EPTSo I recommend putting a lot of that budget into a new monitor if you are still set on spending over $1000. Or spending some of the budget on a new peripheral or setups, like desk chairs or mouse and keyboard.
Computer Build Resource Thread - Page 1018
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Medrea
10003 Posts
So I recommend putting a lot of that budget into a new monitor if you are still set on spending over $1000. Or spending some of the budget on a new peripheral or setups, like desk chairs or mouse and keyboard. | ||
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Myrmidon
United States9452 Posts
On April 08 2012 07:32 Medrea wrote: Spending $1200 on a machine your not going to overclock is silly, and not even responsibly possible. Closer to $700. So I recommend putting a lot of that budget into a new monitor if you are still set on spending over $1000. Or spending some of the budget on a new peripheral or setups, like desk chairs or mouse and keyboard. Agreed. (Also agreed about $50 for that mobo being a good deal.) Prices and products available will change between now and May-July, so you may as well ask again when you're buying. You'll pretty much want a Ivy Bridge quad core, probably a 7 series chipset motherboard, and probably some kind of HD 78xx series or whatever Nvidia has at the time for the graphics card, and then mostly the same stuff you can find today. | ||
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Shauni
4077 Posts
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Medrea
10003 Posts
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JingleHell
United States11308 Posts
Hell, I page to my SSD. It's almost as fast as paging to a RAMdisk. | ||
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Chocobo
United States1108 Posts
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811352013 | ||
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JingleHell
United States11308 Posts
On April 08 2012 13:06 Chocobo wrote: Is it worth spending $80 on this computer case? It looks nice but I hate spending that much, I'm really tight with my money... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811352013 Pretty quality case, IIRC, but I'm not sure how great the price is. skyR is a fan of their stuff though, and he doesn't tend to suggest shit. | ||
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Mordanis
United States893 Posts
Thanks everyone, you are all amazing ^^ Edit:I also don't know anything about PSUs.......... -________- | ||
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Myrmidon
United States9452 Posts
On April 08 2012 12:36 Shauni wrote: when they list the modern 25nm ssds have about 3000 write cycles, isn't that dangerously low? Say you use it as an intensive disk for torrent (say 20gb write a day?), wouldn't they die quickly? I've tried to read up a bit on this but a lot of conflicting information. Some say that since Sandforce uses leveling technology and real time compression the problem isn't significant, but others recommend you not to use 25nm if you're going to write a lot to it. Apparently older 50nm disks have a lot longer lifespan since die shrink is a sad tale for SSD and only used to cheapen manufacturing process. It seems like enterprise market has acknowledged this, they seem to use disks with a lot higher write cycle lifespan than the current generation. Are there any alternative, or better buy if you want to be safe with the write cycles? Maybe I'm just worrying needlessly. Most data people get from torrents can't be compressed by the SandForce controller since it's already compressed into a zip/rar/7z file or is some kind of media file that contains compressed video and/or audio. The reason why most enterprise drives use SLC NAND with higher reliability, is that they're intended for workloads that involve many many many more writes than consumer ones do, and downtime can be really costly so they're willing to pay lots extra for a little lower failure rates. Actually in some server or enterprise environments, they just use consumer-level SSDs, if the demands aren't that high. The reality is that most flash rated for 3000 cycles can exceed 3000 cycles, there's spare flash in the drive, and there's reasonably-robust ECC implemented, so running out of cycles isn't an issue for consumers unless you're doing really nasty stuff to it nonstop. Something else is going to fail before you run out of writes, which for most people will theoretically take some 10-100 years or more (it'll probably die for other reasons before then). A lot of people way overreact about SSD flash endurance in general. That said, as Medrea suggests, why would you be saving large chunks of data to the SSD anyway? You're not going to be storing it there, right? You may as well just have the target directory be on the mechanical storage you'll be leaving it on. On April 08 2012 13:14 JingleHell wrote: Pretty quality case, IIRC, but I'm not sure how great the price is. skyR is a fan of their stuff though, and he doesn't tend to suggest shit. $80 is definitely better than typical ($100-110) for Fractal Design Define R3, and that's the newer version with USB3 ports in front too. At that price, it's the cheapest decent noise-dampening case out there. On April 08 2012 13:58 Mordanis wrote: Hey all, I'm finally getting some money for a new computer, but I'm getting money quite slowly (I'm working 20 hrs a week at $8/hr, and I have $200 car payments per month, need tires, etc.). My plan is to buy just a case, mobo, cpu, and psu to start with, and move the rest over from my current rig. Slowly, I would eventually buy a much better gpu, RAM, HDD, maybe even an SSD, etc. Is this a workable plan? Also, should I wait for May so the Ivy Bridges will come out and either be better for the same price or make the Sandy-Bridges cheaper? Finally, I'm thinking of getting an i3 2100, and I don't know what would be a good mobo for that... Thanks everyone, you are all amazing ^^ Edit:I also don't know anything about PSUs.......... -________- Your plan is fine. Unfortunately the prices won't drop when Ivy Bridge comes, and there won't be Core i3 and lower Ivy Bridge released until later. However, Ivy Bridge performance isn't that much better anyway, so it's not a big deal. As for mobos, you may want to wait a little bit as a cheap newer model could be a decent investment if you think you might be wanting USB3 or SATA3 in the future. Your old RAM is not going to be compatible with modern systems unless it's DDR3, which it probably isn't. There are a lot of okay options for most parts, so usually we don't feel like suggesting all the specifics until you're actually buying, as prices shift around and what's the cheapest decent thing now won't necessarily be the cheapest decent thing later. | ||
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Mordanis
United States893 Posts
+ Show Spoiler [Template From OP] + What is your budget? $350 for CPU, RAM, mobo, case, PSU What is your resolution? Currently 1440x900, but in the future I am looking to upgrade to at least 1920x1080 What are you using it for? Sc2, the occasional Skyrim, and I'm looking into learning to program in C over the next couple of months, but likely not anything very taxing. What is your upgrade cycle? No idea, but I will probably continually change things around as I get money and time to improve my rig When do you plan on building it? ASAP! I'm dying! I can't handle a budget computer from 2006 anymore! Do you plan on overclocking? ...I'd like to try eventually, but I'm really fixating on a i3 2120 at least to begin with, so if that can I'd love to eventually lightly overclock Do you need an Operating System? Eventually I will buy Win7 Student for this rig, but for now I will be using my old HDD which will still have XP and linux on it. Do you plan to add a second GPU for SLI or Crossfire? I'd like to have this option open to me Where are you buying your parts from? I live in the US, so probably Newegg and Fry's Electronics + Show Spoiler [What I'm Looking at Right Now] + http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811133189 Case for $80. I know this is a bit steep, but I am really tired of my ridiculous case. One can only stand a slim Dell for so long before needing some vulgarity in aesthetics :D http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115077 i3 2120 for $127. IDK if it can be overclocked, but if it can I'd like to maybe lightly overclock. The only game I play much is SC2 and the occasional bit of Skyrim, and I don't edit videos or anything so I have a feeling a quad core would be overkill http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138319 Literally a stab in the dark. $80 mobo. IDK if this is much more than I would be using to max SC2 (eventually) and maybe Skyrim, but it seems like it has some pretty good features for its price. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182200 Even more of a blind choice. All I can tell is that it seems like a good price for 630W, and I recognize the brand. Finally http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231277 Again, IDK if its not a good deal, but $30 for 4 gigs of memory seems fair for a good name. I'm pretty sure DDR3 1600 is quite quick, but I'm not very familiar with RAM. PS You people rule :D | ||
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skyR
Canada13817 Posts
On April 08 2012 16:09 Mordanis wrote:+ Show Spoiler + Ok, so I could begin buying tomorrow or the next day (IDK exactly when my paycheck will come in...) My essential plan is to have build a computer that will eventually be amazing, but since I can't afford everything yet, I'd rather get what I need to have a mostly new rig now, and reuse my HDD, video card, cd drive. Later I will replace those and maybe buy a SSD and get a beautiful monitor. + Show Spoiler [Template From OP] + What is your budget? $350 for CPU, RAM, mobo, case, PSU What is your resolution? Currently 1440x900, but in the future I am looking to upgrade to at least 1920x1080 What are you using it for? Sc2, the occasional Skyrim, and I'm looking into learning to program in C over the next couple of months, but likely not anything very taxing. What is your upgrade cycle? No idea, but I will probably continually change things around as I get money and time to improve my rig When do you plan on building it? ASAP! I'm dying! I can't handle a budget computer from 2006 anymore! Do you plan on overclocking? ...I'd like to try eventually, but I'm really fixating on a i3 2120 at least to begin with, so if that can I'd love to eventually lightly overclock Do you need an Operating System? Eventually I will buy Win7 Student for this rig, but for now I will be using my old HDD which will still have XP and linux on it. Do you plan to add a second GPU for SLI or Crossfire? I'd like to have this option open to me Where are you buying your parts from? I live in the US, so probably Newegg and Fry's Electronics + Show Spoiler [What I'm Looking at Right Now] + http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811133189 Case for $80. I know this is a bit steep, but I am really tired of my ridiculous case. One can only stand a slim Dell for so long before needing some vulgarity in aesthetics :D http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115077 i3 2120 for $127. IDK if it can be overclocked, but if it can I'd like to maybe lightly overclock. The only game I play much is SC2 and the occasional bit of Skyrim, and I don't edit videos or anything so I have a feeling a quad core would be overkill http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138319 Literally a stab in the dark. $80 mobo. IDK if this is much more than I would be using to max SC2 (eventually) and maybe Skyrim, but it seems like it has some pretty good features for its price. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182200 Even more of a blind choice. All I can tell is that it seems like a good price for 630W, and I recognize the brand. Finally http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231277 Again, IDK if its not a good deal, but $30 for 4 gigs of memory seems fair for a good name. I'm pretty sure DDR3 1600 is quite quick, but I'm not very familiar with RAM. PS You people rule :D That case is $105 with a $25 mail in rebate. You do realize mail in rebates aren't instant discounts right? It needs to be filled out, mailed, approved, processed, and mailed back to you - this process takes months. And that case isn't even good, it's absolute garbage. Besides Thermaltake's flagship case, they pretty much don't make any cases worth mentioning. Fractal Design Definen R3 for $80, sale ends today is much better: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811352013 The core i3 2120 cannot be overclocked, at least not with the multiplier and I wouldn't recommend overclocking the bus just to attain ~100MHz. Motherboard has nothing to do with your FPS. Rosewill Green is okay but Earthwatts 650 for the same price is better: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371044 4gb for $30 is severely overpriced. Memory is the least of your concerns. | ||
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Mordanis
United States893 Posts
So will that motherboard be a good base to slowly expand into? I'm a bit afraid that it may be overkill just based on my cpu choice and the fact that I will almost certainly not crossfire. Also I'm kind of looking for a less... understated case. That being said, that Fractal Define R3 might look really nice with a TL sticker on it. Anyways, I'll probably be able to make much better decisions tomorrow morning. | ||
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skyR
Canada13817 Posts
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Vagrant
Canada8 Posts
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Ficetool
Germany165 Posts
Myrmidon the list you posted, was it meant for me? if yes: How important is the monitor with the rest of the setup? Currently I am using a big (but cheap no name product from a supermarket. Does it make sense to replace it?) Medrea: In case that post was meant for me, overclocking only increases the power of your setup even further, doesn't it? Why is it so important to overclock a setup which already IS very powerful? | ||
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Shauni
4077 Posts
On April 08 2012 14:17 Myrmidon wrote: Most data people get from torrents can't be compressed by the SandForce controller since it's already compressed into a zip/rar/7z file or is some kind of media file that contains compressed video and/or audio. The reason why most enterprise drives use SLC NAND with higher reliability, is that they're intended for workloads that involve many many many more writes than consumer ones do, and downtime can be really costly so they're willing to pay lots extra for a little lower failure rates. Actually in some server or enterprise environments, they just use consumer-level SSDs, if the demands aren't that high. The reality is that most flash rated for 3000 cycles can exceed 3000 cycles, there's spare flash in the drive, and there's reasonably-robust ECC implemented, so running out of cycles isn't an issue for consumers unless you're doing really nasty stuff to it nonstop. Something else is going to fail before you run out of writes, which for most people will theoretically take some 10-100 years or more (it'll probably die for other reasons before then). A lot of people way overreact about SSD flash endurance in general. That said, as Medrea suggests, why would you be saving large chunks of data to the SSD anyway? You're not going to be storing it there, right? You may as well just have the target directory be on the mechanical storage you'll be leaving it on. I was planning on only using a couple of 240gb ssds with no mechanical drive. Maybe add a NAS stored somewhere if i notice the storage isnt enough but like i said before im building a silent computer. I don't see the point of having a mechanical storage, flash based storage is the future. The Kingston SSDNow V+100 for example can be found very cheap, but apparently it has forced garbage collection which also seem to kill the disk faster. I found a lot of testing in this thread but it's difficult to draw any conclusions with so many confusing graphs. It seems like generally newer 25nm units fail a little beyond 200 tebibytes, but that is for 60gb units. | ||
Womwomwom
5930 Posts
XXX is the future is only relevant when the technology is overwhelmingly better than the technology it is replacing and SSDs are not that. Mechanical drives are cheap, are able to hold a lot of files, and perform just as well as SSDs for tasks that require zero read/write performance (eg. movies, pictures, documents, games that don't have long load times). An SSD offers nothing a mechanical drive doesn't when it comes to light storage, in fact its actually worse since you are actually worrying about write longevity. | ||
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JingleHell
United States11308 Posts
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Shauni
4077 Posts
On April 08 2012 21:10 Womwomwom wrote: That makes no sense whatsoever. Unless you're swimming in cash and want to splurge (even then, get something better like a sound system or a monitor), there is zero reason to only use SSDs. I can't honestly believe you need many hundreds of gigabytes of strong write/read performance...even Chase Jarvis, pro photographer and videographer swimming in cash, only uses SSDs in the field due to their robustness. Even if you want SSDs due to their lack of noise, 5400RPM drives are very quiet inside a case with good hard drive suspension. XXX is the future is only relevant when the technology is overwhelmingly better than the technology it is replacing and SSDs are not that. Mechanical drives are cheap, are able to hold a lot of files, and perform just as well as SSDs for tasks that require zero read/write performance (eg. movies, pictures, documents, games that don't have long load times). An SSD offers nothing a mechanical drive doesn't when it comes to light storage, in fact its actually worse since you are actually worrying about write longevity. 1. Mechanical drives actually suffer more quickly from intensive usage in general, even with the write cycle problem of SSDs. 2. Even if you tell me go buy a 5400rpm drive, they are clearly audible... (annoying sleep wakeup noise, seeking etc) and not silent in contrast to SSD. I'm not a super noise freak but if the rest of the computer is inaudible with no fans masking the noise, it's actually annoying hearing HDD seeks amplified every time you do something. 3. Mechanical drives generate more heat while usually SSDs are very cool. Also less power usage. 4. Mechanical drives need suspension and proper cages due to dying from the slightest fall. SSDs are robust, no moving parts, needs no mounting whatsoever. Also physically smaller, so you can fit more into less space. 5. Increased performance, you're talking about read write performance which like you say, doesn't do that much in a storage drive. But the access times do which is vastly different from a mechanical drive. If your mechanical drive goes into sleep mode (which is very common for those 5400rpm green drives), the access times are seconds apart. If you're browsing pictures or video files, it definitely makes a difference. For example, my 5400rpm (western digital green 1tb) makes a loud noise every time you toggle a new high resolution picture and it takes over 1 second each time you toggle (while if you do it on a modern SSD, it feels instant - 0,1 ms is barely noticeable). How exactly are they worse than mechanical drives? | ||
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JingleHell
United States11308 Posts
On April 08 2012 21:55 Shauni wrote: 1. Mechanical drives actually suffer more quickly from intensive usage in general, even with the write cycle problem. 2. Even if you tell me go buy a 5400rpm drive, they are clearly audible... (annoying sleep wakeup noise, seeking etc) and not silent in contrast to SSD. I'm not a super noise freak but if the rest of the computer is inaudible with no fans masking the noise, it's actually annoying hearing HDD seeks amplified every time you do something. 3. Mechanical drives generate more heat while usually SSDs are very cool. Also less power usage. 4. Mechanical drives need suspension and proper cages due to dying from the slightest fall. SSDs are robust, no moving parts, needs no mounting whatsoever. 5. Increased performance, you're talking about read write performance which like you say, doesn't do that much in a storage drive. But the access times do which is vastly different from a mechanical drive. If your mechanical drive goes into sleep mode (which is very common for those 5400rpm green drives), the access times are seconds apart. If you're browsing pictures or video files, it definitely makes a difference. For example, my 5400rpm (western digital green 1tb) makes a loud noise every time you toggle a new high resolution picture and it takes over 1 second each time you toggle. How exactly are they worse than mechanical drives? You can turn off HDD sleeping in Windows, under advanced power management features. Given the absurdly low amperages used by the things, I don't really consider HDD power draw to be a factor at all, unless we're talking laptop use. Same with the potential for damage to an HDD. Outside a laptop, stop kicking your PC and who gives a shit unless you move it around a lot. Heat from an HDD is fairly low assuming it's mounted well, and noise should be practically nonexistant assuming you've got it mounted properly in a reasonably noise-dampened case. He's suggesting that SSD is worse for some things because the performance increase is pretty much invisible with certain uses, despite costing more per gigabyte and needing to be concerned about write cycles. After all, don't forget that unless you have absurdly high SSD capacity, the massively higher storage caps in HDDs makes the constant re-writing much easier to avoid. | ||
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