTS currently, waiting on RMA for PNY GTX 660ti card
    RAIDMAX SMILODON Case
    Running 5 hdds:
    - two 1tb wd green drives
    - one 2tb wd green drive
    - one 640gb wd black drive
    - one seagate 120gb scratch drive.
    Cooler Master V8 CPU cooler.

    That's not going to pull 300 W as is.

    AMD FX 8150
    ASUS Sabertooth 990FX rev2.0
    Gigabyte HD7950
    Corsair Vengeance 1866 16GB
    Raidmax 850W PSU ATX12V
    Western Digital Caviar Black 7200 RPM 1 TB
    Samsung 830 Series 128GB SSD

    That will likely never pull 300 W, and will certainly never pull 400 W.

    i5 2500k
    1 SSD, 1 HD
    EVGA 560 ti
    ASUS Z68-V pro motherboard
    7 fans

    That will also likely never pull 300 W and certainly never 400 W.

    AMD Phemon II X4 980 BE 3.7ghz
    Asus/ROG Crosshair V Formula 990X
    2x 4gb G-Skill Ripjaws DDR3 1600
    2x Gigabyte GV-N460OC-1GI V3 GeForce GTX 460 in SLI
    Raidmax RX-850AE 850watt Gold 80+ Certified Modular PSU
    Corsair Hydro H60 High Performance Liquid CPU Cooling System
    2x 500gb sata HDD's
    1x Asus DVD/CD/RW burner
    6x 120mm constant velocity 80cfm fans
    NZXT Source 210 Mid Tower ATX Case

    That likely never pulled 400 W, though a stress test could push it over that.  It surely never pulled 500 W from the power supply.

    NZXT Vulcan
    MSI 890GXM
    AMD 1090t Phenom II x6
    (16GB)4GB x4 Kingston HyperX Blu
    XFX Radeon 6970
    ADATA S599 SSD
    RAIDMAX RX-850AE
    3x AOC e2343FK

    That may or may not ever pull 300 W, but surely won't touch 400 W.

    Phenom II x6 @ 3.6 Ghz
    12 Gb DDR3 1600 ram
    2 WD 500 GB HDD's
    XFX HD 6870
    Gigabyte GTX 460

    I didn't design that build with both an AMD video card and an Nvidia card; I'm just quoting it.  A gaming load would likely never pull 300 W from it.  Something else that could stress both video cards and the processor at once might push it to 400 W or so.

    Windows 7 pro 64bit
    AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHz
    Gigabyte geforce GTX 460 1GB (factory overclock)
    Crucial Ballistix Tracer 8GB DDR3 1600
    Seagate Barracuda 1Tb 7200rpm
    GIGABYTE GA-790FXTA-UD5 mainboard
    4 blue shark case fans
    ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 7 Pro Rev.2

    That will probably never pull 300 W, and surely won't go far beyond that at stock speeds.

    i5-2500k @ 4.2GHz
    Corsair Vengeance 1333MHz 8GB
    GIGABYTE GA-Z68M-D2H Motherboard
    EVGA NVIDIA GTX 570 OC'd (not factory OC)
    This PSU
    4 Fans

    The overclocks might be able to push that to 400 W or so in a stress test, and probably substantially less in real games.

    i7 930
    asrock extreme 3
    zotac GTX 580
    x2 1tb hds
    sound blaster x-fi titanium HD
    lg blu-ray burner
    6 led case fans

    It's unlikely that will ever pull 400 W from the power supply.

    "I currently have an Intel 3.4 Quad OCed to 4.0, 16G of ram, 2 Video Cards, 2 SSDs and a standard 1TB HDD and this power supply isn't giving me any problems."

    He doesn't even know what he has, so let's move on.

    Asrock Fatal1ty 990FX AMD AM3+ Motherboard
    EVGA GTX 580 Superclocked VGA card
    AMD Phenom II 1100T 6X CPU
    Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus CPU heatsink
    G.SKILL Ripjaws series 8GB Memory

    That could pull 300 W under a heavy gaming load, but isn't likely to ever reach 400 W.

    ASROCK 970 EXTREME 4
    16GB GSKILL SNIPER 1600MHZ
    2-320GB 6GBS WESTERN DIGITAL BLUE
    HYPER 212 PLUS-PUSH&PULL
    NZXT BETA EVO
    PHENOM II X2 555BE @4.0 UNLOCKED 4 CORES
    LG DVD RW
    RAIDMAX AE850 PS
    XFX 6790 1GB
    WINDOWS 7 HOME PREM. 64

    A low power video card like that means the system will never pull 300 W, and might not even go much over 200 W.

    New Egg's site is hanging on me at the moment, so I'll stop here.  In the first 100 reviews, we have 14 builds listed.  Of those 14, only 3 could plausibly pull even half of the rated wattage under an artificial stress test--a stress test that most users probably won't run, by the way.  Only one has any real chance of pulling half of the rated wattage under a realistic gaming load, and even that one has no chance of coming within 200 W of the rated maximum even under an artificial stress test.

    Is that really a good substitute for a review from a reputable site that can pull 850 W from the power supply at elevated temperatures while measuring the ripple and voltage regulation, and then take the power supply apart to see if the internal components are decent quality and assembled well?

  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,347
    Originally posted by jacktors

    I will give you the best advice.  Go to www.ibuypowerpc.com and have them bulid you that dream computer for the price within your budget.  I have two good reasons for this:

     

    1. If you build your own computer, you are responsible if you fry anything. If you are an advanced rig bulider, this does not apply

    2. Save yourself a ton of time and possible heartache 

    I will probably get flamed from the elite gaming rig builders, but I know my own limits and although I probably could have build my own computer myself, I felt that for the few bucks more I paid Ibuypower, it was worth the stress of messing things up for myself. I have purchased 3 custom gaming rigs already.  I got one about 5 years ago, and another for myself this year.  I also got one from WWW.cyberpowerpc.com  for my son about 4 years ago.  All of these computers still work fine.  And the comfort of having a good warranty and technical support in my corner was worth every penny.  

     

    Good Luck

    Getting a computer built to order makes some sense for people with more money than time.  But such people likely won't be restricted to a $750 budget.  Trying to get a gaming rig built to order on a $750 budget means you'd really have to cut back a lot more than you want to.

  • DihoruDihoru Member Posts: 2,731
    Originally posted by Quizzical
    Originally posted by Dihoru

    I'd read past the second paragraph but you've already committed a cardinal sin: You've not checked your sources, quite a few of the newegg reviews you're bashing state system specs as well some of which well surpass the 450W mark :) ergo you've kinda wasted our time reading even half your post.

    If you really want to wander that far into the weeds then, well, you asked for this.  Let's look at the builds listed.  Most of the user reviews don't list a build.  But among those that do:

    Amd FX6300 (oc 4.5ghz)
    2 gtx 680s
    Asus 990 sabertooth MB
    zalman water cooler
    6- 120mm fans
    2 barracuda 7200 hd's
    8 gigs 1866 sniper memory
    Raidmax 850AE PS

    That one could well pull 425 W under a suitably heavy gaming load.  It's likely that the user has never hit a particular gaming load that would make it pull 425 W, but under a stress test, he may be able to pull 600 W from it.

    AMD FX-8320 OC'd at 4.6Ghz
    GIGABYTE 990fx-UD5
    EVGA 550ti
    G.Skill RipjawsX 2x2 4gb

    Not much chance that that will ever pull 300 W from the power supply.

    -i7-3820
    -64GB DDR3-1600 Ram Gskill (8x8gb)
    -Cooler master hyper 212 evo cooler
    -Cooler master RC-692A-KKN5 mid-atx case
    -WD Blue 1TB HD
    -Asrock x79extreme 2011 board
    -Raidmax 850ae gold psu
    -Single Nvidia GPU 1GB

    So much detail there that he doesn't even know what video card he has.  But 1 GB probably isn't a high end card, so it's likely that he's never pulled 300 W from it.  The highest wattage 1 GB card ever made is either the GeForce GTX 280 or 285, both of which were long off the market by the time the CPU launched.  Next is probably the GeForce GTX 460 or GTX 560 Ti, but either of those in a build isn't going to get you to 400 W even under a stress test.

    AMD FX-8320 processor
    2 x 4gb Ripsaw ddr3 1600 ram
    GIGABYTE GA-970A-UD3 mobo
    PNY 250 GTS currently, waiting on RMA for PNY GTX 660ti card
    RAIDMAX SMILODON Case
    Running 5 hdds:
    - two 1tb wd green drives
    - one 2tb wd green drive
    - one 640gb wd black drive
    - one seagate 120gb scratch drive.
    Cooler Master V8 CPU cooler.

    That's not going to pull 300 W as is.

    AMD FX 8150
    ASUS Sabertooth 990FX rev2.0
    Gigabyte HD7950
    Corsair Vengeance 1866 16GB
    Raidmax 850W PSU ATX12V
    Western Digital Caviar Black 7200 RPM 1 TB
    Samsung 830 Series 128GB SSD

    That will likely never pull 300 W, and will certainly never pull 400 W.

    i5 2500k
    1 SSD, 1 HD
    EVGA 560 ti
    ASUS Z68-V pro motherboard
    7 fans

    That will also likely never pull 300 W and certainly never 400 W.

    AMD Phemon II X4 980 BE 3.7ghz
    Asus/ROG Crosshair V Formula 990X
    2x 4gb G-Skill Ripjaws DDR3 1600
    2x Gigabyte GV-N460OC-1GI V3 GeForce GTX 460 in SLI
    Raidmax RX-850AE 850watt Gold 80+ Certified Modular PSU
    Corsair Hydro H60 High Performance Liquid CPU Cooling System
    2x 500gb sata HDD's
    1x Asus DVD/CD/RW burner
    6x 120mm constant velocity 80cfm fans
    NZXT Source 210 Mid Tower ATX Case

    That likely never pulled 400 W, though a stress test could push it over that.  It surely never pulled 500 W from the power supply.

    NZXT Vulcan
    MSI 890GXM
    AMD 1090t Phenom II x6
    (16GB)4GB x4 Kingston HyperX Blu
    XFX Radeon 6970
    ADATA S599 SSD
    RAIDMAX RX-850AE
    3x AOC e2343FK

    That may or may not ever pull 300 W, but surely won't touch 400 W.

    Phenom II x6 @ 3.6 Ghz
    12 Gb DDR3 1600 ram
    2 WD 500 GB HDD's
    XFX HD 6870
    Gigabyte GTX 460

    I didn't design that build with both an AMD video card and an Nvidia card; I'm just quoting it.  A gaming load would likely never pull 300 W from it.  Something else that could stress both video cards and the processor at once might push it to 400 W or so.

    Windows 7 pro 64bit
    AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHz
    Gigabyte geforce GTX 460 1GB (factory overclock)
    Crucial Ballistix Tracer 8GB DDR3 1600
    Seagate Barracuda 1Tb 7200rpm
    GIGABYTE GA-790FXTA-UD5 mainboard
    4 blue shark case fans
    ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 7 Pro Rev.2

    That will probably never pull 300 W, and surely won't go far beyond that at stock speeds.

    i5-2500k @ 4.2GHz
    Corsair Vengeance 1333MHz 8GB
    GIGABYTE GA-Z68M-D2H Motherboard
    EVGA NVIDIA GTX 570 OC'd (not factory OC)
    This PSU
    4 Fans

    The overclocks might be able to push that to 400 W or so in a stress test, and probably substantially less in real games.

    i7 930
    asrock extreme 3
    zotac GTX 580
    x2 1tb hds
    sound blaster x-fi titanium HD
    lg blu-ray burner
    6 led case fans

    It's unlikely that will ever pull 400 W from the power supply.

    "I currently have an Intel 3.4 Quad OCed to 4.0, 16G of ram, 2 Video Cards, 2 SSDs and a standard 1TB HDD and this power supply isn't giving me any problems."

    He doesn't even know what he has, so let's move on.

    Asrock Fatal1ty 990FX AMD AM3+ Motherboard
    EVGA GTX 580 Superclocked VGA card
    AMD Phenom II 1100T 6X CPU
    Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus CPU heatsink
    G.SKILL Ripjaws series 8GB Memory

    That could pull 300 W under a heavy gaming load, but isn't likely to ever reach 400 W.

    ASROCK 970 EXTREME 4
    16GB GSKILL SNIPER 1600MHZ
    2-320GB 6GBS WESTERN DIGITAL BLUE
    HYPER 212 PLUS-PUSH&PULL
    NZXT BETA EVO
    PHENOM II X2 555BE @4.0 UNLOCKED 4 CORES
    LG DVD RW
    RAIDMAX AE850 PS
    XFX 6790 1GB
    WINDOWS 7 HOME PREM. 64

    A low power video card like that means the system will never pull 300 W, and might not even go much over 200 W.

    New Egg's site is hanging on me at the moment, so I'll stop here.  In the first 100 reviews, we have 14 builds listed.  Of those 14, only 3 could plausibly pull even half of the rated wattage under an artificial stress test--a stress test that most users probably won't run, by the way.  Only one has any real chance of pulling half of the rated wattage under a realistic gaming load, and even that one has no chance of coming within 200 W of the rated maximum even under an artificial stress test.

    Is that really a good substitute for a review from a reputable site that can pull 850 W from the power supply at elevated temperatures while measuring the ripple and voltage regulation, and then take the power supply apart to see if the internal components are decent quality and assembled well?

    Here's a dumbass question then for you considering the title of this thread then: Does the OP sound like someone who's gonna push his PSU beyond 500W? I am not saying you're not right in stating that a professional review (or better yet 3-4 if you can find them which don't all say contradicting things) is not preferable but considering this is a 750-800$ build for a PC what do you think the odds are he'll push 300 W with it? he may tweak some stuff, add some more in but I doubt he'll ever push it over 500 without doing some major upgrades to his PC again which logically means another PSU. He's building on a budget, that PSU is cheap and is reliable at half the wattage, possibly even at 500, where's the issue? He isn't building something hella expensive which will eat power up, he's building a budget gaming rig to run most current gen games at least at medium settings.

    image
  • RidelynnRidelynn Member EpicPosts: 7,383


    Originally posted by Dihoru
    I'd read past the second paragraph but you've already committed a cardinal sin: You've not checked your sources, quite a few of the newegg reviews you're bashing state system specs as well some of which well surpass the 450W mark :) ergo you've kinda wasted our time reading even half your post.


    Your making the cardinal sin in assuming that consumers know what they are talking about.

    When it comes to power supplies, I would bet the percentage of people who actually know what they are talking about is probably less than 1% - those with electrical engineering degrees or a lot of experience with AC/DC power - and that isn't a lot of people.

    Yes, lots of people use microwave ovens (or any number of other technical devices), but past "It can pop popcorn" how many people could really review a microwave oven either? A similar number of the population could speak intelligently about microwave ovens on a technical basis as could computer power supplies.

  • jdnewelljdnewell Member UncommonPosts: 2,237

    Not trying to jump into the debate here too much =)

    I think the point is he is better off getting a good solid 500w psu rather than a less reputable 750w ( or whatever ) that may or may not  function properly at the rated W.

    I am no expert but I think you may also have to account for other things such as ripple and what not. IMO its well worth it to spend money on a really decent lower watt ( 500)  rather than a halfway decent ( 750 )w.

    Personally I just avoid any potential problems and purchase a quality psu. Not worth it just to save $20 or $30 bucks and buy a cheap product. I may skimp on a few things, psu isnt one of them.

     

    My 2cp

  • ShakyMoShakyMo Member CommonPosts: 7,207
    Yep.

    A 550w rosewill, corsair etc.. will be better than a 750w unbranded psu.
  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,347
    Originally posted by Dihoru

    Here's a dumbass question then for you considering the title of this thread then: Does the OP sound like someone who's gonna push his PSU beyond 500W? I am not saying you're not right in stating that a professional review (or better yet 3-4 if you can find them which don't all say contradicting things) is not preferable but considering this is a 750-800$ build for a PC what do you think the odds are he'll push 300 W with it? he may tweak some stuff, add some more in but I doubt he'll ever push it over 500 without doing some major upgrades to his PC again which logically means another PSU. He's building on a budget, that PSU is cheap and is reliable at half the wattage, possibly even at 500, where's the issue? He isn't building something hella expensive which will eat power up, he's building a budget gaming rig to run most current gen games at least at medium settings.

    The power supply in question is $116.  Even if it were excellent quality, that's way too much to spend on a power supply when you've got a $750 budget.  You can get power supplies that are known to be high quality for much cheaper than that simply by going with a lower nominal wattage.  For example, jdnewell linked a 520 W Seasonic S12II for $71, and I linked a 550 W Rosewill Capstone for $80.

Sign In or Register to comment.