Building a computer for a friend tomorrow

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fullvietFX

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Sep 1, 2004
Messages
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If you're gonna ask us to build/list a PC for you or seek advice about a build, please answer all of the following questions:

1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming, schoolwork
2) What's your budget? $2500CDN
3) Where do you live? Ottawa, Ontario
4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? Everything except monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers.
5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? None
6) Will you be overclocking? Yes, my goal is to hit 3.2GHz stable since it is not my own computer I think that's a good speed for 100% stability.
7) What size monitor do you have and/or plan to have? 22" 1680x1050
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC? Tomorrow or Wednesday
9) What features do you need in a motherboard? Sound, maybe Crossfire for the future.
10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? No, Windows 7 Ultimate will be included in the price.

Here is the rig I've came up with, all parts coming from www.pccyber.com
$323.77 - Intel Core i7 860 2.8 LGA1156
$189.77 - ASUS P7P55D PRO LGA 1156 Intel P5
$275.54 - Patriot Viper II DDR3 PC3-12800 4GB x 2
$414.77 - XFX Radeon HD 5850 1GB (in stock :D)
$153.77 - Antec P183 Performance
$136.77 - Antec TruePower New Series 750W
$285.77 - WD VelociRaptor 300GB
$92.77 - WD Caviar Green 1TB
$32.77 - LG 22X Internal SATA Black
$220.77 - Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Bit
$67.88 - Noctua NH-U12P SE2

Total: $2,480.13 (After taxes)


What do you guys think of this build? I want to go 1366 but those don't have USB 3 and SATA3 motherboards yet.
 
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$2500CDN and no SSD nor LGA1366???

Ditch the VRaptor, not worth its price. If you want speed, get an SSD, Intel or Indilinx. http://ssd.alphaq.org -- my SSD page, showing my VRaptor getting slaughtered.

750W is overkill for a single GPU system. For a 22" monitor, CFX/SLI would most likely never be worth it, so he can stick to a single card config w/ a good 650W instead. TP New 650W or Corsair 620W/650W would be fine.

For gaming and schoolwork, 8GB is overkill. Gaming won't benefit from more than 4GB, and unless you list out some intensive as hell schoolwork, neither will MS Office. :p Stick to a single 4GB kit. In the future, he can upgrade to 12GB by buying an 8GB kit for the same price he paid for a 4GB kit. ;)

For 3.2Ghz, the Noctua is overkill. Choose a cheaper cooler, like the CM Hyper 212+ instead.

Does he really need the Pro P7P55 board? If not, save some cash and get whichever board suits his needs. I'd go for the non-pro or a cheaper Gigabyte UD3 P55 board instead.

Get OEM version of Windows 7. If he's a student at a university, he may be eligible for the Ultimate Steal (7Pro for $30), but I'm not sure if its available for Canadians. Check the ultimate steal website.
 
Agreed. Even the new Seagate Cheetah's smoke the Velociraptor. Still SSD kills them both.

Get something like the GSkill Falcon II 64GB for around $200 for the boot/OS and then if you want mega storage you can get the 2TB WD Green for under $150.

BTW, even the new Caviar Blacks have better performance than the Velociraptor.
 
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I'm going to change the Raptor to a 640GB Black, and the 1GB to 1.5GB. Also changing the memory to 4GB.
 
just wondering do you really think spending 200 dollars on a HDD just for booting up the system and OS is worth it? in my opinion SSD drives are way 2 expensive for almost no space.
 
enginurd said:
Heh, I guess you didn't read any of the SSD info?
Click to expand...

I definitely read your advice, thanks I appreciate it. His school doesn't offer the Windows discount program, he doesn't want SSD because he said the 80GB is too small.
 
Consider the Samsung Spinpoint F3 series as well. They use 500GB drive platters in their 500GB and 1TB HDDs, and recent benchmarks have shown them to be slightly faster than Western Digital's Caviar Black HDDs.
 
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fullvietFX said:
I definitely read your advice, thanks I appreciate it. His school doesn't offer the Windows discount program, he doesn't want SSD because he said the 80GB is too small.
Click to expand...

For OS/Apps alone? :confused: does he leave everything installed? lol. My OS partition isn't even using 30GB on my Win7 system with a few steam games installed.
 
enginurd said:
For OS/Apps alone? :confused: does he leave everything installed? lol. My OS partition isn't even using 30GB on my Win7 system with a few steam games installed.
Click to expand...

Agreed. My OS partition is 20 GB. That easily covers the OS and all software utilities and a few games...even my portable folder which is 3 times the size of my program files directory. Since I can't play every game I own at the same time I usually have only 1 or 2 installed, except for a few small games that are always there.

Having a manageable sized system disk also makes maintenance, backup and restore much easier as well as formatting for fresh installs. Also, you can fix issues of an OS on it's own partition when working from another OS on another partition.
 
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