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you can get a better psu for cheaper. plus you only need like 350watts at max.
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Is it smart to buy a Western Digital Raptor 600gb for 200 with a coupon and not have a SSD (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136555&nm_mc=EMC-IGNEFL031612&cm_mmc=EMC-IGNEFL031612-_-EMC-031612-T-_-InternalHardDrives-_-22136555-L01A 200 dollars with a coupon) or should i have a normal western digital 500gb 7200rmp for like 80 and a 140 or so SSD. Which one you think is better? Im thinking on getting the Western Digital 600gb 10,000rmp HDD for the better performance overall what do you think. Is this a good idea or should i just get a SSD AND HDD together. Also if there any deal out there that you think is mind blowing please tell im goin to buy my custom build PC soon so please help After some research i found out that SSD Kill every HDD out there. I think im goin to stick with a SSD AND HDD together. Any deals out there please tell me
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^ SSD and HDD.
Custom built? Are you buying a pre built?
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@Boss.Killer - No. The Raptor is faster than normal 7200rpm hard drives, but it doesn't approach the speed of an SSD - even the slower SSDs.
An SSD that can fit the programs you want to load near-instantly is what you want. Media files like videos, music, etc, can go on any slow-ass hard drive and you won't notice the difference.
Generally newegg seems to have cheaper SSDs than other places. I'd recommend getting a Samsung 830 128gb SSD (or a Crucial m4 if it's cheaper - the samsung is a tiny bit faster, both are fast and are tops in reliability). Then decide how much HDD storage you want/how much you want to spend. us.ncix.com has recently had a Seagate 500gb 7200rpm drive for $75-80, or a WD Caviar Green 1TB 5400rpm drive for $125.
@1004 What motherboard you want depends on your budget. H61 for saving money. H67 gets you native SATA3 support if you're going to get an SSD as well. p67 allows you to overclock. z68 allows you to overclock and use integrated graphics and has some minor features most users don't care about.
This basic board is $55, and will function essentially the same as the one you chose if you don't get a SATA3 SSD (it can still use an SSD, just not at the fastest possible speeds): http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157241 Asrock has a better reputation than other super-cheap brands, and its boards come with 2 controllable fan headers rather than most cheapo boards' 1.
If you wanted a bigger H67 board with a bunch of expansion slots (I dunno why, you probably won't use them, but whatever), this one has a rebate: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130616 For ordinary function (processor speed, GPU performance), all these boards are identical.
If you want to spend $100 plus, may as well get a Z68 board.
If you're getting a discrete graphics card, I don't recommend i3s at all. A pentium g850 for $37 less will give you about the same dual-core performance. It won't have hyperthreading, but hyperthreading has limited application, essentially no application for gaming. Otherwise throw $50 more on top of the i3's price and get a quad-core i5 with much better performance in multi-threaded applications. But that's just my opinion. The i3 is a touch faster than the g850 (not enough you'll notice) and maybe you know of a program you use a lot that utilizes hyperthreading (video editing).
There's a DVD-burner combo deal special with the g850, but I'm assuming you already have a DVD-drive, HDD, and case you're going to re-use.
SkyR's recommendation for the Earthwatts is a good one. You can also get a Rosewill Green 530w for $50, but I dunno how those two compare overall. Both will be more than enough quality power.
No, I'm not going to trash my own video card recommendation . Note tomorrow is the last day that video card is on special. Not that the special is huge, but FYI. As I said before, if you decide you want to spend more on your build, this is probably the place to do it for a gamer (closely followed by getting an i5-2xxx for a quad-core CPU). After the 6850, you pretty much want to browse the 6870s (~$40 more). After that, the 560Tis (above $200 now). Any of these cards will run any modern game at a standard resolution - the only question is how far you turn up the quality settings on the more demanding games. The 6850 should still get you "medium" graphics settings in pretty much every game, and maximum or near maximum graphics settings in graphically undemanding games like SC2.
For a single stick of 4GB RAM, you can get this for $18: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820576002 It should perform essentially the same as 1600mhz of ram, but that can be had a tad cheaper than what you picked too: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820576010 No, the fancy looking heat-spreaders have no effect on performance This is assuming you're leaving open the option of upgrading to 2x4gb. Otherwise, 2x2gb will do marginally better than one stick of ram. ($20) http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007611 600006066&IsNodeId=1&name=4GB (2 x 2GB)
Overall, your build was ok and would do what you wanted it to. I just like to window shop for minor advantages/savings.
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There's some clock speed difference between a Pentium and i3 though, depending on the model, and the hyperthreading does make a difference for some games. Plenty of games can run 3-4 threads, so hyperthreading for a dual core is a lot more useful than hyperthreading for a quad core. It's possible that AVX could gain some widespread adoption; the i3 supports it but not anything lower than that.
Check through the individual benchmarks here for example, between i3-2100 (2C/4T SB, 3.1 GHz no turbo, 3MB L3) and Pentium G860 (2C/2T SB, 3.0 GHz no turbo, 3MB L3): http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-fx-pentium-apu-benchmark,3120-10.html
but some results are a bit flaky of course. For gaming it's probably not worth around a $40 difference, but I wouldn't be so fast to dismiss it.
I'd rather have Antec Earthwatts Green over Rosewill Green Series, but both are okay. The Rosewill is quieter and has a few more connectors, but the Earthwatts is probably built better.
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@Myrmidon - thanks for the clarifications!
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If you can wait a month, you should be able to build a 3rd gen i3.
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I have two really quick questions: a) I would like to upgrade my soundcard, but I really don't know anything about soundcards, so I am wondering what I should get. b) I would also like to get an SSD, nothing too major just for my OS and maybe some programs I use a lot.
My budget is around 300 dollars and I am going to go to a MicroCenter to buy it. I'm sorry if this is the wrong thread, but I am rushing this since I need to go out and would prefer to get an answer by the time I get back.
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On March 18 2012 01:34 CyDe wrote: I have two really quick questions: a) I would like to upgrade my soundcard, but I really don't know anything about soundcards, so I am wondering what I should get. b) I would also like to get an SSD, nothing too major just for my OS and maybe some programs I use a lot.
My budget is around 300 dollars and I am going to go to a MicroCenter to buy it. I'm sorry if this is the wrong thread, but I am rushing this since I need to go out and would prefer to get an answer by the time I get back.
Why do you want to upgrade your sound card, and what are you using currently?
For your SSD, I'd suggest maybe a Crucial m4. 60GB is the OS/Office/PDF reader size, 128 is kinda the minimum if you want to put any games on it.
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On March 18 2012 01:34 CyDe wrote: I have two really quick questions: a) I would like to upgrade my soundcard, but I really don't know anything about soundcards, so I am wondering what I should get. b) I would also like to get an SSD, nothing too major just for my OS and maybe some programs I use a lot.
My budget is around 300 dollars and I am going to go to a MicroCenter to buy it. I'm sorry if this is the wrong thread, but I am rushing this since I need to go out and would prefer to get an answer by the time I get back.
a) In general, I would think that most people don't need a sound card or an upgrade unless there's some problem with the existing solution like audio dropouts, weird noises, and so on. Sound cards make much less of a difference in the sound quality than the headphones or speakers. What would you be using with the sound card?
External sound cards have an advantage over internal sound cards for two main reasons: (1) isolation from EMI from electrically noisy computer power circuitry and I/O, and (2) ability on most external USB interfaces to use generally-good Windows/OSX/Linux default UAC1 audio drivers rather than proprietary drivers which may be buggy. However, in practice, at the consumer level there are more options for internal sound cards because the target market prefers those without good reason.
Which is appropriate depends on the headphones or speakers you'll be using. If you have certain insensitive $200+ headphones then the options are kind of limited as you want something with a more powerful output.
b) As for an SSD, I would recommend a Crucial M4 (Plextor M3 and Corsair Performance Pro are pretty similar, with the Plextor being the best of the three), Samsung 830 (older 470 is okay too), or Intel 320/510/520 except probably not the 320 40GB model. If anything else is cheaper, it's probably because it's an older model or has a bad record for reliability so nobody really wants it.
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SSD - What Jinglehell said. Samsung 830 is also a reliable & fast brand if it's as cheap as the Crucial m4. Edit: nevermind, just read above.
Sound Card - Depends on your budget. Creative Titanium HD if you're a gamer and have a high budget. For spending less, ASUS Xonar DG or DS. For ~$80, ASUS DX/D1 (same card, PCI vs PCI-E connector).
Make sure you have the appropriate slot available on your motherboard. Also, you probably wont' see a benefit over on-board integrated sound unless you have quality headphones & lossless audio files or something. So just not getting a sound card is a better idea if you're not sure what you want.
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On March 18 2012 01:51 MisterFred wrote: SSD - What Jinglehell said. Samsung 830 is also a reliable & fast brand if it's as cheap as the Crucial m4.
Sound Card - Depends on your budget. Creative Titanium HD if you're a gamer and have a high budget. For spending less, ASUS Xonar DG or DS. For ~$80, ASUS DX/D1 (same card, PCI vs PCI-E connector).
Make sure you have the appropriate slot available on your motherboard. Also, you probably wont' see a benefit over on-board integrated sound unless you have quality headphones & lossless audio files or something. So just not getting a sound card is a better idea if you're not sure what you want.
One specific on this. Realtek HD Audio has random issues with BF3 and Punkbuster. Asus Xonar DG is a good replacement at similar quality for an excellent price for this or other technical issues with onboard audio. Otherwise, I agree, onboard unless you're an audiophile, at which point you're looking at spending a lot, and need to look into the stuff Myrm was talking about.
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I'm currently using an Athlon x2 4600+ with 2gb ram and a 8800gt. It's really hard to play 1v1 after midgame because fps drops down to 5-20 range and can't play mass ling styles at all. I am disadvantaged because my opponent doesn't experience the lag as I do, until it gets really laggy. Also, the game randomly stutters from time to time making me unable to control anything for a few seconds, which is really annoying.
What cpu is the best bang for the buck atm? I dont mind if its intel or amd and I play on lowest at 1360*768
Thanks
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On March 18 2012 03:19 HenryZ wrote:+ Show Spoiler +I'm currently using an Athlon x2 4600+ with 2gb ram and a 8800gt. It's really hard to play 1v1 after midgame because fps drops down to 5-20 range and can't play mass ling styles at all. I am disadvantaged because my opponent doesn't experience the lag as I do, until it gets really laggy. Also, the game randomly stutters from time to time making me unable to control anything for a few seconds, which is really annoying.
What cpu is the best bang for the buck atm? I dont mind if its intel or amd and I play on lowest at 1360*768
Thanks
Probably a core i3 2100 / 2120 or a core i5 2500k.
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Hello people. I'm building a PC for a buddy of mine and I could use some feedback. Here's what I have so far:
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z68X-UD3H-B3 Rev 1.3 Harddrive: 1TB Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm SATA 6Gbit/s CPU: Intel Core i5 2500K RAM: Corsair 8GB (2x4096MB) CL9 1333Mhz Case: Fractal Design Define R3 USB 3.0 PSU: Corsair TX 650W V2 80+ Bronze SSD: Crucial SSD m4 64GB Graphics: An AMD 7850, model TBD Monitor: Dell UltraSharp 23'' U2312HM IPS LED
Buying from a swedish site, so obviously most of you can't help a lot with price optimization, but I would like some help with two things. First, I have no idea which model 7850 to recommend. I know the only differences are cooling and custom support, but still, should I just recommend the cheapest or is there value to picking a certain one? I would also like advice to which CPU Heatsink to buy. I personally have a CM Hyper 212+ which I'm fairly happy with, but it was a bitch to mount and it's not available on the site. Here is a list of available Heatsinks. You can just choose "Ja" under Intel 1155/56 and it'll sort those sinks by price. I can't link that as the link has brackets. Just thought I'd clarify: We're looking to OC to maybe ~4,5ghz, so don't really need any monster sinks. Rather looking for the good, cheap ones.
Thanks in advance for any advice you can give <3
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