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Hello...
I've decided to try building a computer...this will be my first time doing so. I came up with this list with my cousin, who actually did all the research and reading. I know next to nothing about computer hardware so...
I would like you guys to take a look and let me know what you think. (:
-LG 22X DVD±R DVD Burner Black SATA Model GH22NS30
-Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 Yorkfield 2.83GHz LGA 775 95W Quad-Core Processor Model BX80569Q9550
-COOLER MASTER RC-690-KKN1-GP Black SECC/ ABS ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
-Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer 7.1 Channels PCI Interface Sound Card
-PC Power & Cooling S61EPS 610W Continuous @ 40°C EPS12V SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Power Supply
-GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard
-mushkin 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model 996599
-SAPPHIRE 100259-1GL Radeon HD 4870 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card
-Western Digital Caviar Black WD6401AALS 640GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
-Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 64-bit for System Builders
I c/p the names directly off of newegg...so yeah.
BTW, does anyone know an online retailer I can order off of other than newegg? Unfortunately, I live in California, so I'm going to get boned by sales tax...like nearly $90 in sales tax...T_T.
Thanks in advance.
 
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As far as I know, all the other computer part online retailers charge tax to CA. Amazon doesn't charge tax to us, but they don't really sell computer parts at competitive prices I don't think.
Your computer looks good and expensive. Do you really need Vista? Especially with Windows 7 coming out so soon, you could get away with using WinXP and just waiting for Windows 7.
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T.O.P.
Hong Kong4685 Posts
Tigerdirect does not charge sales tax for Californians. Newegg, Buy.com, Zipzoomfly does. Amazon does not charge sales tax, but they don't sell much parts.
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On March 09 2009 14:02 blabber wrote:
As far as I know, all the other computer part online retailers charge tax to CA. Amazon doesn't charge tax to us, but they don't really sell computer parts at competitive prices I don't think.
Your computer looks good and expensive. Do you really need Vista? Especially with Windows 7 coming out so soon, you could get away with using WinXP and just waiting for Windows 7.
My budget is around $1200, so I'm cutting it pretty close...haha.
You think so? When is Windows 7 slated for release? TBH, I don't like vista at all, but just went for it due to 64bit becoming more and more accepted...that, and it's only $10 more than XP.
Also, 32bit can't recognize more than 2GB of ram, no?
On March 09 2009 14:04 T.O.P. wrote:
Tigerdirect does not charge sales tax for Californians. Newegg, Buy.com, Zipzoomfly does. Amazon does not charge sales tax, but they don't sell much parts.
Is tigerdirect reliable and similar in price?
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I thought 32 was 4 gigs, and 64 was 8 gigs, could be wrong though.
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T.O.P.
Hong Kong4685 Posts
32 bit can't use more than 3.25GB of ram.
TBH, I really like Vista. I been using Vista since it's beta days.
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T.O.P.
Hong Kong4685 Posts
On March 09 2009 14:07 lovelyrose wrote:
I thought 32 was 4 gigs, and 64 was 8 gigs, could be wrong though.
64 bit supports up to 128GB of ram.
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T.O.P.
Hong Kong4685 Posts
I haven't got a bad experience with Tigerdirect. But I only made 1 purchase. Some people don't like Tigerdirect. I'm pretty sure the prices are competitive. You could always compare the prices to newegg.
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-Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 Yorkfield 2.83GHz LGA 775 95W Quad-Core Processor Model BX80569Q9550
-GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard
I'm currently Using this CPU and mother board but with the HIS Radeon 4870x2. I can say confidently that these all work really well together, but with some newer games i have had some trouble, especially GTA 4.
Prices wise i cant really help seeming USA prices always beat Australian prices.
Edit: Can u use 64Bit OS with a 32Bit CPU?
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you don't really need a sound card im sure the mobo has integrated sound but if you want go for it. i would also get a video card with less ram (512mb) if youre using one monitor with 1680x1050 res or less.
also i'm going to go ahead and try to convince you to get a phenom ii 940. the mobo prices might makeup for the cpu price difference but at least the next time you upgrade you won't have to buy another mobo since AM3 cpus are supposed to be backward compatible. if you won't be upgrading for a long time just go with the q9550.
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i think you should wait for a <$100 1TB internal drive. its so much cheaper.
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I haven't done computer research in a long time but I thought ATI cards were being destroyed in benchmark tests by comparable Nvidia cards.
Windows was giving out free copies of Beta for the longest time but I'm pretty sure they're done giving them out now. You could pirate it >.>
x89 titan is right. Unless you know your'e going to need 640 GB of storage RIGHT NOW, you should wait. Storage gets cheap really fast (like count on that drive being half the price it is like 8-10 months from not) so the longer you can procrastinate on a purchase the better off you are.
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that's pretty much the same for everything but it's probably less worth it to do with storage because you can always expand storage when need be. unless the price drop is coming in like 3-4 weeks i dont even see the point of mentioning it because chances are in 8-10 months they wont even be selling 775 processors anymore.
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why not go for for an antec 900 case, and you don't really need a sound card the onboard should be fine, unless you are an audiophile and even then Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer i don't believe works well with vista, i remember reading up about a lot of driver issues, but it may have been fixed since i last checked.
check out the asus xonar dx 7.1 instead, ive heard rave reviews about that one
Also see if you can get a college kid to get you a copy of vista, for me its like 20 bucks at my campus store .
biggest tip i wish i had, plan out the wires and airflow before you start putting everything in, helps later on
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On March 09 2009 14:37 mahnini wrote:
that's pretty much the same for everything but it's probably less worth it to do with storage because you can always expand storage when need be. unless the price drop is coming in like 3-4 weeks i dont even see the point of mentioning it because chances are in 8-10 months they wont even be selling 775 processors anymore.
It's more true with storage though because you don't have worry about compatibility issues with the mobo/gfx card/cpu etc. etc.
But yea, you're right. It's not really worth the extra hassle unless you do stuff like this all the time.
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On March 09 2009 14:13 T.O.P. wrote:
I haven't got a bad experience with Tigerdirect. But I only made 1 purchase. Some people don't like Tigerdirect. I'm pretty sure the prices are competitive. You could always compare the prices to newegg.
From the checking I've done so far, Tigerdirect will be a good $150-200 more expensive altogether...and they don't have a lot of what I'm looking for. For instance, hard drive (they only have 16MB cache western digital drives...I dunno if this makes a huge difference, but newegg has 32MB ones for the same price), memory, nor any of the cases I was looking at.
I guess I'll just bite the bullet and newegg it. T_T. It'll still come out cheaper.
On March 09 2009 14:14 Bjebis wrote:Show nested quote +
-Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 Yorkfield 2.83GHz LGA 775 95W Quad-Core Processor Model BX80569Q9550
-GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard
I'm currently Using this CPU and mother board but with the HIS Radeon 4870x2. I can say confidently that these all work really well together, but with some newer games i have had some trouble, especially GTA 4.
What problems were you having?
On March 09 2009 14:20 mahnini wrote:
you don't really need a sound card im sure the mobo has integrated sound but if you want go for it. i would also get a video card with less ram (512mb) if youre using one monitor with 1680x1050 res or less.
also i'm going to go ahead and try to convince you to get a phenom ii 940. the mobo prices might makeup for the cpu price difference but at least the next time you upgrade you won't have to buy another mobo since AM3 cpus are supposed to be backward compatible. if you won't be upgrading for a long time just go with the q9550.
Could you elaborate on the video card issue? Why would 512MB be superior to a 1GB for single-monitor?
I was planning on having a dual-monitor setup, though...a 22" at that res and a 15" at...something smaller, lol.
I'm not planning on upgrading the CPU...in addition, I'm not a huge fan of AMD...:\
Could you go into more detail on that, however? I'm not dead set against AMD...just prefer Intel.
On March 09 2009 14:22 x89titan wrote:
i think you should wait for a <$100 1TB internal drive. its so much cheaper.
I'll expand it later when I need it. I also have an external hard drive, so it's not that big of an issue. In addition, in the case of a hard drive failure, it's nice to have your shit spread out, you know?
I lost all my music and photos (more than 100GB's worth) to a failed external before, so I'm especially paranoid about that.
On March 09 2009 14:37 iceburn wrote:
why not go for for an antec 900 case, and you don't really need a sound card the onboard should be fine, unless you are an audiophile and even then Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer i don't believe works well with vista, i remember reading up about a lot of driver issues, but it may have been fixed since i last checked.
check out the asus xonar dx 7.1 instead, ive heard rave reviews about that one
Also see if you can get a college kid to get you a copy of vista, for me its like 20 bucks at my campus store .
biggest tip i wish i had, plan out the wires and airflow before you start putting everything in, helps later on
I don't know...why should I go for an Antec 900? haha. I have no idea what the differences are, except that the 900 is $20 more expensive. :X
The driver issues between Creative and Vista as far as I know have been fixed...just don't install anything from the driver CDs and DL the vista-specific drivers directly from the Creative website. I'll take a look at the Asus one, though.
Thanks for the tip about the wires. I'll keep that in mind.
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Show nested quote +On March 09 2009 14:20 mahnini wrote:
you don't really need a sound card im sure the mobo has integrated sound but if you want go for it. i would also get a video card with less ram (512mb) if youre using one monitor with 1680x1050 res or less.
also i'm going to go ahead and try to convince you to get a phenom ii 940. the mobo prices might makeup for the cpu price difference but at least the next time you upgrade you won't have to buy another mobo since AM3 cpus are supposed to be backward compatible. if you won't be upgrading for a long time just go with the q9550. Could you elaborate on the video card issue? Why would 512MB be superior to a 1GB for single-monitor? I was planning on having a dual-monitor setup, though...a 22" at that res and a 15" at...something smaller, lol. I'm not planning on upgrading the CPU...in addition, I'm not a huge fan of AMD...:\ Could you go into more detail on that, however? I'm not dead set against AMD...just prefer Intel.
i'm not too keen on the specifics but video card ram generally only affects the resolution that you will be running on since higer res uses more ram. i'm guessing having a dual setup would be a good reason to be buying a 1gb vram card though im not too sure.
the AMD is simply just more bang for buck and provides upgradability in the short-medium term. the intel is the better chip and like i said the mobo price for the AMD would just about even it out (maybe save 20-30 with the AMD) but if you aren't planning on upgrading soon just get the intel.
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On March 09 2009 14:58 mahnini wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2009 14:20 mahnini wrote:
you don't really need a sound card im sure the mobo has integrated sound but if you want go for it. i would also get a video card with less ram (512mb) if youre using one monitor with 1680x1050 res or less.
also i'm going to go ahead and try to convince you to get a phenom ii 940. the mobo prices might makeup for the cpu price difference but at least the next time you upgrade you won't have to buy another mobo since AM3 cpus are supposed to be backward compatible. if you won't be upgrading for a long time just go with the q9550. Could you elaborate on the video card issue? Why would 512MB be superior to a 1GB for single-monitor? I was planning on having a dual-monitor setup, though...a 22" at that res and a 15" at...something smaller, lol. I'm not planning on upgrading the CPU...in addition, I'm not a huge fan of AMD...:\ Could you go into more detail on that, however? I'm not dead set against AMD...just prefer Intel. i'm not too keen on the specifics but video card ram generally only affects the resolution that you will be running on since higer res uses more ram. i'm guessing having a dual setup would be a good reason to be buying a 1gb vram card though im not too sure. the AMD is simply just more bang for buck and provides upgradability in the short-medium term. the intel is the better chip and like i said the mobo price for the AMD would just about even it out (maybe save 20-30 with the AMD) but if you aren't planning on upgrading soon just get the intel.
Ah, I see.
I'm fairly hardware illiterate, so upgrading CPUs sounds intimidating to me...yeah. I'm not planning on doing anything like that as a direct result.
lol.
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On March 09 2009 14:51 PH wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2009 14:51 PH wrote:On March 09 2009 14:14 Bjebis wrote:
-Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 Yorkfield 2.83GHz LGA 775 95W Quad-Core Processor Model BX80569Q9550
-GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard
I'm currently Using this CPU and mother board but with the HIS Radeon 4870x2. I can say confidently that these all work really well together, but with some newer games i have had some trouble, especially GTA 4. What problems were you having?
It was with the frame rate, even at low resolutions the frames would be slow untill the Video memory filled and the game crashed. Ive also had memory leak problems with, mirrors edge, far cry 2 (Later Patched) Spore and fallout 3. Although GTA 4 was by far the worst examples of the issues.
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T.O.P.
Hong Kong4685 Posts
On March 09 2009 14:30 thunk wrote:
I haven't done computer research in a long time but I thought ATI cards were being destroyed in benchmark tests by comparable Nvidia cards.
Since ATI introduced the 4000 series, the price and performance crown has been given to ATI. I personally like ATI better because it displays truer colors.
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On March 09 2009 15:04 Bjebis wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2009 14:51 PH wrote:On March 09 2009 14:51 PH wrote:On March 09 2009 14:14 Bjebis wrote:
-Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 Yorkfield 2.83GHz LGA 775 95W Quad-Core Processor Model BX80569Q9550
-GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard
I'm currently Using this CPU and mother board but with the HIS Radeon 4870x2. I can say confidently that these all work really well together, but with some newer games i have had some trouble, especially GTA 4. What problems were you having? It was with the frame rate, even at low resolutions the frames would be slow untill the Video memory filled and the game crashed. Ive also had memory leak problems with, mirrors edge, far cry 2 (Later Patched) Spore and fallout 3. Although GTA 4 was by far the worst examples of the issues.
Is this a hardware issue, or an issue with the games? I'm assuming with the games, since you said that a patch fixed it for farcry 2.
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On March 09 2009 15:08 PH wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2009 15:04 Bjebis wrote:On March 09 2009 14:51 PH wrote:On March 09 2009 14:51 PH wrote:On March 09 2009 14:14 Bjebis wrote:
-Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 Yorkfield 2.83GHz LGA 775 95W Quad-Core Processor Model BX80569Q9550
-GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard
I'm currently Using this CPU and mother board but with the HIS Radeon 4870x2. I can say confidently that these all work really well together, but with some newer games i have had some trouble, especially GTA 4. What problems were you having? It was with the frame rate, even at low resolutions the frames would be slow untill the Video memory filled and the game crashed. Ive also had memory leak problems with, mirrors edge, far cry 2 (Later Patched) Spore and fallout 3. Although GTA 4 was by far the worst examples of the issues. Is this a hardware issue, or an issue with the games? I'm assuming with the games, since you said that a patch fixed it for farcry 2.
Yes it is generally an issue with the games, but GTA 4 has been out for some time now, and the problem is yet to be fixed. I have long given up waiting for patches and just play the games in their impared state, remembering to save alot.
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EPT
