~1200 Build, 2560x1600 Capable.

P

P90Puma

n00b
Joined
Mar 28, 2010
Messages
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Hey guys, wandered over to Hardforum a couple times over the years, never needed to ask anything:

So:

1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
Gaming, Browsing, Java Dev.
2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
1200-1250, yes.
3) Where do you live?
Ontario
4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. Please be very specific.
Mobo
Cpu
Gpu
Power Supply
RAM
SSD?
5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.
Antec 300
Seagate 7200.11 1.5TB
Dell 3007WFP-HC
SATA DVD-RW Drive
Mouse/KB/Speakers
6) Will you be overclocking?
If Required.
7) What size monitor do you have and/or plan to have?
Dell 3007WFP-HC
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
April 1st - June 1st.
9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? etc.
RAID, USB3 would be nice (if possible, if not no big deal), 5.1 audio, LAN, the usual niceties.
10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If so, what OS? 32bit or 64bit?
Yes, XP 32, Will be upgrading to 7 64. Not included in the 1250$ budget.


Thanks guys.
 
Just as a general note, if you're at all curious about SSD's you might want to jump on that bandwagon. I don't want to overemphasize the performance of SSD's, there are plenty of people doing that already, but the performance advantage of SSD's very nice, but also very subtle. Sure they've got ~2X the read speeds of your standard hard drive but that in itself isn't really too noticeable. Its the 1000X reduced seek times that make all the difference. When you can move your page file into storage that's got drastically reduced relative latency on it, stuff just stops loading and starts working. The benchmarks don't really reflect that; I think NCIX actually has a pretty good demonstration. To get the [H]ard numbers on SSD's you're probably going to want to head over to PCPerspective.com


If you use eclipse and you're familiar with that loading box that shows up shortly after it asks you for your work space, on an SSD it sits at 0% briefly, and then over the course of about half a second it reaches 100% and you're in your environment. On a standard hard dive, as you probably know, it usually takes 3 or 4 seconds to actually put you in the IDE, and even then your class hierarchy is still "thinking" about weather you can actually open that java file.

The biggest problem I have is the size is annoyingly small. I've got two 64B SSD's in RAID-0, (for a total of 128GB), and I'm running out of room pretty well consistently. You're definitely going to want to have a nice 500GB+ drive for most of your applications and data. To give you an example I've got BF:BC2, MW2, Mass2, Dirt2, Tropico3 (yeah out of place, its not SimCity 4 but I still enjoyed it) and then... 4 instantiations of the source engine all installed to the raid array, as well as the operating system, and I've got just under 20GB free. So its not difficult to move my data around, but if I want to download and install Assassins creed 2 I'm probably going to have to back one of those games up to my 500GB drive and then re-install when I want to play it again.

Anyways, in terms of the actual build, Ontario Canada or Ontario California?
 
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Ontario Canada, but I have been to the California one!

I forgot, HDMI out on the video card is a must.

I can always upgrade to SSD later, once the technology matures.
 
How long will it be once you build this system until your next upgrade? In other words, how long do you plan on keeping this system?
 
enginurd said:
How long will it be once you build this system until your next upgrade? In other words, how long do you plan on keeping this system?
Click to expand...

2 years of top of the line gaming would be nice, Which is what I have been maintaining for the last 3 computers I have built since '05, all around the 1K price point.

Now with the extreme resolution, I know I have to move the price up to keep that 2 years.
 
P90Puma said:
What are the thoughts on X58 chipset vs P55?
Click to expand...
Here's my thoughts on that subject:
If doing a lot of photoshop, video editing, virtualization or a Crossfire/SLI rig or have a $1500 to $2000 budget, go X58/Core i7.
If just pure gaming, go with AMD. Intel P55/Core i5/Core i7 860 does not offer enough of a performance increase in games to justify the extra $50 to $100 over an AMD setup.

BTW the Core i7 930 will only work with X58 just in case you didn't know that.

Also can you please narrow down when exactly you're planning on buying this PC? Or are you planning on buying the PC in pieces between April and June?
 
Danny Bui said:
Here's my thoughts on that subject:
If doing a lot of photoshop, video editing, virtualization or a Crossfire/SLI rig or have a $1500 to $2000 budget, go X58/Core i7.
If just pure gaming, go with AMD. Intel P55/Core i5/Core i7 860 does not offer enough of a performance increase in games to justify the extra $50 to $100 over an AMD setup.

BTW the Core i7 930 will only work with X58 just in case you didn't know that.

Also can you please narrow down when exactly you're planning on buying this PC? Or are you planning on buying the PC in pieces between April and June?
Click to expand...

I'd rather not spend 1500, but if I cannot pull acceptable frame rates @2560x1600, I will.

Mid April to Late April is when I would like to purchase the PC. Just looking into options now.

5870 seems to be the best bet for a video card right now for me.
 
$257 - AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition CPU + GIGABYTE GA-770TA-UD3 AM3 AMD 770 Motherboard combo
$102 - A-DATA HY63I1B16K 2 x 2GB DDR3 1333 RAM
$440 - Gigabyte GV-R587UD-1GD Radeon HD 5870 1GB PCI-E Video Card
$235 - Intel SSDSA2M080G2XXX 2.5" 80GB SSD
$120 - Antec Truepower New TP-750 750W PSU
-----------
Total: $1154 plus tax and shipping.

Only get the SSD if you are going with Windows 7 for sure. Don't even think about installing XP onto that SSD. If there's even a small chance of you using XP with the new rig until you actually upgrade to Windows 7, drop the SSD.
 
Ended up with the following:

XFX 5870 - 405.00
i7 930 -267.77
Gigabyte X58A-UD3R - 207.98
Corsair XMS3 Dominator TR3X6G1600C8D 6GB DDR3 3X2GB DDR3-1600 CL 8-8-8-2 - 219.99
Corsair TX750W - 109.99

Came out to 1270 after tax and shipping, Minus a 20$ MIR.

Runs really well, just need an SSD now as the read/write speeds of the 320GB Win7 lives on are horribe, as the 1.5TB was full of media I did not want to lose.

Time to find 2x 2007FP's for 4960x1600 goodness.
 
You wasted a nice $50 on those dominators, could have saved that money to put toward an SSD. Oh well, good build otherwise
 
Shadowssong said:
You wasted a nice $50 on those dominators, could have saved that money to put toward an SSD. Oh well, good build otherwise
Click to expand...

The ram was rushed because of the sale on the i7 930, I wasn't sure what to get and the Dominators seemed like a good bet for 200$. (20$ MIR)

enginurd said:
No pics?
Click to expand...

Haven't taken any, pretty standard antec 300, and 3007wfp-hc on a terrible desk.
 
P90Puma said:
Haven't taken any, pretty standard antec 300, and 3007wfp-hc on a terrible desk.
Click to expand...

too bad.

[H] demands pictures.

and i like the 300. Cheap, lots of fan intakes (with dust covers no less), good looking...

that 180mm fan or w/e it is is loud as hell tho.
 
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