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Basic Gaming Rig. Looking for advice.
I'm using a laptop right now and I usually can only run things in medium settings at the most, and yesterday it shut down on me, and when it booted I got a message saying that it had over heated. So I figured it's about time I get myself a new one. I'm a poor college boy, but I've managed to scrounge up some money left over from an old student loans/scholarships/selling back books, to buy myself a new gaming rig. Here's what I'm looking at:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883227267
AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4GHz Quad Core CPU
4GB DDR3 RAM
500GB HDD
Nvidia Geforce GT 220
480W PSU
It'll be around $680 after shipping. Is that a decent buy if I'm just looking to run things like WoW, Counter-Strike Source, Crysis 1/2, TF2, Rift(maybe, still on the fence about that one), and perhaps ToR and GW2 in high to max settings?
Is it at least decent to start with? I figure a 480W PSU isn't the greatest, nor is the GT 220, but I can always upgrade the two of those later I suppose. Anyone have any ideas what a good upgrade for those two would be? Any feedback will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Z
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Comments
Want to buy a pig in a poke?
It doesn't tell you what power supply, motherboard, hard drive, or memory it uses. Think that's because they're all really good, and just trying to keep it secret? Or is it becaus they don't want you to know? Actually, the motherboard is probably decent, and the memory might be, too. But the hard drive is probably slow, and the power supply is probably bad.
The video card is certainly slow, and calling that a gaming machine is a bit of a stretch. On that budget, you could get something much, much nicer if you buy parts and assemble them yourself. If you're planning on replacing the video card and power supply, then that just means you could get something that much nicer yourself on that bigger budget.
I have no interest on putting together any hardware myself. The max I can go is $700. Any suggestions for something pre-assembled at that price?
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Do you just need the case and everything that goes inside of it? Or do you need peripherals, too?
Assembling parts isn't as hard as you might think it is. Plugging things in inside the case mostly isn't any harder than plugging things in outside of the case, and presumably you'll have to plug in USB cables and so forth if you buy a prebuilt.
I just need the case, and everything that goes in it. I really don't trust myself putting it together, and would rather it just be put together before hand, but on the chance that it'd be cheaper to do it that way, I guess I wouldn't mind.
And in case it isn't blatantly obvious, this is my first time buying a computer outside of a Bargain bin (aka staples/walmart)
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http://www.ibuypower.com/
Yea, it doesn't sound to bad to me. You may want to check the actual site though. See if they are offering anything better.
I just put together a custom setup and this is what I'm looking at:
Raidmax Altas Gaming Case Black
Motherboard ASUS M4A77T/USB3 -- AMD 770 Chipset
[= Quad Core =] AMD Phenom™ II X4 965 Black Edition Quad-Core CPU
Liquid CPU Cooling System [AMD] Standard 120mm Fan
4GB [2GB x 2] DDR3 1600 Memory
Nvidia Geforce GTS 450 - 1GB - EVGA Superclocked
Standard 700W PSU
500 GB HARD DRIVE -- 16M Cache, 7200 RPM, 3.0Gb/s
Basic DVD/CD Drive
$660 is what I'm looking at here... and as I say this I'm removing the option to have Windows installed. Thats $70 I could put towards the hardware. I had the Nvidia GT 430, but I'm changing it to the GTS 450.
Is all this pre-assembled or do they send it in parts? Not that it matters though so long as it's a decent price for whats there.
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That's still a cheap junk power supply, and it still doesn't tell you what memory or hard drive they use. If the memory is rated at 1600 MHz, then it can probably run at 1333 MHz with tighter latency timings and a lower voltage, though, so it should be all right. Don't get that power supply, though.
You do surely need Windows, whether they install it or you buy it and install it yourself.
I have a copy of Win7 64bit Home unopened that I got a few months back.
Okay, so what kind of power supply should I be looking for? I'm not sure I understand what qualifies as junk, and what qualifies as good. Heres more info on that 700W one:
Type
ATX12V / EPS12V
Fans
1 x 140mm fan
PFC
Passive
Crossfire
Ready
SLI
Ready
Modular
No
Efficiency
No
Like I said, this is my first time building a computer (well, I've put them together plenty of times, but actually choosing the parts myself and what not), so I'm a bit lost.
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Try this:
http://www.avadirect.com/product_details_configurator.asp?PRID=14248
Changes to make:
Case: Antec Three Hundred
Power supply: Antec EarthWatts EA380 Green
Processor: AMD Athlon II X3 450
Memory: Crucial 4 GB (2 x 2 GB) PC3-10600 DDR3 1333 MHz CL9 1.5V
Video card: Gigabyte GV-R575OC-G1 Radeon HD 5750
Hard drive: Western Digital 500 GB WD Caviar Black
Floppy drives and card readers: none
Operating system: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
That comes to $639.04 without shipping. Add shipping and it will probably be close to $700.
And yes, they do assemble it for you. One big problem with iBuyPower is that they don't offer any high quality, low wattage power supplies. Their cheapest ones are the NZXT Hale 90 550 W and the Corsair TX650, both of which are around $100 power supplies.
AVA Direct will let you get about a $50 power supply that will suit your needs well. They also tell you exactly what parts they're using, so you can make sure everything is decently nice.
"Efficiency: NO"
I think this pretty much says it all
OP, the problem is that while, in theory, a PSU with X wattage should be able to deliver X watts, safely, over the life of the PSU, that isn't even remotely the case, because there's no real industry standard to determining that rating, something companies take advantage of.
Wattage ratings on PSUs are about as useful as contrast ratio ratings on modern day television sets (hint: Sony is NOT making TVs with real-world million to one contrast ratios), and for the same reason.
In short, the wattage rating tells you nothing, whatsoever, because a "700W Power Supply" might not be capable of safely and continuously delivering anything near 700W, and if we're talking about the latest Ibuypower budget special, then it's guaranteed that it can't deliver anything close to that.
What assures that you're getting a good PSU is getting one from a reputable brand, with a good efficiency rating (meaning an 80 Plus certification of some sort), that delivers the proper number of amps on each rail (and you can figure out, easily, what the REAL output of a PSU is from that last bit, because watts are just volts*amps). Honestly, it really isn't terrible simple, but if you tell us what PSU you're buying, we can tell you if it's decent. Another way, if you don't want to wait for a forum response, is to type that name of the PSU into google and read up on the in-depth reviews done on it; if it doesn't have any good, thorough reviews for it that examine the PSU's internal components and does load-testing on it, then it probably wasn't submitted for any. In short, if a PSU has no detailed reviews for it, then it's probably crap, and wasn't submitted for dissection by reviews BECAUSE it's crap. Hardware Secrets is generally my preferred place to read reviews from; I notice Quizzical tends to link to there a lot, as well. Any place that really shows their methodology and does real inspection and testing, however, is probably just fine.
The final way you can avoid all that hassle is just to buy from one of the few brands that don't tend to make bad PSUs, like Silverstone, or PC Power and Cooling, or Seasonic. That's kind of an imprecise way to go about it though, just riding on brand alone.
Thank you very much
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Or better yet, just do this
Basicaly, what you look for in a power supply is one that has been rated well by a reputable review site such as Jonny Guru, Hard OCP, or Hardware Secrets. That's hard to look for if the power supply has never been submitted anywhere for a review, or they won't even tell you what it is.
If you're just reading specs, then you look for a reputable brand name, 80 PLUS certification, an appropriate number of power connectors for the wattage, a rated wattage on the +12 V rail(s) that is near the total wattage, and no mention of "peak" power. But they don't tell you any of that stuff, other than that it lacks 80 PLUS certification. If the power supply were good, they'd tell you.
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So wait, you've assembled parts repeatedly in the past, but aren't willing to do so again? I could help you pick out the parts, and then you could assemble them. You'd save quite a bit of money that way, or perhaps rather, get something considerably nicer for the same price.
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Ah, so you already have a legal copy of Windows 7? In that case, same build as above, except for:
Processor: AMD Phenom II X4 955
Video card: Sapphire Radeon HD 5770
Operating system: None
Or, if you're satisfied that it fits your budget, then upgrade the video card to:
Video card: Asus EAH6850 DirectCU... Radeon HD 6850
With that upgrade, it comes to $668.85, with no OS and not including shipping.
With that power supply, overclocking is absolutely out of the question, as a stress test at stock speeds could pull as much as 300 W from the 380 W power supply. Realistic gaming loads will pull considerably less than that, and likely around 200-250 W in reasonably demanding games.
Case: Antec Three Hundred
Power supply: Antec EarthWatts EA380 Green
Processor: AMD Phenom II X4 955
Memory: Crucial 4 GB (2 x 2 GB) PC3-10600 DDR3 1333 MHz CL9 1.5V
Video card: Asus EAH6850 DirectCU... Radeon HD 6850
Hard drive: Western Digital 500 GB WD Caviar Black
Floppy drives and card readers: none
Operating system: None
Is that it?
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Yeah, that should be a good build. Leave everything else at the default option for that configurator.
Note that under very heavy loads, the system will pull about as much power from the power supply as I'd trust it to deliver over the long run. That restricts your future upgrade path, if you want to upgrade parts in the future. In particular, if you ever want to replace the video card, you'll need to either replace the power supply as well, or make sure that the new video card is low enough power that it only requires one 6-pin PCI-E power connector.
If they had an option to get an equivalent power supply rated at 100 W more for an extra $10, I'd probably recommend it. But the 500 W or so power supplies that cost only a little more are actually of a little lower quality--or sometimes a lot lower. And paying an extra $40 for some additional power supply headroom is quite a bit for something that will probably never make a difference.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820146740
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811233062
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130290
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103886
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136073
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161338
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136216
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817339025
This is basically my rig. $476 before rebate, $446 after. You will probably want to add 2 80mm fans, you can get those from newegg as well for @$5 each.
This rig has good upgrade potential for cheap. MOBO has 4 ram slots. When you have an extra $40 laying around, buy another set of the Mushkin ram. When you want a cpu boost, unlock the 4th core if possible, or just buy a 6 core when the prices drop on them. This build will also crossfire a second HD5770 or even a HD5750 for a big graphics boost.
I think the most important thing when buying components is to read the reviews and pay attention to the number of reviews. I would rather buy a 4 egg item with 1125 reviews than a 5 egg item with only 17.
That's mostly a decent budget build, but there are some issues.
First, do you really want an HEC power supply that isn't even 80 PLUS certified? Really?
Second, you're not going CrossFire on that motherboard. Not with only a PCI Express x4 link for the second video card. Or at least you shouldn't. It's fine for a single card, but not for two. Besides, two lower mid-range cards in CrossFire makes no sense.
Third, the memory is fine, but if you wanted 8 GB, you should have bought 8 GB up front, in a kit with two 4 GB modules. It's one thing to add more memory a few years down the line when you discover that you need more. But don't buy one amount of memory up front, while planning to add more in the near future.
Fourth, that case doesn't look like it has a lot of airflow, or spots to add fans. That also limits your options, and is another reason why I'd consider CrossFire to be out of the question: you can't keep the cards cool. It's likely that some video cards won't physically fit, either. That's all right on a tight budget build, but do recognize that it limits what you can do in the future.
CPU
AMD Phenom II 955 Quad Core 3.2GHz 8MB 125W AM3 Black Edition
x 1
CPU Cooling
Cooler Master HYPER 101 (INTEL LGA1156/775)
x 1
Motherboard
Asus M4A88TD-M/U3 Motherboard
x 1
Memory
Kingston 4GB (2X2G) DDR3-1333 (KVR1333D3N9K2/4G)
x 1
Video Card
Asus Video Card EAH5830/1GD5
x 1
Sound Cards
Onboard Audio
x 1
Hard Drive
Seagate 1TB (1000GB) SATA 3GB 7200RPM,32MB Cache
x 1
Optical Drive 1
LG 22X DVD RW w/ Lightscribe +- Dual Layer Serial ATA
x 1
Network Adapter
Onboard Network Adapter
x 1
Case
Coolermaster Storm Scout (Black)
x 1
Power Supply
1X650W Corsair TX Series ATX PS/2 Power Supply
x 1
Warranty
One year parts and three years labor warranty, lifetime toll free telephone support. Hardware only.
700$ Canadian so should be cheaper if your in the US.I would try to get a 5850 or 5870 you can lose the hard drive if you got one.
Its LUCOMPUTERS its in Canada why I said it will most likely be cheaper if hes in the US
100 more and you could get a gtx 570
You might want to post a link of where you're picking those parts from.
The HEC power supply is solid.
You absolutely can crossfire that motherboard. The 4x link on the second card will reduce its performance by about 4-5%. You would be better off replacing the single video card down the road, which you could do also, but if you find a cheap 5770 at some time in the future that option would be there.
If you want 8gb up front, buy that. If you want to buy 8gb a year from now giving you 12gb, you can do that too. The point is the mobo has 4 ram slots.
It is not the best case but it does provide ample ventilation.
The power supply isn't even 80 PLUS certified, which is the absolute minimum needed for a power supply to be kind of all right. It won't even say how much power it can deliver on total on the +12 V rails. Advertising multiple fans as a selling point is not the sort of thing that good power supplies do. You don't need a lot of wattage for that system, so you could have gotten something much better and actually paid less.
You really want to run CrossFire with a card on PCI Express 2.0 x4 bandwidth? Maybe it works in some games, but in others, it will hurt performance by enough that there isn't a whole lot of point in using CrossFire rather than just one card.
12 GB would give you mismatched memory channels, and possibly worse performance than staying at 4 GB. 8 GB won't have that problem, but it's better to have 8 GB in two modules than four. That's less power, less heat, less stress on the memory controller, and retains room for future upgrades.
Ample ventilation for a low end system, maybe. But one 80 mm fan isn't going to cut it if you try to put a high powered gaming rig in there.
It deliverys 30a on 12v1 and 22a on 12v2. It is not even advertised as having multiple fans. No where in the tilte does it say 2 fans. 195 reviews, 153 of them 4 and 5 egg rating. It is a solid power supply.
Never said you had to run crossfire, but the option would be there. It would not hurt the performance at all. You would see a huge benefit. The 4x on the second card will have minimal affect on framerate, and in fact will lower the temps greatley. Suggested reading for Quiz:
http://www.overclock.net/ati/773426-crossfire-16xpci_e-slot-vs-4xpci_e-slot.html#post9957829
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_5870_PCI-Express_Scaling/11.html
http://www.overclock.net/nvidia/819348-16x-16x-vs-16x-4x-gtx.html
12gb would not be mismatched. The motherboard has 4 slots, each pair utilizing dual channel mode. so 2gb x 2 and 4gb x2 would not be a mismatch.
Ample ventilation for a Basic Gaming Rig as stated in the title of the thread. Not sure where the "high powered gaming rig" came from.
OP came here looking for advice on building a budget gaming rig. The build I listed is by no means a high end rig, or a low end rig for that matter. It can be customized and changed around as needed. You can disagree with the parts I have listed, but saying untrue and misleading things will not help out anyone reading this thread.
So it says 30 A on the one +12 V rail, and 22 A on the other. And how much on both at once added together? Pretty safe bet that it's not 52 A. Maybe it's 40 A on both at once. Maybe it's 32 A. You don't know, because they don't say.
"Dual 80mm Ball Bearing Fans
Dual 80mm ball bearing fans increase overall airflow in the power supply enclosure and help remove heat from the chassis simultaneously."
That sure sounds like advertising two fans to me.
Don't trust New Egg ratings on power supplies, because people who know what they're doing wouldn't even look at that power supply as a serious option, let alone buy it and rate it. Instead, the ratings are just a bunch of people who have no clue about power supplies, but only know that it hasn't completely died. Yet. Indeed, if it did fry parts, most of the people who bought it probably wouldn't figure out that it was the power supply that did it.
Can you find a favorable review of the power supply on a reputable review site? If not, then perhaps you could consider that there might be a reason for that. It's not because the power supply is super awesome and HEC wants to keep it a secret.
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The original poster said he wanted to buy a prebuilt computer, not that he wanted to know what parts to get and assemble it himself.
Looks like the forum ate my post, so I'll try again:
You found two reviews that are over five years old. One only pulled 120 W from the power supply, so that review is completely useless. The other didn't even measure ripple, and returned values on power factor and energy efficiency that are just awful by modern standards. That's the best you could do? That's basically conceding my point.
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An Athlon II processor has two 64-bit memory channels, each of which can be broken into two 32-bit connections. If you fill all four memory slots it does this, so you have four 32-bit connections. In your proposed setup, two of those go to a 4 GB module, and two to a 2 GB module. Thus, you have 1/3 of the memory crammed into 1/4 of the bandwidth. You can argue that an Athlon II X3 is slow enough that it won't matter that much, and it might be worth doing if you really need the extra memory capacity later. But it's completely stupid to plan up front to do that. Every motherboard or memory manufacturer would advise matching the channels properly. If you don't believe me, try to find a memory kit that has modules of different sizes.
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If you use two video cards in CrossFire, they have to communicate with each other, not just the processor or system memory. A CrossFire bridge helps with this somewhat, but it can't do everything.
Consider that Nvidia will completely disable SLI through their drivers if the two cards aren't both in PCI Express slots with at least x8 bandwidth.