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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. |
So, I'm beginning to look into getting a PC since the current gen of consoles is going out and I've been meaning to get a desktop for gaming and maybe streaming for a while, but haven't had the time/money to do it until recently. Resolution would be 1280x1024 most likely, not really sure, I'd like something for around 1-2 years before I'd have to upgrade, and would do that incrementally most likely. I don't think overclocking would be a choice since it's my first time? I would probably use newegg for parts, I don't know if there's a Fry's close to me, and the PC shop that is close seemed shady the last time I was there, but that was over 2 years ago....
What's a good entry level build for around $900-1100 USD? Games would be standard ones, BF3/4, LoL, SC2, DotA, PS2, etc, so some graphically powerful things, others not so much. I'd need everything, OS included, but all the peripherals I'd look into later, although I'm open to suggestions on mice/keyboards/monitors, since I've had horrible luck with all of the ones I've bought:/ I'd buy everything starting early-mid July and finish late July/early August since I want some time to work and I won't have much time to do anything except work and sleep until around that time..
If more information is needed, I'll gladly give it, but this will be my first PC, since I've only bought a laptop and haven't used a desktop in 2-3 years and those were trash.
Thanks
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United Kingdom20327 Posts
It looks like a decent buy for £400 if you wanna use the graphics (you have case, hdd and everything) but if you have a 460, it's silly to build a gaming system around an FX CPU.
Maybe when their next, probably significantly improved revision is released, but not now, they just don't really compete. It's a low price and niche offering.
FX is only worth considering, at all, because they price their 8 core CPU's significantly below intel's quad cores without hyperthreading.
But the performance gap is so great that honestly it doesnt matter.
If you are using only 1, 2, 3 or 4 cores (the vast majority of games do not benefit from more, but MANY like sc2 are cpu bound without being able to utilize 5 or more cores) 2ghz on a haswell CPU will beat 3ghz on an FX cpu, hands down. And you can clock haswell to 4.2-4.4 quite easily.
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United States2718 Posts
On June 12 2013 07:15 Crusnik wrote:
So, I'm beginning to look into getting a PC since the current gen of consoles is going out and I've been meaning to get a desktop for gaming and maybe streaming for a while, but haven't had the time/money to do it until recently. Resolution would be 1280x1024 most likely, not really sure, I'd like something for around 1-2 years before I'd have to upgrade, and would do that incrementally most likely. I don't think overclocking would be a choice since it's my first time? I would probably use newegg for parts, I don't know if there's a Fry's close to me, and the PC shop that is close seemed shady the last time I was there, but that was over 2 years ago....
What's a good entry level build for around $900-1100 USD? Games would be standard ones, BF3/4, LoL, SC2, DotA, PS2, etc, so some graphically powerful things, others not so much. I'd need everything, OS included, but all the peripherals I'd look into later, although I'm open to suggestions on mice/keyboards/monitors, since I've had horrible luck with all of the ones I've bought:/ I'd buy everything starting early-mid July and finish late July/early August since I want some time to work and I won't have much time to do anything except work and sleep until around that time..
If more information is needed, I'll gladly give it, but this will be my first PC, since I've only bought a laptop and haven't used a desktop in 2-3 years and those were trash.
Thanks
Come back mid july then to get an updated list with details on better deals etc. Computer deals will change in and out every week, so it's usually a decent idea to return when you're ready to buy parts.
1280x1024 is really terrible though. With your budget, you can spend ~800$ on a mid-high end gaming build and have enough leftover for a monitor. You can overclock on your first time, although haswell is pretty complicated. I imagine by July people will have a lot more settled though. If you didn't overclock you'd be looking at something like:
i5 CPU ~230$ for non OC
motherboard ~70$
GPU ~250$
Case ~60$
PSU ~60$
HDD/SSD ~130$
ODD ~20$
Ram ~60$
Which puts you just under 900$, leaving an optional 200$ for a good monitor.
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United Kingdom20327 Posts
z87 and the cooler are just for overclocking; because it's pretty easy to clock from the stock 3.5ghz to 4.2-4.4ghz. I'm running at 4.7 right now. If you don't want to do it, you can just use the stock cooler and you can save money on motherboard.
The haswell i5 is a far far superior offering UNLESS the vast majority of what you are doing consists of workloads that can fully load more than 6 or 7 cores.
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Thanks for the advice chaps helpful as always
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I think AMD's offerings easily trump Intel sub €150. The price-performance ratios are excellent. Overclockable quads (or higher). Clock for clock they're meh compared to Intel, but at 4.2 + ghz (easily attainable with a cheapo cooler). An FX-6300 goes for a hundred quid in Europe. Add a cooler to this and we have a quieter system that's the same price as Intel's in this price bracket that's clocked at 4.4ghz with more cores than an i3 - I'd take that any day. Anything up to 4.6ghz is possible, but I'm erring on the side of caution because of the cooler (a budget aftermarket one), and well, because I can 
And multi-threading in games will improve; it is improving. IMO, overall, AMD is the much better choice in these price brackets.
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Yes, the FX6300 is quite attractive now thanks to the recent price drop of AMD and Intel's increasing pricing.
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United Kingdom20327 Posts
If you can't reach unlocked i5 or want to put budget into graphics instead, i agree. Especially with Steamroller coming before broadwell. It's incredibly silly to take an 8350 over a 4670k at the same price point when you already have a good GPU and can afford either though, and are in the market for a strong CPU for gaming purposes
You can't make the argument that clock speed on piledriver is significantly easier than haswell (it might be slightly, might) and clock for clock haswell is ~55-70% better, which is just too wide a margin to ignore. AVX2 may allow i5 to beat fx8350 in x264 which is no small feat.
I mean i'm sure Kaveri will be REALLY awesome too, four steamroller cores and a 7790 GPU should be awesome, and fx4000-6000 has it's place; but they are not premium CPU's if you want one.
AMD is introducing FX-9000 series (8 core piledriver) and anandtech wrote this for example "Considering the pricing and performance offered by Intel’s Haswell i7-4770K at $350, most likely the FX-9590 will be close to the $200 mark."
which is a very painful illustration of where piledriver fits in right now
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On June 10 2013 12:16 skyR wrote:Show nested quote +On June 10 2013 11:10 Kukaracha wrote:+ Show Spoiler +Thanks to Rachnar and SkyR for your answers. And thanks to everyone else for being awesome and helpful.
So here is what I ended up with (following Rachnar's build as it was simpler for me to understand):
CPU: Intel Core i3 3220 (3.3 GHz) 108,80 €
MB: Asus P8B75-M LX 54,89 €
RAM: Dual Channel DDR3 Corsair Value Select, 2 x 2 Go, PC3-10600, CAS 9 29,90 €
GPU: Sapphire Radeon HD 7770 Ghz Edition, 1 Go 89,90 €
SSD: Samsung Série 840, 120 Go, SATA III 89,90 €
HDD: random guaranteed model, 640 Go 44,80 €
Case: Bitfenix Merc Alpha, 439 x 190 x 490 mm 33,80 €
Alim: Corsair CX430, 430 W 44,80 €
Soft: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1, Licence et support 1 PC, 64 bits, OEM 95,90 €
Total: 592€
Rachnar posted the config above, with 4 Go of RAM, when SkyR proposed 8. Is 4 enough? I know that last time I worried about building a computer, 8 was considered too much, but is it preferable now?
Also, am I not missing some things? And if I want that PC to be completely silent, would it be wise to add a fan? 8gb is standard these days, 4gb typically used if you're on a very tight budget. Rachnar's build focuses more on performance whereas mine focuses more on comfort. A Radeon HD 7770 is extremely unnecessary for playing Sims. The integrated graphics of the core i3 should be sufficient for the game. And if you don't find it sufficient then the graphics card is one of the easiest components to add-in / upgrade so it's no big deal. Whereas if you don't like the case or power supply then its a huge hassle to change them. If you want silent computing then you should get a silent case as I originally suggested like the Fractal Design Define Mini or Fractal Design Define R4. Investing in the case and other components rather than getting a graphics card is a significantly better idea as a case and power supply will not only be used for this build but as well as future builds. Lots of people also place a huge weight on aesthetics. You should probably consult your girlfriend as to what she likes or ask her friends for a general idea if you want to surprise her. The Define Mini and R4 aren't gorgeous though due to the stupid mesh on the side panel and top panel but I'd consider them to be much better than the Merc Alpha. I'm not sure when you're purchasing but the Corsair Carbide 330R is being released at the end of July and that's a gorgeous budget case. It's big brother is the Corsair Obsidian 550D which is already out. Just my opinion. You may also want to add an aftermarket heatsink as the Intel stock heatsink can get quite loud as it revs up. Though not absolutely necessary. You can always do this later if she finds the noise to be a problem. I'd strongly suggest a 250gb SSD as well over a 120gb SSD. I'm not sure how comfortable your girlfriend is with technology or her usage pattern but even if they are quite tech literate, they'd probably appreciate not having to constantly micro manage a 120gb SSD and HDD.
Uh, so I learned some things, but in the end I just spoke with my GF and she wants a laptop. It pisses me off because the last one only lasted three years, it was noisy and hot as hell and just overall useless compared to a custom-built PC. Plus, it's pretty expensive for what it is IMO.
But thanks you anyway, this will come in handy when I'll build my own. Do you have any pointers as to where I could find good laptop reviews? Durability being the biggest problem, performance the second. Last computer she had was a VAIO, and it was just too much of a hassle to open and clean (it got very dusty). I have a Toshiba Satellite, and it's just very easy to maintain.
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Notebookcheck should be reasonable enough. Any competent review should show the underside and what it looks like opened up, and what's required for that.
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It's a laptop. All the necessary drivers should already be installed.
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I've got some OC questions for you geniuses. I'm a total novice, this is my first OC ever. Be gentle ~
i7-3770k on an MSI z77a gd65 motherboard, Hyper 212 cooler with 2k rpm cheap(loud) fan attached. 4 more fans covering the HDDs and on the top of the unit.
I went through the basic steps, increased the multiplier incrementally from 35 to 42. At 44, it went unstable (BSOD) with a max temp of ~80c on the IBT. I went to bios to change the voltage and... nothing. Where there should be an [Auto], there was instead Auto. (No brackets indicating the value was unchangeable.)
Their forums :
http://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=158637.0 indicates it's a known bug. I had to go into the "OC GENIE" settings (with the silly blue button), which did a casual 4.2GHz OC. This setting allows me to increase the voltage, but I'm left with the question: how high do I set the voltage? The default is "auto", so I'm not sure how to increase it. Running CPU-Z at low CPU utilization shows a core voltage of 1.28v, but under IBT stress it was closer to 1.2 - 1.21. Why does this value change, and what's my target here?
I'll gladly listen to any other recommendations. Thanks
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You're suppose to use + - to adjust the values.
The drop in voltage is vdroop, a safety precaution of sorts. LLC is used to combat this.
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Hey I finished putting together my desktop. Can you guys recommend a list of programs that I should use to benchmark and check if everything's working properly?
Thanks 
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Regarding stability, just use it for a few days. If you see programs crashing or the PC crashing, unless the PC freezes completely, you'll see something reported in the Windows Event Viewer that may give you a hint on what's off. There will be an entry recorded for the driver that was active at the moment of a PC crash for example. If you can't fix it by changing drivers or playing with settings or something, then you'd run a memory test for a few hours, search for some graphics card stress test and CPU stress test. Programs crashing can simply be the program's fault.
I have no idea what benchmark would be easy to use to check if the CPU and memory and GPU and hard drive is as fast as it should be. You could just use the benchmark that's built into Windows, the "Windows Experience Index".
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United States2718 Posts
Do you mean overclocked? If you mean stock settings, then everything can be tested just by using it. If the computer boots up and you don't find any weird issues, you're probably good to go you don't really need to use stability tests for stock settings.
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On June 12 2013 14:35 Spec wrote:Hey I finished putting together my desktop. Can you guys recommend a list of programs that I should use to benchmark and check if everything's working properly? Thanks
You can check temperatures with Furmark (gpu) and Prime95 (cpu) but be aware they will make your computer a few degrees hotter than any real world use
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Hello gurus of TL.net, I need some advice on a build for my brother's new desktop...I dont know much about building Desktops (I usually just buy the best my budget can afford)
So my brothers works as a graphic designer....mostly photoshop and some other vector drawing programs such as illustrator.
I think he requieres a good GPU since he works with very high resolution images and stuff like that. He also wants to play some demanding games like bioshock infinite.
So I was doing some research but I have no clue where to begin with. So I'm just gonna drop some preferences he has:
- Nvidia GPU is prefered
- Maybe a haswell processor...not sure about this one, he usually sticks with a desktop for a long time so he might wanna get the latest tech available
- ASUS motherboard (he likes the brand lol)
Well I hope this is enough info for a build suggestion. About the budget...I think he wants to spend 1.2K and no more than that.
Thanks in advance guys!!
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EPT
