Computer Build Resource Thread - Page 557

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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.

skyR

Canada13817 Posts

September 12 2011 14:04 GMT

#11121

On September 12 2011 17:11 NoRush20 wrote:
I live in vancouver canada, i was told NCIX is the cheapest place to buy PC parts from... Im looking to build up a gaming desktop for roughly 1000$-1200$ (after taxes), where should i look to buy from?

NCIX.

Shew

United States460 Posts

September 12 2011 16:18 GMT

#11122

On September 12 2011 20:19 nam nam wrote:
The ncix site have a PC Assembly fee but I can't find it on the us part.
http://ncix.com/products/?sku=7842

I can't believe that would be the only major site in US that assemble computers though.

Btw, I've basically assembled a computer in a closet to get away from the damn cats. You can do it if you want to.

Even if it takes all day it would probably be quicker than letting the site do it for you.

hmm alright, I'm starting to think about building my own simply because it would arrive the fastest that way.

The ibuypower computers are nice, but they're very big.. they don't have that small of cases from the looks of it

in that case any suggestions on some builds? like i said in a previous post my requirements are:

under $1,000
good sound card for music production
good video card for streaming & playing atleast at medium graphics, the higher the better though, I don't want any ingame lag while streaming or stream lag

JingleHell

United States11308 Posts

September 12 2011 16:31 GMT

#11123

Uhm, if you want to do music production, small is probably a bad idea if you need low ambient noise. (Mind you, that's defining small as small form factor, mATX or mITX.)

What games do you want to play, and what resolution?

Rachnar

France1526 Posts

September 12 2011 16:31 GMT

#11124

What type of streaming ? casual or 1080p ?

Shew

United States460 Posts

September 12 2011 16:38 GMT

#11125

On September 13 2011 01:31 JingleHell wrote:
Uhm, if you want to do music production, small is probably a bad idea if you need low ambient noise. (Mind you, that's defining small as small form factor, mATX or mITX.)

What games do you want to play, and what resolution?

Well I'm just getting into music production, I guess it isn't that big of a deal at this moment, it's more of a computer for starcraft.

On September 13 2011 01:31 Rachnar wrote:
What type of streaming ? casual or 1080p ?

well eventually I want to have a good enough stream like the featured ones. just one where I can stream and not have ingame lag and stream lag

Rachnar

France1526 Posts

September 12 2011 16:43 GMT

#11126

most featured one's have a 720p, even 480, an i5-2500k overclocked will stream at that resolution just fine

CuraOh

Chile81 Posts

September 12 2011 16:45 GMT

#11127

Womwomwom

5930 Posts

September 12 2011 17:28 GMT

#11128

Since you are doing music production, as Jingle kind of suggested you might want to look into quiet computing cases. Here's a short silent chassis list if you care about computer noise, I'm short on time so I'll just bullet point come major players and maybe add some more later on. All of these case run a single GPU computer more than fine if you shove extra fans in there, if your computer overheats with an Antec P183 or Solo II for instance, its your damned fault for not vacuuming the dust filters/your house and/or not grooming your pets.

Antec P183
+ holds 6 hard disks
+ holds 4 5.25" bays
+ extremely quiet and doesn't vibrate
+ effective hard disk dampening
+ so robust you can hurl it at someone without seriously damaging the chassis
- power button is behind the door
- bay devices are behind the door
- cable management is not especially easy due to structure, you may want to purchase ATX extension cables because it is a large case
+/- Antec TriCools are quiet on low speed, noisy on any other setting
-/+ large and heavy
-/+ expensive ($130 is cheap for a chassis this well built IMHO)
-/+ looks like a fridge

Antec Solo II
+ still probably the most quiet case on the market
+ effective hard disk dampening
+ holds long video cards
+ spring-loaded side panel screws
+ Antec TrueQuiet fan is really, really good
+ 1mm steel construction + plastic sound dampening material
+ top mounted power supply makes it easy to cable route/manage
+/- glossy coating
+/- can fit 5 hard disks but its a really tight fit using two different mounting systems (sleds + suspension)
- only 2 5.25" bays
- not tool-less
- kind of expensive (?)

NZXT H2
+ Quiet
+ Large
+ innovative fan mounting system
+ holds 8 hard disks
+ tool-less
+ decent cable management
+ hot swap bay ontop is p.cool
+/- uses sound dampening foam, which isn't as useful as plastic sheets/thick steel
+ NZXT's white is actually really slick if you like gloss white coatings
- Rather cheap build quality/poor fit and finish
- Extremely restrictive front intakes make it more difficult to cool a hot system
- May require extension cables...? Not exactly a small case anyway.

Fractal Design R3
+ Flexible fan mount locations
+ Holds 8 hard disks
+ Blanking slates allow flexibility and block sound from leaking out
+ comes with fan controller
+ thick bitumen material is better than shitty foam
+ decent cable management
- sleeve bearing stock fans are not the best choice, why Fractal?
+/- quiet with stock 2 fans, gets a lot louder with the top blanking slates removed
+/- steel is extremely thin, bitumen material hides this well enough though
- may have changed but bitumen material is not glued on particularly well
- Corsair-eqsue cable management grommits are utterly useless
- hard drive mounting is similar to Antec's only worse in every way
- side panel is strangely extremely difficult to remove and put back on

I owned a first generation Antec Solo (not II), P183, and Fractal Design R3. The Fractal Design R3 is better featured and flexible than any of these cases here...I bought it as a file server because it was one of the few cases that held 8 HDD out of the box and it does its job well but I would personally never use it as my main desktop. The Antec Solo and P183 however are far more specialized and are easier to make "silent" as well as have much better build quality.

From reading reviews, I may just be fussy with build quality but I'm not a huge fan of Fractal's feature checklisting (which thankfully backfired with basically every other chassis they've released). But I did own a desktop computer in the days when we all had Chieftec Dragons or other workstation chassis, with their 1mm thick steel, and all so I might just be expecting too much from these guys.

Myrmidon

United States9452 Posts

September 12 2011 17:37 GMT

#11129

How small is small?

Silverstone SG05 ($120 with power supply included) - requires miniITX motherboard, smaller CPU cooler (maybe forget about CPU overclocking as a normal i5-2500 should be enough for like 540p or maybe even 720p at lower quality), 9" or shorter graphics card, slim optical drive or use external optical drive
10.87" x 8.74" x 6.93"
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811163171

Silverstone TJ08-E ($100) - requires microATX motherboard but fits large CPU coolers and most things you would want to use
15.16" x 8.27" x 14.72"
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811163182

You still didn't mention what you'll need (what kind of inputs, connectors, drivers, software?) for the sound card, so everybody is ignoring that. Since you're not being helpful there, you should probably just do some research on your own and figure out what you need. External USB interfaces work fine, so you can just add that whenever you need it. No need to consider it in the current build I think.

edit: apparently you can put five 3.5" hard drives in the Solo II if you use both the suspension mechanism and the sleds. They'll just be right next to each other, and you'll absolutely want an intake fan there.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1218-page4.html

Womwomwom

5930 Posts

September 12 2011 17:47 GMT

#11130

Silverstone TJ08-E owns pretty hard if you are going mATX yeah. Seems to suffer from the trademark shitty Silverstone hard drive cage though...I guess you can fix it buy outright removing it if you are only using one 3.5" HDD or applying a lot of pressure to it somehow.

Really annoyed at how bad the drive cages are in my FT02. It works but its not good. Its not even tool-less and the chassis is like $250 so why couldn't you just imitate successful designs correctly, Silverstone?

edit: Oohhh that's a tight fit. I'm surprised that actually works.

Sheesh

United States15 Posts

September 13 2011 01:33 GMT

#11131

On September 13 2011 01:45 CuraOh wrote:
+ Show Spoiler +

What would you change about this configuration to add a second video card? Just the motherboard and power supply?

Edit - and by second video card i mean another 560 ti or two of a similar card

JingleHell

United States11308 Posts

September 13 2011 01:36 GMT

#11132

On September 13 2011 10:33 Sheesh wrote:

Show nested quote +

What would you change about this configuration to add a second video card? Just the motherboard and power supply?

Pretty much. Possibly the GPU's too, depending on budget. 560Ti is better than 460, but SLI 460s can OC to a good bit past stock SLI 560Ti, for a LOT less, if you catch the 460s for ~$130, which is doable.

Depends on how bad you want performance, and how important thermals and acoustics are.

Shew

United States460 Posts

September 13 2011 01:37 GMT

#11133

skyR

Canada13817 Posts

September 13 2011 01:47 GMT

#11134

Power supply is a poor choice. Antec High Current Gamer, Seasonic S12II, Antec Neo Eco, Antec Earthwatts, and XFX Core Edition Pro are all of (much) higher quality and can be had for less or roughly the same price.

GTX 560 is a poor choice, Radeon HD6870 offers similar / better performance and can be had for less. And why would you pay for a Zotac when you can have a MSI Twin Frozr II, ASUS DirectCu II, or Gigabyte Windforce for roughly the same price or less?

I think most would prefer the Samsung Spinpoint F3 over a Seagate even though Seagate owns Samsung's HDD division now.

The Cyberpower sucks. Second generation Phenoms are five years behind in performance. The sad reality is that Intel is a monopoly right now in the consumer desktop market: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core-i7-2600k-990x_9.html#sect2

1600MHz memory offers negligible performance gains over 1333MHz. You're much better off using this money towards a better GPU or CPU.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/memory/display/sandy-bridge-ddr3.html
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4503/sandy-bridge-memory-scaling-choosing-the-best-ddr3
http://techreport.com/articles.x/20377

JingleHell

United States11308 Posts

September 13 2011 01:49 GMT

#11135

On September 13 2011 10:47 skyR wrote:
The sad reality is that Intel is a monopoly right now in the consumer desktop market: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core-i7-2600k-990x_9.html#sect2

And we all wish it wasn't the case. Would be awesome if Intel had to actually price to compete.

Wish AMD would catch up some.

skyR

Canada13817 Posts

September 13 2011 02:18 GMT

#11136

It's unfortunate that all indications points towards Bulldozer being another failure. With a 2700k release, Sandybridge-E on the horizon, and Ivybridge next year. Things aren't looking too good for the delayed Bulldozer...

JingleHell

United States11308 Posts

September 13 2011 02:22 GMT

#11137

It's going to be another round of CPU's that just don't drop in price, I guess.

Although I wish I could get the money scraped together for a Sandybridge-E SR2 equivalent system... Granted, I have no idea what I'd do with it besides 3Dmark11, but wouldn't it look sexy?

I think if I even mentioned that sort of rig, my wife would gut me.

Shew

United States460 Posts

September 13 2011 02:31 GMT

#11138

On September 13 2011 10:47 skyR wrote:
Power supply is a poor choice. Antec High Current Gamer, Seasonic S12II, Antec Neo Eco, Antec Earthwatts, and XFX Core Edition Pro are all of (much) higher quality and can be had for less or roughly the same price.

GTX 560 is a poor choice, Radeon HD6870 offers similar / better performance and can be had for less. And why would you pay for a Zotac when you can have a MSI Twin Frozr II, ASUS DirectCu II, or Gigabyte Windforce for roughly the same price or less?

I think most would prefer the Samsung Spinpoint F3 over a Seagate even though Seagate owns Samsung's HDD division now.

The Cyberpower sucks. Second generation Phenoms are five years behind in performance. The sad reality is that Intel is a monopoly right now in the consumer desktop market: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core-i7-2600k-990x_9.html#sect2

1600MHz memory offers negligible performance gains over 1333MHz. You're much better off using this money towards a better GPU or CPU.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/memory/display/sandy-bridge-ddr3.html
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4503/sandy-bridge-memory-scaling-choosing-the-best-ddr3
http://techreport.com/articles.x/20377

yeah like i said i'm not the best at picking out parts :/

looks like i'm gonna build my own

Switched around a few things, how is this build looking?

added a disk drive: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827135204
harddrive: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152185
vid card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102948
psu: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371048

rest is unchanged from my other mass links from newegg.

Will everything connect correctly? Will I need to buy any extra sata cables or somethin like that? I just don't wanna buy all my gear then once it gets here see 1 part doesn't work T_T

skyR

Canada13817 Posts

September 13 2011 02:42 GMT

#11139

No you don't need any additional cables.

And uh.. you don't need the 620w variant. A Radeon HD6870 uses roughly 130w and a core i5 2300 uses roughly 50w, both under load. Not to mention your motherboard isn't even capable of CrossfireX. The 520w variant is already more than overkill and the only reason why the 400w variants aren't recommended for these configurations is because they don't come with enough connectors so adapters or daisy chaining would be required.

Myrmidon

United States9452 Posts

September 13 2011 02:47 GMT

#11140

Uh, part of the savings was from getting Windows for cheaper than $100 (like $30 or less), through your *.edu account or through school.

The other part of the savings was, say, getting the HCG520 or similar instead of overpaying on stuff like the HCG620.

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