Topic: My New PC

[gpw11]

ASUS TA-861 ATX Mid Tower Case Black Silver 4X5.25 2X3.5 5X3.5INT Front USB & Audio No PSU - Cheap ass case, no window.  That's what matters as far as I'm concerned.  The airflow is aparently alright.

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 160GB Hard Drive SATA2 7200RPM 11MS 8MB Cache 5YR MFR Warranty

Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L ATX LGA775 P35 1333FSB 1PCI-E16 3PCI-E1 3PCI SATA2 Sound GBLAN Motherboard 
 
Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 Dual Core Processor LGA775 Conroe 2.66GHZ 1333FSB 4MB Retail 

G.SKILL F2-6400CL5D-2GBNQ PC2-6400 2GB 2X1GB DDR2-800 CL5-5-5-15 240PIN Dual Channel Memory Kit 

XFX GeForce 7900GS XT

I'll be reusing my PSU (a few months old high quality 450W which I'm told should be more than enough), DVD drives, and sound card. 

I was also thinking of buying an aftermarket heatsink+fan, but then figured if I ever really want to overclock it instead of buyin a faster quad core in a few years, I can just do it then.

I'm a little bit pumped.

Total cost after taxes = just under $600 CDN.  That also includes two free games for buying products on promotion. 

[Quemaqua]

I hate you.  I paid like $2500 US for almost that same system when I built mine, except yours is better.

[gpw11]

Um.....maybe mine will break?

[WindAndConfusion]

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 160GB Hard Drive SATA2 7200RPM 11MS 8MB Cache 5YR MFR Warranty

WRONG. The correct size of hard drive to buy is currently 320 or 500 GB (advertised capacity). You can tell this is the correct capacity, because this is what you can buy for roughly $100.

Total cost after taxes = just under $600 CDN.  That also includes two free games for buying products on promotion. 

Canadian dollars? I thought you people traded leaves, sticks, and beaver pelts?

[Xessive]

ASUS TA-861 ATX Mid Tower Case Black Silver 4X5.25 2X3.5 5X3.5INT Front USB & Audio No PSU - Cheap ass case, no window.  That's what matters as far as I'm concerned.  The airflow is aparently alright.

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 160GB Hard Drive SATA2 7200RPM 11MS 8MB Cache 5YR MFR Warranty

Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L ATX LGA775 P35 1333FSB 1PCI-E16 3PCI-E1 3PCI SATA2 Sound GBLAN Motherboard 
 
Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 Dual Core Processor LGA775 Conroe 2.66GHZ 1333FSB 4MB Retail 

G.SKILL F2-6400CL5D-2GBNQ PC2-6400 2GB 2X1GB DDR2-800 CL5-5-5-15 240PIN Dual Channel Memory Kit 

XFX GeForce 7900GS XT

I'll be reusing my PSU (a few months old high quality 450W which I'm told should be more than enough), DVD drives, and sound card. 

I was also thinking of buying an aftermarket heatsink+fan, but then figured if I ever really want to overclock it instead of buyin a faster quad core in a few years, I can just do it then.

I'm a little bit pumped.

Total cost after taxes = just under $600 CDN.  That also includes two free games for buying products on promotion. 

We have almost the exact same system!

The only diffs:

Mobo: Mine is an Asus P5W DH
Video Card: XFX GeForce 8800 320mb

[gpw11]

WRONG. The correct size of hard drive to buy is currently 320 or 500 GB (advertised capacity). You can tell this is the correct capacity, because this is what you can buy for roughly $100.

See, I would have done that, but I could get this hard drive for under $50 and I see hard drives on sale enough to realize that there is a very good chance that I'll soon be able to get one at that capacity for under $70.  No rush.

And how's your system holding up Xessive?

[Xessive]

I was having a bit of trouble with it in the beginning (BSOD), and my first suspect was the RAM. As it turned out the harddrive was damaged when I bought it and it started giving me Cyclic Redundancy Check errors so I replaced it and it's been working like a charm ever since.

I'm just ecstatic that I can run all the latest and upcoming games decently!

[Pugnate]

ASUS TA-861 ATX Mid Tower Case Black Silver 4X5.25 2X3.5 5X3.5INT Front USB & Audio No PSU - Cheap ass case, no window.  That's what matters as far as I'm concerned.  The airflow is aparently alright.

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 160GB Hard Drive SATA2 7200RPM 11MS 8MB Cache 5YR MFR Warranty

Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L ATX LGA775 P35 1333FSB 1PCI-E16 3PCI-E1 3PCI SATA2 Sound GBLAN Motherboard 
 
Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 Dual Core Processor LGA775 Conroe 2.66GHZ 1333FSB 4MB Retail 

G.SKILL F2-6400CL5D-2GBNQ PC2-6400 2GB 2X1GB DDR2-800 CL5-5-5-15 240PIN Dual Channel Memory Kit 

XFX GeForce 7900GS XT

I'll be reusing my PSU (a few months old high quality 450W which I'm told should be more than enough), DVD drives, and sound card. 

I was also thinking of buying an aftermarket heatsink+fan, but then figured if I ever really want to overclock it instead of buyin a faster quad core in a few years, I can just do it then.

I'm a little bit pumped.

Total cost after taxes = just under $600 CDN.  That also includes two free games for buying products on promotion. 

So much better than a PS3.

[gpw11]

To be honest, I'm only slightly worried about two things:

1.) aparently the north bridge on that motherboard gets insanely hot.  I was looking at buying a northbridge heatsink/fan, but then someone gave me the wicked idea of just making your own cooling solution out of a standard 80mm fan and some foam tape. I don't think I'm the kind of user who will ever really need any after market cooling.

2.) G.skill RAM.  I've heard about some incompatibilites with some hardware, but it looks like this should work.  It's not a brand I'm familiar with, but aparently they're pretty new and a lot of people are impressed, so I decided to take the risk.

I've got a lot of catching up to do.  I think I'll hit up Orange Box and Call of Duty 2 first, and then move onto games like Prey, FEAR, and Oblivion.  Any other major suggestions?

[Pugnate]

That's why I usually buy Kingston RAM.  Currently am using Corsair, which is fine so far.

[gpw11]

Full speed Saturn emulation?  yesssss.

[gpw11]

Six years later (with a ~$100 video card upgrade a couple of years in) and Assassin's Creed III has been the only game I haven't been able to play. CPU's sure are lasting a lot longer than they used to (I'm basing this off the one gaming PC I had before this, which was an Athlon XP 1800+).


I don't know if I'll buy another in a couple of years or just roll with a laptop from now on.  You know, considering I pretty much have to have one anyways.

[Cools!]

I'm still using my tower from 2008. Burned through 2 graphics cards but other than that it's been solid. I wouldn't mind getting something better at some point but it's not like I play a lot of games these days.

The screen on my old 2005 Powerbook is dying so at some point I'll have to get a new laptop or maybe an iPad.

[scottws]

Still using mine too, from 2007.  It did get a motherboard upgrade (same socket and RAM type) and video card upgrade, but other than that it's the same.  Still rocking a Core 2 Quad Q6600.

[gpw11]

Brilliant move on the quad core.   The only games I've had any noticeable problem with run significantly better on quad cores (AC3 is pretty much unplayable for me.... First game like that,  and Battlefield would probably be better although it's still totally playable)

[gpw11]

I've now started thinking about upgrading/getting a new PC.  I don't know if I'd use it that much, but it'd be sweet to even just have something a bit faster to work on from time to time.   Does anyone know if Intel is currently worth the money over AMD?

[idolminds]

I think pretty much everyone will tell you to go Intel over AMD.

[scottws]

AMD is fine, honestly, but Intel definitely is better as it has been since Conroe (the Core 2).

I'm in the market for a new PC too. I'm building my third PC, this time it will be a micro ATX system.

I thought about going with a tiny mini ITX box with an AMD APU, but I guess the word is that there really isn't much value there since the Bulldozer architecture isn't great. Possibly their next architecture will provide a better APU.

[gpw11]

The more I think about it I will probably just start with buying an SSD and go from there.  I really don't play many games on the actual PC anymore, let alone demanding ones.     The current Witcher 3 offer from Nvidia is tempting, but beyond that I don't know how much real world performance I'd be gaining for the money when I'm mostly dicking around with office software and browsing.   

[gpw11]

And then I spent like 4 hours at work illogically looking at mobos and processors.  I did this with skis last week, golf clubs the week before, and cars the one before that.    Seems like I just want to buy something.

[scottws]

Well, if you do look at building, check out http://pcpartpicker.com/.

[gpw11]

I've been looking at that actually, there are a ton of resources out there for pc building now.

I don't know what I should do.  On one hand I haven't really been gaming on the PC much, but that doesn't mean I won't - especially when looking at the next five years in the future.   I guess what I'm looking for is more features, some speed.  My e6750 is by no means slow enough to be annoying, and the SSD should speed it up quite a bit, but the build I did 7 years ago is kinda loud and I'd love to reduce that.

So, what I'm thinking now:

-Replace the case with a silent one for roughly $100
-SSD (already purchased)
-i5 4460 in case I want to game but also because if I'm switching cases I might as well upgrade now rather than do it all in a year
-8 gb of new ram (needs to be done, obviously)
-New, somewhat cheap ATX mobo - as long as it has a few PCI ports and a PCIe port, I'm happy.  I don't think I'll be overclocking - I did a bit on my current PC but don't really care that much.
-Reuse my Radeon HD 5770 for now

I figure this will give me a significantly faster, more quiet PC which should maybe last another 6 years or so. I'll be able to do all the work I want, some emulation, and my game backlog, as well as many newer games.  The 5770 will be a huge bottleneck, but I can keep an eye on sales and could pick something up in a year or two for $200 or so if I really want to.  If I'm not gaming a lot on the thing I save the $250 I was going to spend now.  The only downside is I figured I could offset the cost a bit by selling my 5770 for $50 to someone who wanted to crossfire, and I doubt I'll be able to do that in a year or so.

This cuts the cost pretty significantly, gets me a case I want, and the newer features I'd like (usb 3.0 for some reason, etc).  I'll probably pay $50 to have someone install the mobo and cpu into the case (I figure fucking around with cables will cost me more when I could just bill hours while someone else does it and be up).  On a side note, installing a mobo, cpu, heatsink, etc is the only thing I haven't done with a PC before - is it really self explanatory?  I know it's not difficult, but is it time consuming?

[scottws]

You're probably going to have a hard time finding something with PCI slots these days. Do you mean PCIe 1x slots?

Anyway, that will probably be fine. I think I'm going to go with 16 GB of RAM though. When I built my current PC, I went with 4 GB which was ludicrous at the time but now my RAM utilization generally hovers between 80 - 85%.

I might try to wait longer for USB 3.1 Gen 2 and USB Type-C though.

[gpw11]

Aaaaaand I just dropped, like, a grand on a gaming PC I will probably use for 3-5 games.  Whatever, cheaper than the Subaru that I don't need either....or those skis.....or those golf clubs (I'll still buy the other two by the end of the summer, mark my words).

[Cobra951]

Same dilemma I faced a year or two back.  I was looking to pull the trigger on a $1K PC.  I went the other way, though.  No doubt I'll need somethign to replace this dinosaur eventually, but not a gaming PC.

You're probably going to have a hard time finding something with PCI slots these days. Do you mean PCIe 1x slots?

Anyway, that will probably be fine. I think I'm going to go with 16 GB of RAM though. When I built my current PC, I went with 4 GB which was ludicrous at the time but now my RAM utilization generally hovers between 80 - 85%.

I might try to wait longer for USB 3.1 Gen 2 and USB Type-C though.

My mom's new PC has a couple of PCI and PCIe slots.  I went PCIe on a parallel-port card for her printer, which is really a waste.  But the card was this tiny thing, compared to the PCI equivalent.  She doesn't need the better ports for anything anyway.

I'm surprised you mentioned memory utilization.  A better indicator of when you need RAM is how big your swapfile gets, if things start to choke on disk I/O.  Free RAM is wasted RAM.  The operating systems want to fill it up, and make holes in a hurry when they're needed.  Everything works faster that way.

Found a link in a hurry by searching for that little mantra.

[scottws]

I'm aware of that, of course. The point was that if I had went with only 2 GB, I'd be swapping like crazy today.

[Cobra951]

I figured you were.  That's why the comment surprised me.  Anyway, I'm really choking with 768 MB of dual-channel RDRAM.  Like I said, dinosaur. 

[gpw11]

Yeah, I maybe should have gone the other way but I could have done a lot worse with regards to splurge purchases (seriously - I was spending a lot of time looking at new cars.  A new PC I don't need is probably more financially sound than a new car when mine is fine).

Here's what I got:

Be QUIET! Silent Base 800 ATX Full Tower Case 3X5.25 7X3.5

Intel Core i5 I5-4460 Haswell 3.2GHZ Processor LGA1150 6MB Cache Retail

ASRock H97 Anniversary LGA1150 ATX Motherboard

GeIL EVO Leggera 8GB 2X4GB DDR3-1600 9-9-9-28 PC3-12800 1.5V Memory Kit - Turquoise Blue

Everything else I have or will reuse.   I also paid them $50 to put the above components together and stress test.  I figure that's worth saving me the time and the risk of dealing with an RMA off the bat.   I'll get it basically as a barebones PC and pop the HDD, SDD, and PSU in at my place.  All in it was just over $900 (with the 250 GB SSD as well)

Honestly, I kind of just wanted the case

 

[Xessive]

That is elegant.

[gpw11]

And big apparently.  I missed the "Full tower" part and the specs were in metric - who knows what that means anyway?

Also, IDE isn't a thing at all anymore.  Obviously not a big deal but one legacy header would be sweet - looks like I'll have to buy a new DVD burner for the six times I'll be using it.

[Cobra951]

You can probably get IDE support on a PCI/PCIe card.  A new drive may not be much more expensive, and it's likely the better solution.

Edit:  Straight-up adapter.  No idea about quality.

[scottws]

You still have an IDE device?  Crazy.  I doubt you are going to find an IDE header on a modern motherboard.  My motherboard from 2007 doesn't even have one.

It's funny you mention IDE though.  A family member asked me to try to recover data from an external USB hard drive that isn't working.  I popped open the case and it's an IDE drive in there.  It took me awhile to figure out a way I could even connect it to anything (I broke out my really old 2002 computer and used a live CD).

[gpw11]

Ha.  I've probably had that drive since 2003 or so and moved it from PC to PC.   My last motherboard (2007?) had two legacy IDE headers for some reason so it worked out.  I looked at the adapters, Cobra and then looked at SATA DVDR units.  They cost like $10 more now.  I'll either just buy a new one or boot from USB to install windows.  I'm leaning towards the former because, hey, why not have a drive?   Plus, I'm still holding out hope that I eventually track down some old backup discs of mine with about 10 years worth of photos that I accidentally deleted....thinking I had the backup disks.   Goddamn it. 

[Cobra951]

Yeah, they're practically giving them away.  That's why I said that a new drive is likely better anyway.  It's not like a hard drive, where there may be a lot of stuff on it you need (like photos--I hope you find those).

[gpw11]

Jesus, yeah - full sized tower cases are huge these days (maybe they always were and I always had midsized?)  In either case, got it all put together and just getting windows set up.  The combination of 8GB RAM, SSD, and i5 really made the whole process fast.  Amazing how quick installs, etc go when your computer can restart in about 30 seconds.

Haven't even touched a game yet...

[scottws]

Yeah full towers have always been huge. They are meant if you have tons of stiff you want to put in the external bays. I always went mid-tower.

Mid-towers range in size too. My first one was a pretty big Antec/Chieftec case. My current Lian-Li is fairly small in comparison .

[gpw11]

I guess I know now?  I wish I looked at that a bit more carefully, but whatever, it's under my desk and won't be moved until I move next I guess.   It looks kinda cool, sort of.  If it ever really bugs me I can always just get a smaller case and switch them, I guess.


But more than happy with the rest of it.

[Quemaqua]

Nice. I really want to build a new rig because mine is somewhere around ... really fucking old. I don't know. At least 6, but the more I think about it, the older it has to be. Sirean helped me build it, and that was during the first year of my former marriage, which lasted five years, and it's been very nearly five since the divorce. I think that was finalized October of 2010. So ... yeah. This thing is old. I'm surprised it still works as well as it does.