# computer build, want opinions and suggestions



## Draconas (Jan 18, 2012)

my current mini tower isn't good enough for a large variety of stuff so I did some poking and thought I'd kill two birds with one stone, I'd buy some pc parts and put it together myself.

so far I came up with  this, now I'd change a few things (the  SDD to probably larger capacity, and cram more ram into it)

price wise it doesn't matter too much, but something with an I7, a shit ton of RAM, an SSD, and what looks like a good video card for my needs is great.

anyone got suggestions that you know are compatible let me know.


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## AshleyAshes (Jan 18, 2012)

I was about to sa a lot, but if cost effectiveness isn't an concern... Go nuts.  The build isn't cost effective at all but that's it's only real fault.


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## Runefox (Jan 18, 2012)

You probably won't need the liquid cooler, and you can probably do without the SSD altogether unless you really want it. Depending on what you're doing, an i5 2500K would be a better option, as it's faster per-core than the 2600K (making it better for, say, games), but if you're doing a lot of multithreaded stuff (say, video editing), the 2600's hyperthreading would be more beneficial. You can also probably do without the super fancy Corsair case (though it is quite nice) and shave about $50-$100 off. If you play your cards right, you can also drop down to a Radeon 6950 - Some models are directly soft-moddable to the 6970 spec. Beyond that, I don't really see anything particularly wrong with that bundle (not that there's anything wrong with it at all), but what kinds of things _are_â€‹ you going to be using this for?

And if money really isn't an object, you could stand to add another 8GB of RAM and bump the CPU up to a 2700K, or if you wanna be really flagrant about it, you could hit up the i7 3930K and an LGA-2011 motherboard.


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## Lobar (Jan 18, 2012)

It's overbuilt but those are all fine parts.  60GB is fine for a boot drive plus a few critical programs you want sped up.

edit: This combo's a lot more reasonable, you'd save $600 and it's not short on power at all.


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## AshleyAshes (Jan 18, 2012)

Runefox said:


> i7 3930K



If only I could afford that.  It'd run After Effects like a dream.


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## Draconas (Jan 18, 2012)

Runefox said:


> You probably won't need the liquid cooler, and you can probably do without the SSD altogether unless you really want it. Depending on what you're doing, an i5 2500K would be a better option, as it's faster per-core than the 2600K (making it better for, say, games), but if you're doing a lot of multithreaded stuff (say, video editing), the 2600's hyperthreading would be more beneficial. You can also probably do without the super fancy Corsair case (though it is quite nice) and shave about $50-$100 off. If you play your cards right, you can also drop down to a Radeon 6950 - Some models are directly soft-moddable to the 6970 spec. Beyond that, I don't really see anything particularly wrong with that bundle (not that there's anything wrong with it at all), *but what kinds of things areâ€‹ you going to be using this for?*
> 
> And if money really isn't an object, you could stand to add another 8GB of RAM and bump the CPU up to a 2700K, or if you wanna be really flagrant about it, you could hit up the i7 3930K and an LGA-2011 motherboard.



try to get high as possible video quality for gaming, and fraps them then edit and render to a more suitable upload size (currently my process for doing said things are medium settings on a few crappy games, frapsing at 12 fps and rendering takes close to 5 hours per video).

the SSD and liquid cooler im tempted to try, something new honestly other than a hard drive and air cooling. The computer usually sits within eye sight (originally I was going to go with a lanboy air, but saw this and kinda liked it). Processor wise I keep telling myself I want an i7, I honestly don't know the different between the i5 and the i7 other than one is supposed to do a little better (I do a lot of multi-tasking and I heard the i7's good for it). RAM wise, i'm probably going to fill it with 16GB, 4GB dimms per slot.


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## Runefox (Jan 18, 2012)

Lobar: That's not bad, but the CoolerMaster power supply leaves much to be desired... Also, the GTX 560 isn't as powerful as the 6970 by a fair (though not huge) margin, so it's a sacrifice in performance in that regard.


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## Lobar (Jan 18, 2012)

Runefox said:


> Lobar: That's not bad, but the CoolerMaster power supply leaves much to be desired... Also, the GTX 560 isn't as powerful as the 6970 by a fair (though not huge) margin, so it's a sacrifice in performance in that regard.



And there's no SSD, but that's all a sacrifice worth $600 IMO.  You're right though, it is a shit PSU, I've got a CM SilentPro that's actually really nice so I didn't look close enough at it.


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## Draconas (Jan 18, 2012)

Lobar said:


> And there's no SSD, but that's all a sacrifice worth $600 IMO.  You're right though, it is a shit PSU, I've got a CM SilentPro that's actually really nice so I didn't look close enough at it.



price doesn't hurt at all, just means I'd have to wait another month or two.


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## Runefox (Jan 18, 2012)

Draconas said:


> the SSD and liquid cooler im tempted to try, something new honestly other than a hard drive and air cooling.


The cooler will only be of benefit if you're planning to overclock. The SSD may be useful for your purposes, however.



> Processor wise I keep telling myself I want an i7, I honestly don't know the different between the i5 and the i7 other than one is supposed to do a little better (I do a lot of multi-tasking and I heard the i7's good for it). RAM wise, i'm probably going to fill it with 16GB, 4GB dimms per slot.


As far as the i5 vs i7 goes, the i5 is a quad core without hyperthreading, while the i7 is a quad core with hyperthreading. Otherwise, they're largely identical pound for pound. Hyperthreading basically makes Windows believe that your computer has twice as many cores as it really does, which increases the performance of multi-threaded applications or with multitasking versus a quad core (though how much more is all up to how you use it; Fewer faster cores may in fact be better for something like FRAPS (which will use a single thread, and most games typically won't take advantage of more than two threads, meaning that the i5 would still be able to leave a core free for other tasks). If you do go with an i7, drop the extra for the 2700K rather than the 2600K; The 2600K, per thread, is slower than the i5 2500K.


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## Draconas (Jan 18, 2012)

Runefox said:


> The cooler will only be of benefit if you're planning to overclock. The SSD may be useful for your purposes, however.
> 
> 
> As far as the i5 vs i7 goes, the i5 is a quad core without hyperthreading, while the i7 is a quad core with hyperthreading. Otherwise, they're largely identical pound for pound. Hyperthreading basically makes Windows believe that your computer has twice as many cores as it really does, which increases the performance of multi-threaded applications or with multitasking versus a quad core (though how much more is all up to how you use it; Fewer faster cores may in fact be better for something like FRAPS (which will use a single thread, and most games typically won't take advantage of more than two threads, meaning that the i5 would still be able to leave a core free for other tasks). If you do go with an i7, drop the extra for the 2700K rather than the 2600K; The 2600K, per thread, is slower than the i5 2500K.



The cooler, I'd get in case the stock cooling isn't good enough (my room gets some rather stale air and hot). the i7 2700K is sounding rather good, as long as camtasia can render and im still able to record and play all at once. I'll make up a list of stuff I suppose, the savings listed in there won't apply to me, as I can't have more than 2K in my bank and I'd buy a few parts a month.


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## Lobar (Jan 18, 2012)

If you wanted to go balls-out on a gaming rig a few years ago, you'd have gotten an i7-940, a gtx 295, and maybe some Velociraptor HDDs in a RAID array, and today it'd be blown away by anything being suggested in this thread.  Just making a point about shelling out for THE BEST HARDWARE today, it's all very transient and the performance difference between the higher hardware tiers ends up to not be very significant in retrospect.

edit:





Draconas said:


> as I can't have more than 2K in my bank and I'd buy a few parts a month.



wait, maybe this should be a thread about why you can't have more than $2,000 saved up


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## Draconas (Jan 18, 2012)

Lobar said:


> If you wanted to go balls-out on a gaming rig a few years ago, you'd have gotten an i7-940, a gtx 295, and maybe some Velociraptor HDDs in a RAID array, and today it'd be blown away by anything being suggested in this thread.  Just making a point about shelling out for THE BEST HARDWARE today, it's all very transient and the performance difference between the higher hardware tiers ends up to not be very significant in retrospect.
> 
> edit:
> 
> *wait, maybe this should be a thread about why you can't have more than $2,000 saved up*



Lets just say that I can't work an actual job and we'll leave it at that

edit: alrighty, I nabbed everything into a wishlist but changed it to a Intel Core i7-2700K, 2 sets of the listed RAM (16GB total), and Corsair Force Series 3 120GB SSD at a subtotal of $1,756.90


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## AshleyAshes (Jan 18, 2012)

I coulda produced a 30min indie film with that much money... And had cash left over to feed my actors as much pizza as they wanted during filming...


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## Draconas (Jan 18, 2012)

AshleyAshes said:


> I coulda produced a 30min indie film with that much money... And had cash left over to feed my actors as much pizza as they wanted during filming...



sounds fun, you should try that.


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## Lobar (Jan 19, 2012)

Well if money was really no object and I was building a machine in waves of parts and wanted it to be functional as soon as possible then I guess this is what I'd pick:

1st buy:
Case: Antec Twelve Hundred
PSU: Antec CP-850
Mobo: Asus P8P67 Pro
CPU: Intel i7-2700K
RAM: Kingston HyperX DDR3 1866 2x4GB Kit
SSD: Kingston HyperX 120GB SATA III SSD while it's on sale
Heat Sink: Cooler Master V8 while it's on sale
an optical drive

That's ~$800 there.  If you salvage an old video card temporarily, that gets the machine running.  You can then tweak your overclick while saving up for the second wave

2nd buy:
GPU: EVGA GTX 580 1.5GB
RAM: Kingston HyperX DDR3 1866 2x4GB Kit, again
HDD:Seagate Barracuda XT 3TB, as many as you want.

That's ~$800 again, with just the one HDD.  Then if you really want to get crazy you can always SLI another GTX 580 on there.


edit: or actually screw it and get this combo it's close enough


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## Draconas (Jan 19, 2012)

Lobar said:


> Well if money was really no object and I was building a machine in waves of parts and wanted it to be functional as soon as possible then I guess this is what I'd pick:
> 
> 1st buy:
> Case: Antec Twelve Hundred
> ...



I'd probably replace the water cooler with the giant tin can that you linked, the full size tower seems a bit big for my desk, the corsair case seems rather nice


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## Lobar (Jan 19, 2012)

Draconas said:


> I'd probably replace the water cooler with the giant tin can that you linked, the full size tower seems a bit big for my desk, the corsair case seems rather nice



The PSU I picked is an odd form factor that only works with the case I picked and a couple others.  This one's a good substitute and has a nice rebate on it right now.

edit: or this combo, the HAF 922 is a great case too.


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## Draconas (Jan 19, 2012)

Hate to say but I think any savings right now would expire by the time my permanent visa card gets in and I sort out some retarded mess with my bank(for some reason my provided info's wrong and i'll have to call them :/), I do appreciate the help guys, and actually the picked out a few that was mentioned.

thus far I got  this as my list.


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## AshleyAshes (Jan 19, 2012)

Draconas said:


> Hate to say but I think any savings right now would expire by the time my permanent visa card gets in and I sort out some retarded mess with my bank(for some reason my provided info's wrong and i'll have to call them :/), I do appreciate the help guys, and actually the picked out a few that was mentioned.



Uhh, do you have actual MONEY to make this purchase with, or are you just getting your first credit card and you're gonna put $1700 on it with no plan formulated to pay it off?


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## BRN (Jan 19, 2012)

Oh dear god.

_Credit_ is _not_ free money. I just hope you know that! 

Aside from that, I'm sure you know what you're doing financially, but, man, it's frightening to think you have no income but still plan on spending so much on something.

I'd go with Lobar's suggestion, honestly. His build is pretty solid and cost-effective and it looks like it'll do everything you're asking it to do. Technological progression will render anything you have obselete in less than ten years, however, no matter how high-spec it is. Good luck!


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## Draconas (Jan 19, 2012)

AshleyAshes said:


> Uhh, do you have actual MONEY to make this purchase with, or are you just getting your first credit card and you're gonna put $1700 on it with no plan formulated to pay it off?





SIX said:


> Oh dear god.
> 
> _Credit_ is _not_ free money. I just hope you know that!
> 
> ...



I have a debit card, so no, it's coming straight from me, I do get an income, but I'd prefer to not explain how that works. The problem with my bank is that I gave some wrong info so I can't log into my account to see my balance and history, would be helpful than say, drive across town to just look. The thing with my card is that I have a temp debit card that I can't load money onto until the permanent one gets in.


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## Commiecomrade (Jan 20, 2012)

All I can say is, I want what you're getting.


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## Sai_Wolf (Jan 20, 2012)

Lobar said:


> edit: or this combo, the HAF 922 is a great case too.



dat case.


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## Onnes (Jan 20, 2012)

Sai_Wolf said:


> dat case.



Ugh, I hate how every case has to look so bizarre and flashy these days. I'll always prefer the external look of the Antec P180 line: clean and simple.


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## Sai_Wolf (Jan 20, 2012)

Onnes said:


> Ugh, I hate how every case has to look so bizarre and flashy these days. I'll always prefer the external look of the Antec P180 line: clean and simple.



What's so bizarre about that case? It's basically square and has a nice selection of front panel ports and far more 5 1/4 bays than you'll ever need. And it's a decent full size.


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