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Rate My Quad Core Rig

C

c0re

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 15, 2007
Messages
210
The Questions:
1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing?
Lite-Gaming, Video conversion/ripping, multimedia, browsing, photoshop

2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
$600 including tax/shipping

3) Where do you live?
New York, United States

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.
RAM, CPU, Mother Board, Case, PSU, Hard Drive, DVD Drive

5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.
All new

6) Will you be overclocking?
Not now, maybe later, want to keep a stable system that can stay on 24/7 w/o issues.

7) What size monitor do you have and/or plan to have?
LG 22 inch

8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
Right now

9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? USB 3.0? SATA 6Gb/s? eSATA? Onboard video?
HDMI, DVI, USB 2.0 and USB 3.0, On-board video

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

Parts Ordered
$59.95 - Antec Three Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case {$15 rebate}
$57.98 - Antec NEO ECO 520C 520W Continuous Power
$118.00 -GIGABYTE GA-Z68A-D3H-B3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68 Motherboard
$204.99 -Intel Core i5-2500K Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz Quad-Core Desktop Processor
$19.99 - LG DVD Burner Model GH24NS70 - OEM


Parts Needed
$89.99 - Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS -- waiting for price to come down
RAM: Waiting for a sale
GPU: on-board video is fine for now.

My main concern is the mb, is it a good one to get? Want to avoid problems.
 
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I'd rate that build 4 out of 10 due to the poor choice in case, mobo, HDD, GPU and factoring the rebate prices when you haven't even received them yet. Also your prices for the PSU and HDD are off. Are you planning on getting those parts from another retailer or something?
 
Danny Bui said:
I'd rate that build 4 out of 10 due to the poor choice in case, mobo, HDD, GPU and factoring the rebate prices when you haven't even received them yet. Also your prices for the PSU and HDD are off. Are you planning on getting those parts from another retailer or something?
Click to expand...

I concur. Like you, I never factor in rebates into the final price since the chances of the OP even receiving the rebate at all are iffy to begin with. And that H61 mobo is fine for an i5-2400, but not so good for an i5-2500K. The i5-2500K really needs a P67 or a Z68 mobo in order to take anywhere near full advantage of that CPU. On a mobo based on an H-series chipset, the i5-2500K will not offer any advantage at all whatsoever over the non-K i5-2500 because the H-series chipsets do not support overclocking via the multiplier at all (this means that the K-series CPUs will behave exactly the same as a non-K CPU on such a mobo). And even if the OP is buying a mobo that supports the i5-2500K's integrated HD Graphics 3000 core, he would be better off with one of the budget Z68 mobos which allow for overclocking.

Finally, TigerDirect is one of those companies that do not state their shipping charges upfront. This means that their shipping charges vary by buyer's location even within the Continental US (and they charge sales tax to customers of all states that have Tiger Direct and/or CompUSA-branded retail locations even if the OP orders the item direct). And since I don't factor in rebates, that HD 5450 card ends up costing well over $60 shipped. That's way too high, especially since the HD 5450 performs roughly equal to the onboard Intel HD Graphics 3000. And if the OP is doing Photoshop CS5, he is better off getting a GeForce GT 440 with 1GB of GDDR5 RAM since CS5 does take some advantage of the Nvidia CUDA processing.
 
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Danny Bui said:
I'd rate that build 4 out of 10 due to the poor choice in case, mobo, HDD, GPU and factoring the rebate prices when you haven't even received them yet. Also your prices for the PSU and HDD are off. Are you planning on getting those parts from another retailer or something?
Click to expand...

The PSU and HDD were less a few days ago. I don't know what you mean by poor choice.

The Antec 300 is to top rated case on newegg, i have one with another build and i love it.

The WD Black is also the top rated sata hd on newegg, i have two of those in another build, running 24/7 with no issues at all.

The GPU i just picked at random, don't plan on keeping it. The motherboard i picked because it has a ton of features of a low price. What exactly do you not like about it?

E4g1e said:
I concur. Like you, I never factor in rebates into the final price since the chances of the OP even receiving the rebate at all are iffy to begin with. And that H61 mobo is fine for an i5-2400, but not so good for an i5-2500K. The i5-2500K really needs a P67 or a Z68 mobo in order to take anywhere near full advantage of that CPU. On a mobo based on an H-series chipset, the i5-2500K will not offer any advantage at all whatsoever over the non-K i5-2500 because the H-series chipsets do not support overclocking via the multiplier at all (this means that the K-series CPUs will behave exactly the same as a non-K CPU on such a mobo). And even if the OP is buying a mobo that supports the i5-2500K's integrated HD Graphics 3000 core, he would be better off with one of the budget Z68 mobos which allow for overclocking.

Finally, TigerDirect is one of those companies that do not state their shipping charges upfront. This means that their shipping charges vary by buyer's location even within the Continental US (and they charge sales tax to customers of all states that have Tiger Direct and/or CompUSA-branded retail locations even if the OP orders the item direct). And since I don't factor in rebates, that HD 5450 card ends up costing well over $60 shipped. That's way too high, especially since the HD 5450 performs roughly equal to the onboard Intel HD Graphics 3000. And if the OP is doing Photoshop CS5, he is better off getting a GeForce GT 440 with 1GB of GDDR5 RAM since CS5 does take some advantage of the Nvidia CUDA processing.
Click to expand...

I crossed that motherboard and gpu off my list. I like Gigabyte brand overall, but haven't seen anything great so far.
 
c0re said:
The Antec 300 is to top rated case on newegg, i have one with another build and i love it.
Click to expand...
The Antec 300 is a bad buy at $60 because you can get this higher quality, roomier, easier to cable manage, better airflow having Lian Li case for just $5 more:
$65 - Lian Li Lancool PC-K58W ATX Case
c0re said:
The WD Black is also the top rated sata hd on newegg, i have two of those in another build, running 24/7 with no issues at all.
Click to expand...
Well two things wrong with that hard drive:
1) That particular drive is actually slower than this cheaper Samsung hard drive:
$60 - Samsung Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive

2) Even if you want to stick with WD and pay a higher price for the brand name or something, you can get faster WD 1TB Black drive for $10 less although its performance is roughly the same as the above Samsung:
$80 - Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s Hard Drive

So no matter what you can get significantly faster hard drives for less than the price of that WD 1TB drive you chose.
c0re said:
The motherboard i picked because it has a ton of features of a low price. What exactly do you not like about it?
Click to expand...
What E4g1e said: It's not the right mobo for a 2500K due to the lack of overclocking options. IIRC, it also only had two RAM slots which

c0re said:
I crossed that motherboard and gpu off my list. I like Gigabyte brand overall, but haven't seen anything great so far.
Click to expand...

Grab this Gigabyte Z68 mobo:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128502

PSU wise, go with this PSU as that Seasonic is no longer $55:
$58 - Antec NEO ECO 520C 520W PSU

Do note that the above Antec PSU is Seasonic mad as well.

You can save $4 by going with this DVD burner:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136236

At the very least, get that RAM today.
 
Danny Bui , thanks for your help. I just can't go with that Lian Li cause i have a antec 300 which i love and don't wanna deal with another brand. Missed out on the ram, it was sold out by the time i got to order it. I did however go with your choice of mb, ps and dvd burner.

Gonna wait for a sale on a hard drive, ram and gpu. Long as i have the main parts, can start the build.

As always, the people on this board are awesome :cool::cool:
 
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