Building a new pc.. Got the specs inside, opinions?
- Thread starter dreamache
- Start date
Just built an i7 2600k machine not two weeks ago. Since I didn't want to spend a lot of time doing research, I worked backwards and looked for everything that was highly rated on Newegg. All I knew was that I wanted the 2600k because the bang/buck is phenomenal compared to any other chip. Nothing else in its weight class even comes close except the 2500k.
- I picked up the ASUS P8P67 motherboard; it's good, but it's not ideal. The Marvell 6GB/s SATA chipset is absolute shit, and the placement of the SATA ports sucks. The rest of the board is top notch. The GUI BIOS interface is pretty cool.
- $25 DVD burner. I don't buy Blu Ray discs and I use spare hard drives for backup. I plan to build a dedicated RAID machine for backups in the future.
- 8 GB Corsair Vengeance 1600; works great.
- Cooler Master Hyper 212 cooler. It's huge.
- Cooler Master HAF 912 case. I really really like it. Side-mounted drive cages so you can hook shit up without your cables getting in the way of your video card(s). My full-length video card fits fine, although I was scared for a minute when I first tried it. It's not super pretty, there's no big acrylic window on the side, but I don't care about looks. I need to pick up an extra couple 120mm fans, though, because it only came with two.
- 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black 64mb cache. Killer drive. I partitioned it 100/900 and leave Windows and drivers on the first partition. D: is for \apps and \games. I use the Custom install option whenever possible.
- Corsair TX650W.
All of the above are 5 eggs or near the top of 4 eggs if the 5 egg items didn't have many reviews. My last system had a crap motherboard that was very new and didn't have a lot of ratings yet, and I got burned on it (ASUS, bad SATA; go figure.)
I used my old video card; 9800 GTX. I know, right? But it works fine for what I do. I can play GTA4, Crysis 2, TF2, Portal 2, etc etc with no problems on max settings. When it doesn't work fine, I'll upgrade.
I spent $850 for everything. Using my old monitor, keyboard, mouse, too.
I almost went with a Z68 motherboard, but there weren't any with a lot of good reviews on Newegg.
I didn't go with SSD because I didn't think I'd get a lot of use out of it. On a stable system, how often do you reboot? My old system, I'd go weeks or months between reboots, literally. Maybe it would be good for swap, but with 8GB of RAM, I don't seem to swap much, and I'm running Photoshop, Eclipse, Firefox with a bunch of tabs, Thunderbird, JDownloader, Steam, FeedDemon, etc. On my old system, Photoshop would take 15-20 seconds to un-swap. On this system, it's instantaneous. I never unload anything anymore, I just leave it all running, even when I game.
- I picked up the ASUS P8P67 motherboard; it's good, but it's not ideal. The Marvell 6GB/s SATA chipset is absolute shit, and the placement of the SATA ports sucks. The rest of the board is top notch. The GUI BIOS interface is pretty cool.
- $25 DVD burner. I don't buy Blu Ray discs and I use spare hard drives for backup. I plan to build a dedicated RAID machine for backups in the future.
- 8 GB Corsair Vengeance 1600; works great.
- Cooler Master Hyper 212 cooler. It's huge.
- Cooler Master HAF 912 case. I really really like it. Side-mounted drive cages so you can hook shit up without your cables getting in the way of your video card(s). My full-length video card fits fine, although I was scared for a minute when I first tried it. It's not super pretty, there's no big acrylic window on the side, but I don't care about looks. I need to pick up an extra couple 120mm fans, though, because it only came with two.
- 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black 64mb cache. Killer drive. I partitioned it 100/900 and leave Windows and drivers on the first partition. D: is for \apps and \games. I use the Custom install option whenever possible.
- Corsair TX650W.
All of the above are 5 eggs or near the top of 4 eggs if the 5 egg items didn't have many reviews. My last system had a crap motherboard that was very new and didn't have a lot of ratings yet, and I got burned on it (ASUS, bad SATA; go figure.)
I used my old video card; 9800 GTX. I know, right? But it works fine for what I do. I can play GTA4, Crysis 2, TF2, Portal 2, etc etc with no problems on max settings. When it doesn't work fine, I'll upgrade.
I spent $850 for everything. Using my old monitor, keyboard, mouse, too.
I almost went with a Z68 motherboard, but there weren't any with a lot of good reviews on Newegg.
I didn't go with SSD because I didn't think I'd get a lot of use out of it. On a stable system, how often do you reboot? My old system, I'd go weeks or months between reboots, literally. Maybe it would be good for swap, but with 8GB of RAM, I don't seem to swap much, and I'm running Photoshop, Eclipse, Firefox with a bunch of tabs, Thunderbird, JDownloader, Steam, FeedDemon, etc. On my old system, Photoshop would take 15-20 seconds to un-swap. On this system, it's instantaneous. I never unload anything anymore, I just leave it all running, even when I game.
I didn't even need to read all the replies before asking:
Why the fuck are you getting an X58 mobo and a i7-920 processor (1366 socket)?
You should be getting either a P67 or Z68 mobo and an i7-2600k (1155 socket) processor. Goddamn do some research before you buy a computer. Ivy bridge will most likely be available on 1155 as well. And make sure you get a SATA III 6GB/s SSD not a SATA II. And go with intel for the SSD.
EDIT: Just realized you upgraded. Good man! Don't listen to mgtarheels, he doesn't know what he's talking about in 99% of threads he posts in.
Why the fuck are you getting an X58 mobo and a i7-920 processor (1366 socket)?
You should be getting either a P67 or Z68 mobo and an i7-2600k (1155 socket) processor. Goddamn do some research before you buy a computer. Ivy bridge will most likely be available on 1155 as well. And make sure you get a SATA III 6GB/s SSD not a SATA II. And go with intel for the SSD.
EDIT: Just realized you upgraded. Good man! Don't listen to mgtarheels, he doesn't know what he's talking about in 99% of threads he posts in.
You and the dick knuckle above you fail to realize the excess features in the hardware he purchased. If he wasn't aware of the latest hardware, he's not going to use a lot of said features. Obviously, he's going to use the hardware.
You probably don't have a clue about any of the differences between P67, X58, or Z68 (or any other chipsets for that matter). And you probably don't have a clue about any other motherboard features. Which is pretty clear from your vague response. Or prove me wrong, what do you think he overpaid for that he won't use? The only thing on his final list of hardware that he didn't need was the Z68 chipset. P67 would have been fine, but for a high end motherboard you're still paying $150 - $200. Let's look at what else he got:
Core i7-2600k: if you argue with this, you're an idiot, period.
Intel 510 Series SSD: Only thing I would have done differently is buy 4 of them for RAID10
G.SKILL Ripjaw RAM: 8GB, perfect
Corsair 850W PSU: Absolutely, for dual GTX 580's
Dual GTX 580's: gonna be fucking fast
Coolermaster case: Good choice, cases are largely personal preference
DVD writer: For $24, you think he overpaid?
Zalman CPU fan: Since he's overclocking, this is absolutely required. I would have got a closed loop liquid cooler though since they are comparable to the best air-cooled solutions but stay clean.
So do you have any suggestions on what he didn't need and what he should have got instead? Or were you just talking out of your ass? I'll wait while you go scour google to find some tidbit of information so you don't sound like a complete idiot.
inb4 mgtarheels copypasta's something from the interwebs
EDIT: And now I just realized that in the OP, dreamcache states he does video editing from time to time. Now the Z68 makes perfect fucking sense, since he can use intel's new video decoder (z68 feature). So, I'm curious to hear your expert opinion now.
The SRT + SSD didn't make much sense to me. Sure, it'll improve performance...slightly but not worth the cost/performance ratio.
Maybe I missed it, but since he does editing and gaming he's going to need a shitload more storage.
Quick Sync and his 580s doesn't make sense, either. He's actually slowing down the decoding using a dedicated GPU, so your argument about a z68 for the decoding is moot. He should have gone with a P67.
His cooler is a POS, plain and simple. He also didn't get any thermal compound, so not sure how he plans to even use it. There's quite a few coolers out there that are better and cheaper. Not going to list them here, no need.
His PSU may actually be underpowered for that setup, especially if he has another HDD.
He could've gone with SLI'd 480s. There's only a 5 FPS difference between SLI'd 480s and SLI'd 580s, yet the 580s cost over $320 more. *edit - 5 FPS difference is in native 1920 res. in Crysis
For the case, for the most part it is preference but his system is going to be running extremely hot. Because of that, I would've gone with a Twelve Hundred or DF-85 since they're cheaper and have better cooling since he's going the air route.
Holy shit, we're nerds.
Fair enough. I take my harsh words back, you bring up some good points.
As for the cooler, I just assumed it comes with thermal paste already applied like most do nowadays.
There's plenty of PSU calculators floating around, I wasn't going to take the time to actually see what he's going to need. But just from eyeballing I still think 850 is enough for what he's got. I personally will be getting one of these for my next build: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...air cooler&name=Water Cooling&Order=BESTMATCH
As for the GTX 480 vs 580, this is highly dependent on what game you're testing and what resolution you're running it at. 580s should overclock easier though.
And for the case, I'm partial to the Corsair Obsidian cases.
As for the cooler, I just assumed it comes with thermal paste already applied like most do nowadays.
There's plenty of PSU calculators floating around, I wasn't going to take the time to actually see what he's going to need. But just from eyeballing I still think 850 is enough for what he's got. I personally will be getting one of these for my next build: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...air cooler&name=Water Cooling&Order=BESTMATCH
As for the GTX 480 vs 580, this is highly dependent on what game you're testing and what resolution you're running it at. 580s should overclock easier though.
And for the case, I'm partial to the Corsair Obsidian cases.
Yep, I'm running an H50 on my setup right now. Never had any issues, but the install on my mobo was a bitch.
That's what I assumed to, although honestly I sort of forgot about the paste this time ;/ Based on the reviews, it looks like it does. It had 1k+ reviews and 5 eggs + seemed to be one of the few fans available that'd fit 1155 (from what I saw at least).
About whether this n' that was necessary or not, I'm ok with splurging a bit on the build.. I didn't want it to become some long drawn out process listening to people debate over what I should or shouldn't get..
Is this a pc or something else !? Damn look at the freakin configuration . I think i am the only one here with a retarded core 2 duo processor .
I'm still running a Pentium e2200 dual core on my desktop. Last night I ordered the i5 2500K and Gigabyte z68 motherboard from the Newegg deal running this weekend. The 2500K was $205, and that's the best deal I've seen so far. Gotta get a couple more components (already have 8GB of 1600 memory, 600 watt PSU, and 2 1TB hds, Win7 Pro) before I can complete this build and move into the modern era.
Hot looking build OP...too rich for my blood, but then again, I don't do much gaming. I just run a lot of applications. Gaming through Onlive...doesn't require much GPU capacity.
