The "Help, I want to Build a New Computer!" Thread

[CyberMonk]

Case and CPU are fine, though that case is more than $90. For motherboard:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813131386 (ASUS P6T X58, $205)

For RAM, swap out what you've selected for this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820231223 (6GB G.SKILL PC3 10666, $140)

For HDD, don't go with a Green drive as a boot drive (they're slow). This one has slightly reduced capacity but is much faster as it's a two platter design (I have one in my PC):
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822136319 (640GB Caviar Black, $75)

And the PSU looks good. That GPU would work, but if with that much horsepower CPU-wise I'd highly suggest going with something a little beefier for a graphics card, and that'll make sure the machine lasts a long while without needing any upgrades. Something like this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814121361 (ASUS Radeon 5850, $310)

[Fried Gold]

New and Improved Parts List: CyberMonk edition

Case: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6811129021
Antec Mid Tower - $109.99

CPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819115202
Intel Quad i7 920 $288.99

RAM: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820231223
G. Skill 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3 $139.99

HDD: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822136319
Western Dig. Caviar Black 640GB $74.99

PSU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817139005
Corsair 650W $98.99

GPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814121361
Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 $309.99

Mobo: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813131386
ASUS Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard $204.99


Price: $1227.93

Damn, you replied fast CyberMonk Considering shipping cost, I'm on the fence about whether or not I should downgrade some parts to be a little cheaper. That GPU is purty, but twice the cost of the 5770 so that's one thing I'm hesitant about. What else would I need for the actual construction?

[CyberMonk]

Nothing except a screwdriver, assuming you're going to be using the included heatsink. As a (presumably?) novice builder, I think that'd be fine for you. As for the price, the GPU is an easier thing to upgrade later, but if you can manage I'd try and snag the whole box piecemeal, waiting for deals on those components you want (or similar items). You could probably knock $100 off the base price with the right deals.

You also don't need that big/expensive of a case. Try an Antec 300 or 200; either would fit everything with room to spare (including a 5850).

[Spartacus]

Shipping will be two boxes (one for parts, one for case) and it'll be around 150-200 for the whole deal, or add them into the cart and see how much it is. And if it's from Newegg, it's worth the 10 dollars to go to FedEx instead of UPS.

[fireblade42]

You still dont have an optical drive. Thou you can salvage the one in your old comp or get one locally.

[Atreus]

Nope, optical drive isn't built in. You can do what fireblade said

[CyberMonk]

An optical drive is becoming less and less necessary these days, too. I do almost all ISO installs from a USB flash drive, and about the only time I throw in optical discs anymore is to grab a CD I'm borrowing.

Such is the nature of the post-Steam world.

[Fried Gold]

Looks like I'll have to buy an optical drive then, my current one doesn't work. I'm gonna try and get at least the case and hdd locally, more details as I look into it.

[Atreus]

I was going to recommend http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6827151153 which is what i have (and was recced by Mooka) but it seems to be deactivated. If you can find one like that, that'd be coolios

edit: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6827151171 Bam

[Fried Gold]

After showing my parts list v2.0, my friends made these suggestions.

Mobo: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813131365
RAM: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820220367 (Something about better timing and latency, hell if I know what he's talking about )
GPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814150447

@Atreus: Added to my list

[Atreus]

The mobo is a bit expensive for my tastes :i

[Spartacus]

Unless your friends are messing around with the mobo, you don't need it - you won't use most of the features. You could shave off at least 50-75 on the mobo and redirect it to somewhere else, say GPU.

[Fried Gold]

Yeah, I was gonna go with CyberMonk's choice of Mobo because of the cost. I'm fine with that GPU, relatively cheap, and has gotten good feedback. As for RAM, I have no idea what makes "good ram" and why I even need it,

[Spartacus]

RAM has it's own speed, higher the better, next to DDR* - say 1066Mhz or otherwise, scaling up to 1800Mhz right now. Long long time ago this used to be in sync with the processor, so data was fed as fast as the processor would go, now days the processor is a bit faster.

There's also the timings on the RAM - lower the better, four numbers that look like 9-9-9-24, for example.

These are largely less important compared to the amount of RAM you have on hand to keep programs in memory - if you can keep the entire program in memory that means you don't have to go to disk to fetch files which is a serious slowdown due to spinning up the disk, finding the required file with a head(like a needle on a record), fetching the file back. The Caviar Black is better than the Caviar Green for performance purposes because there are two chips inside to process data, which'll speed up things. But if you were looking for storage purposes, it wouldn't matter how fast you read or write, a Caviar Green would be fine.

[CyberMonk]

These are largely less important compared to the amount of RAM you have on hand to keep programs in memory - if you can keep the entire program in memory that means you don't have to go to disk to fetch files which is a serious slowdown due to spinning up the disk, finding the required file with a head(like a needle on a record), fetching the file back. The Caviar Black is better than the Caviar Green for performance purposes because there are two chips inside to process data, which'll speed up things. But if you were looking for storage purposes, it wouldn't matter how fast you read or write, a Caviar Green would be fine.

It's not that there's "two chips"; perhaps you're referring to the two platter design of the Caviar Black 640GB (meaning, there are two data platters inside the drive, each without roughly 320GB of space, and the fewer platters a drive has to read/write from the quicker it will tend to be). The Green drives also have a variable spin speed and more aggressive power saving measures, both of which contribute to slowdowns in day to day usage, especially as an OS drive (which is why it's not recommended as a boot drive).

As for RAM, go for the stuff I recommended, trust me. You won't notice any difference despite the slightly improved latencies on the RAM your friend recommended--that sort of thing really only becomes important if you plan on substantially overclocking your system, which I'd wager you aren't planning on (the RAM is technically faster, but the increase is negligible in terms of noticeable impact). Go for the cheaper motherboard, too; the one he recommended is indeed nicer, but that's because it costs $60 more (and has bells/whistles/increased overclocking support that you won't need). The one I rec'd is about the best six RAM slot X58 you're going to find on Newegg (there are cheaper models, but they only have four RAM slots; you want six as LGA 1366 supports triple channel memory, meaning you'll buy memory in sets of three).

And, lastly, if the 5850 is really outside your price range, then the 5770 would be a good replacement. The 5850 is, however, a much superior card (hence the added cost), especially if you game at higher resolutions.

[Spartacus]

These are largely less important compared to the amount of RAM you have on hand to keep programs in memory - if you can keep the entire program in memory that means you don't have to go to disk to fetch files which is a serious slowdown due to spinning up the disk, finding the required file with a head(like a needle on a record), fetching the file back. The Caviar Black is better than the Caviar Green for performance purposes because there are two chips inside to process data, which'll speed up things. But if you were looking for storage purposes, it wouldn't matter how fast you read or write, a Caviar Green would be fine.

It's not that there's "two chips"; perhaps you're referring to the two platter design of the Caviar Black 640GB (meaning, there are two data platters inside the drive, each without roughly 320GB of space, and the fewer platters a drive has to read/write from the quicker it will tend to be).

Dual processor - Twice the processing power to maximize performance. A quick google search reveals it borrows from the Velociraptor, which initially had the two chip technology inside and then passed it down to the slower Caviar Blacks.

[CyberMonk]

Ah

That said, I'd bet that the platter design and density plus rotational speed make much more of a difference. That and however well their firmware is written. After all, not all Caviar Black drives are as stellar as the 640GB model from a performance perspective.

[Spartacus]

Didn't want to confuse him with average latency times, seek, throughput and all that, he's confused enough as it is >> Dual chips is a throwaway phrase for laymen and I probably shouldn't have used it, but the long version would be too long, I think.

[CyberMonk]

Speaking of, here's a deal that just cropped up:

http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=HD-W64AALS

The 640GB Caviar Black. Use the coupon code "FRESH15" at checkout and the price drops to $59, with free shipping. I've never seen this drive cheaper.

[Fried Gold]

Asked mother dearest, outlook is good

EDIT: Heatsinks confuse me
Double edit: Found this which is apparently better than the G. Skill and $10 cheaper. Now trying to downgrade some stuff because of the price. Any suggestions?

[Spartacus]

Heatsinks go directly on the chip - as long as you read the manual, you won't need to bother, and the stock cooler with the CPU is enough.

The new RAM is fine - faster speeds, but a little slower timings. Mail-in rebates are never a good idea to count on.

[Fried Gold]

Ugh, went from hopeful to her yelling at me to get out of her house (don't ask how it led to that ).

[Fried Gold]

Apparently my teenage angst worked on her and she is once again "Considering it"

[Giver]

Apparently my teenage angst worked on her and she is once again "Considering it"

Sounds like me. Suggestion: If you don't want to get people ticked off at you, wait for parent permission before you post the thread. It saves a lot of whining.

[Fried Gold]

Apparently my teenage angst worked on her and she is once again "Considering it"

Sounds like me. Suggestion: If you don't want to get people ticked off at you, wait for parent permission before you post the thread. It saves a lot of whining.

Apologies

[Atreus]

waitasecond ... your parents decided on no at first ecaues the hardware came out of the "magical warehouse int he sky!"XD

[Fried Gold]

[Atreus]

Sexy sexy sexy SSD~ http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820167016

[flak]

Nice. Been seriously considering one myself, but I'm way too comfortable with having 1 TB on my internal HD. Maybe if I had room for two drives in this iMac...

[bret]

Sexy sexy sexy SSD~ http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820167016

Bastard!

[Giver]

This Christmas I'm considering upgrading to an SSD as a boot drive. Is there a way for me to move my OS to that boot drive, boot up, and have all settings and everything the same on my computer. Basically I wouldn't want to go through a reformat, just move the OS to a different drive... possible?

[fireblade42]

Only if your OS partition is the same size as the new partition, then you do a disk image copy (i think the command in linux is dd, there are windows programs that'll do this too). Otherwise you'll need to reinstall windows.

[Atreus]

Going to an SSD without reformatting is a really bad idea.

[Giver]

Okay so if I get an SSD I'll make sure to reinstall/reformat

[Atreus]

Yep. And, you should discuss with someone like CyberMonk or myself which SSD you're getting, especially because some of them benefit greatly from installing managing software on your windows install. The one I got (the Intel X25-M) works really well, especially on Win7, but only if you have Intel's managing software installed to properly make use of all the hoozles and the whatsits and the like, especially the trim stuff.

[Mohrcas]

This isn't quite a build request, but it's close.

Anyway, I am in the market for a new laptop. My current one (XPS M1210, Centrino duo T2500 2GHz, 2GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce Go 7400) is four years old, has completely crashed to the point of requiring a format and an OS reinstall twice in the past year, and bluescreens roughly once every two months. I'm not at a point in my life right now where getting a desktop makes much sense; I practically live out of my laptop, and it's rarely more than five feet away from me at all times. I'd love to build myself a decent gaming/composing tower someday, but I haven't yet come up with a suitable solution to both obtain the power and customizability of a tower and the portability and flexibility of a laptop.

That being said. I'm looking for a laptop with a decent-to-high-end graphics card and an excellent processor, and I would prefer something other than integrated sound (I'm a music major, and I compose and arrange in my "spare" time. Sibelius + GPO needs better than integrated sound). I'd also like to avoid sacrificing an on-board optical drive; I would rather not find myself stuck in a situation where I have a busted comp, a boot disk, and no way to use it.

To that end, the best I've been able to come up with is a Dell Studio 14 (specs at end, just under $2k). I briefly considered Alienware, but the 11x doesn't quite pack the punch I'd like (as well as lacking an optical drive) and the 15x would break both my back (9lbs.+) and the bank account (tricked out it comes to something like $3,400). I'm not entirely happy with the Studio 14 system, and given that this will probably be my computer for the next four years (approximately, assuming nothing breaks) I'd prefer to get something I'll be happy with. My current system is still a bit away from being unusable - aside from its low fps (I average 15-20 in-game) - and I could easily squeeze a couple more years out of it (if it wasn't for it's bad habit of bluescreening).

I was wondering if any of you wonderful folks had any suggestions, comments, etc. I've done some research, and I can't seem to find what I'm looking for elsewhere (Lenovo and Toshiba fell short, I'd rather not switch to Mac, and I've heard about and experienced nothing but terrible things regarding Sony and HP). I know this is kind of a long shot given my wish list, but I'd love any suggestions/ideas/help that comes to mind.

Studio 14 Potential Build

Intel® Core™ i7-820QM Quad Core Processor 1.73GHz (3.06GHz Turbo Mode, 8MB Cache)
500GB SATA Hard Drive (7200RPM)
8GB Shared Dual Channel DDR3 at 1066MHz
8X Slot Load CD/DVD Burner (Dual Layer DVD+/-R Drive)
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5450 1GB
Dell Wireless 365 Bluetooth Internal (2.1)
Soundblaster X-Fi Hi Def Audio - Software Enabled
Intel© Centrino© Advanced-N 6200