# Help me spend my tax refund (PC build questions inside)



## Lobar (May 7, 2010)

Okay.  With my tax refund securely in my bank account, it's time to replace this piece of shit desktop.  Seriously, I can't even run Portal right now.

My tentative build:






Goal is to be a solid, future-upgradable gaming build without being a retardedly expensive "enthusiast" rig.  This will be the first PC I've ever built myself so please check my work and let me know of any pitfalls that may lay ahead.  Also if I need to buy any of my own cables/connectors/parts/whatever.  And service plans: unnecessary fluff or worthwhile protection (I'm guessing fluff)?

Thoughts?


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## Vintage (May 7, 2010)

now there are obviously people here more experienced at custom builds than i am, but let me just point out some of the things i noticed:

- video: can your monitor do dvi/hdmi in? i'm guessing so but that doesn't have a vga port on it but i am sure you noticed that as this is an hd-branded card
- are you aiming to run a specific game or is this for general use? i'm thinking your card is a bit above where it needs to be to run the latest games. regardless gpureview is a good resource for card comparisons (i linked you to the 5770 v. the 5670, which doesn't seem like that much of a difference but is about $40 cheaper and ditches one of the dvi ports; someone else check my work insofar as whether it is worth it to step down, please?)

also that motherboard looks terribly badass

it makes me want to build a computer with that mobo

also this is just me but i love my solid state drive. it may not be worth it for you until space on those hits less than $2/GB but i am certainly enjoying the fast bootup times my SSD allows, and if the flash ever burns out because of too many writes, it's got a three-year warranty

if your HDD space is at a premium, def. stick with the 1TB, though! my situation is that i already have two externals so i have lots of space to store stuff and can take less space on my internal.


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## Lobar (May 7, 2010)

Vintage said:


> - video: can your monitor do dvi/hdmi in? i'm guessing so but that doesn't have a vga port on it but i am sure you noticed that as this is an hd-branded card



It has a DVI, but I want to get a better monitor later on because the one I have now is only 1050 vertical pixels instead of 1080 or better and it has a dead pixel to boot.



Vintage said:


> - are you aiming to run a specific game or is this for general use? i'm thinking your card is a bit above where it needs to be to run the latest games. regardless gpureview is a good resource for card comparisons (i linked you to the 5770 v. the 5670, which doesn't seem like that much of a difference but is about $40 cheaper and ditches one of the dvi ports; someone else check my work insofar as whether it is worth it to step down, please?)



No specific game, it's probably way over-spec for the things I want to run atm.  I might step it down a bit, but I'd like something that will be decent for quite a while.

[





Vintage said:


> also this is just me but i love my solid state drive. it may not be worth it for you until space on those hits less than $2/GB but i am certainly enjoying the fast bootup times my SSD allows, and if the flash ever burns out because of too many writes, it's got a three-year warranty
> 
> if your HDD space is at a premium, def. stick with the 1TB, though! my situation is that i already have two externals so i have lots of space to store stuff and can take less space on my internal.



Couldn't I get the same benefit by getting a smaller, cheaper SSD just for the OS, and keeping all my data on the HDD?


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## Vintage (May 7, 2010)

Lobar said:


> Couldn't I get the same benefit by getting a smaller, cheaper SSD just for the OS, and keeping all my data on the HDD?



that's what i did but it's still pricey. my 64GB was like $200. also, as you go up in storage space you'll generally get a better lifetime than you would with smaller SSDs because of wear leveling. this is when a controller spreads writes over the entire drive in order to not burn out just one part of a drive. it logically follows, then, that the more space you have, the less the controller is going to write to one particular sector overall. 

this is also why defragmenting a SSD is discouraged: it results in extra writes to the drive for absolutely no benefit at all, since SSDs don't have platters or heads. there is no need to arrange the data for quickest access on a SSD because _everywhere is quickest access_.

edit: i'm running a laptop so i can't do this, but you can easily get a RAID controller and stack two or more of these as RAID 0 if you have the time or the money. this is if you really want to see some crazy shit happen, like not even seeing the windows splash screen. this is really more money than i care to spend, though.


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## Lobar (May 7, 2010)

Vintage said:


> that's what i did but it's still pricey. my 64GB was like $200. also, as you go up in storage space you'll generally get a better lifetime than you would with smaller SSDs because of wear leveling. this is when a controller spreads writes over the entire drive in order to not burn out just one part of a drive. it logically follows, then, that the more space you have, the less the controller is going to write to one particular sector overall.



What if I go the other route - where I get something so cheap that I don't care if it dies?  I've heard of casemodders buying a USB flash drive, cracking the enclosure open, mounting it and running the OS off it.  Couldn't I do something similar, and put _just_ the OS on it so that when it takes a shit, I'm not losing any data and I'm out $20 at the most?



Vintage said:


> edit: i'm running a laptop so i can't do this, but you can easily get a RAID controller and stack two or more of these as RAID 0 if you have the time or the money. this is if you really want to see some crazy shit happen, like not even seeing the windows splash screen. this is really more money than i care to spend, though.



Too much money for me too.  As stated in my goal, this is not an enthusiast rig.


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## Jaciad2 (May 8, 2010)

I would go with something like a Caviar Black by WD. Me and my friends have always used them and they are awesome! My friend has one that is 130g and is almost 6 years old.


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## Vintage (May 8, 2010)

Lobar said:


> What if I go the other route - where I get something so cheap that I don't care if it dies?  I've heard of casemodders buying a USB flash drive, cracking the enclosure open, mounting it and running the OS off it.  Couldn't I do something similar, and put _just_ the OS on it so that when it takes a shit, I'm not losing any data and I'm out $20 at the most?



welllll

it depends on what exactly they cracked open. if they cracked open an external USB drive and it's still an HDD when they get in there and look inside it then it's probably going to have comparable performance to internal HDDs. i also wasn't aware you could really crack open a USB flash drive and do anything with it involving either an IDE or SATA connection.

i guess what i'm trying to say is that your question is a bit confusing!

going off the particular motherboard that you're using, you've got USB 3.0 _and_ SATA 3. USB 3.0 is pretty fast, but SATA 3 is a bit faster iirc. if you wanted to boot off a USB flash drive, nothing's really stopping you, but it's a cheap solution. 

there's also the fact that a chain is only as strong as its most overused cliche, so in order to get the most speed increase from using USB 3.0, you're going to need:
- a 3.0 port (which is in your motherboard)
- a 3.0 cable (not too hard to get) 
- a 3.0 device (these are prohibitively expensive right now). 

if i understand correctly, using a 2.0 device with a 3.0 port results in a speed increase, but it's not as fast as 3.0 -> 3.0, you definitely don't get the bidirectional piping benefits (a major feature of 3.0 is that it can pass read and write data at the same time), and i don't know, in your case, whether it would be worth it to run as your plan A since i've never installed an OS on a flash drive before and i am not aware of whether it would provide any sort of performance benefit when compared with an HDD (it uses flash chips, so it makes sense that it could, but i don't know about this).

if you're going to do flash anything, SSD is probably your better bet as you'll run SATA and there is much more pronounced support for wear leveling with SSDs than with USB flash drives. this is assuming that you even want an SSD at all and if you don't want to spend the money, don't! an HDD does a guy just fine and the price per gigabyte is pocket change.

oh also more USB 3.0 musings: you can't use a 3.0 A to B cable with a 2.0 device that accepts a B plug. the B plug is shaped differently in the 3.0 incarnation. just letting you know.


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## Lobar (May 8, 2010)

Vintage said:


> welllll
> 
> it depends on what exactly they cracked open. if they cracked open an external USB drive and it's still an HDD when they get in there and look inside it then it's probably going to have comparable performance to internal HDDs. i also wasn't aware you could really crack open a USB flash drive and do anything with it involving either an IDE or SATA connection.
> 
> i guess what i'm trying to say is that your question is a bit confusing!



I mean your standard USB flash drive, that you keep on your keychain, plug into a front port and save documents to.  I probably shouldn't have used the word "enclosure" to describe the plastic casing, which they cracked open for...some reason.  I should really look into it more.

The technical details of the rest of your post are a bit over my head, but I will take their implications under advisement.  Really, though, I'm not particularly bothered by start time, even on my stock cheapass Dell.  If I did something like this, the performance boost would just be a side benefit to having a throwaway drive to play with different OSes on, like the Windows XP Performance Edition unofficial mod, while keeping a "safe" install on the data drive.


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## Vintage (May 8, 2010)

Lobar said:


> I mean your standard USB flash drive, that you keep on your keychain, plug into a front port and save documents to.  I probably shouldn't have used the word "enclosure" to describe the plastic casing, which they cracked open for...some reason.  I should really look into it more.
> 
> The technical details of the rest of your post are a bit over my head, but I will take their implications under advisement.  Really, though, I'm not particularly bothered by start time, even on my stock cheapass Dell.  If I did something like this, the performance boost would just be a side benefit to having a throwaway drive to play with different OSes on, like the Windows XP Performance Edition unofficial mod, while keeping a "safe" install on the data drive.



yeah i mean if you couldn't give a fuck about speed then it should work just fine. the USB 3.0 stuff is for people who care about speed, 'cause i know 2.0 doesn't cut it for me, especially when i do full drive backups. if i were to look at a new laptop today it'd definitely be one that can handle eSATA at the very least since i finally got an enclosure that can _do that_

the transition from USB 2.0 to 3.0 shouldn't be THAT bumpy, when all is said and done. they could have made them completely incompatible with each other :3


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## Lobar (May 8, 2010)

Vintage said:


> yeah i mean if you couldn't give a fuck about speed then it should work just fine. the USB 3.0 stuff is for people who care about speed, 'cause i know 2.0 doesn't cut it for me, especially when i do full drive backups. if i were to look at a new laptop today it'd definitely be one that can handle eSATA at the very least since i finally got an enclosure that can _do that_
> 
> the transition from USB 2.0 to 3.0 shouldn't be THAT bumpy, when all is said and done. they could have made them completely incompatible with each other :3



Well I do care somewhat about speed, that's largely what the point of running Performance Edition in the first place would be.  I'm willing to sacrifice a flash drive towards that end, but I don't want to turn this into a >$1k machine.

I think I'm getting ahead of myself getting into minutia like this though.  Where's the rest of the B&B regulars crew?  Anyone else have an opinion about this build?


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## Vintage (May 8, 2010)

again it's not like getting the HDD you have up there is going to be the death knell of your computer's performance. it's still 7200 RPM and that's still pretty good, and it's 1TB of space, which is really good. i would go with that if you're strictly adhering to a budget.


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## Runefox (May 8, 2010)

USB mass storage adds delays per file access, which causes performance problems when accessing many small files (Windows bootup). Not a good idea in practice. In addition, USB 3.0 devices currently don't exist in the mainstream, and as far as I'm aware, there really isn't much at all available (if anything).

Keep your build as you've got it - It's very good overall. Disregard advice advocating SSD's - Cost-performance ratio is in the gutter and longevity is typically shorter than standard HDD's.

The Spinpoint series are among the faster drives available right now, as are the Western Digital WD1001FALS and its SATA 6Gb/s successor. You'll likely find it to be much faster already.


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## Lobar (May 8, 2010)

Will forget the USB OS drive idea then.  Reconsidering my processor though, I don't think I'd really take full advantage of six cores, and its 2.8GHz clock speed is underwhelming for the money.  I might do better with a Phenom II 965, trading down to quad-core for 3.4GHz clock speed instead.  It's a little cheaper too, but it becomes a wash after losing my combo discount with the case.

I'm kinda looking at aftermarket cooling too, since the 965 overclocks well, but I don't see any AM3 socket-specific heat sinks at all.  I'm assuming the AM2 ones are compatable, yes?

And this is getting a little ahead of things, but when I actually start physically putting things together, how important is it to stay grounded?  I know my dad always insisted on wearing a wrist strap, is that really necessary or will I be okay just touching an outlet before I start?


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## Runefox (May 8, 2010)

> Reconsidering my processor


The Phenom II 965 is generally similar in performance to the 1055T, but the higher clock allows it slightly better single-thread performance overall. The big advantage of the 1000-series Phenom II's is their Turbo Core feature, which automatically boosts three cores at a time up to a certain point while underclocking the others if they're idle. In the 1055T's case, Turbo Core goes to a maximum of 3.3GHz by default, and you can use AMD Overdrive to adjust this maximum manually, as well as overclock it traditionally. The higher base clock of the 965 does give it an advantage over a stock 1055T per thread, however, and the higher maximum overclock frequency also gives it a further advantage. However, I hear the difference in overclock frequency is only about 400MHz, and the 1055T does have its own advantages. It may be best to go with a 965 for now, but don't do it based only on overclock ability.



> aftermarket cooling


Yes, AM2 heatsinks are identical to AM3 (in fact, I think it goes back way further than that; s939 heatsinks are also identical).



> how important is it to stay grounded?


Truth be told, not very, and I actually don't know of many people who adhere to the rule. Computer equipment is very robust, but in this case, you may want to use a strap just for the extra peace of mind. I almost never do and haven't ever zapped anything, but it's really up to you if you're afraid of it, and just because I haven't doesn't mean it doesn't happen. It also somewhat depends on your location; I hear dry climates accumulate static much more readily than humid ones, and we're generally quite humid here.


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## Lobar (May 8, 2010)

Okay, so I started modifying my build around a Phenom II X4 965.  That broke the nifty case discount, so I started playing around with other savings offerings, and ended up changing damn near everything. |3  Here's the new build:






The mobo gives up USB 3.0 and the video card is scaled back slightly to a 5750, but after rebates and a $20 coupon code for the HDD not shown it works out to be a little more than $100 cheaper.

Also some general tweaks that I'd still incorporate into the first build if I decided I liked it better: The new HDD takes advantage of the 6Gb/s SATA available that the Spinpoint did not, and also I swapped out the Kingston RAM for OCZ RAM specifically designed for Black Edition AMD processors.  While I trust Kingston's quality control more than OCZ, if there's a performance boost to be had without spending much extra, I want it.  Also I found my USB external wireless adapter, so I dropped the internal one and tacked on an aftermarket CPU heatsink.

Opinions?

Also, as a totally OT aside, Rigor would like you to IM her, Runefox.


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## Vintage (May 8, 2010)

this seems really nice for even cheaper. i wouldn't change a thing (except maybe giving up USB 3.0, but it's going to be a while on the device side). OCZ has a lifetime warranty on their RAM, just like Kingston, so if it ever fails you can call them up.


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## Runefox (May 8, 2010)

That's still pretty decent. The case is a major departure from the P183 you were looking at though, but it should have more than adequate cooling for what you're putting in. The 5750 video card is a fair step down from the 5770, but if you're on a tight budget, then that's all you can do. You seem to be weighting it towards general system performance rather than gaming performance - What is it you want to be doing with this system, anyway?

Re the aside: I can't seem to find contact info for that.


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## Slyck (May 8, 2010)

Gigabyte boards = win. Also, get a hard drive cooler. That well help get your hard drive through lots of crunching with no pain. 
Go for Corsair on the PSU. You don't need to have SATA 6gb/s. Your HDD will only be putting out 2 gb/s max from buffer and under 150mb/s standard.
Go for Crucial Ballistix on the RAM. The price/rerformance ratio is great. Keep an eyeball extended for a Sparkle 9600GT 2gb graphics card. They go in and out of stock, but the abundant ram lets you max out the view distance on 3d games. Only $99, too. Nice choice on the HDD. WD is always where it's at.
I (somehow) managed to build a rig that let me max out GTA4 (very demanding) and get a decent 15-20fps for $600. That mainly involves sales, overclocking, combo deals, a $30 case, a MicroATX mobo and a open box cpu cooler, though.


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## Jaciad2 (May 8, 2010)

I would stick with what you got now. OCZ is good RAM, and you got the Caviar Black. As far as the video card, I am an Nvida fan so I would listen to Runefox on that one.


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## Runefox (May 8, 2010)

> Also, get a hard drive cooler.


Waste. These things are OK for cases with poor ventilation, but either of the cases on either of those lists sit the drives right in front of a 120mm fan. There's no need.



> Crucial Ballistix


I've experienced really poor reliability where Crucial's concerned when I was working at a local PC shop. From what I hear, G.SKILL is a better choice for the cost-conscious.



> Sparkle 9600GT


Sparkle is also a horrendously poor OEM and this card is very old by now. We've also had experience with those guys, and their quality control and warranties are very poor. 2GB of RAM is useless for a card as old and low-end as the 9600 - There's a reason why stock is so shaky for them. Mind you, it would outperform the 5750 (the 5770 is in around its performance range), but seriously, it's not worth the hassle to track down. The 5700-series Radeons are more energy efficient and furthermore supports DX11 features. It also matches the motherboard's chipset. I would recommend something beefier for heavier gaming, but I suspect gaming isn't the only priority in this system. The 5750 should be able to handle quite a lot.

Regarding the PSU, I'd have mentioned Corsair as well, but that power supply actually looks very capable, and furthermore is modular, with the same warranty as a Corsair unit. I wouldn't say that it would be very different in terms of reliability or performance.

Re the hard drive/SATA 6gb/s, it's not really useful over the 1001FALS, no, but it does have some other advantages, too - A larger cache, for one - Double, actually.


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## Lobar (May 8, 2010)

Runefox said:


> That's still pretty decent. The case is a major departure from the P183 you were looking at though, but it should have more than adequate cooling for what you're putting in. The 5750 video card is a fair step down from the 5770, but if you're on a tight budget, then that's all you can do. You seem to be weighting it towards general system performance rather than gaming performance - What is it you want to be doing with this system, anyway?



If my choices seem confused, a big part of it is due to my hardware inexperience - this is my first PC that didn't come preassembled, ever.  As such, I've never really done much of anything with motherboards, cases, etc. and I don't really know how to compare them other than by their listed features.  For example, from specs alone the 5750 didn't look like that big a step backwards to me.

This box is going to be my only desktop after I retire this one, so it has to be both a gaming and general purpose rig.  Thing is, I've been in a financial hole for so long that I've been running a decrepit hunk of shit forever, and have missed a lot of gaming that's pretty easy to run even on last year's model.  I'd like to still get to all those games, so my thought is if I build a simple but very upgradable machine, I can play all my old games, and by the time I get through them and have an actual need for the good stuff it'll have been long enough to get a little more bang for my buck.  This might be more penny-wise and pound-foolish than I'm aware though, so I'd really like some guidance.


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## Runefox (May 8, 2010)

Well, older games should be able to run fairly decently on a 5750, depending on your definition of "older". Games going back from last year should be generally OK. Newer games will require a bit of reduction in quality settings, and I wouldn't say a 5750 would be a very "future-proofed" card, even if it does run DirectX 11. However, as a stepping stone, it should do you "for now" and if you're able to later on, then you can probably grab something a lot better than you could now for around the same price range. But the only thing is, you'll probably be in the same situation then, too.

So with that in mind, before I can really recommend anything different, you know your needs better than I do: What kinds of games are you looking to run now, and in the future (random examples are OK, but try to think of the most demanding)? How hard are you going to push it? What kind of quality and speed are you expecting?


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## Lobar (May 8, 2010)

Most demanding things I want to run now are probably L4D2 and TF2.  I'm about to fall asleep and can't really think of a complete list of current games I want to play in the future right now, but I guess Mass Effect 1 & 2 and Assassin's Creed I & II would be on the list.  Game that's not out yet that I'm looking forward to the most would be HL2:E3 I guess, but that's kinda hard to build for for obvious reasons. :V

I'd also like to run MAME, and there's no such thing as enough power with MAME.  IIRC MAME doesn't use the GPU at all though.

edit: the latest S.T.A.L.K.E.R. looks pretty demanding, and that's something I might want to play in the future.


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## Runefox (May 8, 2010)

Well, all of that will run, and run rather happily. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. might give you a bit of trouble, though, and you'll probably need to reduce your graphics quality, which is a shame. But for all the Source engine games, it should be able to give you a solid frame rate with that CPU. I couldn't tell you first-hand what Mass Effect 1 & 2 or Assassin's Creed 1 & 2 might be like on a 5750, though; Might be an idea to look up some benchmarks to get a general idea.

You're right, though: MAME only uses the GPU to accelerate the display, not to accelerate rendering. Though, with DirectX11's Compute Shader, maybe we'll see some GPU-based speed enhancements like offloading certain tasks. I'm sure there are many things that a GPU would be able to perform more efficiently in MAME's case than the CPU.


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## Slyck (May 9, 2010)

Had to trim what you said, can't seem to post a large amount.



Runefox said:


> Waste.
> 
> >> Guess I was too lazy to look at the case specs. On second thought, I'm probably the only one here without a case fan.
> 
> ...


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## Runefox (May 9, 2010)

@Slyck: GTA4 taking ~1.5GB of RAM has nothing to do with the graphics card's memory. GTA4 should play nicely on a card with as little as 512MB, seeing as it's a port from consoles (both of which only have ~256MB of VRAM (360 varies)). Most high-end graphics cards only have 1-1.5GB of RAM, and I can assure you that they're much faster with that 1GB than the Sparkle 2GB 9600 would be.


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## Lobar (May 9, 2010)

Still kibitzing with myself on which direction to go.  Redid my higher-end build:







Rebates and coupon codes make the real price ~$1050.  Considering the 1090T for the more overclock-friendly Black Edition features on top of its extra 400mHz, but if I step it back to the 1055T the system becomes $950 without changing anything else.

The mobo is the board in the first build's big brother, featuring the newer 890FX chipset (vs. 790X) which allows it to run two video cards at x16 + x16 (as opposed to the cheaper board's x16 / x8 + x8 setup), allowing a future video card upgrade to work with my current card in a CrossfireX setup with no drawback.  The difference is $40.  Also stepped up the PSU to it's bigger brother anticipating such a move for $10.

If I go back to the x4 965 processor, the mobo I'm now looking at is a GA-790XTA-UD4.  After a rebate it's $30 cheaper than the board in my first build, and all I'm seeming to give up losing four of the six SATA 6Gb/s ports (just fine as I have no plans to make a RAID array).  I can't put that in with the hexcore processor though, as it won't POST without a BIOS update (though it runs just fine with a hexcore after that, so it's still upgradable).  [http://www.gigabyte.us/Products/Motherboard/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=3270]This[/url] board looks to be a superior version but I can't find it anywhere. 

edit: This is a nice looking Asus 790FX board that's $50 off for the open box, but at that point maybe I might as well get the Gigabyte 890FX?

Want to pull the trigger today.  Thoughts?


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## Lobar (May 11, 2010)

Well, for anyone that still cares, I settled on a final build:

AMD Phenom II X4 965 CPU
ASUS Crosshair III Formula mobo
ASUS CUcore Radeon HD 5770 video card
2x2GB OCZ "Black Edition" DDR3 RAM
SAMSUNG Spinpoint 1TB 7200RPM HDD
Antec P183 case
Antec TruePower 750W PSU
Xigmatek Dark Knight-S1283V CPU heatsink
SAMSUNG CD/DVDÂ±R Lightscribe burner/drive

Price was just under $1k before my rebates.

And...it's here already. o_o


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## Runefox (May 11, 2010)

Whoo, an impressive collection of stuff. Hope you have fun with it!


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