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Time to put down ol' faithful

T

TheSoldier

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 9, 2011
Messages
175
My phenom II rig held on for as long as she could but just can't make it anymore. It's time to upgrade her and conveniently tax season is right here.

1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
I would really like to get back into the gaming scene. I run a lot of VMs for school.
2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
I'll allocate $1,000.00
3) Which country do you live in? If the U.S, please tell us the state and city if possible.

Watertown, NY
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 and Cooler, Case, PSU, Mobo, GPU, SSD, HDD ***Mini ATX preferred***
5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.
Monitor- 24" LG 24EC53V-P, RAM- Corsair VengeanceLP 16gb, I have Hyper 212 but I would like to replace.
6) Will you be overclocking?
No.
7) What is the max resolution of your monitor? What size is it?
1080p (not sure the height/width pixel count), 24"
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
Within one month, sales pending.
9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? USB 3.0? SATA 6Gb/s? eSATA? Onboard video (as a backup or main GPU)? UEFI? etc.
USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gb/s
10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If so, what OS? Is it 32bit or 64bit?
I own 8.1 but I'm going for 10 when it "releases" but I would like a copy of 7 if you can find a cheap price.
 
Phenom II too slow, wat? I just upgraded my 2GHz 3000+ single channel DDR system to a 2.6GHz Phenom II X3 dual channel DDR2 setup! omg is so much faster. (Not my primary battle station, hah!)

That 256GB ssd Dangman linked for $90 is hot.
 
So with the SSD pruchase, that leaves you $910 left for the rest of the PC. But a good mATX case is probably going to cost $90 to $100. So that leaves you with $810 to $820 for the rest of the PC.

So here's what I recommend:
$306 - Intel Core i7-4790 CPU
$82 - ASRock H97M Pro4 Intel H97 ATX Motherboard
$210 - eVGA 02G-P4-2966-KR GTX 960 2GB PCI-E Video Card
$80 - Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM001 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s Hard Drive
$19 - Lite-On iHAS124-04 DVD Burner
$95 - Seasonic G Series SSR-650RM 650W Modular PSU
---
Total: $792 shipped

For mATX cases, I recommend the following:
$90 - Corsair Obsidian Series 350D mATX Case
$105 - Fractal Design Arc Mini mATX Case
$130 - Silverstone TJ08B-E mATX Case

A few days before you buy, bump up this thread to check for any last minute deals.
 
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I've decided that I need to add a NAS to my build. I was recommended a DS214 synology box with 2 WD 3TB drives. I'm upping my budget to $1500.00 with the SSD excluded. Can I get a updated list? This will be bought on Friday
 
Did you choose a case? That's going to influence the budget for the rest of the setups.

Also,for the NAS, I have a few questions:
1) how comfortable are you with Linux, FreeBSD, or any other non-Windows based OSes?
2) How much storage do you want in the end?
3) Are you looking for ease of use or bang for the buck? Can't reallly get both with a NAS
 
I chose the Silverstone case.

1) I'm relatively decent with Linux, with decent youtube vids I'll figure it out.
2)I generally want at minimum 3TB of redundant storage.
3) I'd prefer ease of use, however a little geek never hurt anybody. Let's lean more towards bang.

Edit: I scored a Amazon gift card worth $115. Let's take case out of equation as paid for so $1630 total build with case from Amazon.
Edit 2: I also use a Mac for school so NAS needs to be universal (fat32) for example.
 
Last edited:
NAS: Linux mdadm won't read-balance mirrors. Not sure what you might plan for your disk layout but just wanted to share. Mdadm will read-balance striped mirrors, but not just mirrors by themselves.

NAS: What are you planning on running from the NAS? General file serving is okay on spinners but if you think you're going to run any games or VMs from it, you can run out of oomph pretty quickly.
 
It's all storage. My old phenom II will be converted to a VM box. It's not the most ideal situation, but school VMs aren't intensive.
 
I'm going to bump this now because I'm purchasing within the next three days. To recap- budget went up to 1500 with NAS included on the needed list . Thanks for the hard work guys
 
For the gaming PC, I recommend the following:
$303 - Intel Core i7-4790 CPU
$82 - ASRock H97M Pro4 Intel H97 ATX Motherboard
$270 - XFX Double D R9290AEDFD R9 290 4GB PCI-E Video Card
$80 - Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM001 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s Hard Drive
$19 - Lite-On iHAS124-04 DVD Burner
$95 - Seasonic G Series SSR-650RM 650W Modular PSU
$90 - Silverstone TJ08B-E mATX Case
---
Total: $939 shipped

For the file server, I recommend the following:
$85 - AMD A8-6600K APU
$85 - Gigabyte GA-F2A88XM-D3H AMD A88X mATX Motherboard
$70 - Kingston HyperX FURY HX316C10FR/8 8GB DDR3 1600 RAM
$345 - 3 x Western Digital Red WD30EFRX 3TB 7200RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s Hard Drive
$62 - XFX TS Series XFX TS 550W PSU
$50 - NZXT Source 220 Black ATX Case
----
Total: $697 shipped


Total: $1636 for everything.

Gaming PC Notes:
- Due to the increased budget, I upgraded the GPU to the more powerful R9 290 card.
- Everything else is the same as before but with the case now included.

File Server Notes:
- The case, PSU, and motherboard will allow you to install up to 8 hard drives right off the bat. So in terms of future upgrades, it's fairly solid.
- I went with a quad-core APU as that will give you the capability to run a few VMs off the file server itself using ESXi.
- To start with, those three hard drives will give you 6TB RAID5 or RAIDZ
- For the file server OS itself, I recommend FreeNAS.

If you need to cut costs, downgrade the hard drives to this Seagate:
$100 - Seagate Barracuda ST3000DM001 3TB 7200RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s Hard Drive
 
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