Father Xmas's guide to picking computer components
By
Allastor,
Posted on: 2008-05-24 01:15 in Player Guides
Keyboard, mouse and speakers
This is the easy bit. As I stated before, I believe that gamers have strong personal preferences to their input devices so I simply don't recommend them. Also since I don't know the amount of room someone has for their sound setup, a full 7.1 or a simple 2.1 (I do believe a subwoofer is a must) and that I don't necessarily appreciate the subtle tonal differences of different speakers. I defer this choice to the user or people better informed and have better ears than I.
Monitor
I didn't select a monitor again for the reason of different strokes for different blah, blah, blah. Plus most people plan on keeping their current monitor, keyboard, mouse and speakers and are simply looking to swap out the system box.
If I was choosing for myself. Well I'm a simple man. Must be widescreen. Must be a real 16.7 million color display, no dithering, with a reasonably fast update time (but monitor makers have gamed the system here, more on that later). Since LCD panels display best at their native resolution, it's important to match this resolution to the performance of your video card. Hooking a 1920x1200 monitor to a low performing video card simply results in regret and remorse. Sort of like getting expensive speakers but a crappy amp.
A place where I have found informative reviews is up at X-bit Labs. They don't review every monitor out there, no one really can, but they do extensive tests on update times and their results show how the numbers that monitor manufacturers report are cherry picked. Also be aware that quality from the same manufacturer can vary widely across models. Also it's best to go to a local store and actually take a gander at the model in real life before you simply order it online, sight unseen.
Case
I have a set of selection criteria for cases. 2, 120mm fans, one front, one rear. Good air circulation is a must. Next question is what ports do I want access to up front. I think USB as well as audio is a must. IEEE 1394a and eSATA is optional depending on your choice of external drives or video cameras. Tool-free is entirely optional in my book. I don't plan on opening the case without my trusty computer tool kit, and I don't plan on opening the case once the system is up and running, for at least 18 months or unless I smell smoke.
The case I picked for my two builds (note a number of parts are identical between the two builds) is simple, clean and straightforward.
Power Supply
This is the one part that is overlooked buy most first time builders. They either settle with whatever came with their case, which has a good chance of being underpowered at the important +12 voltage, or they get some kilowatt monster and use only 1/3 of the power available, or they get the "pretty" one. Chrome or gloss finished in a preferred color, even transparent with UV wrapped cabling with an LED lit fan, all features that have nothing to do with selecting a good power supply.
The two tools I use to pick a power supply is the eXtreme Power Supply Calculator Lite to estimate the power requirements of the build, and then my eyes as I check out detailed information found on the sticker on it or published at it's manufacturers website. With the calculator (I use 30% for capacitor aging), I take it's suggestion and increase it by 35-50%. That gets me in the ballpark. Then I check out the power supplies in that range. Expect to pay $0.20+ a watt for a good quality PSU. I also go with an 80 Plus certified one. The more efficient the power supply, the less heat it generates and needs to be removed from the case. Also look to see if it meets ATX12V V2.2 or higher and/or EPS12V specifications.
Lastly check to see how many watts are available at +12 volts across all rails. Remember the original wattage that the calculator suggested. Add 25% to that and you should have that many +12 volt watts available. Why? Because the CPU and video card is powered almost exclusively by +12 volts. New PSUs will list this either as watts or amps (watts at 12 volts = amps at 12 volts x 12). This is should be listed either at the manufacturers website or on the sticker on the PSU, which you should be able to look at on NewEgg if you view the photo gallery for that unit. Simply adding the amps of all of the +12 volt rails isn't a good enough estimate.
There are a few good sites that have good reviews of power supplies. First is SilentPCReview then X-bit Labs again and lastly Anandtech. Each site tests them through a whole range of loads while measuring voltage, ripple, efficiency and noise. Avoid reviews that are nothing more than installing it in a system and seeing if it'll run.
The power supplies I chose for my two builds are tuned for those system. The 430 Watt has enough power to allow you to upgrade the video card to a 8800GT, add more memory and another drive, even upgrade the CPU a bit. The 650 watt power supply in the 2nd build had enough power to upgrade to the current top end CPU and GPU and overclock both and still only use only 80%.
Optical Drive
Simple. SATA interface, whatever the current burn speed for DVD-R/DVD+R is for this generation. In May 2008, that's 20x. If you are interested in extensive testing and review, CDFreaks is the site to go to. Some people like more than one optical drive in their system for disk to disk copying or to avoid wearing out the burner with extensive use. Others may want a Blu-Ray reader/DVD burner.
For my builds, one optical drive is plenty and by keeping the number of parts the same between the two builds, it highlights where the differences are and how much those differences cost. My choice of Samsung over Lite-on is simply noise. Samsung is reported to be a lot quieter.
Hard Drive
My two parts lists have the same "puny" 250GB hard drive. It may be small by today's standards but it's quick. There are four important numbers that determine hard drive performance. Random seek time, how much time on average it takes to move the heads over the area where the data is stored, lower is better. Rotational speed, this affects how much additional delay on average before the data desired passes under the head as well as the time it takes for the entire block of data to pass under the head, faster is better. Buffer size, the more you have, the more responsive the drive is from the POV of the operating system. Lastly, areal density. How much data per square inch can fit on a platter. A higher areal density means more data passes under the read/write head in the same amount of time. It goes hand in hand in determining the maximum rate of data on and off the hard drive.
That 250GB Seagate hard drive uses a single platter to hold 250GB. This allows the drive to use less power to spin it (less weight) and the increased areal density means it's data rate is much higher than other 7200RPM drives. You can get bigger drives at the same price but they won't be as fast. A good place for hard drive reviews are The Tech Report, Anandtech and Tom's Hardware (don't forget to look at their hard drive charts as well). If you need more space just add another drive.
I would also like to take a bit of time to give you my take on RAID 0 drive arrays, which can double the performance of your rig's storage. It comes at a terrible price for in practical tests, not a lot of benefit. RAID stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Drives. Unfortunately a RAID 0 array in not redundant at all. If you have two independent hard drives. One will have the OS system on it the other doesn't. If a drive fails you have a 50/50 chance that you can still boot. In a RAID 0 array, you have a 100% chance that you can't boot if one drive fails. Some people can accept to 10 seconds of better level load performance in their favorite FPS shooter for the cost of halving the mean time between failures of the drive array. Needless to say, I'm not one of these people. For the extra, what 10 minutes a day at most of time saving you are cutting years off of your drive subsystem before a failure occurs. I hope you do backups.
Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components
Tempus unum hominem manet
CPU
Well we all know that at this time, May 2008, that the Intel Core2Duo/Quad is king of the CPU world. AMD does have CPUs that exceed at the low end in price/performance, which Intel competes in by disabling a large portion of the L2 cache of the Core2 (from 6 or 4MB down to 1MB), the fastest Intel Core2 is much faster than AMD's fastest Athlon X2 or Phenom. For $200 you can get a 3.0GHz Core2Duo that will outperform the fastest AMD CPU by 30-40%. However in the $75 price range, AMD reigns King. It also currently has the most affordable quad core on the market today.
I use both The Tech Report, X-bit Labs and Tom's Hardware when comparing relative performance for price.
As for the question of which is better, fast dual core or slower quad core for the same price? Unless you run a lot of CPU intensive applications at the same time or have applications that can take advantage of more than two cores, I would say choose the faster dual core. If you run multiple copies of this game for instance or do a lot of video compression, then maybe you would be better off with a slower quad core.
For my two builds I use two very different processors. The 2.3GHz AMD Athlon X2 4400+ is a nice inexpensive CPU. In games it beats out Intel's solution at that price point in performance. The other build uses the 3.0GHz Intel E8400 Core2Duo it's about twice as fast as the 4400+ but costs nearly 3 times as much.
Memory
DDR2 Vs DDR3. Currently DDR3 doesn't provide enough of a benefit when price is taken into consideration. Fast DDR3 is currently about twice as expensive fast DDR2 and gives only a 1-2% improvement in performance in memory intensive apps like games. Some games like DDR3 more than others but 1-2% is average.
Again the usual suspects are gathered as resources. X-bit Labs, AnandTech and Tom's Hardware.
I use 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2-800, CAS 5 memory in the less expensive system and 4GB of DDR2-800, CAS 4 memory in the Intel system. Without a 64-bit operating system coupled with a motherboard that recognizes more than 4GB, you won't see all 4GB, some will be lost to system resources occupying the same space.
Motherboard
Motherboard selection boils down to a few key items. What CPU are you planning to use? What kind of memory are you planning to use? Should it support PCIe 2.0 or not? How many video card slots you are planning to use? If the answer to the last question is at least two then you have a few more. AMD/ATI or nVidia? If you are planning to run a pair or more of video cards in Crossfire or SLi modes be aware that this is very much motherboard specific and must be chosen in advance.
Motherboards built around AMD or Intel chipsets are Crossfire only. Motherboards built around nVidia chipsets are SLi only. Then comes the question how many PCIe channels are available to each video card if I install a 2nd card. Some chip sets will only allow each video card to use 1/2 the number of channels each that a single video card would use. On some Intel motherboards, the 1st video card slot keeps 16 or the 2nd only has 4. Crossfire can handle this but the combined performance suffers.
Me, I think SLi is the greatest marketing gimmick since hyperthreading or the Pentium 4. Unless you know for sure that your game's framerate is being limited by your video card's performance, and there isn't a faster card available, your CPU isn't breaking a sweat and you are simply uncompromising in your resolution and graphic settings, then SLi/Crossfire is the way to go. But if you plan on building a system with a pair of low end video cards, stop right there. In a lot of cases you can get a single higher end card for around the cost of that pair of low end cards and get better performance. It also simplifies the power supply, reduce heat and noise and the problem of if SLi/Crossfire doesn't work well with that game, you are stuck with a much inferior low end video card. SLi/Crossfire motherboards are usually more expensive since they are being sold to people who generally looking to dump a huge sum of money for video cards and a high resolution monitor.
Also if you are considering to buy a Crossfire/SLi platform as a hedge, planning on adding the 2nd card later, beware, the shelf life of a particular model video card is short. 6 to 12 months usually. The longer you wait the more difficult it'll be to find a duplicate for the card you have. Also during this time, the price of higher end cards plummet which makes simply upgrading your single card an attractive alternative.
If you haven't guessed yet, yes once again we go to our usual suspects for information. X-bit Labs, AnandTech, The Tech Report and Tom's Hardware. The chip set reviews allow you to get an idea what each chipset brings to a motherboard while the multi-motherboard reviews with the same chipset shows you the subtle differences in performance.
Both Asus and Gigabyte make excellent motherboards. The motherboard on the AMD system uses the latest AMD 790G chipset with their latest south bridge chipset as well. The motherboard supports the AMD Phenom quad core. The motherboard on the Intel system is based on the older Intel P35 chipset. Both motherboards support more than 4GB of memory and have only one PCIex16 video card slot.
Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components
Tempus unum hominem manet
Video Card
This is probably the most asked about topic for upgrading on the Tech board. First correcting a misconception. The power supply requirement for a video card, which is normally listed as X watts and Y amps at 12 volts. The Y amps isn't just for the video card, it's for the whole system. And the reason for the X watts, most people don't know how many watts at 12 volts is available from their PSU but the system's manual or website may tell them how many total watts it has. Both of these values are on the high side to reduce support calls about adding a video card and now their system won't boot.
Also reviews of video cards usually have a chart showing you how much power under load a graphics card uses. Be aware that 95%+ of these charts are the AC power drawn from the wall socket for most of the components found in the system box. Actual amount of total DC power the test system used depends on the efficiency of the power supply, assume a high value like 85% to get an idea of the power usage of the video card along with the memory, motherboard, CPU and hard drive. Power supplies are rated in DC watts, not AC watts.
Now onto the meat, which card is better and by how much, I prefer to use real benchmarks instead of something like 3DMark. Reviews with the most games, the most resolutions, the most AA/AF settings tested and the most number of video cards tested side by side matter to me most. The Tech Report tends to have good multi card reviews. And the charts, updated about once a year, at Tom's Hardware is a good resource as well. Recently I found that the card reviews at TechPowerUP include a lot of cards, games, settings and resolutions in their charts. These include lower end and older cards that you rarely see reviewed at all. Earlier reviews, before they switched test platforms had many more of these older and/or lower end cards.
Also remember that these benchmarks are usually run with all the graphic options to 11 so less powerful cards with less memory suffer greatly in these tests. Lowering the settings even by a bit will make these low end cards perform much better than these charts usually indicate. Which brings us to another misconception. That more video memory means faster performance. It's not that having more memory makes a game faster, it's not enough memory for the game settings and resolution, that makes a game slower. Beware video cards that come with more memory than the standard card. Check very closely at the speed of the memory. It's notorious with the 8600GT that a number of inexpensive 512MB 8600GTs use slower (over 40% slower) DDR2 memory instead of faster GDDR3. This actually makes the card slower even on games and settings that more memory normally makes a difference.
Also memory speed and bandwidth is important but it doesn't trump raw GPU performance. Back a few years ago, nVidia had the 6800XT. It had the same memory width and speed of a standard 6800 but half of the processing power. A 6600GT which had half of the memory width but faster memory and a more powerful GPU easily beat the 6800XT on benchmarks but that didn't prevent lots of people from buying it anyways simply because it was a 256-bit card. Excess bandwidth doesn't get you anything, it's not having enough that will hurt you.
If you are upgrading your graphics, the two things you should figure out before buying is what video card slot your motherboard has; PCI, AGP or PCIe (or PCI Express). Each are unique. The other thing you should figure out is if the new card you are looking at is truly an upgrade. The best source for this info is Tom's Hardware's Best Graphics Card for the Money: <Current Month> article. The last page is a two column chart, sorted by relative performance with just about every graphics card of the last 10 years from nVidia and AMD/ATI into similar performance "bins". Find your current card's GPU, find the one you are thinking about switching to and compare. Keeps you from swapping that 6800GT for a 7600GS and complain that your performance dropped big time. The rest of the article details their opinion of what to buy for what video card slot PCIe or AGP for X amount of dollars.
In my build I chose the 8800GS (soon to be called the 9600GSO) because is seriously out performs an 8600GTS for only a few dollars more. The next step up from it is the 9600GT which was too expensive for the low cost system. The high end system uses an 512MB 8800GTS. A number of reviews show that the 1GB video cards aren't needed, yet, and cost more, use more power and generate more heat.
Other Bits - Sound Card
Nearly extinct nowadays, because of "acceptable" sound quality from integrated audio on the motherboard, the market is composed of three distinct segments. First is the cheap $20-40 sound card market. These are based on the same chips that are on the motherboard. They may provide you with a little higher quality sound by getting away from some of the electrical noise on the motherboard. The $200 audiophile sound card. Much larger than the cheap sound cards with many more filtering stages to produce a cleaner sound at the output. Then there's Creatives X-Fi line gamer line. Starting around $100 at NewEgg, it contains additional processing power to offload some of the work from the CPU as well as having a better analog back end for improved sound quality. However with the advent of fast multiple core CPUs and the little work required to manage sound, the performance boost is getting less and less all the time. Also the change in the Vista Direct Sound portion of Direct X now requires Creative to do an end run around Vista to allow older games access to the same effects.
I included a Creative X-Fi XtremeGamer card because I could and it didn't seem right without one.
Other Bits - CPU Cooler
CPU Coolers - Nearly all retail CPUs come with a combo fan/heatsink to bleed away the 40-60-125 watts of heat a dual or quad core can generate when under load. They do their job, just not as well as they could. And when you start to overclock your CPU, they can't handle to work at all. So the replacement CPU cooler market is born.
It comes in two major flavors, liquid and air cooled. Now I don't like liquid cooling. You have pumps and tubing and external radiators and then you have the liquid itself. Great for car engines, not elegant enough for my taste.
Air cooling it is. These coolers come in two basic designs. The "awesome blossom" flower style with the fan blowing at the motherboard or a tower design that use heat pipes, a non-mechanical heat conveyor that's faster than just a chunk of metal (brought to us by the space program), to draw the heat away from the CPU to an array of multiple, sharp as razors, thin blades of metal that all together has the surface area of a sheet of newsprint. The heat leaves the pipe going into these blades which are then air cooled with usually a large fan. The fan is mounted at 90 degrees to the motherboard, normally pointing at exhaust fan at the rear of the case. These tower designs generally work better than the flower design in keeping the CPU cooler, eliminating one of the side effects of overclocking.
There are two sites that have nice reviews of the various 3rd party coolers that I look at, X-bit Labs and AnandTech.
I included the Freezer 7 Pro in the more expensive build. Since I decided someone will likely overclock their Core2Duo processor, the Freezer 7 Pro does reasonably well at handling this extra heat for not a lot of money.
Other Bits - Operating System
Well in a few months it will be impossible to get Windows XP Pro, which is my preferred OS, even though it's only 32-bit. However with the price of DDR2 memory where it is and with a motherboard that can support more than 4GB, switching over to a 64-bit OS seems inevitable. If you are going to get Vista get at the minimum Vista Home Premium 64-bit with SP1. Sure you could go nuts and get the Ultimate edition, even one with Bill G's autograph if you want Texas Hold-em that bad. And a backup utility. And drive encryption. Hopefully your printer has a 64-bit driver by now.
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Well that's it. Hopefully people will find it useful. I'm sure that people with strong opinions that are different than mine about the Duo or Quad question as well as my dislike for RAID 0 and SLi/Crossfire will chime in. I'm sure that when the 9900GTX comes out next month and the future price cuts on CPUs as well as newer, faster models will make this guide seem quaint.
Just research the parts before buying, ask up at the tech forum if you have questions. Check the sites I've linked throughout this guide for reviews on the new technologies as they arrive.
Also remember, it was less than 6 months ago that the 8800GT came out, now it's about $100 cheaper. Less than two years ago the original 2.93GHz Core2Duo was priced at over $900 (OK it had an unlocked multiplier, like overclockers needed it), now a 2nd generation Core2Duo with more cache at 3.0GHz is around $200. My point, today's cutting edge is tomorrow's bargain. We are at a price/performance point today that was undreamed of only a year ago. What will it be like in another year?
TTFN
Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components
Tempus unum hominem manet
Great guide. I've been thinking about getting a new video card, and now I'll have to look into an 8800 GS =) Thanks.
After all the various price drops we've seen in the past few months, nominally caused by the release of bigger and faster on the market, I've tweaked my $600 build.
The major changes are:
Since the previous Cooler Master case is no longer offered at NewEgg, I'm now using the Antec NSK6580 which incorporates the Antec Earthwatts 430 power supply I had previously picked. I also tossed in the 2 optional 92mm, 3 speed fans for the front of the case. At the lowest speed setting they will still provide intake air across the hard drive at very little noise.
I also upgraded from a 384MB 9600GSO to a 512MB 9600GT which will provide a nice little speed boost.
The biggest change is going from an AMD CPU and motherboard to an Intel Core2 family 2.4Ghz E2220 CPU and a Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3L motherboard. I really would loved to have gone with an E7200 for a CPU but I simply couldn't find any way to work it in with my pricing rules. The primary reason for the switch, there is a lot more upwards room for CPU improvement with Intel than AMD.
However if you are still a diehard AMD user, you can swap the CPU and motherboard to a 2.8GHz Athlon X2 and the Gigabyte GA-MA78G-DS3H motherboard for nearly the same price and performance.
Also if I believe I've upped the speed of the DVD burner to a Samsung 22x from a 20x. Simply the same drive ratcheted up in speed.
Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components
Tempus unum hominem manet
Not as many changes in the $1200 build.
Once again with the loss of my preferred choice of case, I've substituted the Cooler Master 690 case. This case comes with 3, 120mm fans already and if that isn't enough, there are plenty of mount points for additional 120mm fans, including two on the top, a second one in the side panel and one on the bottom of the case. There is even a mount point for a smaller fan to blow on the underside of the MB about where the CPU would be located.
I'm not sure but I believe I've upgraded the PSU as well from a Seasonic 550 watt to the Corsair 650 watt which has two, 6+2 PCIe power connectors if you decide on one of the monster video cards in the future.
On the graphics front, the introduction of the nVidia new 200 series and AMDs surprising 4xxx series have sparked a price war that drove the price of what was the top end single GPU video cards of 6 months ago down to a really affordable price. The "new" 9800GTX+ squeezes a bit more performance out of the G92 GPU than my previous pick.
Also I went from a P35 to the Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3R, P45 based motherboard which should last until Intel obsoletes the Core 2 line of CPUs. The latest rev of the PCIe bus doesn't hurt either.
I've also changed the hard drive from the Seagate single platter 250GB to the Western Digital two platter 640GB drive which is even faster.
I again updated the DVD burner from the Samsung 20x to 22x.
Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components
Tempus unum hominem manet
Here's what I built before I figured out I was going to get into CoX.
Antec Sonata III case: Got it for less than $30 due to a Boxing Day (the day after Xmas) sale at the Fry's just outside of Chicago. It's probably the last Sonata case I'm going to buy. It's just a bit too cramped and I'm starting to value space in the case over absolute silence now. I've since replaced the included PSU with a 700W PSU with a 14cm fan to evacuate heat from the CPU area more efficiently.
Asus P5E-VM HDMI Motherboard: Basic motherboard with support for 8GB of RAM (now all populated). Didn't want to drop $300+ on an SLI motherboard. Didn't really care for DDR3 yet. And with the onboard video, if my discrete card bites the biggun, I have a backup video system to recover with. My only problem, it doesn't like the memory's native settings, and defaults to lower "safe" settings with 8GB of RAM (works fine at the native settings with 4GB).
G.Skill DDR2 800 RAM: GREAT price, good performance. No real problems.
Asus EN8600GT Video Card: Not enough to drive my monitor at full res (16x10), but still nice. Will probably replace it with something nicer for Xmas this year.
Plextor SATA DVD burner: Had NOTHING but GREAT luck and performance out of Plex. Worth spending almost double for.
Western Digital 500GB ABYS SATA drives. Everyone has their HD preferences and hates. I prefer WD for my systems. These work REAL nice.
Core 2 Quad 6600 (Kentsfield): I have other stuff going on with my system besides gaming (SQL apps). So the extra cores are more necessary than a few extra Mhz. Unless I'm doing something stupid like rocking all four cores with Distributed.net's client, the game is butter smooth, as are all other ops on the machine.
I also upgraded the stock CPU cooler with a Scythe SCNJ-1100P 120mm setup. The stock cooler worked, but didn't really sit well on the board. I was running into IDLE temps of 60 degrees Centigrade and active temps of over 70. Now the chip runs MUCH cooler.
I also went dual monitor at this time. Had an old Rosewill 17" monitor that does 1440x900. Was able to get a new Dell 20" monitor.
Grand total after bumping the machine to 8GB, getting the new PSU, and the new CPU cooler. About $1600.
Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
End of Sept 2008 $600 Build.
Beware, for some reason NewEgg wishlists seem to be influx with older selections suddenly reappearing. If something looks wrong, like an AMD processor with an Intel motherboard, that's the reason. I had to redelete a number of parts that suddenly reappeared again on both wishlists. I'll try to keep an eye on these wishlists to clear up any "ghost of parts past" from reappearing.
The major changes since August's configuration is the upgrade from the Intel E2220 (2.4GHz, 1MB cache, 800MHz FSB) CPU to the new E5200 (2.5GHz, 2MB cache, 800MHz FSB). The combination of twice the cache, 100MHz speed increase and the improved Wolfdale core shows an 11% improvement in CPU benchmarks over the E2220. And it's $5 cheaper. Be on the lookout for the E5300 in October which is 2.6GHz and will assume the same price point as the E5200 does today.
For the AMD crowd I haven't forgotten about you. Besides using the Gigabyte GA-MA78G-DS3H motherboard I highlighted last month, I recommend the new, lower power Athlon X2 6000+ instead of the Athlon X2 5600+ from last month. A historical note, it was around 18 months ago that this class of Athlon X2 was over $430. Thank you Intel for the competition to drive down CPU pricing.
On the video card side of things the "new" 9800GT (really a 8800GT with a name change) is now within price range of the $600 build bumping off last months 9600GT. It was only 11 months ago that the 8800GT came out at twice the current price. Thank you AMD finally for the competition to drive down video card prices.
Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components
Tempus unum hominem manet
Only one change in my $1200 build.
First let me point out that a large number of items on this wishlist are currently on "sale" at NewEgg. Since I don't take these sale discounts into consideration or rebates for that matter, I only had around $35 to apply toward upgrading something performance related.
So I begrudgingly upgraded the CPU from a 3.00GHz E8400 to an 3.16GHz E8500 for $20. Begrudgingly because it's only a 5+% theoretical improvement for an 11+% increase in cost.
Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components
Tempus unum hominem manet
It's been roughly 6 1/2 weeks since my last update so let's look at the $600 build.
The three things I've changed from last time is the amount of RAM, the Motherboard and I've upgraded the DVD burner to include Lightscribe.
The DVD burner change is a why not? It's a $3 difference in price and maybe Lightscribe has improved since it first came out. I thought it was a silly idea when it arrived because it took several times longer to burn a label than it took to write a full disk of data. Maybe performance improved. Maybe not but let's still give it as an option.
For RAM I've bumped the amount up to 4GB from 2GB. Why not, it's only $20? In all likelihood you will be installing Vista anyways, hopefully the 64-bit version to take advantage of all of the memory. If not, you should be seeing more the 2GB and every bit helps.
As for the motherboard, well the P35 was so last year </em eyeroll> so I'm suggesting the Gigabyte GA-EP43-DS3L. The only difference between the P43 and P45 is the P45 ability to split the x16 PCIe graphics slot into two x8 PCIe slots for Crossfire. As for the difference between this and the previous choice, the Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3L, the major difference is the P43 supports the faster PCIe V2 (or Gen 2) spec for twice the bandwidth. It also supports 16GB of memory instead of 8GB, has 2 more SATA connectors (still no RAID) on the MB and 2 more USB connectors on the back panel (instead of an additional header on the MB). You do lose the old fashion parallel port connector on the back panel but it remains as a header on the motherboard.
Unfortunately like minds seem to have come up with the same idea as I've noticed this is being touted on other peoples low end rig parts list and is now on backorder at NewEgg. 
And I thought I was being original.
Sadly the rumored 2.6GHz Intel E5300 processor never materialized when it should have so we are still "stuck" with the now slightly cheaper 2.5GHz Intel E5200. Well the Intel i7 will hit next week and we may see other rumored CPUs, basically the next 1/2 multiplier step, come out before Xmas and push the current line down a notch in the pricing structure.
Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components
Tempus unum hominem manet
Onto the $1200 rig.
Well it seemed that the Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3R has been dropped from NewEgg so now this uses the Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R. It is virtually identical to the old MB but is now full of Awesome Marketing Mojo, an additional ounce of copper and 2 more SATA ports.
And I also spent $3 and switched to the Lightscribe version of the DVD burner.
And I've upgraded from the 640GB, 16MB Cache WD Caviar Blue (formerly SE16) to the 640GB, 32MB Cache WD Caviar Black hard drive for $10 more. No idea how much performance it will buy but the 1TB Caviar Black is currently the 7200RPM drive to beat.
The problem is I have around $40 and have nothing I can really upgrade.
- It's not enough to upgrade the video card to an eVGA GTX 260
- It's not enough to upgrade the hard drive to an WD Caviar Black 1TB or a Velociraptor
- It's not enough to upgrade to a "real" 12MB cache Intel Core2 quad CPU
- It's not enough to upgrade to 6 or 8GB of CAS 4, DDR2-800 memory
As for the less expensive Intel quads like the 2.4GHz Q6600 or the 2.33GHz Q8200 (the 2.5GHz Q9300 is just a bit too much) well... slower quads do perform some multithreaded applications faster than a higher clocked dual core. But since I'm targeting CoH/V in particular with these builds, a quad would only be faster if you virtual dual box, run two copies of the game at the same time on two accounts. I leave that decision up to you.
So until next update, which I'm guessing just before the New Year, have a happy holiday.
Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components
Tempus unum hominem manet
Updated $1200 build.
I wasn't planning I doing an update this soon but an e-mail from someone asking about this list made me think long and hard as well as making me notice an error in my previous post.
First, I inadvertently linked to the GA-EP45-UD3P instead of the GA-EP45-UD3R which was a few dollars more and didn't make sense because of my stated disfavor of multi GPU solutions, the UD3P has two PCIe video card slots, and that I'm specifying an nVidia card where the P45 is ATI Crossfire only. This in turn made me believe I didn't have enough money to upgrade any additional parts when in fact I did.
Second, while looking a bit closer over my previous part selection I became concern that the fancy OCZ Reaper HPC DDR2-800 CAS 4 memory with their elevated heatpipe to heatsink may physically interfere with the fan on the Freezer 7 Pro cooler I specified. It's difficult to judge scale and imagine the parts assembled.
Because of this, more money, possible assembly problems and that this is suppose to be an overclocking rig, I've decided to swap out the cooler and the memory.
For the cooler I'm now specifying the ZEROtherm ZEN FZ120. The review at X-Bit Labs showed that it was an impressive cooler with OC CPUs. It does use an included back plate to secure the cooler to the motherboard as oppose to the Intel cooler style push pins of the Freezer 7 Pro.
For the memory I've switched to the ordinary looking OCZ Platinum DDR2-1066 CAS 5. The CAS 5 DDR2-1066 is a little bit faster than CAS 4 DDR2-800 and should give an OCer some more leeway in setting the speed and timings of the memory once they've finished OCing the CPU.
Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components
Tempus unum hominem manet
Well it's about two weeks after Christmas, start of 2009 so let's look at the $600 build.
Short story. Nothing's changed. The Intel E5300 is now out but $16 for a maximum 4% in raw CPU performance doesn't make my heart go all a twitter. Anyways I only have $11 till I hit my self-imposed spending cap.
I was forced, due to the model being discontinued, to change to a different model of 9800GT from eVGA. Same clock speeds so from a performance POV, again nothing really changed.
The new single platter 500MB Seagate drive seems interesting but I'll wait until I see some reviews on the 7200.12 drives first.
Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components
Tempus unum hominem manet
Onto the $1200 build.
I changed two things over my last build out.
First, I swapped the sound card to now use the new PCIe based Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium instead of the older classic PCI based Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer. No real reason other than eliminating another legacy interface requirement.
Second, I upped the drive from the Western Digital Caviar Black 640GB hard drive to the Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB hard drive. I've always had a bit of a problem recommending what to me are huge hard drives because it means you can lose more when the drive fails.
If there is one thing I wish for it's a permanent reduction in the list price of the Corsair CMPSU-650TX Power Supply. Since I cap my price based on the unit price at NewEgg, the fact it seems to always be on sale for $60 off is locking me out of $60 that I could spend on upgrading something else. It's aggravating, annoying and some other word that starts with A to complete the alliteration.
Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components
Tempus unum hominem manet
[ QUOTE ]
Updated $1200 build.
Second, while looking a bit closer over my previous part selection I became concern that the fancy OCZ Reaper HPC DDR2-800 CAS 4 memory with their elevated heatpipe to heatsink may physically interfere with the fan on the Freezer 7 Pro cooler I specified. It's difficult to judge scale and imagine the parts assembled.
[/ QUOTE ]
To let you know I have this exact ram ( 8gb of it) and it's about 2 inch high with the cooler. ( you basically double the height of the ram compared to a normal stick).
It is very efficient at dissipating heat. the problem I have is I need to remove the ram before swapping some component ( cd-rom / hd) but there is no problem with the Thermaltake blue-orb heatsink for the LG755. I know it's not made on the same design as the Freezer 7 pro, but it is a beast inside the case yet is not in the way.
Btw I use an EVGA 790I motherboard . I know some layout can be different so it's just to give an reference point.
Well I wasn't planning on an update this soon for the $600 build but like Humpty Dumpty, I was pushed.
Short story, NewEgg either stopped restocking the GA-EP43-D3SL motherboard or Gigabyte is phasing it out for this, the GA-EP43-UD3L motherboard. It is essentially an "Ultra Durable 3" version of the D3SL, same port arrangement on the I/O panel, same set of internal connectors but with a slightly different layout of the PCIe slots on the motherboard.
Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components
Tempus unum hominem manet
Well I was pushed again with the $600 build.
The changes are the following. Swapped out the Pentium Dual Core E5200 for the new and shinny Pentium Dual Core E6300 (not to be confused with the original Core 2 E6300). Higher clock speed (2.8GHz Vs 2.5GHx), faster FSB (1066MHz Vs 800MHz) and Intel VT support for those who want to go with Windows 7 Pro or higher and get it's XP in a virtual machine compatibility. This was actually a change I was planning for a while.
Now comes the pushing part. The venerable Seagate 7200.10 250GB drive has been discontinued. On top of that the Samsung SATA DVD burner seems to be always out of stock. Actually this seems to be the case with a lot of SATA DVD burners in general, not just at NewEgg and not just Samsung. No idea as to the cause.
So for the hard drive we are going to skip forward two generations to the Seagate 7200.12 500GB drive. Like my previous pick it is a single platter drive which means lower power and very high transfer rates.
For the DVD burner I'm going with the Sony Optiarc AD-7240S. It's one of the lower cost, better rated drives they still have in stock.
Edit: Of course, in less than 36 hours the Sony is now out of stock. Fine, get an inexpensive SATA DVD burner from somewhere. Trying to pick one that stays in stock is like playing Whack-A-Mole while on quaaludes.
Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components
Tempus unum hominem manet
thanks for the guide. sticky this!
The $1200 build.
OK, quite a number of changes in this rig. The primary reason behind this is that prices have gone up on some components, sometimes by a lot (DDR2 memory prices more than doubled), over $100 all together. Plus a lot has changed in the last 10 months.
First I'm switching from a Socket 775 Core2Quad 9550 to a Socket 1156 Core i5-750. This in turn required me to change the motherboard, the memory and the heat sink. As strange as it sounds this configuration is $46 cheaper yet the i5-750 performs better.
I also dumped the sound card and put some of that money into a faster video card (GTX 275 in place of a GTX 260). The reason is because the motherboard uses a very nice integrated audio chip and I believe that better framerate from a faster video card trumps any framerate gained by using a Creative gamer sound card. Also to provide the additional power for this card I decided to up the power supply from a Corsair 650 watt to the 750 watt model. This also saves $35 from the previous design.
The case, hard drive, optical drive and thermal compound remains the same.
There is one other thing different about this build and the previous one. The motherboard support SLi and Crossfire where the previous one supported neither. It's not that I changed my personal opinion about multiple video cards it's just that this build has always been designed with thoughts of a system for an enthusiast. That is the reason for the low latency RAM and big third party CPU heatsink so if someone wanted to, they could overclock without needing to upgrade anything. It is also another reason I upgraded the power supply, this one has four 6+2 PCIe power connectors to support two video cards.
Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components
Tempus unum hominem manet
great guide
very helpful since getting new computer
thanks for the info
The $1200 build.
You know I really hate it when I'm pushed into changing something, not because of better technology or lowered prices. So please excuse the ranting nature of this post.
So in a bit under six weeks I find myself reworking the $1200 rig again.
First the positive changes.
I've ditched the old Cooler Master CM 690 case for the new Cooler Master CM 690 II Advance for $15 more. It has better cable management, a nifty SATA drive dock on the top and they moved the side fan to the top and made it a 140mm. Still has as many optional fan mounts as the old case. It's sort of Cooler Master's answer to the Antec Nine Hundred Two case but without the window.
Next I swapped the CPU cooler from the XigmaTek HDT-S1283 with the additional Socket 1156 adapter to the Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus. Near identical performance but $18 and change less. So that pays for the case.
Now for the changes I was forced into.
It's widely known that nVidia is in a spot of trouble right now. Their next gen chip is late and with ATI's introduction of the HD 5xxx series, nVidia's GTX line simply doesn't have the performance to compete at ATI's price points. Whether or not that has anything to do with the fact that the GTX 275 being perpetually out of stock, I don't know, but finding one from one from the "big name" manufacturers is next to impossible. Maybe they are just really popular. Anyways I hate listing something you can't get.
So I need a new video card and since I don't like the idea of going back to the GTX 260/216 and sacrificing performance the last build had. This means I'm going with the ATI HD 5850 for $40 more. It's faster and cheaper than the GTX 285 and with the rumored changes to the CoH/V graphics engine for Going Rogue also resolves the outstanding "quirks" that the game has with ATI cards in general, I think it's now a safe alternative to take.
Lastly I need to change the motherboard as Gigabyte seems to have dropped the GA-P55-UD4P for the GA-P55A-UD4P. I love Gigabyte. They produce a high quality motherboard at reasonable price points. They are recommended on loads of tech sites and are universally praised. However, even a company with an excellent reputation occasionally takes a misstep. Gigabyte has with their current line of P55A variants of their P55 motherboards.
Their P55A motherboards add 6 Gigabit SATA and USB 3.0 support via an additional chip on the motherboard. 6Gb SATA should help performance with future SSD drives, doesn't really help conventional hard drives which are just now barely beyone the 1.5Gb SATA speeds. USB 3.0 will definitely help with external HDs (but you would need a USB 3.0 external HD, doesn't do jack with the current ones). The problem comes with how Gigabyte added this chip to the motherboard. The chip needs a single PCIe V2.0 channel to work. The only source of PCIe V2.0 channels are the 16 found on the CPU that is normally connected to the video card(s). So if you enable support of either 6Gb SATA or USB 3.0, you lose not only SLi and Crossfire compatibility but the primary video card slot is now only x8 and not x16. On top of that Gigabyte charges $20-$30 more, depending on the model, for the privilege.
<RANT>
Now that wouldn't be a problem but the older, higher end, non P55A motherboards seem to have been unofficially discontinued since nobody is carrying them anymore. So we have a bad engineering "hack" on a otherwise good motherboard that no right minded gamer will turn on but are charged for it and then they drop the original motherboard line without this feature. It's a gamer stupidity tax.
</RANT>
So until Gigabyte comes up with a better solution, like Asus did with their P7P55D-E series of motherboards, I, with a heavy heart, am staying away from Gigabytes entire P55A line of motherboards. So does this mean I'm going Asus? No, since I got rid of the dedicated sound card last November I want a motherboard with better audio quality than what's found on the Asus. So I'm going with the MSI P55-GD65. It performs well, gets good reviews, uses the same sound chip and if memory serves me, is actually $10 cheaper than the GA-P55-UD4P.
Of course as soon as I post this a container ship full of GA-P55-UD4P and GTX 275s will dock in Long Beach and the parts that I was forced to change will once again be back in stock.
Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components
Tempus unum hominem manet
Your dedication to keeping this guide up to date is, and this is an understatement, greatly appreciated. I'm about to ditch my 5 year old self built dinosaur that has served me so well and go the way of SATA and PCI Express - two things that would be completely foreign to me were it not for your guide.
Many, many thanks.
Quote:
Strongly seconded. I, like many others around here I'm sure, am looking to build a new computer when the GR requirements are finalized. Having not built a computer since the AMD64 days (yes, I'm still running a single core) I've fallen so far behind on current tech that I didn't even know where to start. |
Originally Posted by New Bee
Your dedication to keeping this guide up to date is, and this is an understatement, greatly appreciated. I'm about to ditch my 5 year old self built dinosaur that has served me so well and go the way of SATA and PCI Express - two things that would be completely foreign to me were it not for your guide.
Many, many thanks. |
Thanks to you I can build a nice system without breaking the bank and be confident it will perform well. And I can concentrate on scratch building a custom case for it instead of sweating over which brand of memory is better.
Again, thank you for the time you put into this.
@ Sfort
Post may sarcasm
Leet speak, and generally difficult to read posts will be not be read.
OAS! AAS! LLS!
And thirded, absolutely. Useful guide, presented well (not just "use this" but "why," and "why I changed this.") Even if my upcoming rig doesn't match this... well, much 
it, and the help given when I mentioned what I was looking at, are greatly appreciated.
Hi, if you haven't been over to the Technical Issues and Bugs forum I'm one of the many players who post there regularly. A number of these have to do with part selection for upgrades or for a completely new rig. This guide is to provide some insight as to my methods as well as the resources I use in designing a rig.
There are a number of basic parts that all computers have and need to run. They are, in no particular order.
- Keyboard, Mouse, Speakers
- Monitor
- Case
- Power Supply
- Optical drive(s)
- Hard drive(s)
- CPU
- Memory
- Motherboard
- Video Card(s)
- Sound Card
- CPU cooler
- Operating System
Now the primary tool I use to look for a particular part is the Advance or Power Search tools at NewEgg. It allows my to weed away the parts that don't meet my rather particular requirements to a much smaller list. The Advance Search allows you to thin down the selection, one qualification at a time. Take graphic cards for example. Select Chipset Manufacturer to nVidia, poof, all the non nVidia based cards vanish. Choose 256-bit Memory Interface, poof, all that's left are cards with 256-bit Memory Interface. However if you say are interested in cards with at least a 256-bit Memory Interface, it's best to use the Power Search tool as you can select several entries in each filter. You don't have to buy through NewEgg. Buy through whomever, but I find NewEgg's search tools to be 2nd to none.
A bit about my philosophy about gaming rigs. First let me tell you a bit about myself so you have an idea where I'm coming from. I'm a Computer and Systems Engineer by degree, Software Engineer by trade (firmware and application). I'm in my mid 40s. I prefer elegant, simple solutions. Therefore I design systems that are relatively bling free, whose individual parts do their job well, for a good price, with minimal complexity. I design systems that when assembled and confirmed that they are in good working order are stuffed under a desk until something breaks. They are not pieces of modern art. They are not the high tech equivalent of a hood-less hot-rod at a cruising event. Mine are more like the used family wagon that hides the fact that it could easily take 85% of the cars at those events and do it for less money by simply concentrating on what is important and cost effective.
Before I go onto how I choose each part, let my link to my two part lists I have up on NewEgg. I keep these up to date at least once a month, more if there are major price shifts, old components going obsolete or newer components becoming available. These part lists include just the Case and everything that goes in it. No Keyboard or Mouse, users tend to have specific preferences, no speakers, again depends if the user has the space for a 7.1 setup or a simple 2.1, no Monitor for reasons I'll go into later and no OS due, well, religious differences among people plus the fact that the "Microsoft Tax" can be a substantial % of the cost to any low price system. Also I don't go over my price point and I don't take into account any rebates or sales. I also leave about a 5% pad for upward fluctuations in the price.
My $600 rig, as of 5/23/08, is based on a 2.3GHz AMD Athlon X2 4400+ coupled with a 384MB 8800GS video card and 2GB of DDR2-800, CAS 5 memory. It uses an Antec 430 Watt Earthwatts power supply that can put out 30 amps (360 watts) at 12 volts.
My $1200 rig, as of 5/23/08, is based on the 3.0GHz Intel E8400 Core2Duo with a factory overclocked 512MB 8800GTS and 4GB of DDR2-800, CAS 4 memory. It also includes a sound card and a 3rd party CPU cooler. The memory and 3rd party CPU cooler were selected for those who are looking to overclock the CPU a bit or simply prefer to run a cooler machine. It uses a 650 Watt Corsair power supply that can put out 52 amps (624 watts) at 12 volts. Enough power to upgrade to and overclock a QX9650 with a 9800GX2.
Now on to part picking.
Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components
Tempus unum hominem manet