[Ben the OCer]

Edit (10/7/2010): Thanks for your help guys. All the parts have been bought. I actually ended up getting a MSI Cylcone GTX460 768MB. I was thinking of waiting but said who cares if I'm over budget. It was a nice open box deal so that made it easy too.

Hey, guys. I'm building a computer for someone as a gift that I wanted your thoughts on. I already have some of the components. I mostly wanted your help with the components I don't have purchased yet. As it stands I don't think I'll have enough money for a decent video card. I'll probably go with a 890GX board and he'll use onboard for now, he's not much of a gamer. Maybe later as a Christmas gift or something I'll get him one. AMD's next crop of GPUs is also coming out soon. Here is the scoop:

Parts List (Everything is either in hand or on the way):
Phenom II X2 550BE (Unlocks to X4)
Cooler Master Hyper 212+ CPU Cooler
OB Asus M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 890GX AM3 Mobo
G.Skill Eco 4GB DDR3-1600 7-8-7-24 1.35v Kit
MSI Cyclone GTX460 768MB
OCZ Agility 2 60GB
Samsung F3 1TB Hard Drive
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Corsair VX 550W PSU
Cooler Master Storm Scout Case
Samsung SH-S223L DVD Burner
Asus VW192 19" 1680x1050 LCD
Klipsch ProMedia 2.1 THX Certified Speaker System
Gigabyte GM-M8000 Gaming Mouse
Gigabyte GK-K6800 Keyboard

 

[jpyumul]

Not bad for a gift for a non-gamer. The fact that it unlocks to quad is perfect.

For the motherboard that's the only choice you've got to run 2000Mhz ram. Gigabyte's 890gx only runs up to 1866.

I guess you're good to go.

 

[TheTechRex]

i can vouch for that motherboard. BEST ONBOARD SOUND EVA!!!
you seem to be missing a graphics card?
non-gamer : used 8800gt (i can vouch!!!)
gamer : gtx 470

and with the motherboard, and the patch, you will be able to SLI in the future.

 

[Ben the OCer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jpyumul Not bad for a gift for a non-gamer. The fact that it unlocks to quad is perfect. For the motherboard that's the only choice you've got to run 2000Mhz ram. Gigabyte's 890gx only runs up to 1866. I guess you're good to go.

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheTechRex i can vouch for that motherboard. BEST ONBOARD SOUND EVA!!! you seem to be missing a graphics card? non-gamer : used 8800gt (i can vouch!!!) gamer : gtx 470 and with the motherboard, and the patch, you will be able to SLI in the future.

Thanks for the input guys! TheTechRex, as I stated I don't have enough money for the video card. I'm already over budget without it. I plan to use the HD4290 onboard video on the 890GX chipset. He's not much of a gamer anyway and I might get one for him down the road. Truthfully I'm really still on the fence about it. The fact that the HD6K series is coming out soon is another factor too.

 

[bavarianblessed]

I would use a different RAM kit, but that's just my opinion. The Mushkin in my sig rig runs excellent with the Phenom 2 controller. Some of the 890GX boards I have built with require RAM with a voltage of 1.5 or lower though. Make sure to check for that on the motherboards QVL.

 

[KRAZYTRUCKER]

I agree with a different ram kit/ take a look at the crucial ballistic kits. ocz can tend not to play nice but just my opinion and not so nice luck with ocz sticks but never a fail with crucial.

 

[Ben the OCer]

I made a couple changes. I think the Seasonic X650 is just too pricey for my budget. I swapped it for the Corsair VX550 that's on sale right now. It's a pretty old unit but still a solid high quality one I think. I'd appreciate any of your thoughts on this. Then I swapped the OCZ DDR3-2000 kit for a G.Skill Eco DDR3-1600 kit. I think I'd rather have low voltage and low timing RAM. I also doubt I could get the OCZ RAM to it's rated 2000MHz anyway since I will be using the stock base clock of 200MHz. So what do you guys think?

 

[polm]

hey, I have an idea, how bout getting a second identical hdd, and set up a raid 0 config, u save 70$, that you can incest in a ok gpu or just save it... sure you won't get as much performance with the raid 0 than with the ssd but it is still a good alternative + raid 0 of f3 will be very decent

 

[Ben the OCer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by polm hey, I have an idea, how bout getting a second identical hdd, and set up a raid 0 config, u save 70$, that you can incest in a ok gpu or just save it... sure you won't get as much performance with the raid 0 than with the ssd but it is still a good alternative + raid 0 of f3 will be very decent

I appreciate the thought and trying to save me some money to have enough for a video card. There's a very simple reason why I'm not doing that though. Even two F3s in RAID-0 can't come close to the performance of a single OCZ Vertex 2 SSD. They could come close to the read speed but that's about it. The main thing that make SSDs so much faster is their amazingly low access time. Since he doesn't game much, boot-up and everyday application performance is much more important. Even for me that would be more important since 95% of the time I'm not gaming.

 

[Ben the OCer]

I bought the Corsair VX550 today. It just seemed like a really nice PSU for the money and a nice deal ($45.98 shipped after MIR). It also seems like a pretty good fit for this build and would leave room for the possible GPU upgrade down the road. Still have to get the motherboard, RAM, and SSD. I might have bought everything if the motherboard was in stock. So I thought I'd see if any other better deals on the other stuff comes along.

 

[Ben the OCer]

The motherboard finally came back in stock. So I bought it and the G.Skill Eco RAM. Now the only thing left is the SSD and possibly a video card unless I stick with the onboard like I'm thinking of doing. I was thinking about the Agility 2 90GB SSD but it went out of stock before I decided. I will probably go with that if it comes back in stock and the price is the same.

 

[Ben the OCer]

I ended up getting the OCZ Agility 2 60GB for $99.99 and an Open Box MSI Cyclone GTX460 768MB for $143.32 shipped. Thanks for all your input guys. I'll finally be building this thing!