Help! Cyber Monday Build ~$1000

H

HardwareNoob

n00b
Joined
Nov 22, 2009
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Hi guys. :) I'll be building a ~$1000 rig as a graduation gift during the next week, trying to take advantage of the bf + cm sales. So here it goes...

1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
Gaming and photoshop, just about even.
2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
around $1000, not including a monitor. Includes all possible ship/tax.
3) Where do you live?
Georgia (the state, not country)
4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. Please be very specific.
Everything except monitor.
6) Will you be overclocking?
Not sure. If possible why not.
7) What size monitor do you have and/or plan to have?
I'm looking to spend max. $450 on a 24 monitor. No TN panels, but open to suggestions of course.
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
This week, but if I can get better deals during Christmas I can wait. Are there any new technologies worth waiting for at this time?
9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? etc.
I'd like RAID for backup; sli would be nice but not necessary.
10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license?
No, but I can get win7 for $30.


Thanks mucho in advance. I'm really new to comp building, so any interesting tips about upcoming price/new technology trend would be appreciated as well. (Especially for monitors.)
 
To be more precise, I frequently use it for editing RAW images from my camera. I also use lightroom and Capture one for the same purpose as well. Thanks!
 
$450 will be hard to get a 24" non TN panel. You can get the Dell Ultrasharp 2408WFP which an 8bit S-PVA panel for $423.76 from Provantage but, I am not sure if this is the Rev A01 model that reduces input lag. Or, you could save up and buy the HP LP2475W 24" for $529.28 which has a H-IPS panel. But, like the Dell 2408WFP it has a high color gamut of 102% so.. by default the colors will look over saturated. You will need to tweak the setting. Other than that, you are stuck with a TN panel. However, there are some decent 24" TN panels out there like the BenQ G2400WD which is hard to find though. Or, the Samsung 2493HM is also a good 24" TN monitor.
 
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Let's just do a rough build for $1,000 A Core i7 920 build would be out of your $1,000 budget.

Intel Core i7-860 + Corsair XMS3 4GB both for $373.98 w/free shipping
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.286423

Corsair XMS3 4GB + ASUS P7P55D LE LGA 1156 both for $213.98 w/free shipping
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.287041

HIS Radeon HD 4890 1GB for $179.99 ($20 MIR) w/free shipping
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161299

Seagate Barracuda 500GB Sata Drive for $54.99 w/free shipping
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148395

Lite-On 24X Sata DVD Burner for $31.99 w/free shipping
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827106334

Antec Earthwatts EA650 for $79.99 ($30 MIR) w/free shipping
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371015

Coolermaster RC-690 for $64.99 ($25 MIR) w/free shipping
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119137

Total: $999.91 w/free shipping
 
Here's what I came up with just now. Comments would be appreciated..

Samsung 22x $31
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827151175
Samsung spinpoint f3 1tb $85
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152185
cooler master 700w PSU+gigabyte mobo+4gb xm3 ram+cooler master case combo deal $359
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboBundleDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.292098
core i5 + thermaltake cooler combo $238
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.260490

TOTAL $713

At this point, I'd like to add an ATI 5850 for ~$300...what do you guys think?
 
If you don't mind going down to 23" and 1920x1080, there are 2 decent E-IPS monitors that would fit into your budget: the NEC EA231WMI for $319 (not including shipping) or the Viewsonic VP2365wb for $296 (not including shipping). The money left over from your $450 monitor budget could probably go to a nice colorimeter, like the Eye One Display 2 (or you can "cheat" and take your chances by downloading a profile for either monitor).

I suggest checking out the Displays subforum for more information on those monitors ;)

Oh, and be sure to try using http://www.bing.com/cashback to recoup some expenses back on your build.
 
Thanks tungt88, I'm really liking the NEC. What's the difference between NEC & viewsonic? I get an impression that they have same internals...
 
i don't have anything to add to this build recommendation, unfortunately.

but i just have to point out that seeing HardwareGuru helping out a guy named HardwareNoob kinda made me chuckle. :D
 
HG's got you covered on hardware suggestions.

For photoshop, get RAMDisk and lots of RAM. More info here:
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showpost.php?p=442160&postcount=5

... and a popular quote for ps builds...

Joe Average said:
... I built a RAID 0 box for a small image studio..., 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...
 
So here's the current build that's in the cart right now:

Antec 900 black steel $100
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129021

WD 640gb 50x2 = $100 (for RAID 0)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136319

Corsair 650w $90
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139005

Logitech g11 kb $44
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16823126009

G.Skill ripjaw 1600 4x2gb $160
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231303

Asus Maximus III + core i5 combo $395
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.291941

Total: $920 (828 after bing, 768 after manufacturer cashback)

I need to add a graphics card, something that will run 1920x1080 games well. Thinking about pairing with nec EA231wmi. Thoughts?
 
Bare minimum for 1920x1080 gaming would be the HD 4870 1GB:
$155 - XFX HD-487A-ZWFC Radeon HD 4870 1GB PCI-E Video Card

However if you can speend the extra cash, the HD 5770 (only if it's around $170), the HD 4890 (get the XFX version for lifetime warranty) and the HD 5850 are all good choices at that resolution.

I'd recommend ditching the Antec 900 case as the Coolermaster case has equal cooling, more room to work with, and has significantly better cable management. Plus it's $30 cheaper:
$70 - Cooler Master RC-690-KKN1-GP ATX Case

The CPU + mobo combo is absolutely a HORRIBLE choice for the money for a number of reasons:
1) The setup that HG provided is only $24 more but yoo do get a significantly faster CPU with HT support
2) It seems so counter-intuitive to spend more than $150 on a motherboard for what is suppose to be a mid-range platform. $200 for that motherboard? Not worth it.

With the exception of the PSU, keyboard and the RAID 0 hard drives (hope you have a strong backup solution), HardwareGuru's build in post #5 is still a better choice for money. Those who buy Rampage motherboards tends to have budget that are signicantly higher than yours. As such, it's not suitable for relatively modest budget.
 
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