looking for opinions on this build

Cthulhu

Limp Gawd
Joined
Apr 1, 2003
Messages
413
putting together a build for a friend budget of 550.

1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
gaming (WoW mostly), general computer use, browsing.

2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
550 tax/ship included.

3) Where do you live?
texas

4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. The word "Everything" is not a valid answer. Please list out all the parts you'll need.
case, motherboard, processor, ram, hard drive, video card and power supply.

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

6) Will you be overclocking?
negative, ghostrider

7) What size monitor do you have and/or plan to have?
19" widescreen lcd

8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
within 2 days.

9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? USB 3.0? SATA 6Gb/s? etc.
no major needs here...just something stable.

10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If yes, what OS? Is it 32bit or 64bit?
yes, win7 64bit.

here is what i have picked out so far total: 571.89 i'll just eat the 21.89 over 550... O_O

case http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129042
hdd http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152185
video http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131330
power http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817339002
ram http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231311
proc/mobo http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.592495
 
Ditch the shitty PSU and go with this significantly better quality PSU:
$64 - Antec NEO ECO 520C 520W PSU

Does he actually need 8GB of RAM? Nothing you've wrote so far would indicate that he needs that much RAM.
 
Ditch the shitty PSU and go with this significantly better quality PSU:
$64 - Antec NEO ECO 520C 520W PSU

Does he actually need 8GB of RAM? Nothing you've wrote so far would indicate that he needs that much RAM.
thanks for the reply... i looked up some reviews of that power supply and i didn't see anything that would indicate that it is bad. what makes you say this?

yeah you're right, he def does not need 8gigs...but ram is pretty cheap and it's one less thing he will have to upgrade down the road if he ever needs more. also didn't break the budget, so i said what the hell.. =)
 
thanks for the suggestions. i've personally never built any amd machines, so i'm just not familiar with them at all. is that processor considerably better than that i3 that i had picked out?
 
thanks for the reply... i looked up some reviews of that power supply and i didn't see anything that would indicate that it is bad. what makes you say this?)

The amperage on the 12V rail, the HEC has 19A on 4 12V rails. The Antec is a well known PSU and has 40A on the 12V rail.

Someone a bit more knowledgeable with the specifics of how that works can probably chime in and explain why that is good.
 
The amperage on the 12V rail, the HEC has 19A on 4 12V rails. The Antec is a well known PSU and has 40A on the 12V rail.

Someone a bit more knowledgeable with the specifics of how that works can probably chime in and explain why that is good.
interesting... thanks. curious to hear the answer. =)
 
there's that amd again...hehe. so is it pretty widely known that the i3 i picked out is that much inferior to the amd? i don't have anything against amd, i've just never used them on any of my builds...

All i3 CPUs are only dual-core. And at their current street prices, the i3s are a bit too expensive for CPUs with only two physical cores. Plus, newer games are now scaling very well with more than two physical cores.
 
thanks for the reply... i looked up some reviews of that power supply and i didn't see anything that would indicate that it is bad. what makes you say this?

Looking at that PSU, that particular model appears to be based on a platform that's similar to that of the infamous Thermaltake TR2 RX 750W PSU.
 
thanks for the suggestions. i've personally never built any amd machines, so i'm just not familiar with them at all. is that processor considerably better than that i3 that i had picked out?

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/2

go ahead and bench the closest processors to the two, from what I can recall the i3 is better for threaded apps slightly, worse at encoding, about even for gaming.
 
thanks for the reply... i looked up some reviews of that power supply and i didn't see anything that would indicate that it is bad. what makes you say this?
Pretty much this:
Looking at that PSU, that particular model appears to be based on a platform that's similar to that of the infamous Thermaltake TR2 RX 750W PSU.

That and because only a handful of HEC designs are actually of decent to good quality. That's not one of them.

yeah you're right, he def does not need 8gigs...but ram is pretty cheap and it's one less thing he will have to upgrade down the road if he ever needs more. also didn't break the budget, so i said what the hell.. =)
Yeah in this case, not such a good idea considering the budget. As hossdaddy and mellon both showed, the extra cash spent on the RAM can be used on the video card itself.
 
Pretty much this:
That and because only a handful of HEC designs are actually of decent to good quality. That's not one of them.
Yeah in this case, not such a good idea considering the budget. As hossdaddy and mellon both showed, the extra cash spent on the RAM can be used on the video card itself.
thanks, yeah i swapped out the ram for what they recommended and got the better video card as well as the power supply you had above. still up in the air about getting the i3 or possibly one of the amd chips. microcenter has some really good combo deals on the amd x4 965 chips right now... =/
 
Quad > Dual. Period. WoW can actually be a bitch when it comes to CPU usage as I understand, so get as much as you can there.
 
thanks, yeah i swapped out the ram for what they recommended and got the better video card as well as the power supply you had above. still up in the air about getting the i3 or possibly one of the amd chips. microcenter has some really good combo deals on the amd x4 965 chips right now... =/

Well if you live near a Microcenter, then yes, you really really should be taking advantage of those MC deals.
 
in case you were not aware Cthulu that cpu may unlock to a full quad core. The biostar board has the proper bios tools to do so.
 
I recommend the Biostar as that Asus uses the Nvidia chipset
 
ok, so i have to ask...why is the nvidia chipset a bad thing?

Numerous driver issues. Plus, Nvidia is pretty much ceased developing new chipsets for AMD desktop platforms, which means that the Nvidia nForce chipset(s) will become less and less likely to be supported any longer as time goes on.
 
Numerous driver issues. Plus, Nvidia is pretty much ceased developing new chipsets for AMD desktop platforms, which means that the Nvidia nForce chipset(s) will become less and less likely to be supported any longer as time goes on.

They tend to be slower, lower quality, and less stable than their Intel or AMD counterparts.
right on, thanks for the heads up. :cool:
 
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