• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Please critique this build.

X

xenthressa

n00b
Joined
Jul 17, 2011
Messages
32
1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
Gaming (1680x1050) and virtualisation are going to be the two heaviests types of tasks.

2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
Around 800 euro's including tax and shipping

3) Which country do you live in? If the U.S, please tell us the state and city if possible.
Netherlands

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
CPU
CPU Cooler
RAM
Motherboard
Videocard

5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.
Tagan 480Watt modular power supply
Antec P180 case
2* 2TB samsung drives

6) Will you be overclocking?
Not very high on my wishlist but perhaps in time.

7) 7) What is the max resolution of your monitor? What size is it?
1680x1050

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

10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If so, what OS? Is it 32bit or 64bit?
Yes, Windows 7 x64


Here's what I was thinking, please critique.

hurrp.png
 
You aren't planning change monitor ? If not than 6950 will be totally overkill. For 1680x1050 even 6770 would be enough. In this case you could buy 6850 and it would be more than sufficient.
6950 will work great in fullHD resolutions and higher and if you'll youse onlu 1680x1050 it would be simply waste of money.
Tagan 480W is not enough for 6950 - it would be propably ok for 6850 only.
 
Thank you for the input.

For now I will stick my current resolution, do you think a 6770 will be sufficient at this resolution to play upcoming games (BF3 etc) on high?
 
That Scythe Mugen cooler is probably over priced, see how much the Cooler Master 212+ cooler is. If it's cheaper, go with the 212+ instead.

That RAM seems to be over priced as well, check G.Skill ripjaw series DDR3 1333. No need to spend more money on DDR3 1600, when you wont notice a difference. So save the money.

I wouldn't go with Sapphire GPUs as they all seem to have 2 year warranties, when similar priced GPUs from other manufacturers such as MSI, Gigabyte, XFX, VisionTek and ASUS have 3+ year warranties. So keep that in mind.

I would upgrade your PSU, as the one you have is of poor quality and doesn't have much power on the 12V rail. Check the prices on a 600W+ Corsair V2 or Antec High Current Gamer PSU.
 
xenthressa said:
For now I will stick my current resolution, do you think a 6770 will be sufficient at this resolution to play upcoming games (BF3 etc) on high?
Click to expand...

Hard to say. I have Sapphire Radeon 5750 but i've never played BF3 on it. Either way i think that 6850 would be better. 6770 is just rebranded 5770 really.
If you don't want to OC maybe You better buy AMD X6 CPU with am3+ board ? You would have 6 cores that you would use in virtualization and even 6cores are cheaper that Sandy Bridge.
 
Hey guys.

I considered your feedback and I came up with some new parts, changing the CPU cooler and ram would save me about 10 or 15 euro's and I figured that wasn't worth it.
Picking between the Nvidia 560Ti 1GB or Ati 6850 1GB is giving me the biggest headache so far but my preference goes out to Nvidia and they seem to perform about the same according to the reviews I've read.

dahy.png


Let's hear it :p

PS
Am I going to be giving up some of my memory speed by filling up all four slots?
 
Last edited:
That PSU is stupid overkill for that setup. You'll be fine with the Corsair 650TX V2 650W PSU. Also note that the Sandy Bridge based CPUs don't really benefit from higher speed RAM that much. As such, you're not going to lose any noticeable performance by filling all four RAM slots or going with DDR3 1333 RAM.
 
+1 on what Danny said and the Cooler Master 212+ is a better deal, even if it's only a couple Euros cheaper. No need to waste money when you wont really notice a difference between the two.
 
Right, well it took some effort on your part but I'm convinced :p
When I factor in shipping turns out the 1333 RAM is literally 4 euro's cheaper.

I think this turned out pretty nice, if you have any other comments let me know.
Thanks for all the input!

hady.png
 
Looks better now.

However, if you want the new UEFI interface, I recommend this similarly priced mobo:
$168 - MSI Z68A-GD55 Intel Z68 ATX Motherboard

Also, you didn't answer question 8 correctly: I was asking WHEN are you planning on buying that PC? Please answer that question again.
 
Correct me if I'm wrong but the biggest reason for UEFI would be support for booting from GPT drives right? That's something the gigabyte board does seem to offer.

Oh sorry, I'll be building it in about a month, possibly sooner.
 
xenthressa said:
Correct me if I'm wrong but the biggest reason for UEFI would be support for booting from GPT drives right? That's something the gigabyte board does seem to offer.
Click to expand...
Somewhat. Main reason for UEFI is support for 3TB+ hard drives. Yes that Gigabyte does have support for 3TB+ drives. However, another big reason for UEFI is the significantly better "BIOs" interface. Not to mention the better interface between Windows based board monitor/overclocking and the motherboard itself.
 
xenthressa said:
Correct me if I'm wrong but the biggest reason for UEFI would be support for booting from GPT drives right? That's something the gigabyte board does seem to offer.
Click to expand...

The interface, as well. Gigabyte's "TouchBIOS" is a hybrid of Windows-based software running on top of a legacy-looking BIOS. In other words, without the TouchBIOS software running in Windows, the Gigabyte BIOS is still the EFI BIOS without the proper UEFI interface - in other words, a legacy BIOS with UEFI-compatible features. The UEFI BIOSes from both MSI and Asus are GUI-based BIOSes that allow you to use a mouse; however, the MSI version of UEFI is a bit clunkier than the one from Asus.
 
Hey guys.

Im pretty keen on Gigabyte as a brand, this specific motherboard offers me a lot of connections and seems to be a great deal.
If I were to switch over to a UEFI motherboard I'd have to spend about 20 more euro's for anything comparable, seems a bit expensive for such a seamingly minor feature.

I mean I'm not planning on spending a lot of time looking at my BIOS (UEFI, how do we call it now? :p) screen anyway and if I do feel the need to overclock I can simply do it in the BIOS I suppose.

Thanks. :)
 
UEFI is definitely more of a "nice to have" than a "need to have". I wouldn't pay extra for it at this point, unless you planned on doing heavy overclocking, or something that needed you to be digging around in the BIOS a lot.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top