Building my first Desktop

Boricua

Member
Im gonna build a Desktop for the first time ever and this is what i came up with...


You guys think this is a good build? if not how can i improve it? Im trying to stay under the 1200 range.
 

odingalt

Well-Known Member
Staff member
1.) CPU. If you want my honest opinion, you can get twice the processing power for the same cost if you go with AMD. Find one of those CPU benchmarking sites, here's an example:

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i5-3570K+@+3.40GHz

According to this, for less money ($199), you could purchase the AMD FX-8350 CPU and get about a 25-40% improvement in performance for 10% less cost. Of course you'd have to pick a different motherboard that is compatible with the particular AMD CPU you end up buying, but just my opinion. I never have and never will purchase Intel and I've always been satisfied with my computers. My opinion is when you buy Intel you are paying for a lot of their advertising instead of for performance. The only thing that matters is performance and price.


2.) CPU cooler. A year ago I looked very, VERY hard at a liquid-cooled system. Why? I wanted a high-performance, but whisper-quiet computer. I gave up on liquid-cooled because the performance of these liquid cooled systems actually performed worse than cheaper traditional air/copper CPU coolers from companies like Zalman, and in some cases the liquid cooled system was actually noisier than using air! If you are just doing it for the brag factor then stick with the liquid cooled, but if your goal is performance, take a second look at traditional air coolers. They perform as good or better, could be quieter, and probably a lot cheaper.


3.) Hard drives. If you can afford another $100, purchase a 128 gigabyte SSD drive to install your operating system and apps. Two years ago I purchased a $2,600 computer system. The bottleneck was the 7200 RPM SATA III drive. I ended up purchasing two 64 GB SSD's. It turns out that 64GB is simply not enough space for Windows 7/8 plus all your apps. 128 GB recommended, 64GB minimum but you will run out of space very very fast! SSD will speed up your boot times as well as seriously speed up your application loading times.

Also, I've purchased a lot of Samsung hard drives and they've all failed. I am not saying Samsung is a bad brand (I don't really know). In most cases the culprit is overheating localized near the hard drive. The hard drive gets crammed in a 3.5" rack in a tight space in your computer and creates a hot spot. Do yourself a favor and buy one of those Antec "spot fans" and point it at your hard drive. Also i highly recommend if you have critical data, either back it up regularly on DVD, on-line, or buy an identical second Samsung spintpoint and run it as a RAID mirror so if you lose one drive due to mechanical failure you will not lose your data.


4.) Power supply. 550 watt should be enough but double-check the power requirements of your video card.


Hope this helps, I've built 6-7 custom PC's in the past ten years and my opinions above are based on my own experiences. It sounds like you are building a nice system and it is going to do some kick-*** stuff for you if you just purchase the build you picked out! If you could only make one change and one change only, I would purchase that 128GB SSD for your operating system and games/applications.
 

Boricua

Member
1.) CPU. If you want my honest opinion, you can get twice the processing power for the same cost if you go with AMD. Find one of those CPU benchmarking sites, here's an example:

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i5-3570K+@+3.40GHz

According to this, for less money ($199), you could purchase the AMD FX-8350 CPU and get about a 25-40% improvement in performance for 10% less cost. Of course you'd have to pick a different motherboard that is compatible with the particular AMD CPU you end up buying, but just my opinion. I never have and never will purchase Intel and I've always been satisfied with my computers. My opinion is when you buy Intel you are paying for a lot of their advertising instead of for performance. The only thing that matters is performance and price.


2.) CPU cooler. A year ago I looked very, VERY hard at a liquid-cooled system. Why? I wanted a high-performance, but whisper-quiet computer. I gave up on liquid-cooled because the performance of these liquid cooled systems actually performed worse than cheaper traditional air/copper CPU coolers from companies like Zalman, and in some cases the liquid cooled system was actually noisier than using air! If you are just doing it for the brag factor then stick with the liquid cooled, but if your goal is performance, take a second look at traditional air coolers. They perform as good or better, could be quieter, and probably a lot cheaper.


3.) Hard drives. If you can afford another $100, purchase a 128 gigabyte SSD drive to install your operating system and apps. Two years ago I purchased a $2,600 computer system. The bottleneck was the 7200 RPM SATA III drive. I ended up purchasing two 64 GB SSD's. It turns out that 64GB is simply not enough space for Windows 7/8 plus all your apps. 128 GB recommended, 64GB minimum but you will run out of space very very fast! SSD will speed up your boot times as well as seriously speed up your application loading times.

Also, I've purchased a lot of Samsung hard drives and they've all failed. I am not saying Samsung is a bad brand (I don't really know). In most cases the culprit is overheating localized near the hard drive. The hard drive gets crammed in a 3.5" rack in a tight space in your computer and creates a hot spot. Do yourself a favor and buy one of those Antec "spot fans" and point it at your hard drive. Also i highly recommend if you have critical data, either back it up regularly on DVD, on-line, or buy an identical second Samsung spintpoint and run it as a RAID mirror so if you lose one drive due to mechanical failure you will not lose your data.


4.) Power supply. 550 watt should be enough but double-check the power requirements of your video card.


Hope this helps, I've built 6-7 custom PC's in the past ten years and my opinions above are based on my own experiences. It sounds like you are building a nice system and it is going to do some kick-*** stuff for you if you just purchase the build you picked out! If you could only make one change and one change only, I would purchase that 128GB SSD for your operating system and games/applications.


Thanks for the reply man.. it means alot.

So i looked into the AMD FX-8350 and found that for what im going to be doing (Gaming, downloading tons of movies, Watching videos) The i5 3570k is gonna be better for me. Where the FX-8350 shines is on heavy multitasking and a lot of video encoding.

I want to get a SSD but like i stated above.. But i will be downloading a lot of movies and it will fill the thing up super fast... would i be better of buying a SSD and just buying a external HDD for all my movies, music, etc?
 

Boricua

Member
You guys know of any good macro capable keyboard and mouse? Im thinking of getting the Logitech G600 mouse but im still not sure on the keyboard.
 

BraveTitan

New Member
If your going to do a ton of gaming and movie watching I would suggest going with an i7 just because I personally would rather be safe than sorry oh the processing end. Your RAM looks good and everything else. I would suggest the SSD as well but get one with enough space to install your OS and apps/games. You would then be able to go out and buy a 1 or 2 TB hard drive to store all your music and movies. Me being a Mac OSX user I stream a lot of my music from between my devices (MPBs, iPads, & iPhones) already when I'm at home so I don't worry a lot about hard drive space but movies music on their own work great on a external especially since you can take it on the go with you.
 

Boricua

Member
If your going to do a ton of gaming and movie watching I would suggest going with an i7 just because I personally would rather be safe than sorry oh the processing end. Your RAM looks good and everything else. I would suggest the SSD as well but get one with enough space to install your OS and apps/games. You would then be able to go out and buy a 1 or 2 TB hard drive to store all your music and movies. Me being a Mac OSX user I stream a lot of my music from between my devices (MPBs, iPads, & iPhones) already when I'm at home so I don't worry a lot about hard drive space but movies music on their own work great on a external especially since you can take it on the go with you.

yeah.. i think i am gonna et a SSD and then just buy an external 1 or 2TB HDD for movies and such. Like u said ill be able to take it with me where ever i go.
 

odingalt

Well-Known Member
Staff member
Thanks for the reply man.. it means alot.

So i looked into the AMD FX-8350 and found that for what im going to be doing (Gaming, downloading tons of movies, Watching videos) The i5 3570k is gonna be better for me. Where the FX-8350 shines is on heavy multitasking and a lot of video encoding.

I want to get a SSD but like i stated above.. But i will be downloading a lot of movies and it will fill the thing up super fast... would i be better of buying a SSD and just buying a external HDD for all my movies, music, etc?

Intel sells itself as superior for graphics (that's their advertising talking) but without benchmark results to back it up... again I would put actual benchmarks/performance specs over Intel hype any day. If you are using the integrated graphics processor then you would go with the Intel mother board but since you are buying an add-on video card it's a non-issue.

If you only care about gaming graphics, here is a benchmark showing the AMD FX-8150 (Newegg Price $179.99) is neck and neck with the i5 3570k (Newegg Price $229.99). AMD wins at the AVP graphics benchmark and Intel wins at the 3DMark 11 benchmark.

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/46...ud5h_intel_z77_and_core_i5_3570k/index10.html

Again that's the less expensive AMD FX-8150 in this particular benchmark that costs $50 less than the Intel processor. So it's a little strange to me that Intel sells itself as superior for graphics processing but couldn't outright beat a cheaper AMD processor in terms of rendering actual graphics?

Also I find it funny that in that benchmark result they list about 8 Intel processor but only one AMD processor - and the AMD processor they pick is cheaper... why wouldn't they pick a comparably priced processor to get a beter sense of performance vs. cost?

The only point I'm trying to make is you can make youself go mad looking at the benchmarks, at the end of the day Intel has got more hype going for it. If you want the state-of-the-art cutting-edge and you are willing to spend about $5k-$6 on a new computer then I don't think AMD has got anything to match Intel. Costs aside Intel always has "the fastest" if you have bottomless wallet :). But down in the real world where computer budgets are $1k-$2k it's pretty even.
 

Boricua

Member
Intel sells itself as superior for graphics (that's their advertising talking) but without benchmark results to back it up... again I would put actual benchmarks/performance specs over Intel hype any day. If you are using the integrated graphics processor then you would go with the Intel mother board but since you are buying an add-on video card it's a non-issue.

If you only care about gaming graphics, here is a benchmark showing the AMD FX-8150 (Newegg Price $179.99) is neck and neck with the i5 3570k (Newegg Price $229.99). AMD wins at the AVP graphics benchmark and Intel wins at the 3DMark 11 benchmark.

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/46...ud5h_intel_z77_and_core_i5_3570k/index10.html

Again that's the less expensive AMD FX-8150 in this particular benchmark that costs $50 less than the Intel processor. So it's a little strange to me that Intel sells itself as superior for graphics processing but couldn't outright beat a cheaper AMD processor in terms of rendering actual graphics?

Also I find it funny that in that benchmark result they list about 8 Intel processor but only one AMD processor - and the AMD processor they pick is cheaper... why wouldn't they pick a comparably priced processor to get a beter sense of performance vs. cost?

The only point I'm trying to make is you can make youself go mad looking at the benchmarks, at the end of the day Intel has got more hype going for it. If you want the state-of-the-art cutting-edge and you are willing to spend about $5k-$6 on a new computer then I don't think AMD has got anything to match Intel. Costs aside Intel always has "the fastest" if you have bottomless wallet . But down in the real world where computer budgets are $1k-$2k it's pretty even.

http://techreport.com/review/23750/amd-fx-8350-processor-reviewed/9
 

Moddurs

New Member
WOULD THIS BE a good gaming laptop? i cannot do desktop do not have that enough space for that. if you go farther into this link tell me just the basic of this laptop at $961 would it be worth it for games like BF3? and so fourth i really do not know much about gaming PCs so if anyone can help that would be much appreciated(i dont see myself buying the new xbox.) i wanna prolong my macro :) by switching to PC :D

http://www.originpc.com/gaming/laptops/eon11-s/
 
starting at $961... I would Suggest going with a Asus G73 or G76 whatever model they are using now..

I purchased a Asus G73 a few years ago for $1100, comes with 2 year warranty... never had a single issue with it... I dont buy anything but Asus now.
 
No I mean going with a Different brand, Called Asus.. They started out making top of the line motherboards and computer parts... then started building gaming computers.. I really would suggest atleast looking into a Asus G73 or G76.. I cant remeber what there new model is right now... I just know I bought a ASUS G73 a few years ago when Intel just came out with the i7... I have had no problems with it.. and I run it hard, its a few years old now and runs all the new games with no issues at all.

Here... Just check them out
http://www.asus.com/Notebooks_Ultrabooks/Gaming_Products/
 
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