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What is your budget?
Id prefer not to spend over 500$ if at all possible. I would like to sink most of my money into a GPU/CPU, and a mobo that will be kind in the upgrading department. (probably cause thats why i cant paly sc2 on my comp right now ><)
I have a suitable SATA hard drive, SATA CD drives, and the like. What im mainly wanting help on is choosing a GPU,CPU,motherboard, and PSU that is all compatible, plays sc2 and maybe diablo 3.
What is your resolution?
1280x1024
What are you using it for?
Very much so gaming. lots of it. probably looking at up to 8 hours at time. ( i have no life)
SC2 is my main endeavor, and i dont care to play on probably anything over medium settings. But that doesn't mean that i don't want those options if you know what i mean, Im not a very graphics hungry person but i like my games to run smoothly and have a shot at running future games smoothly too.
What is your upgrade cycle?
i think the comp model im using now is 4 or so years old. If my mobo had a PCI-E 2.0 for a new graphics card i wouldnt be here >.>
When do you plan on building it?
Soonish. next couple of months or so.
Do you plan on overclocking?
I would except im afraid i would break something.
Do you need an Operating System?
I shouldn't.
Do you plan to add a second GPU for SLI or Crossfire?
i would prefer not to as that sounds like something i would screw myself over with or break something 
Where are you buying your parts from?
I've heard newegg is the way to go for cheapness thats not totally botched or shipped badly. I get E-mails for their sales when they have them.
I hope i answered adequately : /
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5930 Posts
On March 18 2011 17:10 Stirbend wrote:
Above post
Bump to $600-$700 and you can get a pretty awesome computer that slays typical games easy, with $500 you are going to end up compromising on something.
Here is a sample build, its still pretty good but I wouldn't trust the motherboard except for the most basic of tasks:
Motherboard + CPU combo deal
Case + Power Supply
Hard Disk
Video Card
Memory
Comes to around $460 without postage. At that resolution, it can play pretty much every FPS game current out there and it shouldn't do that badly in CPU intensive games either. Get Windows 7 from from your school's IT department, if you are still in education, they should be handing them out for like $10 a pop.
On March 18 2011 13:17 Talz wrote:
So, what do you guys think about intel's motherboards?
I'm also wanting to ask about the different versions of windows 7. What do you guys use, recommend, etc? Is there even a big difference?
Intel motherboards own if you want the gold standard in reliability. Just like video card drivers, the increased reliability often means less performance but you shouldn't care about this unless you love overclocking or get really upset seeing people beat your 3DMark score.
They're good boards, just expect them to work perfectly at stock settings and be capable of nothing else. Not familiar with their high end boards but seeing how good everyone generally is in the high end market, I can't see why you'd pick them over, say, Asus or MSI.
About Windows:
Home: What you should be getting. Has everything you want: UAC, DirectX11, Aero Snap, etc.
Professional: Supports more memory (?) and can (somewhat) support legacy software that only works on older Windows operating systems.
Ultimate: Don't bother, you are not corporate. It has Bitlocker and has better support for languages but its definitely not work the extra price unless you can use either feature often.
Just so you know, if you buy from itsnotcheating or from an educational institution, they'll probably give you Professional so you can use all the shitty legacy programs that university departments enjoy using.
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On March 18 2011 21:34 Womwomwom wrote:
Intel motherboards own if you want the gold standard in reliability. Just like video card drivers, the increased reliability often means less performance but you shouldn't care about this unless you love overclocking or get really upset seeing people beat your 3DMark score.
They're good boards, just expect them to work perfectly at stock settings and be capable of nothing else. Not familiar with their high end boards but seeing how good everyone generally is in the high end market, I can't see why you'd pick them over, say, Asus or MSI.
About Windows:
Home: What you should be getting. Has everything you want: UAC, DirectX11, Aero Snap, etc.
Professional: Supports more memory (?) and can (somewhat) support legacy software that only works on older Windows operating systems.
Ultimate: Don't bother, you are not corporate. It has Bitlocker and has better support for languages but its definitely not work the extra price unless you can use either feature often.
Just so you know, if you buy from itsnotcheating or from an educational institution, they'll probably give you Professional so you can use all the shitty legacy programs that university departments enjoy using.
Well, I'd like to try overclocking my CPU at the very least, so maybe Intel motherboards aren't the best for me.
Windows 7 Home Premium X64 is the standard now, right?
According to this here, Professional and Ultimate do support more RAM (That's what physical memory is, right?) but it's a pretty obscene amount: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366778(v=vs.85).aspx
A lot of people say you can't even use over 8 GB of RAM, so why are they making the limits so huge? There's also all these motherboards that support double digit numbers of RAM, is there a reason for this beyond a shitty marketing ploy to make people think they should be getting more RAM?
It confuses me because I still have that newbie "bigger numbers are always better" mindset in some regards, probably because I've only been seriously looking up on this stuff for a week or two. I assume the people that buy into that have the "I want to future proof my computer" attitude, but is it even possible to future proof a computer?
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On March 19 2011 01:28 Talz wrote:
A lot of people say you can't even use over 8 GB of RAM, so why are they making the limits so huge? There's also all these motherboards that support double digit numbers of RAM, is there a reason for this beyond a shitty marketing ploy to make people think they should be getting more RAM?
It confuses me because I still have that newbie "bigger numbers are always better" mindset in some regards, probably because I've only been seriously looking up on this stuff for a week or two. I assume the people that buy into that have the "I want to future proof my computer" attitude, but is it even possible to future proof a computer?
Limits for certain variants are huge because there ARE applications that require it, they just aren't average end-user applications. They're generally specific to certain tech industries.
Some people literally build a PC "because they can". If that's what they choose to do with their money, build the craziest rig, and squeeze every last cycle out of it to put up insane benchmarks, well, that's their prerogative, and there ARE the occasional not-so-average end users that DO need rather larger systems.
The notion of future proofing a computer involves a willingness to trade an expensive upgrade cycle for a long upgrade cycle. If you spend $1500 when you upgrade, odds are, your computer will outlast the guy who spends $350 by a good chunk of time.
In the end, the purchasing decisions should boil down to a few key questions.
1: What do I need?
2: What would I like?
3: Where in between those 2 sets does my budget fall?
4: What achieves the best compromise within budget?
Answering that last one is where the newbie will have trouble. Inexperience will lead to skimp a bit too much on one component or other, and bottleneck somewhere.
If you can answer the first 3 questions with rough sets of specs based on your goals, the 4th question can be easily answered by people more experienced than yourself.
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On March 19 2011 01:28 Talz wrote:
A lot of people say you can't even use over 8 GB of RAM, so why are they making the limits so huge? There's also all these motherboards that support double digit numbers of RAM, is there a reason for this beyond a shitty marketing ploy to make people think they should be getting more RAM?
It confuses me because I still have that newbie "bigger numbers are always better" mindset in some regards, probably because I've only been seriously looking up on this stuff for a week or two. I assume the people that buy into that have the "I want to future proof my computer" attitude, but is it even possible to future proof a computer?
Video editting and compiling large amounts of code requires tons and tons of RAM, it eats it like candy. Well, required is the wrong wrord but it makes it alot easier. I have 8gb of RAM on my PC, and the school video editting computers have 24 i think, and the difference is night and day in the fluid workflow. It just makes it that much smoother. But you'd be fine with 8gb or even 6 for gaming i'd think. 8 and above is for things that require alot of ram like the stuff mentioned above.
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5930 Posts
Not sure about the exact reasons but I believe motherboards have more memory slots than you use because:
1) Provide users with adequate upgrade routes (what happens with people using 1GB sticks who want to reuse the memory they have? Lots of lowish density memory is still cheaper than high density memory)
2) Redundancy. If you can't be bothered with RMA, you can just shift your memory over to the RAM slots that do actually work.
As for who would use 192gb of RAM in a desktop, basically no one would. That being said, professional workers in any technical field could use that amount of RAM pretty easily. It can help murder numbers, virtualize whole operating systems and other environments, or create some huge RAM disk with insane read/write speeds.
I actually do some of that for work. Honestly, I prefer using OSX but I need to virtulise Windows since the surveying and analysis software we use is Windows only. As you can imagine running an operating system within an operating system is pretty demanding stuff.
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Well, I'm wanting to use this system for playing Starcraft 2 maxed, Diablo 3 maxed, streaming, playing music and movies, downloading, writing, messaging, and some graphics/forum design. I may be expanding my forum into a full website, and do some photography as well.
I was originally going to make a middle of the road gaming computer for now to satisfy my Starcraft lust, but I'm shifting more in the direction of one general computer that I can do all these things on now.
I also like to multitask a lot, meaning I'm doing a lot of these things simultaneously..
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@Talz
I think you're overestimating the amount of ram that word processing, music, movies, downloading, and messaging takes up. These tasks shouldn't even approach the 1GB mark. What's really going to eat your RAM is multi-boxing SC2 / D3 / or any other game you have in mind and working on multiple projects. So unless you work on multiple 24" - 30" Dell Ultrasharps, I highly doubt you will need more than 8GB of RAM.
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Well, RAM wise I'm mainly worried about image editing and photography as I've heard it can be very demanding.
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Thx skyR and every1 else i learn alot from this thread..
just wondering should i get a Really good PSU and a good cooler..
like the Corsair H70 and psu corsair AXGold series 1200 w and 4 GB x 2 Corsair ddr3 1333 mhz (gaming)
so next time if i ever upgrade my desktop in pbb the next 2-3 years i can still keep all this good cooler/psu and ram..
and a single GTX580> is better than GTX 560 x 2 SLI ?
sorry im kinda new at this things..but thanks for all the help ^^
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You don't need an 1200W power supply if you aren't planning on buying a $300+ motherboard and a $200+ full tower case to support tri/quad SLI. A quality 750W or 850W unit such as the Corsair AX750 or Seasonic X760 is powerful enough for any dual GPU solution on the market (2x GTX 580, 1x 6990, 1x GTX 590, etc). The case, power supply, and heatsink can last you a lifetime so it depends on your mindset of how you want to handle this. You can either spend a $160 for a Corsair AX750 (7 year warranty, hope that it doesn't give out once out of warranty) or spend $80 now for a power supply that comes with a 5year warranty and spend another $80 on another 5year warranty power supply when it the first one dies.
GTX 560 in SLI will outperform a single GTX 580. However, it is not recommended to do a SLI setup unless you are playing at 2560x1600 or are using 3DVision. The performance you gain from SLI over a single card can be anywhere ranging from a negative percentage to 150% depending on the drivers. For a newbie like yourself, I would not recommend it for your initial build.
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Thank you!! 
just heard some rumors that heatsinks fits a certain motherboard and intel proccesor..
so by the time new motherboards/ intels proccesors are out it requires different heatsinks because of the fitting towards the motherboard..
and is 3d vision any good atm ? i tried googling but all the videos require 3d glasses..
cant really experience the great effects of it
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Looking to get a new computer. I have a friend who is well practiced in putting computers together, but he is busy atm with a lot of school work and I don't wanna pester him to figure out what to put in it, so I figured I would ask for some help here, and then get him to help me assemble it when he has a free afternoon.
What is your budget?
Willing to spend up to/around $1500. Of course, if I can save some money without making sacrifices, that's fine by me.
What is your resolution?
I have no monitor. I need suggestions on what kind of display to get too, please. I dunno shit about them.
What are you using it for?
This would be doing a ton of graphics stuff. I will be using programs like Photoshop, GIMP, Maya, etc, plus spending lots of time playing sc2, etc. I tend to run a lot of that at once too.
What is your upgrade cycle?
I'd like to invest a bit more in making this a long term machine. I suppose you can update some things without completely starting over. 3-4 years is about what I am thinking, though I don't expect to completely get rid of it.
When do you plan on building it?
Plan on building it around the end of April, unless something comes up.
Do you plan on overclocking?
No.
Do you need an Operating System?
Nope.
Do you plan to add a second GPU for SLI or Crossfire?
If it would particularly benefit me for what I'm using the computer for, sure. I have no idea if it would or not. I don't want to get fancy stuffs I don't need.
Where are you buying your parts from?
There is a Microcenter right near here I can get everything from. :D
Sorry if I inadequately answered anything. I am not very computer-innards-suave. Basically I just want something that can handle a lot of graphics programs and my streaming and my various social media applications and my games simultaneously without lagging to hell. (Within reason, lol, I don't usually run /everything/ at once.) Please and thank you. <3
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@RedJustice:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115071
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128475
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145340
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150517
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139005
That covers the PSU, GPU, CPU, Mobo, and RAM, without breaking your budget, on top of that, you would just need a case with decent airflow, and HDD and DVD, which really just boil down to what fits the budget and your needs best.
Those parts are NOT cheap, but they'll last you for several years, as requested, and the massive graphics card should help with the 3d modelling in Maya.
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On March 19 2011 19:34 dandan23 wrote:Thank you!! just heard some rumors that heatsinks fits a certain motherboard and intel proccesor.. so by the time new motherboards/ intels proccesors are out it requires different heatsinks because of the fitting towards the motherboard.. and is 3d vision any good atm ? i tried googling but all the videos require 3d glasses.. cant really experience the great effects of it
When new sockets are released, manufacturers will have new mounting hardware for these sockets. Usually, you just email them and they'll mail it to you for free (or you might have to pay for shipping).
3D Vision requires 3D glasses and a monitor capable of 3D. 3D is overrated imo.
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What do you guys think of this build (my first time)? It's for an HTPC on a 1920 x 1080p HD TV, and also as a workhorse to OCR documents with ABBYY FineReader (for my job), which is why the quad-core is useful.
No SC2 or other hard-core gaming
+ Show Spoiler +
Comes to about ~$360.00
Should I get a blu-ray and/or optical drive? Would a blu-ray drive serve as a typical optical one as well?
Let me know what you think! Thanks.
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EPT
