Core i3 + GTX460: first time builder!

[Pott]

Hi all,

I've just received the first parts to my first build but I'd like to ask a few people about it before ordering the second batch of bits

The idea is for a budget gamer's PC with decent power for just about anything I require, which aside from the occasional game wouldn't be much past web browsing, installing a couple of Linux distros aside W7 64 and A LOT of music.

Already got:

• Core i3-540
• Asus P7P55 mobo
• 4GB Corsair DDR3 1,666Mhz
• OCZ 600W PSU

Yet to order:

• Gigabyte 1GB GTX460
• DVD player (BluRay?)
• HDD (I don't need a lot of storage at all: probably 2 x 320GBs for automatic backup)
• Tower
• ... anything else?

I need some advise regarding the other components basically... I really know nothing about this and this was assembled by reading up on the web. I wouldn't know how to chose an appropriate tower or whether I am missing any components.

OS will be W7 64 bits with a Debian or Ubuntu partition.

I'll be playing Starcraft II and Bad Company 2 on it, nothing much more elaborate. I'm not a heavy gamer. I don't process video, pictures, use photoshop etc...
I built this with a 1156 mobo so I could later upgrade to a core i5 when they got cheaper and if I ever felt the need.

Overall budget not including screen is about 800 euros (and all of this fits within 800 euros)

I'll be buying from Amazon.de or alternate.de... nothing in shop in Luxembourg

I do not plan on overclocking, but I did select a board + card that will allow me to...

I have NO IDEA about current resolutions + screens... I'm planning on spending about 200 euros in a nice computer screen and that's about all I know. Probably a 20". I have no need for anything huge.

Am I forgetting anything and does it seem like a decent build?

Thanks

 

[Davidh373]

Hopefully you got the i3 for free or at a great discount because that is NOT a good processor for it's cost. Same with the OCZ PSU, it would have been better to come to us before you buy parts.

Otherwise your build will work. I might buy a 5770 or 450 instead of the 460 if you're not going to be gaming in high res.

 

[Pott]

Thanks, why do you say this about the i3-540 though? I figured that quad cores wouldn't be THAT huge an improvement over what I want it to do (exit high end i5s and i7s) and 3,06Ghz dual core, even with just a 4mb buffer seems more than enough to me.
Would going AMD have been more beneficial?

Not sure about the PSU either then.
I got this model: http://www.amazon.de/OCZ-600MXSP-Mod...5153504&sr=8-2

 

[Campy]

That's a decent build you've got there.

GTX 460 is nice but it really depends on what you want. I'd go with a 460 1GB and a 24" screen but then again I'm a gamer and spend a lot of time on the PC. The big screen is really nice(for everything).
Get a normal DVD writer for 20€. Bluray is for the tv. I have my pc hooked up to the tv and just download x264 1080p encodes. Same quality as bluray and i wouldnt need a bluray player, although i have a PS3 that can do that too if need be.
Anyway the PSU is good it's just that you don't need anywhere near that much power and could have settled for a smaller&cheaper unit. For the tower dare i say antec 300? It's a great case for a small price.

 

[Pott]

I have no TV and have not had one since I'm 5 years old hehe... nor have I got any interest in getting one in fact!

For 20 euros I think I'll get a DVD player, you're right. It's cheap enough to justify an upgrade when BluRay is more the norm and cheaper

I selected most parts so that I could upgrade in one year time for better value in fact. The GTX460 should last me 2 years, so would the core i3. The PSU can stay for longer as I doubt I'll upgrade to a rig that'll eat up more than 600W..!

Thanks for the tower suggestion, I'll look into it!

 

[crucibelle]

Pott -- Anandtech has some CPU benchmarks you can look at to see how your processor fares. I just took a look, and to me, it seems like the i3 is fine for gaming. I didn't see anything from AMD in the same price range that does much better (and this is coming from a huge AMD fan..lol). However, you should just look for yourself, as I could be wrong.

 

[Pott]

Merci, I'll take a look at it.

The logic behind getting 'just' a i3 was that I could later, if needed, upgrade to an i5 (not possible if I'd gotten an AMD board, and from what I gathered Intel chips just get progressively better than AMDs as price goes up). The 540 is decently cheap in EU for what it is (110 euros), so that was a no-brainer.

 

[Axon]

Don't worry too much about the i3. It's a solid piece of silicon. And with the 32 nm tech inside, it overclocks like a beast.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/143?vs=109 (i3 v. i5 750). As you can see, the 750 is a superior chip. It's also twice the price...and further, both absolutely decimate the gaming benchmarks. Do you really need to run a game at 140 fps??

So if you pair up with a GTX 460, which is a tremendous card, you'll have the makings of an awesome gaming system. Not everything needs to be bleeding edge. You might dip to 30 FPS on BC2 because it prefers more cores, but SC2 will be butter smooth at all times. I run SC2 on my substantially less powerful LAN rig at 1680 perfectly. If you're going with a 20" (1680 res) monitor, both those games will be well within this system's wheelhouse.

My suggestions for your remaining components:

GTX 460 1 GB (not sure EU price)

Samsung F3 1TB HDD (easily the best deal in standard HDD right now)

Case depends on the quality and features you want. If you just want to house your PC, the coolermaster Elite 310, at $40 US, is more than adequate. If you want more space to work with internally, lots of case fans, out of box SSD housing and the ability to drop a loose HDD into your system externally, you want something like the CM 690 II or the Antec Nine Hundred 2.

I would not buy a blue ray drive IMO. Optical media is dead to me. lol. Who knows though.

You're good otherwise, save for like, case fans and maybe an aftermarket CPU cooler.

 

[Davidh373]

The Athlon II X4 is the same price and it is better for multitasking. Basically you could have saved $15 on the processor and $30-$50 on the Motherboard for close to the same performance. I'm not saying it's a bad chip, it's just overly expensive for it's performance when you factor in a motherboard. You could potentially upgrade to an i5 eventually, but with AM3 you could have upgraded to the much better Phenom II X6 1055T for ~ $10 more.

 

[mfenn]

I don't normally recommend the i3, but you've already bought it, so no sense in arguing about it now. Advice for the future: don't plan on upgrading to a new CPU with the same motherboard. When you're ready to upgrade, a whole new platform (mobo, cpu, potentially RAM) will likely give more bang for the buck (or euro ) than an i5.

If you follow Axon's advice, you will end up with a solid build.

 

[Axon]

The i3 is actually surprisingly strong. I had one for a while and thought it was a great chip. I'm not sure where it's bad rep has come from.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/105?vs=143 (Athlon X4 630 v. i3 540. 540 generally wins except in multi-threaded apps).

However, there's no question that the AM3 platform is cheaper overall. Which certainly has its advantages...not the least of which is saving cash.

 

[mfenn]

The i3 is actually surprisingly strong. I had one for a while and thought it was a great chip. I'm not sure where it's bad rep has come from.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/105?vs=143 (Athlon X4 630 v. i3 540. 540 generally wins except in multi-threaded apps).

The bad rap comes from the fact that it's a dual-core. Dual-core are fine for most games right now, but IMHO, they won't have the longevity of a quad. BFBC2 gets a nice boost from running on a quad even now.

 

[piasabird]

I-5 Quads have 4 cores but can only 4 threads.
I-7 Quads have 4 cores and can open 8 threads.
Generally that have 8 megs of shared Cache.
There is quite a jump in price between an I-5 quad and the I-7 quad. I still like the large amount of Shared Cache on the quad and the Turbo Boost feature. It is like Intel pre-overclocked the processor. I would think Turbo could cause problems if you run software that is always pushing the threshold, but maybe Intel took that into consideration. I wonder if they have some benchmark software that can keep track of thread usage and turbo speed? Still if you have a 32 bit game on a 64bit version of Windows it has to run in compatibility mode anyway.

 

[mfenn]

I-5 Quads have 4 cores but can only 4 threads.
I-7 Quads have 4 cores and can open 8 threads.
Generally that have 8 megs of shared Cache.
There is quite a jump in price between an I-5 quad and the I-7 quad. I still like the large amount of Shared Cache on the quad and the Turbo Boost feature. It is like Intel pre-overclocked the processor. I would think Turbo could cause problems if you run software that is always pushing the threshold, but maybe Intel took that into consideration. I wonder if they have some benchmark software that can keep track of thread usage and turbo speed? Still if you have a 32 bit game on a 64bit version of Windows it has to run in compatibility mode anyway.

Games don't start enough threads to really benefit from HT.

I can't see turbo causing a problem with any software except for really stupid programs that keep time by cycles instead of by the actual clock.

 

[Pott]

Thanks everyone. I did hear that I wouldn't benefit from more cores/hyperthreading.

I was also wondering if it may have been worth going for a Core i5-750 and a lower-end GPU such as a HD5770, but now I do feel I've made the right choice. Can't wait to finish it!

 

[Davidh373]

Good, I really didn't mean to scare you into thinking you picked a bad processor. I just wanted to be truthful. I think the i5 is worth it but only with the appropriate budget (normally between $900-$1100) and the 460 1GB.

 

[Campy]

Btw americans, keep in mind that hardware in general is quite a bit more expensive in europe. At least here in norway it's like 30-50% more expensive on average i think. That's my experience anyway.
I'm always drooling at the prices on newegg when ppl link to it

GL with your build Pott

 

[Pott]

Thanks for the tips everyone.

Regarding the optical drive (I don't download anything and I buy loads of CDs and DVDs so it's all very much alive to me ), is there any difference at all betweem most?
The most common choice today seems to be (in EU) between 25 and 30 euros, for a SATA DVD R/RW. But past that I would have no idea which are better, worse, what brands to avoid etc...
I'll be ordering the graphics card + DVD player tomorrow (however it appears all the GTX460 models I was considering are out of stock in a lot of places... le sigh).

 

[betasub]

Most are much-of-a-muchness, so unless you have specific needs such as Lightscribe or BluRay, just go with a standard brown box OEM DVD-RW. With such low prices, you shouldn't be too worried - if you are unlucky enough to get one that sounds like a helicopter when it spins up, just send it back.

 

[Davidh373]

Most are much-of-a-muchness, so unless you have specific needs such as Lightscribe or BluRay, just go with a standard brown box OEM DVD-RW. With such low prices, you shouldn't be too worried - if you are unlucky enough to get one that sounds like a helicopter when it spins up, just send it back.

pretty much!

 

[Pott]

Thanks. I have no idea what LightScribe is (I never burn DVDs and not many CDs) so I guess I have no interest in it (not enough to even look it up, now THAT's lazyness).

What kind of connector am I looking for normally..? I have this http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=RBA8CzWoopUlYRFZ mobo, and I'm getting a Samsung F3 HDD http://www.samsung.com/global/busin...=94&subtype=98&model_cd=469&tab=fea&ppmi=1087 which uses a sATA connector.

Connectors on the mobo:
6 SATA 3.0Gb/s
1 SATA 3GB/s (black)
1 eSATA (SATA on the go)
1 IDE port

 

[mfenn]

You'll want to get all SATA drives.

 

[Pott]

Thanks.

http://www.samsung.com/ae/consumer/c...il&tab=feature

That one seems like it'd do the job.


EDIT: Looks like I've chosen all my missing components:

Antec 300 case
Samsung F3 500GB HDD (I'll do my backup on an external HDDs I already have)
Samsung SH-S203D SATA DVD burnerMSI GTX 460 Cyclone OC 768MB

I'll start up the system with Debian/Ubuntu (Maverick should be out when I get to assemble all of this) until I can get W7 Home Premium 64 bits.

 

[Pott]

Everything but the GPU and W7 is now here!
Hopefully the GPU will arrive today and I can build the thing.

 

[Axon]

Awesome. It should end up being a real strong build.