First time Gaming Rig builder :D

[DobyMick]

Hello I am a first time poster and soon to be a first time PC builder and I was hoping that some of you guys would analyze the parts that I plan to use for my first build and answer a few questions that I had about PC building.
The purpose of this build is to create a powerful bang-for-buck gaming rig on a budget of 1000 USD not including the monitor. These parts will be bought in the U.S. and I plan to buy within the week. Bellow I have listed my parts that I plan on using as well as a few questions that I have about them.

Thanks in advance for any help, information, or comments that I receive.

CPU ? Intel E8400 - $169.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16819115037

Motherboard ? ASUS P5Q-E LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail ? $159.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16813131296

I chose this motherboard because of the high front side bus speeds that it supports, its DDR2 1200/1066 support, PCI-E 2.0 slot, and its great price. I do have two questions about this board. Will DDR2 1066 ram (I plan to get DDR2 1066) work as well on this board as DDR2 1200 or will I see a performance loss? I also wonder if this board will be a good one for over clocking my CPU. Chose this over the P5Q because the dual gigabit Marvell LAN controllers on the P5Q-E seem like they might be better (higher quality) than the single PCIe gigabit LAN controller on the P5Q, am I right?

RAM - G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - $59.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16820231144

Here is where I need some real help. As I understand my real front side bus on my CPU is 333 (1333/4) and I need to make sure that my ram speed can match or exceed that. My ram speed is 533 (1066/2), well above 333 but allowing plenty of room to over clock the CPU to 4.0GHz. Is my understanding correct or am I wrong as can be? If I am correct will I see a performance loss compared to using DDR2 800 or DDR2 1200? I just don?t know much about how the FSB, RAM and CPU should be set up to get maximum performance. Please help me out and explain this to me guys, this is my biggest problem going forward with this build.

PSU - CORSAIR CMPSU-650TX 650W ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply 100 - 240 V UL, CE, CB, TUV, FCC, CCC ? Retail ? $109.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16817139005

The newegg write up on this product says that it has a 52amp 12 volt rail. The 750watt PSU has a 60amp rail according to newegg, is that a big difference? I didn?t see any info about the amps on the rails on the corsair site. Is 650W enough power for my system?

GPU- VisionTek 900244 Radeon HD 4870 512MB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card ? Retail - $284.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814129113
I am not sure which brand of ATI card to get so I chose the one with the highest percentage of five egg reviews. The Sapphire brand would have been my other choice but its stats were slightly lower. If anyone knows what the best ATI brands are let me know incase I should pick a different one.

HDD - Seagate Barracuda ES.2 ST3250310NS 250GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive ? OEM - $79.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16822148309

I chose this drive because of its 32mb cache size. I?m not really sure if 7200RPM is good enough or if it even matters but I was under the impression that it was more reliable in the long run than 10000RPM.

Heat sink - XIGMATEK HDT-S1283 120mm Rifle CPU Cooler - Retail - $36.99 (also getting the $6.99 retention bracket)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16835233003

This heat sink received some good reviews from various sites and is nice and cheap. The heat pipes on this model are actually touching the CPU so I?m not sure how mounting will go. If anyone has any experiences with that type tell me about it.

Case - Antec Nine Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail ? $119.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16811129021

DVD Burner - LITE-ON Black 20X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 8X DVD+R DL 20X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 12X DVD-RAM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM 2MB Cache SATA DVD Burner - Retail ? $28.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16827106057

Is Light-On any good? Are they super noisy?

Total cost $1057.90 just a tad over 1k

Another question I have is does anyone have a good gaming LCD to recommend. Preferably one with a 2ms response time. These are the two that I am looking at on new egg right now. Any info or suggestions would be great.

ViewSonic X Series VX2240W Black-Silver 22" 2msDVI Widescreen LCD Monitor 300 cd/m2 1000:1, 4000:1 (DC) ? Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16824116096

SAMSUNG T220 Rose-Black 22" 2ms GTG Touch of Color series Widescreen LCD Monitor 300 cd/m2 DC 20,000:1 - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16824001273

Thanks again to everyone who took the time and effort to read, review, explain, comment, laugh, and get assaulted by my tower of text. I really appreciate it.

 

[videogames101]

For $10 more you can get the Western Digital 640 gig HDD which will perform better then that seagate. http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16822136218

650 Watts is plenty

Are you running vista? Even if your not, RAM is so cheap right now it's crazy not to grab 4gigs.

$80 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16820231122

The -E is basically useless if your not getting crossfire, don't get 1066 ram unless your pushing your cpu more then DDR800 can handle (400 fsb), which isn't likely. The standard P5Q should be more then enough for your needs. If you don't need 2 LAN ports, no sense in getting two. In fact, the top one on the -E is a slower performer then the bottom one or the standard one on the standard P5Q because it's on a PCI line, not PCIe.

 

[modoheo]

Since you said you want to try to overclock to 4.0GHz, you'll need faster RAM than DDR2 800 - DDR2 1000 2X2gigs from GSkill is a great value right now and would be fine, or 2 X 2 gigs of Gskill, mushkin, or corsair 1066 RAM will work fine as well. Performance will be similar whichever you choose. To answer some of your questions about this in much more detail, there are a couple stickies over in the cpu/overclocking section that go into great detail you need to read. If you really want to hit 4.0GHz, you may want to consider the E8500 now that the price has come down, b/c of the higher multiplier.

Agree with getting the WD 640 gig HD.

I prefer samsung optical drives over the lite-ons - quieter in my experience.

That mobo is very nice and excellent for overclocking, but the main thing you're paying extra for is two PCI-E X 16 slots, which are not worth it for most since you can't do full speed crossfire with this board - only with the X38 or X48 chipset boards. Look at the basic P5Q and see if it has all the features you really want:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16813131295

Everything looks good in general. Will be a very nice system when you're done.

 

[DobyMick]

Thanks a lot for the reply guys

First off videogames101 I appretiate you hitting on the LAN controllers issue that is basicly why I was looking at that motherboard, I am leaning to the plain P5Q now.

I really like the price and capacity of that WD drive that you guys sudgested but I would think that because it has 16mb cache and the Seagate has 32mb cache that the Seagate would be faster. Am I mistaken and if so how can I better compare HDD performances?

On the issue of ram 4gb is tempting but would I see a performance increase on 32bit Windows Xp? I was looking at the ASUS site and they recommend not using more than 3gb with 32bit Xp because it might not see it all. Does any of this matter or should I go with 4gb?

I am also unsure of wether or not to just step up to the 750Watt PSU from Corsair. Would having that extra 100 watts be a good safeguard against underpowering my system or is 650 more than enough? How can I accuratelly judge my power needs before I build and after I build how can I check to see how many watts the machine is actually pulling under load?

lol I come up with questions by the second
Thanks for helping me out and thanks to all who continue to help me cut a path through the dense information jungle of computer building!

 

[DSF]

I'm running 4GB on Windows XP. Windows sees 3.5GB of it for me, but it will vary from system to system. It certainly doesn't hurt anything, and if you hit the right deal 4GB is about as cheap as 3GB anyway. The PSU has plenty of power without a doubt.

The easiest way to check how many Watts the machine is using is to use something like a Kill-A-Watt, but be aware that they are far from perfectly accurate.

 

[RapidSnail]

Originally posted by: DSF
I'm running 4GB on Windows XP. Windows sees 3.5GB of it for me, but it will vary from system to system. It certainly doesn't hurt anything, and if you hit the right deal 4GB is about as cheap as 3GB anyway. The PSU has plenty of power without a doubt.

The easiest way to check how many Watts the machine is using is to use something like a Kill-A-Watt, but be aware that they are far from perfectly accurate.

Are you running 32-bit?

 

[cusideabelincoln]

The 650W Corsair is way more than enough power for your system.

While 32-bit Windows won't utilize all 4GB of RAM, there is no penalty for installing 4GB. You may as well buy 2x2GB modules, because there would be improved system responsiveness over just having 2GB of RAM installed.

If you don't plan on using both LAN controllers on the P5Q-E, then you may as well grab the regular P5Q. As far as internet performance goes, there would be no difference on your end.

 

[DSF]

Originally posted by: RapidSnail

Originally posted by: DSF
I'm running 4GB on Windows XP. Windows sees 3.5GB of it for me, but it will vary from system to system. It certainly doesn't hurt anything, and if you hit the right deal 4GB is about as cheap as 3GB anyway. The PSU has plenty of power without a doubt.

The easiest way to check how many Watts the machine is using is to use something like a Kill-A-Watt, but be aware that they are far from perfectly accurate.

Are you running 32-bit?

Yep.

 

[DobyMick]

I was under the impression that running different capacity ram moduals in your 2 ram slots would make it so that you couldn't run in dual channel mode. Am I wrong on that? If I install 4 gigs of ram and the OS sees less than 4 gigs will my memory still be running in dual channel mode?

Thanks for your reply DSF

Edit: Lol right after I posted this all my answers appeared. Thanks for being so responsive guys

 

[DobyMick]

Thanks a lot for all the sudgestions and new information guys. I really appretiate the help with this endeavor
I am going to turn in for the night and I will check back tomorrow.

 

[faxon]

just a heads up. i dont remember if i saw it here or on another site, but dual channel vs single channel memory configurations really dont make a world of difference. hell, they dont make any difference at all more or less, and sometimes a single channel system performs better on the whole. however, you will only see this in benchmarks, and even then it should only be within a point or 2 of each other. in the real world you wont notice it. as for your CPU, as mentioned earlier get the e8500. the 1x higher multiplier will help a ton with your overclocking while putting less pressure on your ram. as for the reason the WD drive is faster, it has to do with the platter design of the hard drive in that it has more platters which increases drive performance. as a last note, when you apply the thermal compound for your system, you should apply it to the cooler first and spread it evenly over the cooler surface as thin as possible, just enough to fill in the cracks. heatpipe direct touch coolers have the pipes exposed, and because of the way they are ground down to be flat you still end up with tiny cracks between the mounting bracket and the pipes themselves. ideally you would want to fill these gaps in with a metal substance like some type of low melting point solder that you can spread with a razorblade, but if you dont want to risk covering the copper surface in lead and tin filling it with thermal compound is a priority before applying it to the CPU. after you fill in the cracks, apply another paper thin layer to the CPU itself and then mount the cooler, making sure to tilt it in instead of ploping it down straight on top, to avoid forming air bubbles. in my personal experience this is the ideal way to mount such a type of cooler (i use the OCZ Vendetta 2), and i currently have my athlon 64 4000+ San Diego running at 25c at idle while overclocked to 2.7ghz from 2.4

 

[DobyMick]

Ok, great info and sudgestions everybody, I am going to tweak my build specs and post back.

 

[MarcVenice]

Just get this ram: http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16820231145

It's cheap ( like ddr2 800mhz ) yet it's a bit faster, allowing for plenty of overclocking.

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

Originally posted by: DSF
I'm running 4GB on Windows XP. Windows sees 3.5GB of it for me, but it will vary from system to system.

can you explain why it will vary from system to system?
are you saying some systems will only see/use 3gb and others up to 3.5gb, while others somewhere in between?

 

[DSF]

XP 32-bit has 4GB of address space to work with, which has to be shared by your RAM and all the other devices your computer needs to address. The largest address hog besides your system RAM is your video card, and mine has 512MB. After that and various other little things are addressed, I'm left with about 3.5GB of address space left for my system RAM.

It will vary because people have different video cards and other devices connected that eat up different amounts of address space. With a 256MB video card for example, you'd see closer to 3.75GB. People with a 1GB video card, or two 512MB cards in SLi, get only about 3GB.