Here's the casing I'm getting
power supply
motherboard
processor
memory
graphics card
hard drive
Current total is $886.20

Time for a few questions...
1. Am I missing anything?
2. Will this work?
3. Can I use the optical drives out of my Dell?
4. How the fuck do I put it all together?
5. Can I run Crysis on the graphics card?
6. Is there a better place to buy this shit?
7. Can I use my Dell power supply? (doubtful)

I'm still trying to decide on an OS.
I would stick with XP if I could get a legit version of it
But I kinda want Vista for DirectX 10 support.

I'm going to buy it in parts, it will take me about 3 months to buy it all.

1. Sound card? Floppy drive?
2. Should.
3. Yes.
4. Follow instructions. Fairly simple. Only reason I say follow the instructions the first time is that one of the first PCs I built I didn't follow the instructions and I fried the motherboard.
5. Possibly. I'd get an 8800GTS at the minimum to play crysis if I were you.
6. Newegg.com
7. I wouldn't.

You are missing a case.

Definitely be thorough on reading the motherboard documentation as to how to hook it up.

Also check the hard drive for a jumper when you get it, some SATAs come with a jumper attached that throttles it down to SATA 1.5.

Nothing there that I like that much, but ok. I'll let someone else recommend everything, I get paid for that. I can still give a couple tips, though. <.<

Seri-fucking-ously: Go to NewEgg and check prices there. That place is expensive. Seriously. Evena great board like the ASUS M3N78 PRO AM2+/AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 8300 HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail is like 66% of the price of the one you came up with. <.<

Also:
AMD Athlon X2 4850e 2.5GHz Socket AM2 45W Dual-Core Processor Model - Retail
Costs half the price of that thing you came up with.
And it's faster.
And it draws 20W less power.
And it runs cooler.
And it lasts longer.

Also:
It's only 30-40$ more for a hell of a lot more Graphics power if you get a 8800GT from NewEgg instead of that 8600.

For RAM, only consider Kingston. The 8300 Pro board I mentioned supports ECC. That means 2GB of the most compatible 800mhz ECC ram with a lifetime warranty and all, in dual-channel config, costs 44$.

For a hard disk, only get a Hitachi Ultrastar, Seagate NS/ES, or Western Digital RE2. They cost like 10$ more have 1,200,000MTBF versus 400,000 not to mention all the other bonuses.

That power supply is crap. With the proc I recommended, even with a 8800GT, that system wouldn't even pull 300W ( http://extreme.out...calculatorlite.jsp ). Seriously. One of the best power supplies ever made is the Enermax PRO82+ series, and the 425W version COSTS LESS than the no-name one you came up with. http://www.newegg....em=N82E16817194033

Personally I am not a huge PNY fan, I'd fully recommend BFG, their lifetime warranty kinda kicks all sorts of ass.. I have a 7900 GT OC, it crapped out on me, I sent it in and they had one back to me in a week no hassle (granted at the time I lived like a 20 min drive from them so shipping was pretty much overnight...)

For RAM I'd pretty much always go Corsair, I have been of fan of their memory for quite some time and never had a problem with them, the company you have I personally never heard much of..

An alternative to the case would be some of ThermalTakes, they have a very similar look to them.. I have the Armor (which is amazingly huge) but they have an Armor Jr, which is the same basic layout as the one you have, although I am not sure on price difference.. Furthermore though the Case I have is a damn solid case.. My first computer had an antec tower, it was insanely cheap (like $30 I think) and built like a tank, But I haven't seen a case that solid from them since.. overall I am not that impressed with them since my old ass case..

Other then that random other things that you could get unless you plan to harvest your old machine would be things like a CD/DVD drive, mouse/keyboard, monitor/KVM switch... all depends on if you want a secondary computer (which is nice)

Sound cards are kinda useless now days unless you do alot of serious sound crap (professional audio stuff or something) Most any motherboard has an onboard one that will do anything you would need for the most part..

Other places to check out would be Frys, and TigerDirect... TigerDirect has done a few shady things in my brother but most of that was stuff due to returns and their rebates sometimes taking a long time, but they have some very nice prices.. They are worth the risk if you know 100% what you want, and if the rebates are through them and not the company of the product, the wait..

For the Power supplies I think you pretty much NEED over a 350W nowdays, but go as low as you can, they make 1000W power supplies nowdays, and all thats good for is a space heater.. and I would pinch the extra to make sure you get one from a well known 'good' company, shitty no names can do alot of damage when they go (if they go) Somewhere between a 400W and 500W should do you good..

Why AMD? At the moment Intel is much more interesting. The E8400 is the core2duo processor to get right now. 3Ghz, 1333Mhz bus, 6mb cache, lower power, and also less heat. You also get better OC capabilities along with a 3 year warranty and it's the same price as the CPU you picked. It will run circles around that AMD.

Posted by tholcomb Time for a few questions... 1. Am I missing anything? 2. Will this work? 3. Can I use the optical drives out of my Dell? 4. How the fuck do I put it all together? 5. Can I run Crysis on the graphics card? 6. Is there a better place to buy this shit? 7. Can I use my Dell power supply? (doubtful) I'm still trying to decide on an OS. I would stick with XP if I could get a legit version of it But I kinda want Vista for DirectX 10 support. I'm going to buy it in parts, it will take me about 3 months to buy it all.

1. Not really.
2. Yah.
3. Yah.
4. Uh, the motherboard manual should have most of it covered.
5. Yah, but it will look like crap and probably play like a slideshow. Only the best systems can actually run it somewhat reasonably.
6. Definitely: www.newegg.com
7. No. You wouldn't want to either. I also suggest getting a Corsair supply.

Other suggestions: Don't bother with AMD unless you get an AM2+ board and a Phenom 9550 or better. If not that, get an Intel board and Core 2 Duo/Core 2 Quad CPU. That graphics card is pretty fail. Get an ATI Radeon 4850HD. I also suggest Corsair for the RAM, or G. Skill.

You also might want to pick out a cheaper motherboard and invest on a better graphics card. The 8600 is shit if you want to even slightly play games. If you don't plan on running SLI/Crossfire (and it's not that worth it anyways), you don't really need the 2 PCI-E 16X. If you want to save some more without much compromise, forget the Antec 900 + separate power supply and look into the Antec Sonata III. It's very quiet and has excellent and efficient ventilation. It also comes with a 500watt Earthwatt PS which is excellent and backed by the same 3 year warranty as Enermax. It's approx 100$.

I just whipped this up real fast. It's cheaper then your current system and better. I would just replace the AS drive with an ES and replace the liberty with the Pro82+ (I couldnt find them and I didn't really look).



The p35 is a bit outdated being that it's over a year old but it's still an excellent and quite capable chipset. Supports the 45nm's, GREAT overclockability, excellent performance and stability.

Yah, the P35 is still great. It's a real solid performer. I can't really recommend any other Intel chipset any more so. I've got that Enermax psu. So far it has done well but I would still rather go with a Corsair unit.

Those 8800GT's are freaking dirt cheap now. Amazing.

As far as Crysis goes, it runs fine with my current Gfx card, which is only a BFG Nvidia 7900.. Also have a 3800+ (single core AMD running about 2.4Ghz), and 2 GB of RAM.. I think I turned down some things slightly (although not much) it still looks better then most game on the market, and doesn't LAG up at all..

You must have turned down a lot of things. Currently almost no one can actually run the game with max settings at full tilt. Even Intel's Skulltrail systems (8 CPU's, 4 GPU's, a crapload of RAM) have trouble with it. A game that is way the fuck ahead of it's time.

I'm just going with the system Professor Chaos "whipped up"
But I'm adding Vista Home Premium & a DVD Drive.

Which adds up to $868.92 (shipping & rebates considered)

With me working 15 hrs a week at 6.55/hr will take me 2.210992366 months to fully buy it.
A lot better than I thought.

What other power supply & hard drive are you talking about?

Posted by tholcomb I'm just going with the system Professor Chaos "whipped up" But I'm adding Vista Home Premium & a DVD Drive. Which adds up to $868.92 (shipping & rebates considered) With me working 15 hrs a week at 6.55/hr will take me 2.210992366 months to fully buy it. A lot better than I thought. What other power supply & hard drive are you talking about?

In the automotive world, when I take on a project, I always assume that it will cost double than what I think I am going to be spending upfront. Now, in the computer world, this isn't as necessary, but always factor in that you will be spending 1.25 of the upfront cost. That way you aren't surprised by anything.

Plus, they take taxes out of that 6.55/hour you get. Also, don't be afraid to ask for a raise. They can only say no.

If you want to save even more, get the P35-DS3L. Same damn thing but without the RAID option.

Are you getting the 32bit Vista or the 64bit?

Posted by Sinister Crayon Plus, they take taxes out of that 6.55/hour you get. Also, don't be afraid to ask for a raise. They can only say no.

There's a sign up in my work that says, "Last week we lost $1,287 worth of stock due to giving away food, eating food without paying, giving out handfulls of ketchip, blah blah.
If you want a raise, EARN IT!"

Posted by Professor Chaos If you want to save even more, get the P35-DS3L. Same damn thing but without the RAID option. Are you getting the 32bit Vista or the 64bit?

64

Posted by tholcomb What other power supply & hard drive are you talking about?

The power sypply I was talking about was the Enermax 425watt Pro82+.

http://www.newegg....em=N82E16817194033

The 500watt Liberty I included in the list I whipped up is fine, it's an excellent power supply, no question there, but the Pro82+ is better. They are the same price anyways... Also check out Corsair, they are usually cheaper but as good.

For the hard drives, beryl already covered that.

Posted by Beryl For a hard disk, only get a Hitachi Ultrastar, Seagate NS/ES, or Western Digital RE2. They cost like 10$ more have 1,200,000MTBF versus 400,000 not to mention all the other bonuses.

However, if your budget is a concern, and it sounds like it is, then get the AS drives. They are just fine and have the same 5 year warranty. Beryl, I don't know where you get your stuff, but over here the difference between the 7200.11 500gb AS and ES is roughly 50$. I've sold a shit load of AS drives, in fact it's all we kept in stock, and they have proven to be very reliable and just fine for normal computing.

Posted by Professor Chaos Beryl, I don't know where you get your stuff, but over here the difference between the 7200.11 500gb AS and ES is roughly 50$. I've sold a shit load of AS drives, in fact it's all we kept in stock, and they have proven to be very reliable and just fine for normal computing.

I abuse the hell out of my OS drive (NOT my data drives), so I need enterprise drives. I killed two Maxtors and a Deathstar in 16 months before learning my lesson. I normally get 80% of my kit from Mindfactory (Germany only) as they're cheap, fast, have great service, and have free shipping.

Seagate ST3250410AS 250GB 8MB Cache, 2yr warranty 250 GB - 40€
http://www.mindfac...TA2-8MB-Cache.html
Average seek time: 11 ms / Track-to-track seek: 1 ms
MTBF: 700,000 Hours / Unrecoverable Data Error rate: 1 pro 10^14
Statistical annual failure rate: 0.34%

---

Seagate ST3250310NS 250GB 32MB Cache, 5yr warranty 250 GB - 55€
http://www.mindfac...0NS-32MB-SATA.html
Average seek time: 8.5 ms / Track-to-track seek: 0.8 ms
MTBF: 1,200,000 Hours / Unrecoverable Data Error rate: 1 in 10^15
Statistical annual failure rate: 0.73%
+ PowerTrim dynamic power (similar to Cool'N'Quiet and such) that cuts drive power draw between 20-50%
+ Vibration tolerance of 12.5 rads/s2 (take two normal Maxtor drives and put them on top of each other and use them for 6 months in a RAID - the vibrations alone will kill them)
+ Extended 10bit self-healing ECC error correction

Of course it's little compared to a Velocirapter, but seriously, 15$ gives you a faster, quieter, much more reliable drive with more features and statistical error rates TEN TIMES less than the cheap drive, plus twice the lifetime even in 24/7 operation. Plus it has FOUR TIMES the cache, so imagine it can easily buffer so much more of the things that are being read/written every microsecond on your system such as your registry, VNC, Trillian, etc - even when it's idling, they are constantly being accessed (use Filemon from Sysinternals/Microsoft and see how many tens of thousands of times per minute). Whereas the cheap drive would be constantly seeking.

It's like ECC ram versus normal DDR2 ram, Kingston DDR2-800 costs 18€ vs 22€ for the same with ECC (and almost all AM2+ boards and such support ECC, even plain consumer boards nowadays). While both have a lifetime warranty, use only the BEST Samsung chips (whereas Corsair and such SOMETIMES use them and also use cheap Infineon and even Infineon-on-third <although I haven't heard of that lately> chips since many of their buyers are just kids paying for the name). Not only do you then have slightly more stable and reliable ram, no more bit errors (that are fairly rare enough anyways - one per gigabyte per year or so), but also much higher tolerance against things like a weak power supply which could otherwise cause serious ram errors which would then normally be blindly unchecked - trash data written to a hard disk without anything noticing, for example. It's not only the difference in itself, but also the quality of the component.

That tiny cost (15 + 2x4) can't be any issue. The proc I recommended costs 79.99$ - the one you recommended costs 174.99$. Of course it's faster and a fantastic proc, but it's also a fair bit more than 2x the price for less than 2x the performance boost. ;) Toms hardware makes it seem like the e8400 would get about 20fps advantage to the 4850e in their Unreal Tournament test, but that's also ignoring the fact the the 8300 chipset is SLI HybridBoost-ing, so it would ALSO add the power of the embedded graphics (which is good enough to play Half-Life 2 in medium detail at 25fps or so) to the AMD CPU. It's hard to compare since you can compare the AMD to a T2700 or perhaps an AMD 5400+ and there are few benchmarks/reviews of it so far. Either way, I'd rather take the extra money and pay a bit of it to get all best-quality components (and STILL save 50-70$) than pay more than double for such a small performance boost - but that's just opinion, I'm sure many hardcore-gamers would disagree.

Posted by Beryl I abuse the hell out of my OS drive (NOT my data drives), so I need enterprise drives. I killed two Maxtors and a Deathstar in 16 months before learning my lesson. I normally get 80% of my kit from Mindfactory (Germany only) as they're cheap, fast, have great service, and have free shipping. Seagate ST3250410AS 250GB 8MB Cache, 2yr warranty 250 GB - 40€ http://www.mindfac...TA2-8MB-Cache.html Average seek time: 11 ms / Track-to-track seek: 1 ms MTBF: 700,000 Hours / Unrecoverable Data Error rate: 1 pro 10^14 Statistical annual failure rate: 0.34% --- Seagate ST3250310NS 250GB 32MB Cache, 5yr warranty 250 GB - 55€ http://www.mindfac...0NS-32MB-SATA.html Average seek time: 8.5 ms / Track-to-track seek: 0.8 ms MTBF: 1,200,000 Hours / Unrecoverable Data Error rate: 1 in 10^15 Statistical annual failure rate: 0.73% + PowerTrim dynamic power (similar to Cool'N'Quiet and such) that cuts drive power draw between 20-50% + Vibration tolerance of 12.5 rads/s2 (take two normal Maxtor drives and put them on top of each other and use them for 6 months in a RAID - the vibrations alone will kill them) + Extended 10bit self-healing ECC error correction Of course it's little compared to a Velocirapter, but seriously, 15$ gives you a faster, quieter, much more reliable drive with more features and statistical error rates TEN TIMES less than the cheap drive, plus twice the lifetime even in 24/7 operation. Plus it has FOUR TIMES the cache, so imagine it can easily buffer so much more of the things that are being read/written every microsecond on your system such as your registry, VNC, Trillian, etc - even when it's idling, they are constantly being accessed (use Filemon from Sysinternals/Microsoft and see how many tens of thousands of times per minute). Whereas the cheap drive would be constantly seeking.

Ohh I know what the ES series drives are, and I do fully agree with you, they are wonderful. It's all I run in my personal machine. However, there is a big price difference over here, which make them less interesting for regular computing purposes : just about everyone. The ES version is over 100$ more for the 1TB 7200.11 drive over here. A far cry from the 15$ you mention. Same story with the 500gb version. Are they worth in heavy duty workstations and servers? absolutely! For regular every day computing? No. They would be if they were really 15$ more but they are not over here. The performance from the 7200.11 AS is phenomenal with the 32mb cache, especially when you consider their low price and excellent warranty. Cache is not an issue as all 7200.11 are 32mb. ES or not.

Posted by Beryl It's like ECC ram versus normal DDR2 ram, Kingston DDR2-800 costs 18€ vs 22€ for the same with ECC (and almost all AM2+ boards and such support ECC, even plain consumer boards nowadays). While both have a lifetime warranty, use only the BEST Samsung chips (whereas Corsair and such SOMETIMES use them and also use cheap Infineon and even Infineon-on-third <although I haven't heard of that lately> chips since many of their buyers are just kids paying for the name). Not only do you then have slightly more stable and reliable ram, no more bit errors (that are fairly rare enough anyways - one per gigabyte per year or so), but also much higher tolerance against things like a weak power supply which could otherwise cause serious ram errors which would then normally be blindly unchecked - trash data written to a hard disk without anything noticing, for example. It's not only the difference in itself, but also the quality of the component.

Again, the price over here right now for Kingstoin DDR2-667 is 20$ per gb which is pretty damn cheap for excellent ram. However, for the ECC equivalent, it's in the upper 70s. Again, not worh it for the avrage joe for the small avantages it offers. Slighty more stable and reliable? Damn, if we are talking about OCZ, fine, but I've rarely, if ever, seen Kingston ValueRAM or HyperX fail or give any sort of trouble.

Posted by Beryl That tiny cost (15 + 2x4) can't be any issue. The proc I recommended costs 79.99$ - the one you recommended costs 174.99$. Of course it's faster and a fantastic proc, but it's also a fair bit more than 2x the price for less than 2x the performance boost. ;) Toms hardware makes it seem like the e8400 would get about 20fps advantage to the 4850e in their Unreal Tournament test, but that's also ignoring the fact the the 8300 chipset is SLI HybridBoost-ing, so it would ALSO add the power of the embedded graphics (which is good enough to play Half-Life 2 in medium detail at 25fps or so) to the AMD CPU. It's hard to compare since you can compare the AMD to a T2700 or perhaps an AMD 5400+ and there are few benchmarks/reviews of it so far. Either way, I'd rather take the extra money and pay a bit of it to get all best-quality components (and STILL save 50-70$) than pay more than double for such a small performance boost - but that's just opinion, I'm sure many hardcore-gamers would disagree.

Yeah, I was comparing the 8400 to the X2 5600 he linked.

* I got all my prices from directcanada, which is the cheapest place around.

I'll just add to this one instead of starting another.

This or this on this.

May as well go with the faster of the 2, it's only a $10 difference.. Why not, Eh?

Posted by tholcomb I'll just add to this one instead of starting another. This or this on this.