Computer Build Resource Thread - Page 1337

Hello all. After trying to keep my lapptop afloat, its become apparent that its time has passed and I need a more reliable PC. Im hoping you all can help me with it.

Budget: About 700-900 USD

Resolution: 1920x1080

Using it for:. Gaming mostly, LoL and SC2. I also listen to a lot of music and use music writing programs, like Guitar Pro and a few others. Also lots of basic Office programs, since im in college.

Upgrade Cycle: about 2 years.

When do you plan on building this?: Within the next month, just waiting on taxes.

Overclocking?: nope!

Need an OS?: nope, got windows 7 already

Need a 2nd GPU for SLI or Crossfire?: Preferably not. :/ maybe in the future if I ever get the urge to stream or something.

Where are you buying parts from?: Bestbuy, newegg, amazon. Just the basic places.


Thank you in advance for any help I hope someone has the time to look at this

I was REALLY worried about installing my new heatsink correctly as I freaked out about it shorting my mobo when I finally came to that nervracking moment of truth, and also had several minor mishaps that make you cringe very hard. Since this is the first heatskink with a backplate I ever installed I simply followed the instruction like a robot and hoped for the best (shouldn't that mean I'm completely safe? ). I then broke off this weird little latch on the mobo that holds the GPU in. It was COMPLETELY different than my old mobo's latch that you just pulled up and away from the gpu to unlatch it, this one slid back and forth...threw me off really badly and I snapped it off on accident. No big deal as the socket is what really matters, so I put my GPU in and screwed it into the case without any other incident.

Then I dropped my screwdriver onto my mobo (from a very low height at least) and almost had a panic attack thinking I just killed it. Then when I went to push down the latch on my CPU I realized it was EVER SO SLIGHTLY out of place and wondered why I had to apply an uncomfortable amount of pressure on it (I could hear metal creaking a bit, which was almost blood curdling). I didn't even see my cpu go down or level out when I moved it, I simply gave it the slightest push with my finger while it was comfortably in the socket already and then the latch went down much more easily. The first thoughts in my head though were: "YOU BENT THE PINS ON YOUR MOBO YOU MORON THATS WHY IT DIDNT GO DOWN RIGHT THE FIRST TIME!!!"

I also talked about cable management in my last post....well when you have 5 SATA cables and fan cables with a mediocre imo cable management case you can only do so much. I stashed as many cables in the HDD bay and in the back of the case as I could, but cable length and the stiffness of them once I started running out of room was very limiting in regards to what positions I could safely contort them into. All in all, I had a lot of little mistakes that had me worried beyond belief, it took about 3 1/2 hours to finish not just installing but double checking all of my cables to make sure they were in correctly ( the tiny ones at the bottom for pwr switches, reset switches and such always confuse me a bit in every build).

But finally, the part you all care about....when I finally hooked it up (without putting the side panel back on for superstition's sake) and hit that power button with sweaty, sore and most of all anxious fingers, my PC..... + Show Spoiler +