Building a desktop. Opinions?

Off-topic
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Hey guys, I’m building up a barebones desktop rig. I want your opinions. What should/shouldn’t i get? Anything else i’ll need? (inside the CPU) The GPU apparently runs pretty awesome.

Yes, it’s primarily a gaming/animation rig.

So far, heres what i’m going to buy:

desktop: BIOSTAR Eco i1
Hard drive: Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31500341AS 1.5TB hard drive
GPU:PNY XLR8 RVCGGTX465XXB GeForce GTX 465 (Fermi) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16
RAM: Crucial 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1066
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E7600 Wolfdale 3.06GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor BX80571E7600

from reviews, aparently the motherboard doesn’t like the 4gb sticks of ram.

Anyway, opinions are much appreciated.

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Get out and ride.

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I have been building the same pc for 12 years

I think every part has been upgraded at least 5 times, except the metal case.

I find, as a gamer, it is best to upgrade often, with semi bottom feeder parts.

Every year or so when I feel like upgrading, I have to do all the parts research over again. I usually go to here,

to find out what was currently a good part. then go to here,

http://www.newegg.com/ , to go shopping. Newegg has good prices, and a no hassle return policy if something goes wrong.

General tips

1 Buy an ASUS motherboard if possible. Better capacitors.

2 Get a 3 or 4 core processor for gaming.

3 Get an excellent cpu heatsink, and a cheap black edition (BE AMD) cpu. BE processors have an unlocked CPU multiplier. My current CPU is a BE 3 core AMD that cost only 72 $ 6 months ago. With the excellent heat sink, it runs great at 3 Ghz and all the games run smooth. Read a few of the many simple articles on the net on over clocking Black Edition AMD multi core CPUs. It is simple to learn , and gives you 150 $ processor kick for half price.

4 Never upgrade while all the games are smooth, the longer you wait to buy a part, the cheaper it gets.

5 If you buy and upgrade 100 $ parts every year, instead of buying 200 $ parts every 2 years, you will have a much faster game box most of the time, for your dollar. And you will have a shelf of extra parts that will prove invaluable for trouble shooting a dead system.

6 Get a can of spray electronic cleaner. Most dead boxes can be fixed by cleaning the vid card slot, and reinstalling the card. If still SOL, do the same with the memory sticks, and try to start it with just one stick first.

If it’s still crap, try what spare parts you have. I have had more power supplys fry than motherboards, so try that first. Every part on my box has gone crap at least once, except the case, which is on it’s 4th power supply.
I know it sounds stupid to clean the vid slot of a new board and keep plugging the card in and out, but that is the most common fix in my experience. I would try that 5 times in a row (power off, in out vid card, then reboot), minimum, before I’d try the next fix.

Most importantly, do not expect a newly built box to fire up first try. 50/50 at best IMHO.
Lot’s of tiny contacts to maybe not contact at the start. Just keep at it, and remember that it’s not a parrot. It only looks dead, but it’s almost always just a part that is dead, not the rest of the parts.

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You see dead parrots are a tough fix

A dead computer, you just work the parts a bit. Try a new beak or a different memory setup. Replace enough parts and it will arise a stronger Phoenix of a gaming computer .

Fixing a dead parrot is a different game. So many parts seem to hit the wall at once that even experts have trouble fixing one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npjOSLCR2hE

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All the fancy components in the world won’t do anything for you if your motherboard won’t connect them together at the proper speed.

If you don’t know the difference between clock speed and bus speed, do some reading before you buy anything. And don’t assume that 333 MHz ram works on a 200 MHz bus (for example).

STFY

(Shortened that for you)

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CSB

(Cool story, bro)

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LOL

(Laugh out loud)

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If I may weigh in on your proposed upgrade, Mr. Bikeling, I would only take issue with your CPU, motherboard and RAM choices.

Biostar is known for making bottom end components for cheap. (A lot of cheap motherboards in pre-built computers are Biostar.) ASUS is a good name, as are Gigabyte, DFI, EVGA, and others–but they all make some bottom end trash that you shouldn’t buy, so research specific models and don’t worry about who makes it. It is better to slightly overspend on your motherboard than to find, for example, that it “doesn’t like 4GB sticks of RAM”.

The RAM you have listed is only DDR3-1066, which would be okay if you were using a now-out-of-date Core 2 Duo, but…

Please, please do not spend your money on a Core 2 Duo at this point in time. There are lots of cheap quad cores out there even if you can’t stomach owning an AMD product–and there are some super super cheap tri-core CPUs if you can.

Good luck, sir. Computering is awesome.

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i just bought a core 2 duo 3.0ghz? and i’m pretty sure i’ll be satisfied with my desktop. I’ll upgrade when things get cheaper.

I’m not looking for top of the line, I’m looking for something that’s fast and reasonably priced.

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You didn’t look in the right place

Next time, look here, at charts that show how powerful a CPU is at a certain task.

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/desktop-cpu-charts-2010/Gaming-Left-4-Dead-2,2433.html

I think you bought moderate priced and slow, when you could have gone with cheaper and faster, for a gaming box.

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alright. I might just be up for returning it and purchasing another cpu. Depending what my motherboard will take.

… which also means returning a shit ton of other things.

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nevermind. Theres a reason the intel is more expensive. It’s more versatile.

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Yeah, you have to choose between Intel and AMD

It depends on what you want your box to do, both Intel and AMD have their good points. Unlike almost all other computer parts, which are easy to swap around, your motherboard determines what CPU’s you can use.

It really gets down to how much money means to you. A bottom feeder gamer (like me) , prefers AMD at this time. Their selection of sub 100 $ cpu’s is better than Intel’s. This has not always been true, just that it seems to be now. I have bought Intel in the past (those old single core Celerons were awesome over clockers, and cheap) .

Current state of the art games are coded in a balance between 2 and 4 core CPU’s. Most games will run faster on a 3 core CPU running at 3 Ghz , than on a 4 core running slower. All the older games (that can only use one core) , will run best with the faster core speed.

Answer, (only good for this year) , get a cheap BE 3 core AMD and good heat sink, then adjust the multiplier up (only possible with a BE CPU). Only BE CPUs can be cranked to the moon, without effecting the motherboard speed, cranking up your motherboard speed will limit your speed to the slowest part on the bus.

Trust me on this. If you buy what is called an “unlocked CPU”, and put a great (still only 30 ish $) , heat sink on it so it doesn’t overheat, sub 100 $ CPUs can be made excellent. You buy a 2.4 Ghz BE, then turn up the multiplier in the bios . This can make a 70 $, 3 core run so fast (3 Ghz) it is better than many 150 $ 4 cores at games. My 60 $ ASUS mother board has no problem with this. Just don’t get a rock, rock bottom board, that has limited bios features.

You did make a mistake going with a 2 core. It will only run older games well,
that were not written for more than 1 or 2 cores. Next year, I might say you are a fool to buy less than 4. For now, cheap 3 core BE AMD is unbeatable if you are a cheap gamer. Next year I will replace it. :wink:

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read about the second CPU on this list

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I’m a cheap gamer. As in, i want to play battlefield 2 PR (which will run on my system, and depending on my gpu, will run better).

lol…

Thanks for all the info, but at the end of the day, i’m not returning all my stuff. The motherboard in my barebones case is generic and not that great, but it’ll run. It’s an intel socket, so switching my cpu won’t be possible really. I’ll just update the internals when it comes to moving up to college.

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Opinions on this ?:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102858

Or do you have any good gpu’s for an okay price? (I know i’ll probably need to get a bigger power supply)

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The 5770 is a very nice card, I have a 4850 with 1GB of ram, and you’ll see in most benchmarks the 5770 is just a little better. Currently the 6850 which is only $20 more will offer better performance and lower power consumption. I would take it instead. - Advice wait two weeks or so, AMD high end 69xx parts will be released, Nvidia will have to drop their prices, AMD will probably drop the prices on 68xx parts too. And that 5770 will drop even more!

For the PSU, what do you have currently?

I don’t buy nvidia stuff, but that’s more of a religious matter. Also makes my decisions way simpler.

As for Intel making more versatile stuff I dont know. Currently AMD have far better pricing on the midrange with their X4/X6 chips which provide good value compared to the Intel quad cores with really stupid i-names.

I currently have a Q6600 overclocked and am seriously considering the jump to an AMD X6 as my motherboard dies slowly. Intel CPUs may be priced about as good as AMD but their chipset/motherboard pricing make them much more expensive.

@feel_the_light, while I like to have a multi-core CPU, saying a highly clocked dual core is only good enough for old games is rubbish. Show me a benchmark where an tri-core or quad core (not on LN2) from AMD beats an E8400 using a mid range graphics card.

/* End rant */

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Check this chart
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/desktop-cpu-charts-2010/Gaming-Left-4-Dead-2,2433.html
It shows the E8500 , a 170 $ part, being beaten by numerous 3 and 4 core CPUs that are less than half the price.

My point about 2 cores being good for older games, is based on the fact that if the game is written to use only one core, extra cores won’t help with that game. Almost all new games can use 3 cores, and will struggle without them. For a gaming box, buying an expensive 2 core CPU is a bad choice.

If you don’t like the L4D benchmark, try one of these.

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/desktop-cpu-charts-2010/benchmarks,112.html

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Show me benchmarks using a midrange GPU like I said… Anyways who wants to see benchmarks at medium settings at 1680x1050? When you do a CPU bottlnecked benchmark with an overpowered GPU at low res and low quality settings youre gonna get some useless benchmarks… Never mind the fact L4D is an old game that any modern Core2 or Phenom CPU can handle with ease as long as there is a half decent GPU.

I maintain that for gaming best spend money on a GPU, the CPU is fairly irrelevant. And 2 cores is sufficient. Most games will batter the hell out of your
GPU before even using all your cores. I like more cores, but it’s not for gaming, I do a lot of development compiling quite a lot etc…

Look at the crysis results from a 8400 vs Phenom II X4 955. The fear benchmarks are irrelevant because they are done in low quality where benchmarks typically go haywire. (some of those will tell you a Q6600 will beat an i7 920 at 640x480 - :roll_eyes: )

I think you’re a little overeliant on charts made by THG, which are either for GPU using the highest CPU available or the other way around. Unfortunately that means they are mostly irrelevant… Unless you want to buy the top end everything that is :wink:

An interesting fact, I benchmarked a build I did with 2x harpertwon Xeon CPUs at 2.4ghz with 16GB FB-DIMM memory agains my 3.0ghz Q6600 with 4GB of ram with the same 4850 and found that my Q6600 got me more FPS in fallout3 and in COD4 MW2. Now you’ll probably say 8 vs 4 isnt the same as 3/4 vs 2, and you would probably have a point, but it goes to show all these multi-core optimised games really benefit more from highly clocked cores than raw core numbers.