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$1200 build, what do you think?

  • Thread starter Deleted member 88227
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Deleted member 88227

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1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc

Video and photo editing mostly, no gaming.

2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?

$1200 - $1400

3) Where do you live?
Las Cruces, NM

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.

I am starting out with nothing. I'd like to be able to burn DVDs, possibly watch BluRay movies.

5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.

Starting from scratch

6) Will you be overclocking?

No.

7) What size monitor do you have and/or plan to have?

Want something in the 21/22 inch range. Maybe 24" (Does not have to be part of the actual budget)

8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?

This month.

9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? etc.

Do not require any features, just whatever I need to do what I want to do.

10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If yes, what OS? 32bit or 64bit?

Do not have any operating system license. Want Windows 7.

This is what I've built, but I think I can spend the money better?

ASUS M4A79XTD EVO AM3 AMD 790X ATX AMD Motherboard - $118.99
AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor HDZ965FBGMBOX - $159.99
CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Compatible with Core i7 Power Supply - $109.99
Antec Nine Hundred Two Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - $119.95
EVGA 768-P3-1360-TR GeForce GTX 460 (Fermi) 768MB 192-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card - $169.99
G.SKILL PI 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL6D-4GBPI - $134.99 x 2
Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive - $89.99 x 2
HP Black 12X BD-R 2X BD-RE 16X DVD+R 12X DVD-RAM 8X BD-ROM SATA Internal Blu-ray Burner Blu-ray Burner bd340i LightScribe Support - $169.99
ASUS VH222H Black 21.5" 5ms HDMI Widescreen 16:9 Full HD 1080P LCD Monitor Built in Speakers 300 cd/m2 1000:1 (ASCR20000:1) w/ SPDIF out - $179.99 x 2
 
No doubt about it, you can definitely spend the money better. That whole setup is overpriced for the performance.

Additional questions:
  • Will you be using Adobe CS5?
  • Is the cost of OS also factored into that $1200 to $1400 budget?
  • Will you actually be burning blu-ray discs?

Also, ditch that Antec 900 case, it's a piss poor case for $120 as there are significantly better cases for less or the same price. My recommendations:
$70 - Cooler Master CM690 II Basic ATX Case
$90 - Cooler Master CM690 II Advance ATX Case
$90 - Cooler Master HAF 922 RC-922M-KKN1-GP ATX Case
$90 - Lian Li PC-7B Plus II ATX Case
$105 - Fractal Design Define R3 Black ATX Case
$105 - Fractal Design Define R3 Titanium ATX Case
$105 - Fractal Design Define R3 Silver ATX Case
$100 - Lian Li Lancool PC-K7B ATX Case
$110 - Lian Li PC-7FN ATX Case
$120 - Velocity Micro GX2-W Silver Classic Aluminum Case with Side Window
$130 - Cooler Master HAF 932 RC-932-KKN1-GP ATX Case
 
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Just looking at that list I think I could trim a lot of fat for what you plan to use it for. Maybe $300 to $400. But depends how flexible you are with what you want and how much $300 to $400 in savings means to you. For example do you have to have an am3 board and ddr3? Is slower ddr3 ok? Do you have a blu-ray burner? No point in getting 2 Western Digital blacks unless you plan to run Raid etc.
 
Skillz said:
1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc

Video and photo editing mostly, no gaming.

2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?

$1200 - $1400

3) Where do you live?
Las Cruces, NM

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.

I am starting out with nothing. I'd like to be able to burn DVDs, possibly watch BluRay movies.

5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.

Starting from scratch

6) Will you be overclocking?

No.

7) What size monitor do you have and/or plan to have?

Want something in the 21/22 inch range. Maybe 24" (Does not have to be part of the actual budget)

8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?

This month.

9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? etc.

Do not require any features, just whatever I need to do what I want to do.

10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If yes, what OS? 32bit or 64bit?

Do not have any operating system license. Want Windows 7.

This is what I've built, but I think I can spend the money better?

ASUS M4A79XTD EVO AM3 AMD 790X ATX AMD Motherboard - $118.99
AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor HDZ965FBGMBOX - $159.99
CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Compatible with Core i7 Power Supply - $109.99
Antec Nine Hundred Two Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - $119.95
EVGA 768-P3-1360-TR GeForce GTX 460 (Fermi) 768MB 192-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card - $169.99
G.SKILL PI 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL6D-4GBPI - $134.99 x 2
Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive - $89.99 x 2
HP Black 12X BD-R 2X BD-RE 16X DVD+R 12X DVD-RAM 8X BD-ROM SATA Internal Blu-ray Burner Blu-ray Burner bd340i LightScribe Support - $169.99
ASUS VH222H Black 21.5" 5ms HDMI Widescreen 16:9 Full HD 1080P LCD Monitor Built in Speakers 300 cd/m2 1000:1 (ASCR20000:1) w/ SPDIF out - $179.99 x 2
Click to expand...

IMHO, if your budget is anywhere near that $1200 to $1400 price range, an Intel-based i5 or i7 rig would be a better bet. As it stands now, you're paying way too much money for the performance of your originally listed build. Plus, if you're using Adobe Premiere, even the Phenom x4 965BE will perform no better than a higher-model Intel Core 2 Quad (which will perform worse than any Intel i7 platform) due to the AMD CPU's lack of full SSE 4.x support.

As Danny stated, that Antec 902 is a very poor value even though its stock cooling performance is better than those of many other "gaming" cases because that case is very cramped from front to rear. A regular-sized regular-length ATX motherboard fits with barely enough room to spare. And because of that, the hard drives will sometimes obstruct access to the motherboard's internal SATA ports. What's more, many mid-level graphics cards require the PCI-e power connector to be bent sharply just to even fit due to the case's cramped depth.

Second, you're paying way too much money per GB for the memory: It has been shown that very tight timings offer nowhere near as much of a benchmarked performance improvement, let alone a real-world performance improvement, over standard DDR3 memory for such a steep price premium especially on a system with an on-CPU-die memory controller (IMC).

Third, that 768MB GTX 460 cannot run Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 in GPU-accelerated mode because that mode requires at least 765MB of unused graphics RAM available, and that Windows by itself eats up 19MB of that 768MB of graphics RAM and thus leave you with only 749MB available. That forces software-only mode. Furthermore, MPE's GPU mode requires an NVIDIA GPU in order to work; it does not currently support any AMD (ATi) GPU.

Fourth, those 1TB WD Black SATA 6 Gbps drives, although they are competitive in performance with most of the other 1TB 7200 rpm hard drives, are still slightly slower in sequential performance than the Samsung F3 that Danny and cn06 recommended. Plus, the Blacks cost $15 more apiece than any of the other consumer 1TB desktop hard drives.

Fifth, if you will not be working with high-definition video at all (or if your high-definition work is limited to Web posting), you can skip the Blu-ray burner in favor of a cheap SATA DVD-only burner (what I mean by DVD-only is that the drive does not handle Blu-ray at all). And although you can create high-definition AVCHD DVD discs with a DVD-only burner, be advised that the maximum total average bitrate (this includes video, audio and other miscellaneous tracks combined) is limited to 18 Mbps if the content is to be burnt onto DVD - and if you use an Adobe product, you will need third-party burning software such as the freeware IMGBurn to burn those AVCHD DVDs since Adobe's own authoring software by itself requires a full Blu-ray burner and full Blu-ray media just to burn high-definition discs at all. (To do this, simply author and "burn" in Encore as a Blu-ray folder, then use IMGBurn to burn the created Blu-ray folder onto DVD.) And when you open a new high-definition project in Encore, be sure to create it as a new Blu-ray project since the default of DVD will downcovnert everything to standard definition - and using an improper alogarithm that creates nasty artifacts.

And finally, I would not configure two 1TB drives in a RAID 0 array and use that array as your only drive volume: While that setup is great at sequential reads or writes, it does very poorly at simultaneous reads and writes when it is also used as a boot/system volume. And if you need a RAID 0 array for certain high-definition video work (as in your high-definition video files are of uncompressed formats), it is better to get a third, non-RAID drive as your boot/system drive and use the RAID array as the "work" drive ("work", in this case, means video files that are to be tinkered with further). And video editing is not recommended if you have only one hard drive volume or one single physical hard drive anyway: Many prosumer video editing software packages require at least two completely separate hard drive volumes (no, that does not include partitions on a single hard drive) in order to run properly.
 
Last edited:
another thing to consider is if you are spending this kind of money on a non-gaming rig, especially for video projects, your money would be well spent on a SSD for a boot/system drive. That would actually noticably increase overall system speed, instead of wasting twenty or thirty bucks here and there on random other 'performance' parts.
 
Danny Bui said:
Additional questions:
  • Will you be using Adobe CS5?
  • Is the cost of OS also factored into that $1200 to $1400 budget?
  • Will you actually be burning blu-ray discs?
Click to expand...

Maybe not immediately, but in the future I'd like the capability to run CS5.
Yes.
Yes.

Thanks for the suggestions on the case.

tosgamer said:
Just looking at that list I think I could trim a lot of fat for what you plan to use it for. Maybe $300 to $400. But depends how flexible you are with what you want and how much $300 to $400 in savings means to you. For example do you have to have an am3 board and ddr3? Is slower ddr3 ok? Do you have a blu-ray burner? No point in getting 2 Western Digital blacks unless you plan to run Raid etc.
Click to expand...

I am open to suggestions on other platforms. I don't plan to run RAID, the second hard drive is just a backup. I guess I can save money there and get a slower/cheaper hard drive since it's just a backup.

E4g1e said:
IMHO, if your budget is anywhere near that $1200 to $1400 price range, an Intel-based i5 or i7 rig would be a better bet. As it stands now, you're paying way too much money for the performance of your originally listed build. Plus, if you're using Adobe Premiere, even the Phenom x4 965BE will perform no better than a higher-model Intel Core 2 Quad (which will perform worse than any Intel i7 platform) due to the AMD CPU's lack of full SSE 4.x support.

As Danny stated, that Antec 902 is a very poor value even though its stock cooling performance is better than those of many other "gaming" cases because that case is very cramped from front to rear. A regular-sized regular-length ATX motherboard fits with barely enough room to spare. And because of that, the hard drives will sometimes obstruct access to the motherboard's internal SATA ports. What's more, many mid-level graphics cards require the PCI-e power connector to be bent sharply just to even fit due to the case's cramped depth.

Second, you're paying way too much money per GB for the memory: It has been shown that very tight timings offer nowhere near as much of a benchmarked performance improvement, let alone a real-world performance improvement, over standard DDR3 memory for such a steep price premium especially on a system with an on-CPU-die memory controller (IMC).

Third, that 768MB GTX 460 cannot run Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 in GPU-accelerated mode because that mode requires at least 765MB of unused graphics RAM available, and that Windows by itself eats up 19MB of that 768MB of graphics RAM and thus leave you with only 749MB available. That forces software-only mode. Furthermore, MPE's GPU mode requires an NVIDIA GPU in order to work; it does not currently support any AMD (ATi) GPU.

Fourth, those 1TB WD Black SATA 6 Gbps drives, although they are competitive in performance with most of the other 1TB 7200 rpm hard drives, are still slightly slower in sequential performance than the Samsung F3 that Danny and cn06 recommended. Plus, the Blacks cost $15 more apiece than any of the other consumer 1TB desktop hard drives.

Fifth, if you will not be working with high-definition video at all (or if your high-definition work is limited to Web posting), you can skip the Blu-ray burner in favor of a cheap SATA DVD-only burner (what I mean by DVD-only is that the drive does not handle Blu-ray at all). And although you can create high-definition AVCHD DVD discs with a DVD-only burner, be advised that the maximum total average bitrate (this includes video, audio and other miscellaneous tracks combined) is limited to 18 Mbps if the content is to be burnt onto DVD - and if you use an Adobe product, you will need third-party burning software such as the freeware IMGBurn to burn those AVCHD DVDs since Adobe's own authoring software by itself requires a full Blu-ray burner and full Blu-ray media just to burn high-definition discs at all. (To do this, simply author and "burn" in Encore as a Blu-ray folder, then use IMGBurn to burn the created Blu-ray folder onto DVD.) And when you open a new high-definition project in Encore, be sure to create it as a new Blu-ray project since the default of DVD will downcovnert everything to standard definition - and using an improper alogarithm that creates nasty artifacts.

And finally, I would not configure two 1TB drives in a RAID 0 array and use that array as your only drive volume: While that setup is great at sequential reads or writes, it does very poorly at simultaneous reads and writes when it is also used as a boot/system volume. And if you need a RAID 0 array for certain high-definition video work (as in your high-definition video files are of uncompressed formats), it is better to get a third, non-RAID drive as your boot/system drive and use the RAID array as the "work" drive ("work", in this case, means video files that are to be tinkered with further). And video editing is not recommended if you have only one hard drive volume or one single physical hard drive anyway: Many prosumer video editing software packages require at least two completely separate hard drive volumes (no, that does not include partitions on a single hard drive) in order to run properly.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the insight. I really like the idea of having bluray on the computer, not only for creating HD content, but I also plan to watch bluray movies on my computer as well. I was going to get three LCD monitors, two for the PC and one for my PS3, but I think I'm gonna just get two 24" ASUS LCDs for the PC and hook the PS3 up to one of them as well.
 
$285 - Intel Core i5 750 CPU + Gigabyte GA-P55M-UD2 Intel P55 mATX Motherboard Combo
$300 - 2 x G.Skill Ripjaws F3-10666CL9D-8GBRL 2 x 4GB DDR3 1333 RAM
$130 - Asus ENGTS450 DIRECTCU/DI/1GD5 GeForce GTS 450 PCI-E Video Card
$225 - 3 x Samsung Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
$180 - That Blu-Ray burner that you chose.
$110 - Antec Truepower New TP-750 750W PSU
----------
Total: $1230 plus tax and shipping.

Left out the case since that's up to you which case to get. Notes about the above build:
- You now get 16Gb of RAM rather than the 8GB of RAM you chose earlier
- You now get three faster Samsung drives, two of which are to be used as a RAID 0 array and the other as a boot/OS drive.
- Since you're not gaming at all, the GTS 450 will suffice for your needs. In addition, it does have the necessary amount of VRAM needed for Adobe's GPU acceleration features.
- You now get a significantly higher quality PSU.
- You now get a faster CPU

So basically the above build is better than your planned setup in every way.
 
Wow Danny, you are awesome. Should be ordering it all Friday if all goes well!!
 
Danny put a pretty nice build together for you. But I'll add a couple of suggestions.


1. ASUS P7P55D-E + I5 760 if you want an atx board over a matx board. Also the base clock for the i5 is slightly higher since you don't plan to overclock. Also has sata 3 and usb 3.0 = $314 -$13.50 with code: MBTEN7 - $10 rebate = 290.50.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.526549

2. If you want to save $ on memory Mwave has Avexir ddr3 for $28 per 2gb. A generic brand but it gets good reviews at Mwave.

http://www.mwave.com/mwave/skusearc...-1S Standard Series 2GB (2GB x1) 2#aStockNote

3. If you want to save about $70 on the blu-ray burner newegg has this LG one. Slightly slower and doesn't come with a box /cable etc but does come with a blu-ray disc to play with. I have the older version of this burner (2k8 model and it has given me zero problems in the 1.5+ years I've had it.)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136181&cm_re=lg_blu-_-27-136-181-_-Product

4. That PSU maybe overkill for you since you don't plan to overclock. A 650w Corsair, Antec, Seasonic or XFX would do fine like this Corsair:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...005&cm_re=corsair_650w-_-17-139-005-_-Product

$62 after rebate and coupon code EMCZYYS26.
 
tosgamer said:
Danny put a pretty nice build together for you. But I'll add a couple of suggestions.


1. ASUS P7P55D-E + I5 760 if you want an atx board over a matx board. Also the base clock for the i5 is slightly higher since you don't plan to overclock. Also has sata 3 and usb 3.0 = $314 -$13.50 with code: MBTEN7 - $10 rebate = 290.50.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.526549

2. If you want to save $ on memory Mwave has Avexir ddr3 for $28 per 2gb. A generic brand but it gets good reviews at Mwave.

http://www.mwave.com/mwave/skusearc...-1S Standard Series 2GB (2GB x1) 2#aStockNote

3. If you want to save about $70 on the blu-ray burner newegg has this LG one. Slightly slower and doesn't come with a box /cable etc but does come with a blu-ray disc to play with. I have the older version of this burner (2k8 model and it has given me zero problems in the 1.5+ years I've had it.)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136181&cm_re=lg_blu-_-27-136-181-_-Product

4. That PSU maybe overkill for you since you don't plan to overclock. A 650w Corsair, Antec, Seasonic or XFX would do fine like this Corsair:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...005&cm_re=corsair_650w-_-17-139-005-_-Product

$62 after rebate and coupon code EMCZYYS26.
Click to expand...

+1 for the ASUS board. They make very solid mobo's. Easily worth the money. i5 760 is a great choice too.
 
Here are some pictures. Waiting on the displays to come in and have to pick up some SATA cables since none of the hard drives were supplied with them.

CIMG_2010-10-15-190444.jpg

CIMG_2010-10-15-210954.jpg

CIMG_2010-10-15-212820.jpg

CIMG_2010-10-15-210936.jpg
 
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