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When using this resource, please read FragKrag's opening post. The Tech Support forum regulars have helped create countless of desktop systems without any compensation. The least you can do is provide all of the information required for them to help you properly. |
On November 20 2010 07:01 Skrillex wrote:Show nested quote +On July 21 2010 11:35 FragKrag wrote:
1920x1200
GTX 470
HD 5850
HD 6870
HD 6850
GTX 460 1GB
GTX 460 768MB
HD 4890
HD 4870
GTS 450
HD 5770
1680x1050
HD 6850
HD 4870
GTS 450
HD 5770
GTS 250
HD 4850
I have an Intel Q8400 quad core at 2.66 with the GTX 460 1gb displaying on a 1680x1050 monitor (I think its a 20"), currently running sc2 all graphics at ultra around 60 / 70 fps, would I benefit getting a bigger monitor like a 24" or it would be impossible to run everything at ultra? I see that the GTX 460 1gb is under the 1920 x 1200 what screen resolution is that?
Your 460 would be fine at 1080p but might be bottlenecked somewhat by your CPU.
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Ooh ok Thank you for the replies.
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On November 20 2010 07:08 deconduo wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2010 07:01 Skrillex wrote:On July 21 2010 11:35 FragKrag wrote:
1920x1200
GTX 470
HD 5850
HD 6870
HD 6850
GTX 460 1GB
GTX 460 768MB
HD 4890
HD 4870
GTS 450
HD 5770
1680x1050
HD 6850
HD 4870
GTS 450
HD 5770
GTS 250
HD 4850
I have an Intel Q8400 quad core at 2.66 with the GTX 460 1gb displaying on a 1680x1050 monitor (I think its a 20"), currently running sc2 all graphics at ultra around 60 / 70 fps, would I benefit getting a bigger monitor like a 24" or it would be impossible to run everything at ultra? I see that the GTX 460 1gb is under the 1920 x 1200 what screen resolution is that? Your 460 would be fine at 1080p but might be bottlenecked somewhat by your CPU.
So I would have to run it at a little lower setting to be ok?
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leomon
Canada169 Posts
Can anyone pick apart my system? Any suggestions on what to change? My requirements were on the previous page.
+ Show Spoiler +
If possible, try to not go TOO over budget with changes. Right now, I'm not very certain on the case and power supply. Would 430W be enough? I don't plan on overclocking for awhile, but I am interested in it. What about the case? Any good (cheap) suggestions? Would overheating be an issue?
Also, I got a few general questions:
1) Do I need to get a wireless network card in order to gain access to wireless internet? The computer won't be in range of the home router, so I need to use wireless.
2) Can I use an old DVD-drive in my new system? I got one of these lying around: Here. I'll really only be using it to install Window 7, and not much else.
3) Does NCIX Canada have a black friday sale? If yes, should I wait on some of these parts and check the prices on a few of them? Some of the parts I just listed are weekly offers, so their prices will go back up next week.
Many thanks in advance!
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@ leomon
build looks good. If you live in Toronto or Vancouver. You can go buy that PSU in store for $19 AMIR.
1) yes, you will need to purchase a wireless network card if you want wireless.
2) yes.
3) yes, NCIX has a black friday sale and cyber monday sale every year. Their next weekly sale prior to black friday will start on Wednesday.
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For the record, the 430CX is really more like a 380W PSU with the wrong label, though it's a decent budget unit for 380W. It only has 336W max capacity on +12V, so theoretically if you were to overclock the CPU and GPU, you could reach or get close to that limit if you're intentionally trying to max out power consumption.
In terms of cable management and airflow, the NZXT Gamma is a popular budget option. If heating ever becomes a concern, you can easily add a few more fans.
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I have a request from you guys. Christmas is coming up and I'm looking to upgrade my wife's computer from scratch. I don't know lick about pieces and their correlations to each other and what makes what work, but her computer is old as hell. All she does with it is watch anime and play WoW so I'm looking to replace it for Xmas (thats the timeframe mind you to get the pieces and set it up.
Budget: ~$900, yes I love her.
Resolution? Not too sure what this is... She plays WoW if that's any help. And will be playing the new Cataclysm as a raider so keep that in mind please.
Use: See above.
Upgrade cycle: I think I understand this to be how often I upgrade certain pieces in the computer. Let's go with 2 years.
When: See above.
Overclocking: No.
OS: No, I think I can reuse her Windows Vista cd.
SLI/Xfire: Sounds awesome and I might want to do it so she feels cool. So let's go with a yes unless it goes way over budget. I prefer Nvidia cause that's who I've always used but either or is fine.
There's a Microcenter like 14 miles away. Also Newegg has been useful in the past.
I will probably pay a local guy to set it up cause those wires and hooking the power source correctly screwed me up last time and I almost burnt out my motherboard by screwing it straight to the metal case. Good thing I messed up hooking the power supply to it else I would have.
if you need any more info from me feel free to PM me.
Would love to take advantage of some Black Friday deals there if applicable.
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Dude, just buy her a mac and she will be happy. I say this as some one who's being done this road before.
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Can anyone tell me if this a good deal for a desktop computer please?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883113129
The processor is Athlon II X4 635(2.9GHz), however for that price should I be getting an i5? Which processor is better, the quad core, the i3, or the i5? (what's the order from best to worst from those three?)
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On November 21 2010 14:03 haduken wrote:
Dude, just buy her a mac and she will be happy. I say this as some one who's being done this road before.
Fuck Steve Jobs and Apple. Sorry, they just don't do it for me, for some reason I'm a Windows guy, even have a Zune. lol I love that thing.
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On November 21 2010 14:29 GrayArea wrote:Can anyone tell me if this a good deal for a desktop computer please? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883113129The processor is Athlon II X4 635(2.9GHz), however for that price should I be getting an i5? Which processor is better, the quad core, the i3, or the i5? (what's the order from best to worst from those three?)
Its okay for that price but you can probably get an i3 540 with board for similar pricing.
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On November 21 2010 14:03 haduken wrote:
Dude, just buy her a mac and she will be happy. I say this as some one who's being done this road before.
She plays WoW, she's probably gonna want windows and already knows her way around it.
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On November 21 2010 12:51 Kakera wrote:
I have a request from you guys. Christmas is coming up and I'm looking to upgrade my wife's computer from scratch. I don't know lick about pieces and their correlations to each other and what makes what work, but her computer is old as hell. All she does with it is watch anime and play WoW so I'm looking to replace it for Xmas (thats the timeframe mind you to get the pieces and set it up.
Budget: ~$900, yes I love her.
Resolution? Not too sure what this is... She plays WoW if that's any help. And will be playing the new Cataclysm as a raider so keep that in mind please.
Use: See above.
Upgrade cycle: I think I understand this to be how often I upgrade certain pieces in the computer. Let's go with 2 years.
When: See above.
Overclocking: No.
OS: No, I think I can reuse her Windows Vista cd.
SLI/Xfire: Sounds awesome and I might want to do it so she feels cool. So let's go with a yes unless it goes way over budget. I prefer Nvidia cause that's who I've always used but either or is fine.
There's a Microcenter like 14 miles away. Also Newegg has been useful in the past.
I will probably pay a local guy to set it up cause those wires and hooking the power source correctly screwed me up last time and I almost burnt out my motherboard by screwing it straight to the metal case. Good thing I messed up hooking the power supply to it else I would have.
if you need any more info from me feel free to PM me.
Would love to take advantage of some Black Friday deals there if applicable.
With Black Friday and Cyber Monday coming up, I'm not going to look through newegg for pricing. You'll get a lot of deals and Micro Center already has some amazing deals. Here's a rough idea of what you want:
Intel Core i5 750 ~$200
Gigabyte P55 UD3 or EVGA P55 or any P55 board would do ~$140
EVGA Geforce GTX 460 1GB ~$200
Coolermaster 690ii Basic ~$70
Corsair, Seasonic, or Antec 400-500w PSU ~$60 (get a 600w if you plan on doing SLI in the future)
GSkill, Corsair, Crucial, or Mushkin 2x2GB 1333MHz DDR3 ~$50
any DVD drive $20
OCZ Vertex 2 60gb $100
Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB $90
Windows 7 $100
Without Windows 7, this is around $900. With micro center and black friday, this will probably end up being ~$700.
The SSD (OCZ Vertex 2) will reduce WoW zone load times in half and help with loading the models when entering dalaran. She'll thank you a lot -.^
You'll want to get her Windows 7 since it's a lot better than Vista but that will put you over budget.
The 2TB HDD is only necessary if she downloads anime or uses fraps or takes a lot of screenshots in WoW.
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+ Show Spoiler +On November 21 2010 15:02 skyR wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2010 12:51 Kakera wrote:
I have a request from you guys. Christmas is coming up and I'm looking to upgrade my wife's computer from scratch. I don't know lick about pieces and their correlations to each other and what makes what work, but her computer is old as hell. All she does with it is watch anime and play WoW so I'm looking to replace it for Xmas (thats the timeframe mind you to get the pieces and set it up.
Budget: ~$900, yes I love her.
Resolution? Not too sure what this is... She plays WoW if that's any help. And will be playing the new Cataclysm as a raider so keep that in mind please.
Use: See above.
Upgrade cycle: I think I understand this to be how often I upgrade certain pieces in the computer. Let's go with 2 years.
When: See above.
Overclocking: No.
OS: No, I think I can reuse her Windows Vista cd.
SLI/Xfire: Sounds awesome and I might want to do it so she feels cool. So let's go with a yes unless it goes way over budget. I prefer Nvidia cause that's who I've always used but either or is fine.
There's a Microcenter like 14 miles away. Also Newegg has been useful in the past.
I will probably pay a local guy to set it up cause those wires and hooking the power source correctly screwed me up last time and I almost burnt out my motherboard by screwing it straight to the metal case. Good thing I messed up hooking the power supply to it else I would have.
if you need any more info from me feel free to PM me.
Would love to take advantage of some Black Friday deals there if applicable. With Black Friday and Cyber Monday coming up, I'm not going to look through newegg for pricing. You'll get a lot of deals and Micro Center already has some amazing deals. Here's a rough idea of what you want: Intel Core i5 750 ~$200 Gigabyte P55 UD3 or EVGA P55 or any P55 board would do ~$140 EVGA Geforce GTX 460 1GB ~$200 Coolermaster 690ii Basic ~$70 Corsair, Seasonic, or Antec 400-500w PSU ~$60 (get a 600w if you plan on doing SLI in the future) GSkill, Corsair, Crucial, or Mushkin 2x2GB 1333MHz DDR3 ~$50 any DVD drive $20 OCZ Vertex 2 60gb $100 Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB $90 Windows 7 $100 Without Windows 7, this is around $900. With micro center and black friday, this will probably end up being ~$700. The SSD (OCZ Vertex 2) will reduce WoW zone load times in half and help with loading the models when entering dalaran. She'll thank you a lot -.^ You'll want to get her Windows 7 since it's a lot better than Vista but that will put you over budget. The 2TB HDD is only necessary if she downloads anime or uses fraps or takes a lot of screenshots in WoW.
Thanks a lot. If anyone feels they have something to contribute feel free, thanks for giving me somewhere to start if not the entire thing. I'll start looking for deals. Any idea on cases? When I made mine the power source was too large for the slot given it so I had to take out a fan, which may or may not have contributed to my RAM constantly burning out. Half the reason was because it was Ballistix and had a history of burning out but seriously 3 sticks of RAM burning out in 8 months time is unreal isn't it?
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On November 21 2010 10:50 leomon wrote:2) Can I use an old DVD-drive in my new system? I got one of these lying around: Here. I'll really only be using it to install Window 7, and not much else. Many thanks in advance!
If you could afford to shell out $20 for a new SATA dvd drive it would be nice to have around, I hate IDE cables, and how much space they take up. Having SATA and IDE all wrapped up in a small case can't be fun.
This is more of "luxury", but if you are really only using it for installing windows 7, you can just install windows then take out the cable after haha.
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On November 21 2010 15:36 Kakera wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On November 21 2010 15:02 skyR wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2010 12:51 Kakera wrote:
I have a request from you guys. Christmas is coming up and I'm looking to upgrade my wife's computer from scratch. I don't know lick about pieces and their correlations to each other and what makes what work, but her computer is old as hell. All she does with it is watch anime and play WoW so I'm looking to replace it for Xmas (thats the timeframe mind you to get the pieces and set it up.
Budget: ~$900, yes I love her.
Resolution? Not too sure what this is... She plays WoW if that's any help. And will be playing the new Cataclysm as a raider so keep that in mind please.
Use: See above.
Upgrade cycle: I think I understand this to be how often I upgrade certain pieces in the computer. Let's go with 2 years.
When: See above.
Overclocking: No.
OS: No, I think I can reuse her Windows Vista cd.
SLI/Xfire: Sounds awesome and I might want to do it so she feels cool. So let's go with a yes unless it goes way over budget. I prefer Nvidia cause that's who I've always used but either or is fine.
There's a Microcenter like 14 miles away. Also Newegg has been useful in the past.
I will probably pay a local guy to set it up cause those wires and hooking the power source correctly screwed me up last time and I almost burnt out my motherboard by screwing it straight to the metal case. Good thing I messed up hooking the power supply to it else I would have.
if you need any more info from me feel free to PM me.
Would love to take advantage of some Black Friday deals there if applicable. With Black Friday and Cyber Monday coming up, I'm not going to look through newegg for pricing. You'll get a lot of deals and Micro Center already has some amazing deals. Here's a rough idea of what you want: Intel Core i5 750 ~$200 Gigabyte P55 UD3 or EVGA P55 or any P55 board would do ~$140 EVGA Geforce GTX 460 1GB ~$200 Coolermaster 690ii Basic ~$70 Corsair, Seasonic, or Antec 400-500w PSU ~$60 (get a 600w if you plan on doing SLI in the future) GSkill, Corsair, Crucial, or Mushkin 2x2GB 1333MHz DDR3 ~$50 any DVD drive $20 OCZ Vertex 2 60gb $100 Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB $90 Windows 7 $100 Without Windows 7, this is around $900. With micro center and black friday, this will probably end up being ~$700. The SSD (OCZ Vertex 2) will reduce WoW zone load times in half and help with loading the models when entering dalaran. She'll thank you a lot -.^ You'll want to get her Windows 7 since it's a lot better than Vista but that will put you over budget. The 2TB HDD is only necessary if she downloads anime or uses fraps or takes a lot of screenshots in WoW. Thanks a lot. If anyone feels they have something to contribute feel free, thanks for giving me somewhere to start if not the entire thing. I'll start looking for deals. Any idea on cases? When I made mine the power source was too large for the slot given it so I had to take out a fan, which may or may not have contributed to my RAM constantly burning out. Half the reason was because it was Ballistix and had a history of burning out but seriously 3 sticks of RAM burning out in 8 months time is unreal isn't it?
my list included a case =p the Coolermaster 690ii Basic. If you don't like the look of it, you can look into other cases like the Coolermaster Centurion 5, Elite 310, HAF 912, or Antec 300. Or if you want an aluminum case, you can look at Lian Li but they're going to be more expensive.
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On November 21 2010 14:29 GrayArea wrote:Can anyone tell me if this a good deal for a desktop computer please? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883113129The processor is Athlon II X4 635(2.9GHz), however for that price should I be getting an i5? Which processor is better, the quad core, the i3, or the i5? (what's the order from best to worst from those three?)
It depends on what you're running. Also, there are two lines of Core i5 processors, the i5-6xx and i5-7xx. The i5-6xx are dual cores that are pretty much the same as the i3-5xx, except that they have a very slightly higher clock speed and a couple more features that aren't relevant to most all users. Those are usually pretty terrible values compared to the i3-5xx, since they're significantly more expensive for a small performance increase. The i5-7xx are quad cores, so that's completely different.
For well-threaded workloads (video encoding, heavy virtual machine usage, some computations, zip/unzip, etc.) :
Core i5-7xx > Athlon II X4 > Core i3-5xx
For most applications including most games:
Core i5-7xx > Core i3-5xx > Athlon II X4
See here for relevant benchmarks.
@Kakera: I think skyR's suggestions are fine, but those specs are pretty overkill for WoW. Along those lines, SLI or Crossfire would be even more overkill and a waste. TBH if you're spending $900, I'd consider spending part of the budget on upgrading peripherals, a new monitor, or a larger (more capacity) SSD. Someone's more likely to notice changes there over an incremental upgrade in performance--say getting a new computer 4x faster than before over one that's only 3x faster or whatever.
You can save money on some parts by downgrading to a AMD Phenom II X4 and corresponding AM3 socket motherboard, and using a GTS 450 or GTX 460 768MB instead of the GTX 460 1GB. That would still be plenty powerful.
Here is a list of decent PSUs. Note that a few of the lower-wattage ones listed are not standard ATX size. You want one that's standard ATX size.
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On November 21 2010 15:42 skyR wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2010 15:36 Kakera wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On November 21 2010 15:02 skyR wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2010 12:51 Kakera wrote:
I have a request from you guys. Christmas is coming up and I'm looking to upgrade my wife's computer from scratch. I don't know lick about pieces and their correlations to each other and what makes what work, but her computer is old as hell. All she does with it is watch anime and play WoW so I'm looking to replace it for Xmas (thats the timeframe mind you to get the pieces and set it up.
Budget: ~$900, yes I love her.
Resolution? Not too sure what this is... She plays WoW if that's any help. And will be playing the new Cataclysm as a raider so keep that in mind please.
Use: See above.
Upgrade cycle: I think I understand this to be how often I upgrade certain pieces in the computer. Let's go with 2 years.
When: See above.
Overclocking: No.
OS: No, I think I can reuse her Windows Vista cd.
SLI/Xfire: Sounds awesome and I might want to do it so she feels cool. So let's go with a yes unless it goes way over budget. I prefer Nvidia cause that's who I've always used but either or is fine.
There's a Microcenter like 14 miles away. Also Newegg has been useful in the past.
I will probably pay a local guy to set it up cause those wires and hooking the power source correctly screwed me up last time and I almost burnt out my motherboard by screwing it straight to the metal case. Good thing I messed up hooking the power supply to it else I would have.
if you need any more info from me feel free to PM me.
Would love to take advantage of some Black Friday deals there if applicable. With Black Friday and Cyber Monday coming up, I'm not going to look through newegg for pricing. You'll get a lot of deals and Micro Center already has some amazing deals. Here's a rough idea of what you want: Intel Core i5 750 ~$200 Gigabyte P55 UD3 or EVGA P55 or any P55 board would do ~$140 EVGA Geforce GTX 460 1GB ~$200 Coolermaster 690ii Basic ~$70 Corsair, Seasonic, or Antec 400-500w PSU ~$60 (get a 600w if you plan on doing SLI in the future) GSkill, Corsair, Crucial, or Mushkin 2x2GB 1333MHz DDR3 ~$50 any DVD drive $20 OCZ Vertex 2 60gb $100 Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB $90 Windows 7 $100 Without Windows 7, this is around $900. With micro center and black friday, this will probably end up being ~$700. The SSD (OCZ Vertex 2) will reduce WoW zone load times in half and help with loading the models when entering dalaran. She'll thank you a lot -.^ You'll want to get her Windows 7 since it's a lot better than Vista but that will put you over budget. The 2TB HDD is only necessary if she downloads anime or uses fraps or takes a lot of screenshots in WoW. Thanks a lot. If anyone feels they have something to contribute feel free, thanks for giving me somewhere to start if not the entire thing. I'll start looking for deals. Any idea on cases? When I made mine the power source was too large for the slot given it so I had to take out a fan, which may or may not have contributed to my RAM constantly burning out. Half the reason was because it was Ballistix and had a history of burning out but seriously 3 sticks of RAM burning out in 8 months time is unreal isn't it? my list included a case =p the Coolermaster 690ii Basic. If you don't like the look of it, you can look into other cases like the Coolermaster Centurion 5, Elite 310, HAF 912, or Antec 300. Or if you want an aluminum case, you can look at Lian Li but they're going to be more expensive.
Ahh sorry didn't recognize it for that, btw whats the diff between the i5 750 and the 760?
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On November 21 2010 16:03 Kakera wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2010 15:42 skyR wrote:On November 21 2010 15:36 Kakera wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On November 21 2010 15:02 skyR wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2010 12:51 Kakera wrote:
I have a request from you guys. Christmas is coming up and I'm looking to upgrade my wife's computer from scratch. I don't know lick about pieces and their correlations to each other and what makes what work, but her computer is old as hell. All she does with it is watch anime and play WoW so I'm looking to replace it for Xmas (thats the timeframe mind you to get the pieces and set it up.
Budget: ~$900, yes I love her.
Resolution? Not too sure what this is... She plays WoW if that's any help. And will be playing the new Cataclysm as a raider so keep that in mind please.
Use: See above.
Upgrade cycle: I think I understand this to be how often I upgrade certain pieces in the computer. Let's go with 2 years.
When: See above.
Overclocking: No.
OS: No, I think I can reuse her Windows Vista cd.
SLI/Xfire: Sounds awesome and I might want to do it so she feels cool. So let's go with a yes unless it goes way over budget. I prefer Nvidia cause that's who I've always used but either or is fine.
There's a Microcenter like 14 miles away. Also Newegg has been useful in the past.
I will probably pay a local guy to set it up cause those wires and hooking the power source correctly screwed me up last time and I almost burnt out my motherboard by screwing it straight to the metal case. Good thing I messed up hooking the power supply to it else I would have.
if you need any more info from me feel free to PM me.
Would love to take advantage of some Black Friday deals there if applicable. With Black Friday and Cyber Monday coming up, I'm not going to look through newegg for pricing. You'll get a lot of deals and Micro Center already has some amazing deals. Here's a rough idea of what you want: Intel Core i5 750 ~$200 Gigabyte P55 UD3 or EVGA P55 or any P55 board would do ~$140 EVGA Geforce GTX 460 1GB ~$200 Coolermaster 690ii Basic ~$70 Corsair, Seasonic, or Antec 400-500w PSU ~$60 (get a 600w if you plan on doing SLI in the future) GSkill, Corsair, Crucial, or Mushkin 2x2GB 1333MHz DDR3 ~$50 any DVD drive $20 OCZ Vertex 2 60gb $100 Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB $90 Windows 7 $100 Without Windows 7, this is around $900. With micro center and black friday, this will probably end up being ~$700. The SSD (OCZ Vertex 2) will reduce WoW zone load times in half and help with loading the models when entering dalaran. She'll thank you a lot -.^ You'll want to get her Windows 7 since it's a lot better than Vista but that will put you over budget. The 2TB HDD is only necessary if she downloads anime or uses fraps or takes a lot of screenshots in WoW. Thanks a lot. If anyone feels they have something to contribute feel free, thanks for giving me somewhere to start if not the entire thing. I'll start looking for deals. Any idea on cases? When I made mine the power source was too large for the slot given it so I had to take out a fan, which may or may not have contributed to my RAM constantly burning out. Half the reason was because it was Ballistix and had a history of burning out but seriously 3 sticks of RAM burning out in 8 months time is unreal isn't it? my list included a case =p the Coolermaster 690ii Basic. If you don't like the look of it, you can look into other cases like the Coolermaster Centurion 5, Elite 310, HAF 912, or Antec 300. Or if you want an aluminum case, you can look at Lian Li but they're going to be more expensive. Ahh sorry didn't recognize it for that, btw whats the diff between the i5 750 and the 760?
t's just faster. It has a higher multiplier but you aren't overclocking so that doesn't really matter. Performance difference between the two won't be noticeable at all except when running benchmarks.
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I rather spent the extra $4 for the 760, but I will OC so meh...
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EPT
