Building a new computer, and I already have two harddrives, and a cd/dvd burner. I need a powersupply but im not sure what one to get, also any advice is appreciated. I dont do video editing or anything like that, just video games, like Rift & League of Legends. I think I need a x4 CPU or would a x2/x3 work? I just don't want to be playing the game and seeing them both at 100% if i get an x2 CPU. Not sure if I would get good FPS with Rift at ultra with one video card, thats why I picked a motherboard that can crossfire. But I would get the 2nd at a later date. Or could I run it with one video card and ditch the motherboard with one that doesnt crossfire, thats cheaper?
{Mod Edit}
Above comes to $470.96 with the rebates.
Comments
AMD's 790FX chipset was replaced by their newer 890FX chipset about nine months ago, so it's a rather dated motherboard. The only real point of the 790FX chipset is for multiple video cards in CrossFire, which looks like it's pretty much out of your budget.
Two lower end video cards in CrossFire is a bad idea. It's better get get one higher end card. CrossFire and SLI are mainly for people who think one high end card isn't good enough, so they get two of them.
A Radeon HD 5830 isn't that great of a card. If that's your budget, then try this instead:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102908
If you need more video performance than that, then get a faster single card like this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102908
I strongly advise against going CrossFire on anything slower than a Radeon HD 6870, and would be somewhat against CrossFire on anything slower than a 6970. If two 6970s are out of your budget, then you'll find plenty of performance from a good single card.
The choice of processor vendor (Intel or AMD) is basically a question of budget. If willing to pay over $350 for the processor and motherboard (added together), then Intel is better. AMD offers some cheaper processors, though, like what you've picked.
I'd recommend getting a quad core processor for a gaming system today unless you're on a very tight budget. You don't really need four cores for most games today, but it will become more common for games to assume four cores in the future, and you don't want to buy a new system today only to have to replace it in a year.
Don't be fooled by the marketing on the memory. You need DDR3, but you can get basically whatever and ti will work. Try something cheaper like this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231253
I'd recommend staying with a single video card, in which case, this will have plenty of power for your needs:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151094
If you do want to use two video cards, then something beefier like this will handle them nicely:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371025
I’ll do away with crossfire then & get a better video card. About the motherboard what benefit is 890FX to gaming if I’m not going to crossfire? I thought AMD was going to require a new chipset for their new bulldozer processors?
I looked at your video card and noticed it doesn’t have OpenGL 4.1
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102908
This one is with OpgenGL4.1, but does that even make a difference in gaming?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121399
I'm still not sure about the video card or the motherboard.
Both of those cards are based on the same bin of the same GPU chip, so they'll support exactly the same APIs. Few games use OpenGL, but they presumably both support the latest version, or at least something very near it.
If you're getting a single video card, then the appropriate chipset for that is AMD's 870 chipset, not 890FX. 890FX is the successor to the 790FX chipset, and intended for multiple video cards in CrossFire. 870 offers most of the same features, but only enough PCI Express lanes for one video card, not two.
It's not clear what Bulldozer will bring. It will almost certainly use a new processor socket and new chipsets, but AMD has often made their processors backward compatible to older sockets and chipsets. They'll surely try to do that with Bulldozer as well.
What do you think about this build?
{Mod Edit}I'd try a processor/motherboard combo deal to save a few dollars:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.581455
Note that you're still missing a case and OS license. If you've already got them and are keeping them, that's fine, but I'd like to know what you have. It's best to make sure everything you have in mind will fit inside your case before you order parts.
I get windows server 2008 from dreamspark for free, https://www.dreamspark.com/Products/Product.aspx?ProductId=17
I do have an old case probably I think it should work, used it with a NF7-S motherboard, i think it should still work right? Not sure what model the case is its at another house, but it looks nice.
I was looking at ibuypower.com just checking their prices, and noticed that they recommended a 600w PSU, its mine going to be enough? I plan on sticking 2 hard drives in there as well.
A lot of iBuyPower's power supplies are cheap junk, so if they think you need 400 W, they'll recommend a "600 W" power supply that can only deliver 400 W. People who have no clue about power supplies are sometimes impressed by inflated wattage ratings. Realistically, your system may pull around 300 W under heavy load, and will probably never draw 350 W from the power supply. A good quality power supply that can really deliver 520 W is plenty for your needs. A hard drive will generally draw less than 10 W--and sometimes a lot less.
Windows Server 2008? Not Windows 7? I have no idea how games would work on a server version of Windows, but I wouldn't be completely shocked if they don't.
Going to be ordering new parts monday, theres just so many choices. Whats your take on this build guys?
Total with rebates is $511.96.{Mod Edit}
Change the power supply back. It's not worth saving $16 (including shipping) to get a cheap junk power supply that risks all sorts of problems, from little malfunctions that are impossible to trace the precise cause of up to and including frying your entire system. The power supply you've picked now isn't even 80 PLUS certified, which is the absolute minimum to be considered kind of all right. The Seasonic S12II, meanwhile, is pretty good. Don't be misled by nominal wattage ratings. The Seasonic S12II 520 Bronze is a vastly superior power supply for your needs than the Rosewill RV2-600.
Memory looks like a good choice. The rest of the hardware you've chosen is sensible if you're going to do the rebates, and not otherwise. Note that the 790X is an older chipset, so the SB750 southbridge isn't as good as the newer SB850. That said, it will work just fine for the processor you've picked, and if you want to save a few dollars on a motherboard, go ahead and go that route.
It looks like some sort of forum error is making my above post not display properly. I'm going to try reposting the text to see if a second post will display properly, or if the thread is just broken now.
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Change the power supply back. It's not worth saving $16 (including shipping) to get a cheap junk power supply that risks all sorts of problems, from little malfunctions that are impossible to trace the precise cause of up to and including frying your entire system. The power supply you've picked now isn't even 80 PLUS certified, which is the absolute minimum to be considered kind of all right. The Seasonic S12II, meanwhile, is pretty good. Don't be misled by nominal wattage ratings. The Seasonic S12II 520 Bronze is a vastly superior power supply for your needs than the Rosewill RV2-600.
Memory looks like a good choice. The rest of the hardware you've chosen is sensible if you're going to do the rebates, and not otherwise. Note that the 790X is an older chipset, so the SB750 southbridge isn't as good as the newer SB850. That said, it will work just fine for the processor you've picked, and if you want to save a few dollars on a motherboard, go ahead and go that route.
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Edit: Nope, you broke the thread somehow.
So I'll have to type short paragraphs to make sure they display properly.
Short version: change the power supply back.
The Rosewill RV2-600 is a cheap junk power supply.
It could easily cause all sorts of weird problems for you, including frying parts.
The Seasonic S12II will work properly, and reliably.
That difference is worth more than the $16 difference in price.
The rest of the parts are fine if you'll do the rebates.
Thanks Quizzical, I switched back to the seasonic powersupply. After reading reviews it seems like Asus has a higher quality product than gigabyte so I think I'll get that motherboard. My only concern is the video card. I don't really know what all the specs mean. I'd like to keep it Asus.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121370
5850 ^ 1440 Stream Processing Units and is 765MHz - $185
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121419
6850 ^ 960 Stream Processing Units and is 790MHz - $160
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121418
6870 ^ 1120 Stream Processing Units and is 915MHz - $220
Out of these 3 which would you get? the 5850 has the most Stream proccessing units but has a low clock. Is the 6870 really worth that much? Is there a noticealbe jump in performance from the 6850 to the 5850? Does the 6870 beat them both by a lot? I dont want to get it if its only small improvement.
Aha, you can see the entire post if you copy and paste it into Notepad. The web page doesn't seem to display it properly, as the last build you posted seems to have broken the thread.
A Radeon HD 6850 and 6870 are different bins of the same "Barts" GPU chip. The Radeon HD 5850 and 5870 are based on the older but higher end "Cypress" GPU chip. In performance, it goes 6850 < 5850 < 6870 < 5870. The 6800 series cards have a little bit nicer feature set than the 5800 series cards, but it's not a huge difference. Most importantly, both cards fully support DirectX 11. The 5800 series cards are basically discontinued and disappearing, but this also means that
For motherboards, both Asus and Gigabyte are reputable brands. Apparently some reviews of motherboards say that Gigabyte doesn't have UEFI working yet. If you want to go with an Asus motherboard on that basis, then go ahead.
For a video card, I don't think sticking with Asus is such a good idea. It's not that there's anything wrong with Asus, but rather, there's no sense in paying an extra $10 for an Asus card over one from several other board partners. Indeed, enthusiasts would more often be willing to pay a small price premium for XFX rather than Asus. Among AMD video card board partners, XFX seems to be generally regarded as offering the best warranty service--not just in terms of what they promise, but what they'll actually deliver on. Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, and Sapphire all offer premium cards in various ways.
If you're counting mail-in rebates as "free", then of the cards you link, I'd probably go with the 5850. Looking at other options on New Egg, I'd probably go with this XFX 5850 instead:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150477
Another interesting option is this 5870:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102872
Note that Sapphire's Vapor-X is their premium line with a vapor chamber cooler that will keep the GPU chip significantly cooler than any of the other cards we've linked here. (Sapphire also has a Toxic line, which is basically the same thing, except that it also has a factory overclock.)
That's really a question of budget. I'm a little surprised to see either of those cards as cheap as they are, though.
For what it's worth, Asus' DirectCU line is their custom cooler that they use on a lot of cards. It's a little better than some of the reference coolers that AMD uses, but not a lot better, and certainly not as good as MSI's Twin Frozr II or Sapphire's Vapor-X. Asus cards commonly have firmware that allows you to adjust the voltage, in case you want to overclock the cards. Asus' high end cards with premium everything are sometimes branded as Matrix.
Thanks for all the advice, I built my computer it runs great. I also got a new monitor 21.5 in (in the store anything bigger seemed like too much to look at up close) its 1920x1080 but came with a vga cable. If i buy a $10 dvi cable will I notice any difference? Or should I just save the money.
Thanks
personally I think it is. Im not sure Id pay out 10 bux for one, most everyone I know has an extra or 4 laying around.
at any rate, you should get a crisper and better image quality from DVI as its being output as intended in pure digital format. As opposed to vga which is converting your digital signal to analog and becomes lossy.
Well I asked around can't get one for free, $10 for cable kinda sucks.