Building computer, need adviceon parts

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geekcomputing

[H]ard|Gawd
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Aug 30, 2004
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Simply put i'm in the military and 2 years ago knew my hardware but the military has kept me busy. so now i really need some advice on what to buy or research.
having a quiet to normal pc is needed..my last one screamed!


1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
The primary purpose is running graphics programs (Illustrator, Photoshop). My wife is a graphics designer. Secondary purpose is gaming and financial applications + folding/
2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
im loooking to spend about $800 (excluding monitors). I'll be buying off the local computer market since the exchange rate is so good here. no taxes or shipping to worry about. all i need is the cost in dollars.

4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. Please be very specific.
quad cpu whats better amd or intel nowdays if on a budget?
any mobo, min 4 gig ram, graphics card (ati seems to pack the most punch this generation for the dollar?)
5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.
none
6) Will you be overclocking?
maybe just a little, but not much.
7) What size monitor do you have and/or plan to have?
dual monitors, 19+ inch
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
this week
9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? etc.
crossfire or sli would be very nice but its not absolutely required.
10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license?
I plan on running 64 bit xp, linux and apples os.


thanks in advance.
 
i should add ill need a dvd burner and a cheap case ( i really dont care about cases much, all it has to do is hold the stuff)
 
well its against DMCA to run OS X on non-Apple hardware, unless they've re-written something, so I'd go with "get a mac" if that matters to you

the GPU will not influence Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, ImageReady, Lightroom, etc (and before someone decides to flame this, a few select parts are able to provide minimal acceleration for H.264 and one or two filters in CS4, with special pro drivers and all that, however the cards with this feature will run into the $500-$5000 range), so I wouldn't worry there, just buy something that suits your gaming needs

quad core isn't required, may help out a bit, but a dual or triple core could be just as good if it fits your budget, at $800 you should be able to get away with a quad though

I'd go with a Phenom II X3 or X4, some decent looking mobo (Gigabyte, MSI, maybe Asus), cheapseats graphics card like an HD 4850 or a GTS 250 (its only a 19", 1280x1024 isn't that extreme), 4GB or w/e is cheap on RAM (its like $50 for a good kit, just grab something)

^ should be like $400-$500 of parts (like $100-$175 for the CPU, $100 for the mobo, $50-$100 for RAM, $100-$150 for graphics), then grab whatever HDs you want/need, will be like $50-$100 depending on capacity required, and then a DVD burner (all of ~$25, get whatever is on sale and has free shipping basically) and whatever case you want (if you dont care, just get whatever is cheap and has cheap shipping), and of course a solid PSU (Corsair and Antec both have decent priced ~$50-$75 units right now)

no, I don't believe in packaging it up on a platter for you, sorry :)
 
GIGABYTE GA-MA770T-UD3P AM3 AMD 770 ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail $80

AMD Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition Callisto 3.1GHz Socket AM3 80W Dual-Core Processor Model HDZ550WFGIBOX - Retail $100

XFX HD-487A-ZHFC Radeon HD 4870 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card - Retail $150

G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F3-10600CL9D-4GBPK - Retail $65

Western Digital Caviar Black WD6401AALS 640GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive - OEM $75

Antec TruePower New TP-550 550W Continuous Power ATX12V V2.3 / EPS12V V2.91 SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply - Retail $90

Antec Three Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail $55

COOLER MASTER Hyper N 520 RR-920-N520-GP 92mm Sleeve CPU Cooler - Retail $30

Total before S&H $645

Games today don't make great use of the extra 2 cores but if you are lucky you might get a cheap quad from x2 550.
 
the extra cores should help him multitasking with photoshop/illustrator running, or with video encoding

hence the suggestion
 
like I said, for Premiere Pro for H.264, this is like DXVA

the only current plug-ins TMK that support Photoshop and Illustrator (which are not the same as Premiere Pro, and Adobe != all the same thing) are available from nVidia, run on CUDA, and are supported by Quadro CX and some Quadro FX boards, as well as Tesla/Quadro Plex farms

the advantage of the quad core is that the price is roughly the same (ok, all of ~$20 more) and it will improve multitasking performance when he's got other stuff open + if he does video encoding, why not have it (really, why not?)
 
thx for the replies guys. it seems that the amd p2 x4 955 is a good value.
unless i can a reason to go w/ the intel i7 (given the cost) ill go amd
 
The Phenom II X4 setup is fine. As obobski mentioned earlier, just having a quad core processor will help you with multitasking and the Adobe CS4.

I also suggest picking up another 2x2GB kit and using a RAMdisk program to make a scratch disk out of the second kit.

Joe Average said:
In other words, as I said, the cost of the devices + the cost of populating them becomes absolutely ridiculous. Grab two Velociraptors and have fun... or even a handful of SSD drives and RAID 'em together. The overall price-to-performance ratio will blow these iRAM devices clear off the planet surface...

Sad, really, because I've been a proponent of actual RAMdisks for decades now. Hell, I used to boot my Amiga 500 off a RAMdisk, so I've seen pretty much every attempt at making such devices as the iRAM that have appeared, and they all suck, period. They just can't do the job adequately and keep the price-to-performance ratio anywhere near a reasonable level.

I built a RAID 0 box for a small image studio 2 weeks ago, a new startup here in Vegas that is making waves. They wanted a "demo" workstation to see what's possible for processing as they don't want to create a massive server-type situation in the office, but 3-4 workstations that are equal in performance and then just using simple file sharing as required. Very simple setup in terms of the network, but the workstation I built used 2 300GB Velociraptors (tried to sell 'em on SSD but the amount of data they're dealing with wouldn't be practical - again, a price-to-performance and ROI issue).

The hard part was getting them to spring for 16GB of RAM because of the cost, but a few weeks ago I saw that sale for 4 4GB sticks of RAM for about $450 and made a few phone calls and snagged a similar deal.

I set up Photoshop CS3 for 'em (their legit retail copy) on Vista Business x64. They started messing around with it, loading some rather large TIFF files in excess of 150MB a pop, several at a time, performing some basic scripted actions on 'em, blurs, filters, etc. Using the Velociraptors in RAID 0 meant very snappy and consistent performance, as well as having 16GB of RAM too. Also, it's a Q6600 based machine running rock solid at 3 GHz.

They were very pleased with the performance at that point, but I had a surprise for 'em. ;)

I asked if I could have 20 mins 'alone' with the workstation to "rewire it" as Tim Allen might say. That consisted of grabbing a trial version of SuperSpeed Software's RamDisk Plus 9 and installing it, doing the simple configuration, and then creating a 10GB RAMdisk and told Photoshop "Ok, you want a scratch disk? Here, try this on for size."

After I did some tests of my own using the same scripts they'd done earlier, boy... I tell ya. You haven't lived till you see 225MB TIFF files literally snap onscreen in the blink of an eye, multiple huge TIFFs with resolutions like 5000x5000 and even higher. That's what's possible with RAMdisks, because even Velociraptors in RAID 0 pumping out something like 280MB/s sustained pales to the close to 5GB a second in bandwidth of that RAMdisk.

I told 'em to come back in and rerun their test scripts.

Jaws hit the floor, folks. Well, not quite but figuratively speaking, at least.

They asked what I'd done, I told them I put the scratch disk in RAM where it should be if you have the RAM to make it happen, and they bought 4 licenses of RamDisk Plus 10 mins later, and I got a signed contract to construct 3 more workstations identical to that one top to bottom and also be their "geek" if any issues come up.

It was a very good week... ;)
Click to expand...
 
ok, so far im looking at the amd p2 x4 955 cpu and it looks like the amd/ati radeon 4870 (157$) over the higher priced geforce 260 216 core ($204)

Is the performance of those 2 cards comparable, in most reviews the ati card had a slight edge or am i missing something?

thx guys for the feedback
 
The HD4870 (1GB model) and the GTX 260 (Core 216) perform about the same, so get whichever one you can find for less.

You'll also gain similar performance (overall) for a bit less by going with the cheaper Phenom II X4 940. However, if you're buying everything from NewEgg, the Phenom II X4 955/CM RC-690 combo deal is a very good one.
 
Where are you located? Is there a website with prices similar to where you will be buying these parts?
 
AMD Phenom II X4 940 Deneb 3.0GHz Socket AM2+ 125W Quad-Core Black Edition Processor Model HDZ940XCGIBOX - Retail and GIGABYTE GA-MA790X-UD4P AM3/AM2+/AM2 AMD 790X ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail $240

XFX HD-487A-ZHFC Radeon HD 4870 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card - Retail $150

G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Desktop Memory Model F2-8500CL5D-4GBPQ - Retail $48

Western Digital Caviar Black WD6401AALS 640GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive - OEM $75

Antec TruePower New TP-550 550W Continuous Power ATX12V V2.3 / EPS12V V2.91 SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply - Retail $90

Antec Three Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail $55

COOLER MASTER Hyper N 520 RR-920-N520-GP 92mm Sleeve CPU Cooler - Retail $30

Total before S&H $688
 
I'm stationed in Korea but all incomming mail goes to an APO, AP address with a California zip code, so in effect i'll be paying shipping charges from where ever to California.

I considered the suggestions of the amd 940 vs the 955 but I think i'll pay a slight premimum for the Am3 socket for a future upgrade path and the few extra megahertz by going w/ the 955. $(215)

Graphics = Ati 4870 1 gig ($150)

Hard drive = Western Digital Caviar Black WD6401AALS 640GB 7200 RPM 32MB (getting 2 of them for raid 0) (150 bucks) I also have an 500gb external fyi.

power supply = Antec TruePower New TP-550 550W Continuous Power ATX12V V2.3 / EPS12V V2.91 SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply - Retail (89 bucks)

cpu cooling = COOLER MASTER Hyper N 520 RR-920-N520-GP 92mm Sleeve CPU Cooler - Retail ($30) 19 dBA is really good!!!!

mobo = ??? (maybe one of the combos here http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...ubCategory=343&SortField=0&PageSize=10&Page=1 ) ??

ram = ddr3 or ddr2???

thanks for the feedback guys. I know im asking a lot of questions but its been a while.
total of above = 634
I think my max will be be $1000 or so give or take
 
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