PC Build Thread

[82mm 4g63]

If you're going to build a new rig...don't build an old rig and don't ignore new features! No Core2Duo's, and if you can help it, hold off on AM3 AMD chips. New Zambezi chips are right around the corner. USB 3.0 and SATA6 are the latest greatest, don't ignore them.

Another aspect I was overlooking was your intentions for the new machine. Are you going to be playing any graphics intensive games or strictly a work machine? If it's just a work machine you might not want a consumer video game card. Check out the nVidia Quadro and AMD Firepro professional GPU's.

If you'll be primarily working with software like... Autocad 2011, 3d Studio Max 2011, ZBrush, Adobe Photoshop CS5, Cinema 4d, Luxology Modo 501, Google Sketchup Pro 8, Maya 2011, Mudbox 2011, Revit Architecture 2011, Archicad 14... then you'll probably want a professional card. You'll pay a LITTLE more, but the hardware is optimized for software like CAD.

What's the difference? Pro cards, when playing a game, have drivers that tended to accelerate games slower than the consumer drivers, BUT the pro drivers tended to accelerate CAD apps much faster than consumer drivers. So you get more out of your hardware for the money you spend.

Just food for thought.

GTX460's on NewEgg are >$150 ($130 w/MIR). You can get an HD 6850 for that price and it's a superior, newer card. You could get an HD 6790 for $110 and that's not too far beneath the 460/6850.

-------------

CPU+Memory Combo: $258
Core i5-2500K --- Combo
Corsair Vengeance 8GB DDR3-1600 --- Combo
Gigabyte P61 s1155 --- $70
Corsair BS CX500w PSU --- $60 -$20 MIR
XFX HD 6790 --- $130 -$20 MIR
Samsung F3 1TB --- $60
Samsung CD/DVD --- $20

Total: $558

[WingsofWar]

i dont do any PC gaming, much of my processing needs are to run programs like Maya and 3Dmax, Vray, AutoCad, Adobe Premiere, Adobe After Effects, Photoshop CS5, Music Studio for my arrangements.

Although i would like to try my hand at starcraft II and Diablo III, modern warefare 3, battlefield 3. I dont really intend to use it for games.

I want to build a new rig, that much is certain and id rather not use products that are 1.5-2 years old if it can be helped.

I dont mind waiting for better prices to appear or better products to hit the market, but it really puts my 3D, VIDEO, IMAGING, and MUSIC projects on hold which are just sitting in a 1TB portable hard drive collecting dust.

and id love to bring out more high quality FT86 work and BRZ work ASAP without relying on my friends and other artists.

So scratch the AMD/MOBO deal? Go with intel i5/i7?

Also how important is liquid cooling for some of these workhorse processors? Or could just a big fan or multiple fans and a good heatsink work even for mild overclocking?

[Dave-ROR]

Most lower end liquid cooling systems are worse than good air cooling solutions. I run a i7 950 @ 3.6ghz, with HT on and all cores pegged at 100% (which it's basically at 24/7 for world community grid computing) it runs 60-64c depending on how much dust is in the heatsink fins :P

[serialk11r]

Aftermarket cooling is useless if you don't overclock. As an extreme noise elimination method it's plausible though...

82mm, I think you're overlooking his budget...he said 300 bucks lol. At that price point he's basically stuck with AMD, and lower end graphics. Quadro is the biggest ripoff ever, the cards are almost identical to the consumer grade ones, fyi. It's just a tiny software difference. The point is not to get a computer that is best for rendering, the goal is to have something within budget and more modern than his completely obsolete machine.

[82mm 4g63]

Originally Posted by serialk11r

Aftermarket cooling is useless if you don't overclock. As an extreme noise elimination method it's plausible though...

Agreed. Watercooling is an all or nothing deal and you only need to do it if you plan on significantly overclocking. I watercooled my last build just because I appreciate silence. lol

Originally Posted by serialk11r

82mm, I think you're overlooking his budget...he said 300 bucks lol. At that price point he's basically stuck with AMD, and lower end graphics.

Yes and no. He said... "I mean if i have to break my budget of $300-400 to get a proper rig, i don't mind. Id just hate to pay like $900-$1000 when i don't have to."

He's willing to break the $400 budget to get a proper rig. Using 2 year old components, IMO, is not a proper rig. Besides, $560-600 bucks isn't that bad for a really impressive rig and significantly below that $900-1000 point of no return. Buying old components is what I recommend for old people who use Facebook and check email as it'll last them half a decade, not someone doing using cutting edge software.

Originally Posted by serialk11r

Quadro is the biggest ripoff ever, the cards are almost identical to the consumer grade ones, fyi. It's just a tiny software difference. The point is not to get a computer that is best for rendering, the goal is to have something within budget and more modern than his completely obsolete machine.

They're really not ripoffs. Workstation cards are definitely expensive, but they are optimized to run on software that can cost upwards of $10,000 as opposed to video games that cost $60. It depends 100% on what WoW will be using it for. If it's just casual graphics design and side projects then definitely get a gaming card, but if you do real world projects that have to be hyper accurate then definitely go for a workstation card.

[n2oinferno]

Originally Posted by 82mm 4g63

Agreed. Watercooling is an all or nothing deal and you only need to do it if you plan on significantly overclocking. I watercooled my last build just because I appreciate silence. lol

That's not exactly true. There are plenty of closed water loops now that work very well. I don't think I'd trade my Kuhler 620 for any aircooled HSF setup. And they generally don't cost much more than a mid-high end air cooler.

I agree with sticking to the i5 though, 2500k. Easily overclockable to 4.0ghz+ on the stock Intel HSF. If you can't swing a nice video card now, and since anything will be an upgrade, the lower end 6xxx series as mentioned above will work fine until you get into games since you mentioned a few, depending on your resolution. I'm honestly not sure how much of a difference it makes since I haven't tested, but I know Photoshop now benefits from GPU processing as well.

[82mm 4g63]

Originally Posted by n2oinferno

That's not exactly true. There are plenty of closed water loops now that work very well. I don't think I'd trade my Kuhler 620 for any aircooled HSF setup. And they generally don't cost much more than a mid-high end air cooler.

I agree with sticking to the i5 though, 2500k. Easily overclockable to 4.0ghz+ on the stock Intel HSF. If you can't swing a nice video card now, and since anything will be an upgrade, the lower end 6xxx series as mentioned above will work fine until you get into games since you mentioned a few, depending on your resolution. I'm honestly not sure how much of a difference it makes since I haven't tested, but I know Photoshop now benefits from GPU processing as well.

Yeah it's not a shabby simple setup, but if I'm going to go through any extra hassle of installing a water cooling system, I'm definitely not getting one that get's significantly out performed by high end air alternatives. Noctua 14's take 30 seconds to install and are superior for overclocking. To me, it's like turbocharging an NA car...with a tiny T28 turbo. If you're going to do it, do it right. Just my opinion though. :happy0180:

[Snaps]

Originally Posted by n2oinferno

I agree with sticking to the i5 though, 2500k. Easily overclockable to 4.0ghz+ on the stock Intel HSF.

This is what I'm running at the moment 2500K w/ stock HSF, running at 4.0GHz, and the max temp I've had (playing games) is 67*C. I don't like going any hotter than 70*C as I like to leave a bit of headroom, as well as for reliability reasons.... May upgrade to HSF later to overclock it a bit further though

The 2500k is DEFINITELY a good deal if you know how to overclock

[chaoskaze]

After reading WingsofWar's excellent post on engine build, I decided to share my 2 cents to help. xD

Since it sounds like u gonna built one uself, I'm just gonna list some basics that everyone might know. :X

CPU: Cheap amd combo is definitely gonna save u some bucks. However Intel do preform better when it comes to running Maya, 3Dmax and Photoshop CS5 etc.

RAM: go find a good deal on newegg :P 8G is good (just make sure u have a copy of 64bit windows)

Motherboard: Try not to save too much on motherboard, Good mother board = easy to upgrade in the next 3 years +/-.

HDD : If u have the $, a small 60G SSD as boot drive + a big HDD as data drive is the way to go, u will never see pop ups in Orgrimmar/Stormwind and it cuts you load time for wow from 90s to like 20s even with all the addons. This is one single component that vastly improves everything I do on my pc.

Videocard: Depends on u like nvidia or ati, personally I love the color off an ati card and they also tend to use a lot less power but nvidia have physicX on their side & always runs things smoother right off bat. (Don't buy any card that ended with 50 or lower, other then some exceptional overclocked ones)

Power: get a middle range one, a cheapy Power = nono and tend to burn itself up right after a year or when warranty expires. >.> Trust me on this one... being there many times.


I also suggest u check out cyperpowerpc (www.cyperpowerpc.com), I can only undercut their price by around 100 when I built pcs to their spec (which is basically the price of windows) unless I catch on to some super deal around black friday or really sit out on my computer parts and get them from online deals over a period of 2-3 months.

[WingsofWar]

^ ooo thats right, black friday is coming up! might be a good chance to get better products and still be within a good budget. Thanks

[n2oinferno]

Originally Posted by 82mm 4g63

Yeah it's not a shabby simple setup, but if I'm going to go through any extra hassle of installing a water cooling system, I'm definitely not getting one that get's significantly out performed by high end air alternatives. Noctua 14's take 30 seconds to install and are superior for overclocking. To me, it's like turbocharging an NA car...with a tiny T28 turbo. If you're going to do it, do it right. Just my opinion though. :happy0180:

The above is just one result that I found that compared both solutions. I wouldn't call 2 or 3 degrees C very significant when you're well under max temp. I spent about 50 bucks on my 620, so shelling out another 25-30 for that little difference the D14 gives doesn't make sense to me or anyone on a budget, really. I'd say it's more like turbocharging a NA car and spending 6 grand instead of 4 grand so you can have 520 horsepower instead of 500. However, as you said to each their own, and I completely understand why some people min max. I won't lie, if I had the cash to drop I'd experiment with phase change.

It's really no hassle at all to install though. I ran a Koolance loop several years ago, and yeah, I remember running lines, bleeding the system, and then leak testing for a day. This Antec unit was just a matter of mounting the rad/fan as you would any other fan, putting the back plate on the motherboard, and then setting the heatsink on the cpu and twisting it to lock. It was honestly far easier than installing my old Zalman 9700 on my old box, or the Xigmatek Dark Knight on my wife's computer.

Originally Posted by Snaps

This is what I'm running at the moment 2500K w/ stock HSF, running at 4.0GHz, and the max temp I've had (playing games) is 67*C. I don't like going any hotter than 70*C as I like to leave a bit of headroom, as well as for reliability reasons.... May upgrade to HSF later to overclock it a bit further though

The 2500k is DEFINITELY a good deal if you know how to overclock

Even if you don't know how to overclock it's easy to do, since a good number of motherboards have automatic overclocking now. I hit 4.3 by clicking a button in AI Suite and waiting a few minutes through reboots. A couple manual tweaks put me at 4.5, and I'm sure I could go higher but I ran out of patience and just wanted to use the computer already instead of running more stability tests. Looks like my temps are in the mid-high 50s while gaming, but ambient temp is ridiculously hot in my office.

edit: on what chaos said above, it's extremely important not to get a cheap PSU. You don't need a 300 dollar 1kw beast, but something tried and tested to be reliable. Not only because they don't last, but because advertised specs don't hold up. My wife's old machine had a cheap PSU in it that just let go one day. Unfortunately, it took the mobo, HDDs, optical drive, and VGA card with it. Thankfully all of the companies RMA'd the parts.

And yeah, black friday is wonderful for computer sales.

[82mm 4g63]

Originally Posted by n2oinferno

[IMG][/IMG]

I agree, 2-3 degrees isn't that significant, but... IDK I guess I'm just weird. If I'm going to step up to liquid cooling, I want it to out perform the old air cooling. The main thing about the little CPU cooling kits like that Kuhler620 is you can't expand them down the road to GPU or memory cooling. If it let you expand down the road, maybe piece by piece as you gathered the funds, then I might be more open to it.

Originally Posted by n2oinferno

Even if you don't know how to overclock it's easy to do, since a good number of motherboards have automatic overclocking now.

Exactly, my grandfather could overclock using the onboard OC software most motherboards come with.

You want a Corsair PSU, they're the perennial PSU Of The Year award winners. Corsair Builders Series are great bang for buck.

[82mm 4g63]

CyberPowerPC is where my brother bought his computer from about a year ago, not a bad deal. But even if you buy a copy of Windows 7, you can still build a PC for atleast $100 savings.

Every edition of Windows 7 available in the US is 32 and 64 bit compatible and you can pick a copy up for $100 bucks.

If you don't mind reusing your computer case and you buy a copy of W7 you can build the i5,8gbddr3-1600,1tb,hd6790 rig for $660 after $40 MIR. The same rig is $860+tax+s&h. (You can get a cheap case from $15-50.)

[n2oinferno]

As an alternative, are you or do you have any friends that are in college or still have a .edu email address? I got my copy of Win7 from The Ultimate Steal, which is a special student program that Microsoft sponsors. 30 bucks.
http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/...UB_4up_Windows