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snowbird122

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Jun 19, 2010
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All help and comments are appreciated.

1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
Some gaming - (Starcraft II), lots of web browsing, some web development (visual studio)
2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
no hard budget. around $600 would be nice. Really looking for best bang for the buck.
3) Where do you live?
Austin, TX area
4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. "Everything" is not a valid answer. Please list out all the parts you'll need.
CPU (with heatsink and/or fan if necessary), motherboard, RAM (6GB), video card, case, power supply, hard drive
5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.
have a few DVD burners already, keyboard, mouse
6) Will you be overclocking?
No
7) What size monitor do you have and/or plan to have?
Already have a 24 running at 1920x1200
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
within a week
9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? etc.
gigabit NIC, soundcard
10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If yes, what OS? 32bit or 64bit?
Yes, Windows 7 ultimate 64 bit
 
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Yeah we're gonna need a hard budget. Best bang for the buck is relative, man. Though for gaming at 1920x1200, a budget increase to $800 to $1000 might be necessary if you want more than low to medium settings in games.
 
How about a hard budget of $700? I don't play any games right now, but want to play starcraft II when it comes out. I'll never play a FPS, and probably won't play anything other than starcraft II.
 
$240 - AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition CPU + MSI 870A-G54 AM3 AMD 870 Motherboard Combo
$110 - G.Skill Ripjaw Series F3-12800CL9D-4GBRL 2 x 2GB DDR3 1600 RAM
$235 - XFX HD-577A-ZNFC Radeon HD 5770 1GB PCI-E Video Card + XFX P1-650X-CAG9 650W Modular PSU
$56 - Western Digital WD5000AAKS 500GB 7200RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
$55 - Antec 300 ATX Case
---
Total: $696 plus tax and shipping

6GB of RAM was not feasible. Since you have a high resolution, spent a decent amount of change on the video card.
 
Thanks Danny. I really have my heart set on 6GB of RAM. I like to have a lot of browser windows open at once. I can't find a 6GB set of the RAM you recommended. There isn't even a single 2GB stick that I can add onto what you recommended.

Which 6GB set would you recommend if the budget allowed?
 
snowbird122 said:
Thanks Danny. I really have my heart set on 6GB of RAM. I like to have a lot of browser windows open at once. I can't find a 6GB set of the RAM you recommended. There isn't even a single 2GB stick that I can add onto what you recommended.

Which 6GB set would you recommend if the budget allowed?
Click to expand...

Actually, in a system with a dual-channel memory controller, you cannot have 6GB of RAM without either using an odd number of equal-sized modules (which would force part of the memory to run in single-channel) or mixing completely different-sized sticks of RAM (two 2GB sticks plus two 1GB sticks, which might cause stability issues in certain systems). In addition, AMD memory controllers do not officially support the use of three DIMMs; thus, there is no guarantee than the AMD system will even work stably or at all with three 2GB DIMMs installed. The only way you could have 6GB of RAM without these issues would be to budget a higher total amount (say, at least $1,000 with all of the other parts the same as the build Danny suggested) for a Socket 1366 platform with an i7-9xx CPU and an X58-based motherboard (1366 systems are the only consumer enthusiast systems on the market with a triple-channel rather than a dual-channel memory controller).
 
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What E4g1e said. However, up your budget by another $110, you can get 8GB of RAM :D

But if you want to see for yourself if three sticks of RAM is viable in an AMD setup, use this RAM:
$170 - G.Skill F3-12800CL9T-6GBNQ 3 x 2GB DDR3 1600 RAM

If you do that, please post back with your results.

But yeah I know what you mean about the 6GB of RAM. I have a ton of browser windows open as well as well as a few virtual machines here and there. I can easily hit 90% RAM usage on a busy day with my sig rig with 6GB of RAM.
 
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Danny Bui said:
$240 - AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition CPU + MSI 870A-G54 AM3 AMD 870 Motherboard Combo
$110 - G.Skill Ripjaw Series F3-12800CL9D-4GBRL 2 x 2GB DDR3 1600 RAM
$235 - XFX HD-577A-ZNFC Radeon HD 5770 1GB PCI-E Video Card + XFX P1-650X-CAG9 650W Modular PSU
$56 - Western Digital WD5000AAKS 500GB 7200RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
$55 - Antec 300 ATX Case
---
Total: $696 plus tax and shipping

6GB of RAM was not feasible. Since you have a high resolution, spent a decent amount of change on the video card.
Click to expand...


Isin't this a faster drive?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...52181&cm_re=samsung_f3-_-22-152-181-_-Product
 
For those of you curious, The price from Dell for a somewhat similar system was $810:

Software & Services
Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64Bit, English
AMD Phenom™ II X4 945 + ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB
1 Year Basic Service Plan
4GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHz- 2 DIMMs
No Monitor
500GB - 7200RPM, SATA 3.0Gb/s, 16MB Cache
16X DVD+/-RW Drive
No speakers (Speakers are required to hear audio from your system)
Dell Studio Consumer Multimedia Keyboard
Dell Laser Mouse
THX® TruStudio PC™
No Modem Option

My Accessories
Microsoft® Office Starter 2010
McAfee SecurityCenter, 30-Day Trial
Dell Online Backup 2GB for 1 year

Also Includes
Studio XPS 7100 Minitower
Integrated 10/100/1000 Ethernet
Adobe® Reader 9.0
 
snowbird122 said:
For those of you curious, The price from Dell for a somewhat similar system was $810:

Software & Services
Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64Bit, English
AMD Phenom™ II X4 945 + ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB
1 Year Basic Service Plan
4GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHz- 2 DIMMs
No Monitor
500GB - 7200RPM, SATA 3.0Gb/s, 16MB Cache
16X DVD+/-RW Drive
No speakers (Speakers are required to hear audio from your system)
Dell Studio Consumer Multimedia Keyboard
Dell Laser Mouse
THX® TruStudio PC™
No Modem Option

My Accessories
Microsoft® Office Starter 2010
McAfee SecurityCenter, 30-Day Trial
Dell Online Backup 2GB for 1 year

Also Includes
Studio XPS 7100 Minitower
Integrated 10/100/1000 Ethernet
Adobe® Reader 9.0
Click to expand...

The primary difference (hardware-wise) between that Dell system and the system build Danny suggested is that the Dell system has a slightly slower CPU (3.0GHz versus 3.2GHz).
 
Danny Bui said:
If you do that, please post back with your results.
Click to expand...

Just for the record, my sig rig currently only has 3 2gb DDR2 DIMMs installed, the 4th one being temporarily used elsewhere, and it runs 100% stable in all stress tests. YMMV of course.

Tangentially, my particular mobo has stability issues running 8gbs at speeds above 800: it's a fairly common problem with this chipset.
 
E4g1e said:
The primary difference (hardware-wise) between that Dell system and the system build Danny suggested is that the Dell system has a slightly slower CPU (3.0GHz versus 3.2GHz).
Click to expand...

Don't forget the other things that the Dell doesn't have:
- No USB 3.0
- No SATA 6Gb/s (not much of a difference mind you)
- No ability overclock
- More than likely lesser quality PSU than the one I chose.
 
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