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On March 27 2011 09:24 Belial88 wrote:
oh taking a look at skyrims specs, recommending a 9800GTX, yea, a 4850 will be more than powerful to accomplish that game. You should probably just buy the 4850 more than anything, I'm sitting here saying that I shouldn't have bought the 460, I shouldve went with the 4850 and been able to eat for a week lol.
whoa where did you find the specs for skyrim?
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On March 27 2011 09:33 gimmeateeshitkent wrote:Show nested quote +On March 27 2011 09:24 Belial88 wrote:
oh taking a look at skyrims specs, recommending a 9800GTX, yea, a 4850 will be more than powerful to accomplish that game. You should probably just buy the 4850 more than anything, I'm sitting here saying that I shouldn't have bought the 460, I shouldve went with the 4850 and been able to eat for a week lol. whoa where did you find the specs for skyrim?
It's a console port. Minimum spec is on par with an xbox 360, and that hardware is so old anything and everything in this thread should be above suggested spec. DA2 is kind of an exception, but with how bad they screwed the pooch on DX11, might as well play it lower specs. (Well, AvP 2010 too, but that game was such a flop it doesn't matter, and no amount of DX11 could save it.)
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On March 27 2011 09:43 JingleHell wrote:Show nested quote +On March 27 2011 09:33 gimmeateeshitkent wrote:On March 27 2011 09:24 Belial88 wrote:
oh taking a look at skyrims specs, recommending a 9800GTX, yea, a 4850 will be more than powerful to accomplish that game. You should probably just buy the 4850 more than anything, I'm sitting here saying that I shouldn't have bought the 460, I shouldve went with the 4850 and been able to eat for a week lol. whoa where did you find the specs for skyrim? It's a console port. Minimum spec is on par with an xbox 360, and that hardware is so old anything and everything in this thread should be above suggested spec. DA2 is kind of an exception, but with how bad they screwed the pooch on DX11, might as well play it lower specs. (Well, AvP 2010 too, but that game was such a flop it doesn't matter, and no amount of DX11 could save it.)
do you know if morrowind/oblivion were console ports too?
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On March 27 2011 09:47 gimmeateeshitkent wrote:Show nested quote +On March 27 2011 09:43 JingleHell wrote:On March 27 2011 09:33 gimmeateeshitkent wrote:On March 27 2011 09:24 Belial88 wrote:
oh taking a look at skyrims specs, recommending a 9800GTX, yea, a 4850 will be more than powerful to accomplish that game. You should probably just buy the 4850 more than anything, I'm sitting here saying that I shouldn't have bought the 460, I shouldve went with the 4850 and been able to eat for a week lol. whoa where did you find the specs for skyrim? It's a console port. Minimum spec is on par with an xbox 360, and that hardware is so old anything and everything in this thread should be above suggested spec. DA2 is kind of an exception, but with how bad they screwed the pooch on DX11, might as well play it lower specs. (Well, AvP 2010 too, but that game was such a flop it doesn't matter, and no amount of DX11 could save it.) do you know if morrowind/oblivion were console ports too?
Well, back then, more games were developed side by side. They were developed together, but they made the PC versions better. Oblivion, not much so, since when it came out, the 360 was still relatively new, so the hardware was reasonably up to date, and I don't think the differences are as pronounced as Morrowind was. Skyrim, however, is being made to run on 5 year old tech, and the odds of them polishing the PC version significantly further are just kind of slim, the way the industry has been shitting on PCs lately. However, we're kind of dragging this way off topic, so if you want to discuss that sort of nuance further, PM me.
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Hi first of all thanks OP for your educational build. I've decided to build a comp according to it. Please check if this is OK..
Prices in Canadian Dollars
Athlon II X3 460 $72
Asus GTX460 Fermi 768mb $115
NZXT Gamma Case $50
Antec Earthwatts 500W 80+ Bronze $35
BenQ Monitor 23' $120
Patriot Extreme Gaming Ram 2x4GB 1600 mhz DDR3 $69.99
WD Caviar Blue 500GB SATA 7200RPM 16mb Cache $39.32
Subtotal (No Mobo and other small things) $501
I need a motherboard, but don't know any good ones, any suggestions?
Is 8gb of ram too much? I can get 4gb for 35$
I also want to play Diablo 3 and Dota 2 when they come out, so I don't know whether it's a good idea to prepare for OC/Unlock or no?
Thanks
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On March 27 2011 09:47 gimmeateeshitkent wrote:Show nested quote +On March 27 2011 09:43 JingleHell wrote:On March 27 2011 09:33 gimmeateeshitkent wrote:On March 27 2011 09:24 Belial88 wrote:
oh taking a look at skyrims specs, recommending a 9800GTX, yea, a 4850 will be more than powerful to accomplish that game. You should probably just buy the 4850 more than anything, I'm sitting here saying that I shouldn't have bought the 460, I shouldve went with the 4850 and been able to eat for a week lol. whoa where did you find the specs for skyrim? It's a console port. Minimum spec is on par with an xbox 360, and that hardware is so old anything and everything in this thread should be above suggested spec. DA2 is kind of an exception, but with how bad they screwed the pooch on DX11, might as well play it lower specs. (Well, AvP 2010 too, but that game was such a flop it doesn't matter, and no amount of DX11 could save it.) do you know if morrowind/oblivion were console ports too?
Morrowind was a PC port, oblivion was a console port.
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Hi first of all thanks OP for your educational build. I've decided to build a comp according to it. Please check if this is OK..
Prices in Canadian Dollars
Athlon II X3 460 $72
Asus GTX460 Fermi 768mb $115
NZXT Gamma Case $50
Antec Earthwatts 500W 80+ Bronze $35
BenQ Monitor 23' $120
Patriot Extreme Gaming Ram 2x4GB 1600 mhz DDR3 $69.99
WD Caviar Blue 500GB SATA 7200RPM 16mb Cache $39.32
Subtotal (No Mobo and other small things) $501
I need a motherboard, but don't know any good ones, any suggestions?
Is 8gb of ram too much? I can get 4gb for 35$
I also want to play Diablo 3 and Dota 2 when they come out, so I don't know whether it's a good idea to prepare for OC/Unlock or no?
Thanks
What kind of motherboard are you getting?
I discuss RAM in my thread - for SC2, you only need 2GB (this will play it perfectly smoothly, but it *will* require you shutting down absolutely every program - imo if you have an extra $20, get more RAM, but if you are strapped, just buy 2GB more when you get the money, I would say its the best thing to spend extra money on, you'll notice the difference, but don't sacrifice your choice of CPU or GPU because you wanted to get 4GB instead of 2). With 4GB you will be able to play SC2 and browse with multiple windows, run background applications, videos, downloads, et cetera, with more RAM only needed for streaming or running other intensive programs at the same time. If you really need 8 GB, the price sounds right on what you picked (70/2=35 for 4GB, not bad) but I'm not sure what the specs are on that RAM and how it compares to other RAM at the same specs at their prices.
If you don't really know about overclocking or unlocking, then I don't think you really should buy stuff for it. It takes a lot of time, patience, and research, that you clearly haven't done yet. With the basic gear you buy now, you should be able to do any overclocking you may want to do in the future anyways. Unlocking doesn't generally require anything extra (unless youre buying the absolute minimum in mobo or PSU, as in like a 300w psu and a 3+1 bad VRM motherboard? If your mobo supports quadcore it'll support tri core unlocked, same with PSU). As for overclocking, the 450 doesn't overclock too far from what I've seen (and when it does, it doesn't require too much voltage to do so, which is actually pretty awesome in the rare cases people hit 4GHZ on it, usually at only +.1v). Get what you need, learn to overclock, and see how stability and temperatures are affected. If temps are an issue, you can just slap on an aftermarket heatsink. Generally things like motherboard or PSU will only need to be changed if you are going for an extreme overclock that you don't plan to use for more than 20 minutes (like an overclocking competition), so in the future you can just buy what you need and be fine. For example, I bought the basic, best priced gear. I have overclocked everything in my system to its limits, and due to stability issues, I never hit high temperatures or voltages that would warrant 'overclock gear'. I did buy fans and a heatsink but this is was to increase the longevity of a system I both wanted to last and be a bit harsh on at the same time. In retrospect, I should've tested first, and seen what I needed, and realized I didn't need to buy what I ended up buying.
But the build should be able to play dota and d3 just fine.
Also your choice in monitor, I can't say if its good or bad. I would recommend you ask someone or somewhere who/what knows about monitors to inform you on the quality of that choice.
The PSU is fine. I think the 430 is all you need, but with a 500w you should be fine for anything you need to do. I actually added 7 fans, a fan controller, and 2x cold cathode lights to my setup, and overclocked my CPU, CPUNB, HT, and RAM with extra voltage and I'm riding the limits of my PSU (meaning I may have to replace it in 3 or so years when it starts to age and lose it's power output but by then I can simply either remove fans, scale back OC's, or simply upgrade). So unless you plan to stack 7 fans (mind you, it's absolutely silly to have 7 fans but that's just me) and know how to overvolt properly, get the 430.
As for suggestions on motherboards, just go with a combo motherboard on newegg with the athlon 450 (i believe they offer the biostar a770e3 still, just like I got). But if you plan to overclock and unlock, then you will need a better motherboard - read my VRM section about that. Since my motherboard was 60USD (40 with the combo deal) you should just start at the 60USD price point and review motherboards and seeing which ones have good VRMs up and up in price until you find the cheap one that is good quality on it.
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Thanks Belial,
I did some research for mobo, and i currently set my mind on the MSI 870A-G54, which can be bought at 82$ here.
according to this comparison (http://www.techspot.com/review/295-amd-socket-am3-motherboard-comparison/page6.html ), this mobo seems ok in terms of performance vs the Gigabyte board that was also in the article, but that one is 106$ here.
What do you think of this MSI mobo? should i go lower or is this ok?
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^ Come on man, my article talks about motherboards, as does that great link I posted in it (the one at overclock.net that talks about motherboards, as well as the All-You-Need-to-Know-About-VRMs guide).
I already said MSI boards are generally avoided, although I didn't get into specifics. They are generally avoided because they use really cheap VRM parts - they buy cheap mosfet chipsets, they use cheap capacitors sometimes, and they use cheap capacitors. The setup may be good, but for some reason they buy really cheap parts to put on the VRM - generally.
So doing an in-depth analysis of you motherboard, that i teach you how to do in my motherboard section, we'll see how good the motherboard is.
![[image loading]](http://www.ixbt.com/mainboard/msi/870a-g54/vrm.jpg)
1. Square blocks, that's ferrite chokes. Good
2. 5 square blocks in total, or "4+1". Bad
3. Solid Capacitors that are 'solid' instead of 'wrapped' looking like electrolytic capacitors. Good.
4. 3 identical mosfet chipsets per channel instead of 2 with a 3rd 8 legged 'driver' chip - bad.
5. 3 legs with the middle cut instead of 4 legs on each chipset, meaning there is no Low RDS on - bad.
6. This wasn't specificed in the guide, but the mosfet chipsets are Nikos brand (you can't really tell in the picture because the gold lettering isn't really readable, but if you look them up online, or seen them before, you can tell those are Nikos because its gold lettering and the circular indention on the middle of thie chipset) this is REALLY bad.
7. No heatsink. Really bad.
The motherboard seems to be 'bad' instead of good most of the time, the only redeeming features are 8pin PSU port and solid capacitors, which are offset by how horrible the mosfet is set up and the low number of channels. The fact this board is $80 and is worse than my $40 Biostar motherboard means it's a total waste of money. My opinion on this motherboard is that it's a total piece of crap, with a jacked up price, using completely cheap taiwanese and chinese parts to save money in a dangerous way since you can use cheap parts where it doesnt matter and you can use smart design with cheap parts to make it work, but in this instance they did neither, and that MSi is doing something a lot of PC companies do - using their brand name to take advantage of consumers who don't know better
It seems the majority of the PC market does this, ie Mac especially and all prebuilt PC companies like HP and Dell do this, they take the ignorance that people don't realize how cheap it is to build a PC or have someone else do it, jack up the price by a huge premium, then make all the parts proprietary so you have to buy a new one to upgrade). What a lot of enthusiasts don't realize is that motherboards are the same way - theoretically, you could build your own motherboard by taking a blank printed circuit board and soldering on chipsets, capacitors, chokes, etc from Japan and Taiwan and then processors from AMD/Intel/ATi etc. It's okay though, MSi is generally a quality brand, I love their company, but in the case of motherboards they are not good.
This isn't an expert opinion or anything, just a little reading at overclock.net and that article I found that I posted in the link. You could've done this analysis by yourself if you took the time to read my article thoroughly, i would think you would if you are spending money to build a PC that you want to last and work 
As for that article you posted, it's a retarded article. I've read through it, and they compare how 'quality' one board is to another based on retarded things. They pick these 3 boards to compare because they have 800 series chipsets, but like I already said, the only difference between northbridges is how many GPUs they support and overclocking, ie they mean very little given you can overclock via software anyways, that many series overclock anyways, and that SLI/Crossfire is a bad option anyways. You can see here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_AMD_chipsets#Comparison_of_Northbridges
That they really don't mean much.
They also knock or priase a board on stupid things like how many SATA ports it has - which you can just add expansions to a board anyways for, and again, you only need just a few. They also praise boards with integrated graphics, which doesn't matter since we are buying a graphics card. We already know no matter how good the integrated graphics, it won't work for SC2, as it isn't for gaming but just to maybe be able to play DVDs or blu-ray. It's just a really bad article, some of the things they say maybe for nice or not for a motherboard but almost nothing they say is worth paying extra money for. In all, the article doesn't say what's important - how well does it handle voltage, how is the vdroop and vdrop, how hot does the VRM or northbridge get, et cetera. The motherboard is just a power supply, and it's quality is based on how well it powers things and how reliably it does so. 'Things' also plug into it, so just make sure it can plug in and your good, you don't need fancy 800 series chipsets to understand that it can support 2 GPUs when you see 2 GPU slots on it.
So I can say it again, its a horribly overpriced board with horrible quality. Don't ever buy it, it will blow out even at stock settings.
Here's what they said at OC.net:
870A-G(D)54/870S-G54 4+1 No 125W 95W max, OC w/cooling No Nikos P060BD MOSFETs 8 pin ATX
http://www.overclock.net/amd-motherboards/946407-amd-motherboard-power-phase-list.html
Essentially its a weak board.
The following is a few testimonials:
http://www.overclock.net/amd-cpus/794250-help-msi-870-g45-unlocking-720be-3.html#post11272679
- MSI 870A-G54/Phenom II x4 955 [4+1] - blew up upon turning the PC on for the first time - 25/2/2011
http://www.overclock.net/amd-motherboards/770915-i-toasted-my-msi-890fx-gd70-12.html#post12246100
MSI 870A-G54/1055T very slight OC, mosfet blew the first day [4+1] - 3/2/2011
http://www.overclock.net/amd-motherboards/914345-msi-870a-g54-cant-change-voltages.html#post12008181
MSI 870A-G54/1075T - sparks coming from mosfets [4+1] - 18/1/2011
http://www.overclock.net/amd-motherboards/839162-msi-870a-g54-lacks-mosfets.html
MSI 870A-G54/x4 955 4Ghz + H50, 10 minutes [4+1] - 5/10/2010 - PIC
Apparently that motherboard is so bad it will actually blow up on stock settings sometimes.
Do you plan to overclock? If you do, you'll need a good motherboard, maybe an extra $20 or so. If you don't then you can get a cheap one. It's about buying smart with motherboards - see, my $40 motherboard is better than that $80 motherboard, and at least mine won't blow up as easily. Although my motherboard isn't good quality for overclocking, it's half the price and better quality.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128469
The cheapest motherboard I could recommend. I wouldn't advise a huge overvolt on this, but any working 24/7 overvolt should be fine. If you plan to overclock, get chipset heatsinks. Miles ahead of the MSI G54 in terms of reliability and not-blowing-up-ness.
Read this article too: http://www.overclock.net/amd-cpus/943109-why-vrms-big-issue-why-choose.html
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Ok I think im going to get that mobo. thanks
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^ its actually $10 cheaper than my motherboard, but imo better. I can see what its cheaper though - no southbridge and less slots. But no point in PCI slots besides single x16 and 2 RAM. You should look up the chipset, its an Nvidia chipset insttead of an AMD chipset, meaning its a bit different. I'm not saying it's bad, the difference is like Nvidia vs Radeon, it's just a different setup. Apparently some Nvidia setups combine the NB and SB together.
But doing a bit of quick research using the 2 links I posted from overclock.net - it has no testimonials of people blowing them up and apparently its recommended to use for 125w OC when cooled. It's definately better than my board, in my opinion. Clearly a better buy than my board which was $10 more expensive (although it was actualyl $10 cheaper due to combo deal). I didn't really do much research on that, I simply looked at newegg and looked at the VRM of the cheapest boards, and that was the first one I saw that was acceptable and wasn't a POS. So there may be better boards out there, although that's the cheapest one that's acceptable so I guess that's all you really need to do in choosing a motherboard (of course, make sure your CPU fits, it has a PCIx16 slot, but that's about all motherboards come down to).
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It also only has a single 12v rail, and its not rated even 80 bronze. It says UP TO 80% efficiency.
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EDIT: made some changes, check out the new system!
+ Show Spoiler +First, I decided to upgrade to the radeon 4850 graphics card, along with a different motherboard ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138197I would LOVE some input on the motherboard, a better suggestion for a cheap/solid AMD board. Also, what is the difference between CAS latency of 7 and 9. I'm assuming that 7 is better, based solely on "less latency = good" can anyone explain CAS latency a bit?
Thanks so much for the guide! I literally was wondering, "how can I build a computer that will play starcraft 2 for $400 to $500?" when I stumbled upon this. Never found more pertinent advice. Anyway, here's the build Im considering, I'd love some opinions/advice on it:
CPU- AMD Athlon II X3 450 Rana 3.2GHz
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103886&cm_re=x3-_-19-103-886-_-Product
$80
Motherboard:
BIOSTAR TA880GB+ AM3 AMD 880G HDMI Micro ATX
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138197
$75
Memory- Kingston 4gb DDR3 (1)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820134927&cm_re=kingston_4gb_ram-_-20-134-927-_-Product
$42
Graphics card
XFX HD-485X-ZNFC Radeon HD 4850
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150482&Tpk=4850 raddeon
$120 ($90 after rebate)
Hard drive- HITACHI 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache Hard Drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145299&cm_re=HITACHI_500g-_-22-145-299-_-Product
$40
Case- SIGMA ORCA ORCA-B ATX
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811226019&Tpk=SIGMA ORCA
$30
Power supply- Antec EarthWatts Green 430W 80 PLUS BRONZE
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371034&Tpk=430 antec earthwatts
$50
(I already have a good LCD monitor)
total:
$437
Edit: bought and built this computer, and it's running things absolutely beautifully! Thank you very much Belial for the thread, without it I woudn't have built this.
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@Lobotomist: I'd check a1's guide to building a sandybridge PC if you're willing to hit the $500 price point.
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This is Australian Dollar
The gaming machine i am looking to build for $1500. Please critique, in particular the mobo, ram and PSU are the main choices that im still not 100% on, perhaps the coolers as well for those more versed.
The mobo will not need to be able to dual gpu as its something i will upgrade later and use this one in a different non gaming system, but would there be other mobos you would recommend in terms of stability/features.
The RAM has me wondering if i should go with the 4gb ones running at CL6, with an upgrade to 8gbs later or would it make not much difference in getting the CL8 version.
Will 750w psu, this one in particular handle dual GTX 560s as that is what i will be aiming to get, along with an i7 on the upcoming 2011 socket, which we can only estimate general levels of power.
CPU – i5 2500k – $250
MOBO Gigabyte GA-P67A-UD3R – $200
RAM – 8GB DDR3 G.Skill F3 1600MHz CL8-8-8-24-2N(2x4GB) – $145
Or
4GB DDR3 G.Skill F3 1600MHz 6-8-6-24-2N (2x2GB) = $90
GPU – Gigabyte GTX560Ti Super Overclock – $310
HDD – 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black SATA III 6 Gb/s 7200RPM 64MB Cache – $105
Cooler – Zalman CNPS9900A(Copper fan-orb design) – $70
Optical – Samsung 12x Blu-ray Reader Combo Drive – $90
Case – Antec Dark Fleet-30 – $120
PSU – 750W Corsair TX-750 – $155
Sound card – Asus Xonar – $60
Total $1475-1525(depends on market)
Thanks for your help.
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EPT
