EPTComputer Build Resource Thread - Page 1465
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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. | ||
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Belial88
United States5217 Posts
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bode927
United States164 Posts
I switched to a Rosewill capstone since most of the people who reviewed the Seasonic complained about a whining noise. As far as case fans go, does newegg sell something that is decent? I would like to get everything in the same box at the same time. Thanks for your help! | ||
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Cyro
United Kingdom20285 Posts
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Belial88
United States5217 Posts
On April 22 2013 06:15 bode927 wrote: Can you recommend a non liquid cooled CPU cooler or are those the only good ones these days? I'm a total beginner so to be honest ease of use is more important than performance. I'm sure you'll say that it isn't difficult to use but for someone who has never installed one it might be. I switched to a Rosewill capstone since most of the people who reviewed the Seasonic complained about a whining noise. As far as case fans go, does newegg sell something that is decent? I would like to get everything in the same box at the same time. Thanks for your help! A closed loop cooler, like the zalman lq-320, has more in common with an air heatsink, than with 'real' liquid cooling, ie a custom water loop. Zalman, and most closed loop companies, will extend their warranty to damage on other components, so if the .0001% chance there is a leak, they'll send you a check for the total of your system components. It's no longer the days of the H40 or asetek LCLC, so chances of leaks of very, very small, a total non-issue. Generally closed loops are more expensive than similarly performing air coolers, but the zalman lq310/315 are on sale so that's why they are on better deals. Closed loops are actually advertised as being easier to use and install than air heatsinks, that's their main selling point, but they are all extremely easy to install. If you are worried about ease of use a closed loop cooler would be 'easier' to install... but it's all very, very easy to install. Like I've never heard of anyone messing up a heatsink install, they are made very easily these days, marketed towards people who don't know what they are doing. They are foolproof in design. Newegg does sell things that are decent but none of them are cheap, and you dont really need an expensive fan for just a case fan. Also, even if you order everything from newegg, it won't all come in one box because it won't all arrive at the same time. Even if it did, it won't be in the same box... I understand you want things to be easy, but all of these computer component stuff is made these days to be super, super easy. I'm trying to think of what is anymore difficult to install than anything else... maybe ram with super tall heatsinks and a low clearance heatsink but you need really tall ram for that to be an issue (like clearly obnoxiously tall ram), and you can just move up the fan on most heatsinks, and i recommended a closed loop cooler to you so it's not an issue anyways. hyper 212+ is the only lower end heatsink that's okay for just $19 but the zalman lq310/315 midrange heatsinks are more appropriate for a high end build, and are a way better value at $34/39AR. The macho is only cheap in europe. Right now there's currently no high end heatsink on sale, but that'll probably change in a day. | ||
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Arnstein
Norway3381 Posts
On April 22 2013 00:41 Cyro wrote: Don't worry, i do it too. It's the only piece of hardware i typo, and i did it like three times in the space of 2-4 days in replies on TL.. it's cursed =P I gave you an answer, what more do you want? I mean, any more specific questions from you? Not sure what to add. Well, it sounded from you like there's no difference, but before I asked here, I googled it, and it seems like there is quite a difference because the XT uses the Tahiti architecture. I still haven't found anywhere where it says what's better though. I should have been more clear  | ||
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Cyro
United Kingdom20285 Posts
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Myrmidon
United States9452 Posts
HD 7870: 1280 stream processors, 80 TMUs, 32 ROPs, core clock 1000 MHz, 2GB GDDR5 @ 1200 MHz and 256-bit bus So yeah, the 7870 XT should definitely be a little faster (extra compute hardware and memory transfer rates should more than compensate for small core clock speed difference) but should use more power. Check benchmarks if you want numbers. edit: On April 22 2013 07:10 Cyro wrote: Um, yea, the 7870 is Tahiti. All of them. You're comparing two models of the same card that are almost identical No, normal 7800 series is all Pitcairn (middle / 2nd chip). 7870 XT is the 3rd-string Tahiti (big chip) config under 7970 and 7950. In another era, it'd have been called 7930. | ||
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Cyro
United Kingdom20285 Posts
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Myrmidon
United States9452 Posts
Ever since the unpopular HD 5830 and GTX 465... Uh... yeah, we'll call it a GTX 660 Ti, not a GTX 665. GTX 560 Ti 448, not GTX 565. An HD 7870 XT, not an HD 7930. HD 6790, not HD 6830. At least it's not like the OEM and mobile GPU segments, where the same product designation refers to multiple different chips and configurations. | ||
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Gumbi
Ireland463 Posts
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waffling1
599 Posts
On April 21 2013 19:26 Arnstein wrote: From this it doesn't look too bad: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107-3.html that one is the 650 Ti BOOST. we're talking about the 650 Ti at a price point of $115. | ||
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waffling1
599 Posts
On April 22 2013 02:53 Belial88 wrote: hyper 212+ is the only lower end heatsink that's okay for just $19 but the zalman lq310/315 midrange heatsinks are more appropriate for a high end build, and are a way better value at $34/39AR. The macho is only cheap in europe. Right now there's currently no high end heatsink on sale, but that'll probably change in a day. what about http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835233082 You generally want to avoid micro-atx boards - they are low quality for a high price because they are small (only exception might be some of the asus rog boards i think, which are high priced anyways). The Z77M-D3H is nothing like the other D3Hs, it's more in common with the DS3H. I'm thinking about getting an H61 mATX board for an i3, since it requires no OC and because it's $45 BEFORE the microcenter 40 dollar discount. The V3 is a really bad case lol. it has vents for cooling, a ton of purchases, my clients won't be tearing apart the case open, and it's $23 so I think it's a good deal. Antec basiq is a very low quality psu, not to mention nowadays it's very outdated. Dual rail really means nothing unless it's a 1000w+ crazy, insane PSU (even then it's not really 'dual rail', it's a bit more complicated). If anything single rail is 'better', but it's such a non-issue on rails on PSUs that are under $200. CX430 is not as high quality as high quality PSUs, but it's a decent CWT. It's much higher quality than a basiq, and what it lacks in quality, it's made up for in low price and the best support in the PSU industry. Unless you run a ton of peripherals, there's really no foul using a cx430. I only blew out a few because I'm an idiot. hm the reviews seemed to say Antec VP450 is a great PSU for that price. the warranty was only 2 years so i guess that says something about it. I went with the CX430 because it was $34 after rebate, 3year warranty, and because you said u liked it. So why shouldn't I have gone with one that has 5 year warranty for a similar price, say up to $10 more than CX430? By the way, does the CX430 have proper protection against damaging other components if it blows out? The Antec one had just about every protection, which was one reason why I was leaning towards it earlier. 650TI is just not priced too well. There's a 7790 and 7850 on newegg that are priced much better. Go with the 7790, way better pricedo n newegg. now I don't know about that. what are you considering as your price for 650 Ti? i got it for 115 after rebate, with virtually no shipping costs. ($3.80 for a whole mess of components, thanks tigerdirect). The cheapest 7790 i can find on Newegg is $125 and the performance according to my reviews research is slightly less than that of 650 Ti. The cheapest 7850 on newegg is $160. I'm pretty sure the 650 Ti is a better deal. Cost-effectiveness aside, is there anything wrong with the card itself? If they want an i5, they want an i5. Is this your money? An i3 is more than powerful enough for gaming (really I'd go for a phenom x4 and a $40 AM3, not am3+, board off geeks.com), i5 is literally just the best of the best, which i think would get lost on a 13 year old. They're paying for it. I'm handling the rebates and sending them to myself. I purchase, they compensate me. I have a build cost structure work out and the i5 3570k build is $605 while the i3 3225 build is $445, after tax and shipping. These are due to the mobo, and cooling, as well as CPU. Since the difference is about $160, and the i5 build breaks the $600 mark, which has a psychological effect from comparing it to roughly $450... they might not be happy... especially since I quoted them for $450 for an i5 build... (The reason I did that was I had seen a low end hard drive for 20 bucks, so i could have saved them 55 dollars (compared to a WD blue 1TB HDD), but i read that Total Defense Internet Security was pretty shady and would even require you pay more through a subscription, so.. that added about 50 bucks to the original quote of $450.) The deal is still on btw, if anyone is up for jumping through all the hoops. But really, there are some pretty terrible reviews on Newegg. http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/search.asp?keywords=total defense hard drive bundle&sort=1&recs=30 Plus they're paying me (maybe i'll share exactly how much later) for hunting down good deals, as opposed to they just buying a crappy pre-built one from gateway or something, also for handling rebates, overclocking, a bunch of software installation and freeware that I know are solid, and "student" versions of windows and office. That's already a several hundred dollars in savings and higher quality. They don't know about computer building so I think they're getting a great deal. I was actually thinking there could be a business opportunity in setting up a custom build service that would allow tech saavy people like you to do what you love and help people like my client not deal with the research and headache while getting good computers. Are there any businesses like that that you know of? What i've noticed so far, was that there is a huge learning curve, so it wouldn't be worth training people. But it's also the reason why people in general really don't want to get into computer building... kind of like how learning about politics is a huge time, energy, brain, and potentially stress investment. So that's a factor of a guarantee of business to an extent. But on the flip side, the profit margins are thin, if you're buying retail like how most people do here. You definitely need better deals from manufacturers. As a service, you could charge a premium, but who knows how much to be profitable. You really wouldn't require too much overhead, since you could just run it out of someone's large home, ship everything. But if you were to try to be a computer assembler and compete with gateway and HP, then you'd really have to differentiate your brand so people know these aren't shitty bundles, but good, cost effective ones. IDK how you'd do that, exactly. Which also makes me wonder why Gateway and other assemblers put together such shitty parts. Bottom line is important, but I don't see good bundles. I sometimes question the ones put together by retailers like Newegg themselves. They don't seem all that well picked or a good dael. Anyway, that's my computer building business rant. | ||
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Belial88
United States5217 Posts
it has vents for cooling, a ton of purchases, my clients won't be tearing apart the case open, and it's $23 so I think it's a good deal. They all have 'vents' for cooling? And vents = louder, so it's not like vents is always a good thing. I'd say vents and no vents are even. Also, it might not look like it has vents, but it does - most modern cases with solid fronts, like the nzxt source, actually has vents but it doesn't look like it (it's 'ducted' like a ramjet engine). You want fan slots, not vents, but any modern build will have fan slots. The v3 is actually short on fan slots to most modern computers. It's also flimsy, built poorly, lacks cable routing, no space behind the motherboard... it's a really bad case. It's not a good deal lol. If you want a cheap case... maybe the gamma on newegg? You really are better off shaving corners somewhere else. Going cheap on a case is fine, but right now there are no cases under $35 that are worth it. The nzxt source 210 at $35 is a million times better than the v3 at $23. hm the reviews seemed to say Antec VP450 is a great PSU for that price. the warranty was only 2 years so i guess that says something about it. I went with the CX430 because it was $34 after rebate, 3year warranty, and because you said u liked it. So why shouldn't I have gone with one that has 5 year warranty for a similar price, say up to $10 more than CX430? Please stop reading newegg reviews, they are all idiots. And please stop reading reviews in general, the vast majority of review site are terrible - tomshardware, anandtech, they are really bad, intentionally misleading. If you want review sites, use overclock.net's reviews, johnnyguru, hardocp maybe... there's very few good review sites. Antec basiq is NOT a good power supply. And 2 years ago is a long time. Just because it has a long warranty doesn't make it worth choosing. The antec will be end of life before 5 years so the warranty won't last 5 more years, it probably has no warranty these days at all because it's end of life. Corsair also doesn't ask for a receipt, so don't worry about only a 3 year warranty, in 5 years from now they'll still replace it for you because corsair is just awesome like that in regards to customer service. By the way, does the CX430 have proper protection against damaging other components if it blows out? The Antec one had just about every protection, which was one reason why I was leaning towards it earlier. Short circuit protection? It does not, but don't worry about it. It most likely won't damage other components if it goes out, and it going out is very unlikely. It has protections in place to prevent it from blowing out. The antec one does not have every protection. It just has a bunch of things so people think it has a bunch of protections. It has the basic protections that the cx430 has, and every other lower end psu has. I would imagine the cx430 has more protections, like undercurrent protection. Don't worry. If it takes out other system components, corsair will give you a check for them. You are getting into questions that are a way out of the depth of this forum and not really important. Very simply, the cx430 is much higher quality then that antec basiq. It's called a basiq because it's meant for OEMs, like dells and HPs, not for custom computers with graphics cards or overclocking. And you are talking about buying a $20 case because you cant afford a $35 case - if you have the money, you are better getting a decent $35 case instead of a better psu than the cx430. now I don't know about that. what are you considering as your price for 650 Ti? i got it for 115 after rebate, with virtually no shipping costs. ($3.80 for a whole mess of components, thanks tigerdirect). The cheapest 7790 i can find on Newegg is $125 and the performance according to my reviews research is slightly less than that of 650 Ti. The cheapest 7850 on newegg is $160. I'm pretty sure the 650 Ti is a better deal. Cost-effectiveness aside, is there anything wrong with the card itself? Yea $115 for the 650TI sucks. It performs the same as a gtx 460 which can be found for $60-80 on ebay. Right now the best GPU to get is the 7790 for like $120 with far cry 3 and blood dragon included, on newegg. They also have the 7850 for like $160 plus a few games, which makes it priced more like $130, so if you want more power, that isn't a bad choice either. These are due to the mobo, and cooling, as well as CPU. Since the difference is about $160, and the i5 build breaks the $600 mark, which has a psychological effect from comparing it to roughly $450... they might not be happy... especially since I quoted them for $450 for an i5 build... You could do $450 for an i5 build but it'd require ebay and being really savvy and basically not questioning what i tell you to do lol. It's way beyond your element to make a $450 i5 build, and you'd have to make sacrifices like only 4gb of ram (which is still more than enough for gaming), a gpu off ebay (which will still perform the same as your 650ti, just way cheaper), etc. Seriously, never listen to newegg reviews. Just go to the 1-star reviews, you'll see they are all idiots who do not know how to plug it in. Go to any RAM review, and anyone giving 5 stars has no idea how to judge ram, and all the people giving less than 5 stars is a moron, usually someone who doesn't realize what XMP profile is or that they have to overclock to set it to that 1600mhz CL9 speed that's advertised. They don't know how to overclock ram, they all say stupid stuff like "It does X speed at 1.65v great!" but don't know how to actually overclock RAM. Most people don't know how to push hardware components to their limits, so they say it's awesome when in reality it's a piece of crap. Basically it's like people reviewing consumer level cars for speed - people don't know how to race cars, so when people say stuff like "the civic sure is fast!" it's because they are an idiot. The totaldefense premium thing.. they are software, that's not a hdd. I was actually thinking there could be a business opportunity in setting up a custom build service that would allow tech saavy people like you to do what you love It all goes to shit when you factor in the price of an operating system. There's pretty much zero profit if you pay for the operating system instead of pirating it. Most small builders and local repair shops pirate all their stuff, but even if you pirate the OS and programs, all the work you have to put into it pretty much makes the profit lower than if you just flipped burgers. If you want to make money with tech stuff, you need to do reviews, specifically, graphics cards reviews (they are easiest to sell, and easiest to review). But there are certain ethical problems with that, and as you can see with any big review site, like tomshardware, their reviews are total crap because they are forced to review things that the GPU company wants them to cover, like the included overclocking software which is meaningless, instead of what matters, and they can never say anything bad (which is why you'll never see a review say something is low quality or a piece of crap, only that "its very good but for its price maybe something better out there"). Gateway and other assemblers put together such crappy builds because 99% of people don't need anything else. If you aren't gaming, you can get by with a piece of crap, $100-200 build easily. You could literally build a $200 computer that would outperform an xbox 360/ps3, and maybe $300 to outperform a ps4/xbox720. They also put in firmware so that you can't customize the computer at all, and use such low quality parts that you can't upgrade either, ie you can't put a graphics card into the crappy motherboard, the power supply is so bad that you can't put a graphics card or stronger CPU in it, etc. But the reason people buy them is because they don't know how to assemble computers on their own, and because they come with huge amount of support and warranty. | ||
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mav451
United States1596 Posts
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zturchan
Canada156 Posts
+ Show Spoiler + What is your budget? Ideally $1500 max, but could be persuaded to go to 2k if was really needed. What is your resolution? I currently use a 32 inch TV as my external display, resolution is 1360*768 What are you using it for? -Gaming: Mostly Magic The Gathering Online, which isn't very graphically intense, as it's an online card game. However, I would liek to be able to play SC2 and/or DOTA 2 on reasonably high settings (neevr played on above lowest and would like to see what the hype is about). -Streaming/Desktop Recording: Again mostly Magic Online, but might want to stream sc2/dota 2 every so often. -Coding -Small amount of Video editing (nothing super hardcore, just making my magic videos look presentable for youtube. What is your upgrade cycle? I would generally like to make this system last If I could, ideally not upgrading for 2 years or so at least. When do you plan on building it? I have 2 weeks free before I start my new job/after exams so preferably oduring this time. My other machine just died and I'll haev less time once I start work. I understand this sort of schedule might not be feasible, but I'd like to try. Do you plan on overclocking? Not really. Do you need an Operating System? No, I get windows 7 free through my school. Do you plan to add a second GPU for SLI or Crossfire? No. Where are you buying your parts from? Currently undecided. I live in Edmonton, Canada, and am open to either buying online or from retail stores. As I don't drive I'd prefer not having to take multiple trips carrying lots of components on the bus, but if physical stores are a must I can make it work. Local stores I know of are pretty much just Memory Express and the standard big box stores (Best Buy, etc). Any help or input you guys can give me would be much appreciated. I've already started reading a bunch on r/buildapc and am checking out other articles and whatnot in my free time, so trying to learn a fair bit pretty quickly. Thanks again! | ||
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Belial88
United States5217 Posts
if you live by microcenter go for the pro4 motherboard and CPU combo. If you don't live by microcenter, get best buy to price match the i5-3570k and get the z77x-ud3h from ncix. that really could apply to anyone looking for a build right this moment. overclocking is really important in getting the most value, you sure you won't overclock? with an overclock you basically double your performance for gaming, and it speeds up certain parts of the CPU that matter, which is why an overclocked i5 will significantly outperform the $1000 i7 extreme CPUs in gaming. You could go with an i3 and the cheapest z77 board you can get your hands on if you wanted to. Moreover, when building client systems, you cannot seriously be putting pirated software in those machines. I realize many posters in this thread may be too young to have a full-time job, but selling machines with pirated software is just a big no-no in general. My point was that pirating software was the only way you might see a profit (literally, your profit = OS cost), which is something that many (most?) small time repair shops and custom builders do (you'd be naive to think otherwise, a lot do it because of convenience more than cost too). If it's a build for a friend or something, it's might not bite you in the ass as if you did it for a 'client' who tries to reinstall or do a repair install and wonders what the problem is. Pirated systems are pretty foolproof these days, allowing for automatic updates and stuff like that, but the point is there's not much profit in building systems, basically zero if you don't pirate. I mean no one is going to buy a custom build from you for $3000 just because it's better than a $3000 alienware. | ||
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mav451
United States1596 Posts
I'm not arguing with you about margins. I'm well aware of how thin they were 10 years ago, and if you read my post in full context, you know I'm aware of how much thinner it's become with the modern 'hot deal' culture that is so pervasive today. My warning is that for a PC used for revenue-generation (and not just recreation), that maybe waffling1 should be more careful in providing a build with pirated software - per the advice of some members in this thread. I guess my follow-up question to you is if you are still using pirated software, despite having a full-time job. I could understand a certain grace period with high school students, but once you're in college and can take advantage of university-pricing, I really wonder how much longer that argument can be used. | ||
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waffling1
599 Posts
wow, the 7790 with two games is a great deal. now that is great service and support by corsair. first time hearing the details. a friend not a client. he wants a quality build (or knows "enough" to want an i5 and 8GB ram instead of i3 and 4 GB ram), but doesn't know about computers or have time. Microcenter has Samsung 840 128GB (or 120GB w/e) for $80 with a purchase of a core. Random Write 4K Up to 32,000 IOPS Read Speed Up to 530MBps Write Speed Up to 130MBps not as good, but may be worth 33% discount to some. They have $20 off other SSD too. | ||
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Belial88
United States5217 Posts
if you want good resources, just add "site:overclock.net" to your searches. When googling something, search by going "7790 vs" and it'll autofill to something comparable and then read what people say who've used both. avoid tomshardware and anandtech and newegg, amazon, etc type reviews. Look for quality of reviews over quantity of reviews, as in, someone who has used both, and pushed it to extremes. Like everyone who owns the extreme4 will tell you it's a great motherboard, but anyone who's owned the extreme4 and a gigabyte board will tell you how crappy the extreme4 is. Most of this stuff is built like a tank, so people will say things, for example, that a certain psu is awesome, when in reality it's crap but they just don't push it enough. Now, you only need a certain level of quality for every day usage and even overclocking is not very stressful until you really push extremes (which very few people do), but why buy the worse choice of two is what buying computer components is about. yea i guess at those prices and given the 830 has gone up to $100+, go for the standard 840 at mc. | ||
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waffling1
599 Posts
On April 22 2013 16:08 Belial88 wrote: i think you'll find most people disagree with me because i recommend stuff that is too cheap. i just couldn't find a lot of the items at the prices you said. Please stop reading newegg reviews, they are all idiots. And please stop reading reviews in general, the vast majority of review site are terrible - tomshardware, anandtech, they are really bad, intentionally misleading. If you want review sites, use overclock.net's reviews, johnnyguru, hardocp maybe... there's very few good review sites. Antec basiq is NOT a good power supply. And 2 years ago is a long time. that's why i'm reading belial reviews like a book-starved nerd;) i like that you recommend low cost stuff. it's the best value/cost. i think i might get 7790, | ||
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