Hyrox

Hi, I'm planning on building a new PC pretty soon. I plan on ordering the parts right around Thanksgiving weekend, hoping I might be able to find some deals online.

In general, I have ~$1500 for the build, excluding the price of them mouse/keyboard/monitors, etc.

I mainly plan on using it for gaming, though I don't actually play much at the moment. I want it to be able to run Diablo III, SC2, The Old Republic and any general MMOs (WoW) well. Other than that, I watch a lot of movies and sometimes mess around with photo and video editing.

I'm in the process of trying to make a build. I think I want to go with a Core i7, thought I'm not sure whether 8 or 9. From what I understand, the 1366 motherboard is better if you plan on using crossfire/SLI.

Anyways, I'm still in the process of trying to make a full build, so any full builds or merely suggestions are greatly appreciated!

P.S. If it's not EXACTLY $1500, it's not a big deal, just trying to set a ballpark price.

shadow19935

go with core i7 920, some nice gigabyte mobo that has xfire/sli capabilities, then get windows 7 and xfire hd5*** series, a nice wd black hdd corsair psu and 6gb of ddr3 and u are sorted. ohye and case

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E5x00 - Overclocking Thread

Hyrox

Just as another note, I have Windows 7 Ultimate...so that's the OS I'll be using.

Tommie

Or you can pick up a 750, http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3652 the extremely cheap UD2, 4 GB of DDR3 and spend the money on Case-quiet fans or better GPU ( Crossfire 5850 is absolutely not bottlenecked by x8x8)
X58/Core i7 is way overpriced IMO. Its not like, new. The 750 is practically the same as the 920 except for HT. And it clocks to 4 Ghz too.
IMO 920 was a good deal 1 year ago. Right now you get the same performance for a lot less cash.

r31ncarnat3d

Alright, so this build I made in mind with what you said in your OP: moderate gaming with video/media editing. With that in mind, I made you this build with emphasis on CPU power, memory, and storage. Keep in mind it's not perfect, and I have a note at the end for you:

CPU/MOBO Combo: Core i7 860 LGA 1156 / Gigabyte P55 UD3R $409

RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws 3x2GB DDR3-2000 $170

Harddrives: 2x 500GB Western Digital Caviar Black $140 Total

Power Supply: Corsair CMPSU-750HX Modular $159.99

Case: Cooler Master HAF 932 $140

Video Card: Sapphire Tech HD 5770 $160

Optical Drive: Sony SATA DVD-RW $30

CPU Cooling: Prolimatech Megahalems Rev. B $65

CPU TIM: Shin-Etsu x23 $4

All together with shipping, your cost should be roughly $1450.


Notes about build:
CPU: The reason I went with the 8xx instead of 9xx and X58 is that the performance increase for the jump up doesn't necessarily justify the increased cost. The P55/8xx combo, I feel, is a good "bang for buck" path without losing much performance.

Video Card: Even though the HD 5000 series are making all the reviews right now, I heavily suggest you wait until the G300 series is released from nVidia. The competition will drive down prices on both fronts, in addition to very likely new releases from ATI to compete with nVidia's new cards. In short, they compete, you win. I also went with Sapphire instead of the popular XFX because Sapphire is still a high quality name, while XFX's ATI cards have been reported to have a quality slip lately. Their warranty is superior to all other manufacturers, in my opinion, but I'm still a bit iffy about XFX's ATI quality to recommend them (to clarify, the drop in their ATI cards for some reason seems independent of their nVidia cards; green is still strong in XFX).

Harddrives: The reason I chose 2x500GB drives for you is for flexibility. You can use them straight up as 1TB of storage, or you can use RAID 1 for data security or RAID 0 for speed at 500Gb of storage.

Case: I chose the HAF 932 because I very much like the design and airflow, but you don't have to settle on that case. To be honest, any decent midtower case will cost about the same as the 932, so even if you choose another case you can still use the 932 as a cost estimate.

CPU Cooler: I chose the Megahalems for simplicity. It is the best value CPU cooler I know for LGA1156 without needing to purchase a 1156 bolt-thru kit. If you want to, though, you can definitely purchase another cooler with the 1156 kit.

TIM: The Shin-Etsu is, IMO, the best brand out there. It doesn't have as much hype as the ICD7 or OCZ Freeze (don't get me wrong, they perform well too, just not as great as Shin-Etsu), so it's relatively unknown. The only problem I think you'll have with it though is that it is a very thick paste, so spreading it might be tough. If you don't want to deal with it or don't trust the name yourself, feel free to go to ICD-7 or Freeze.


Any problems, I'll be checking back on this thread, so leave a response.

Rightwing

I agree.

MeeMoo220

when I had 1000$ USD to build my rig. I got a way better one than w/e is being posted up there. Prices hae dropped since then and I'm sure u can find a better rig than a cheap Ggiabyte mobo like mine and 4gb ram for 500$ more. I'll make a setup in tha tprice range and post it here later.

couple of Qs :

1- Will u be overclocking?
2- Do u want to go SLi ?
3- how much HDD space do u think u will use ?
4- do u have any brand loyalty?

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Hyrox

1 - Probably, but I don't really want to base the build with the idea of overclocking.

2 - Yeah, I want to run multiple monitors eventually, as well.

3 - Somewhere north of 500 GB. I'd like to have somewhere near 1 TB, but I guess it's not necessary.

r31ncarnat3d

Edited my post with a build!

MeeMoo220

Case: Antec 900 / CM HAF 932 [99.99$ / 139.99]

Mobo: EVGA 141-BL-E757-TR LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX X58 SLI LE Intel Motherboard [229$]

CPU: intel Core i7-920 Bloomfield 2.66GHz LGA 1366 [288.99$ or 200$ if u have a microcenter near by]

RAM: OCZ Platinum 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600MHz Low Voltage Ram. [163.99$]

CPU Cooling: COOLER MASTER V8 LGA1366 compatible. [54.99$]

HDD: Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5".

PSU: CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready 80 PLUS Certified. [109.99$]

GPU: 2 x GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 Superclocked Edition 896MB (EVGA 896-P3-1257-AR ).
[2x199.99$ = 398$]


total : 1457.91$ [u could get a better PSU / Single GPU / Different RAM, HDD and Mobo based on Brand Loyalty for teh same price approx.]

u can also get urself some Arctic Silver with the Change hope I helped.

P.S: this was kind of rushed cuz I have class in 15 mins :S

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