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Need help building new high-end computer

I

imported_Helios

Member
I'm looking to build a new gaming desktop (I also do a lot of work with Adobe CS3), and I've been so out of the loop with computer technology lately that I have no idea what to look for.

I'm not really looking to spend more than $1500 (excluding LCD display, keyboard, mouse, speakers), so I'd appreciate any help coming up with the best possible setup. Video card should be excellent, but doesn't have to be the absolute best. Thanks.
 
Wow, thanks. That's nowhere near as much as I thought it would cost. I'm definitely taking this into consideration..I'd probably up the CPU to the E6600. Any suggestions on a HSF?
 
Depends Helios, going for overclocking or pure quietness ? For both the thermalright 120 ultra would be a good bet, but it's the best you can get, and at 60$ might be overkill for you, depending on what you wanna do with it. Zalman's usually run pretty quiet, and the ac7 pro doesn't perform to bad either.

Btw you could drop the 620HX for a 520HX, that's all the power you need, by a LONG shot. Might wanna add in a 10k WD raptor for pure HD speed. Besides that, guitardaddy provided you with an exellent choice of components.
 
Originally posted by: Helios
Wow, thanks. That's nowhere near as much as I thought it would cost. I'm definitely taking this into consideration..I'd probably up the CPU to the E6600. Any suggestions on a HSF?
Click to expand...

depends on whether you plan to overclock. if you don't, the stock intel HSF is actually not that bad. if you do, get this will let you OC the !@#$ out of your system while still keeping cool.
 
I have no intention of overclocking, so I guess I'll stick with whatever stock HSF. Thanks, guys.

Also, does anyone know if there are any new tech on the horizon that would be worth waiting for?

 
Definately wait till 22nd of july, when intel is cutting prices. New tech will be out in Q4, penryn from Intel, the 45nm die shrink of current C2D, and Phenom, the desktop version of AMD's Barcelona, and native qaudcores.

Not really worth waiting, if you got a decent p35 mobo, you can always drop in a new 1333fsb chip or penryn cpu later on if you want to. Later this summer we should be seeing the e6750 and the e6850, but worth waiting for ? Not really ... You can't really go wrong with this system, it's mid-end to high-end, and offers pretty good bang for buck.
 
The seagate 500GB should be much cheaper than 199.99$

Also consider the 2900XT over the 8800GTS.

Other than that looks pretty good.. you may not need 4GB of ram.
 
Hello, this is what you can buy if you wait till July 22nd, in my opinion you can't pick much better for this money:

Motherboard
GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3R $129.99

Processor
Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 $266

Cooler
ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 7 Pro 92mm CPU Cooler - Retail $35

Memory
CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2

8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Retail - $168 (AR)


Case
COOLER MASTER Centurion 5 $50

PSU
Corsair 620HX $150 (AR)

Video Card
MSI 8800GTX OC $510 (AR)

Hard Drive
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3320620AS (Perpendicular Recording

Technology) 320GB $80

DVD Burner
SAMSUNG Black 18X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 8X DVD+R DL 18X DVD-R 6X

DVD-RW 12X DVD-RAM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM

2MB Cache IDE DVD Burner with LightScribe and Software - OEM
$33

Sound Card
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer 7.1 Channels 24-bit

96KHz PCI Interface Sound Card $90.99

Total: $1363 after rebates

Summary: Since you are not interested in overclocking E6850 will be your best bet, 3.0ghz stock speed is great, and Freezer 7 Pro will keep in quiet and cool. The 2GB Corsair ram is quick (1066mhz) and on the GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3R qualified ram list which will save you a lot of potential headache. I can't say enough good things about the Corsair 620HX PSU, and I'm sure you've heard enough already 🙂 8800 GTX! - not much to add here 🙂 Quality sound card, dvd burner and 320GB HDD. You will not be disappointed.

Good luck.
 
x-fi extreme gamer is overkill imo. Unless you've got a 7.1 dolby surround system, high qaulity, it's not necesay. My stereo, connected to the onboard sound works just fine. 620W is also overkill, he will be fine with 520W. The memory is also overkill, it barely if at all will make his system faster compared to ddr 800, which he could get 4gb of for almost the same price! The gtx is a very good pick though. And I'm doubting that the price premium of the e6850 over the e6750 is worth it, but what the heck, if it stays within his 1500$ budget it should be fine.
 
Originally posted by: MarcVenice
x-fi extreme gamer is overkill imo. Unless you've got a 7.1 dolby surround system, high qaulity, it's not necesay. My stereo, connected to the onboard sound works just fine. 620W is also overkill, he will be fine with 520W. The memory is also overkill, it barely if at all will make his system faster compared to ddr 800, which he could get 4gb of for almost the same price! The gtx is a very good pick though. And I'm doubting that the price premium of the e6850 over the e6750 is worth it, but what the heck, if it stays within his 1500$ budget it should be fine.
Click to expand...

Besides having a totally different definition of "sound" compared to on-board sound cards they have EAX 5.0, and once you experience playing a game which supports it you will never go back 🙂 That's just a personal preference I guess, but heck, if he's building a gaming machine, integrated sound just doesn't cut it, again, that just in my opinion. 620HX might be just a little over what he needs but like you said, if it's within the budget there isn't really a reason not to get this great PSU. As for the ram, I just wanted to be safe and picked the ram on the mobo qualified list, but you are right, if you step back to DDR2 800 you can get 4GB for just a little over. E6850 @ 3.0ghz stock is well worth it I think considering he doesn't want to oc at all.

.
 
Thanks for the responses. Sinn, that seems like a really good setup as well. I think one thing for sure is that I'm going with that GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3R, and the 8800GTX. The 4GB ddr800 seems to be the better option. Question for everyone..is there any real performance difference between the E6850 and the Q6600, which apparently will be the same price?
 
Originally posted by: Helios
Thanks for the responses. Sinn, that seems like a really good setup as well. I think one thing for sure is that I'm going with that GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3R, and the 8800GTX. The 4GB ddr800 seems to be the better option. Question for everyone..is there any real performance difference between the E6850 and the Q6600, which apparently will be the same price?
Click to expand...

I'm glad you like it. It really is a good build.
The e6850 or q6600 discussion is fairly common, but people look at it differently. Basically there are very few games or programs that can take full advantage of 4 cores now, that's why today a higher clocked E6850 seems like a better choice, but as time passes more and more soft and games will support multiple cores, it's pretty safe to say that by the end of 2007 most new released software and pc games will support at least 2 cores, many will support 4. That's just my guess, so based on that Q6600 is a more futureproof choice. If you google "e6850 or q6600" and look at some polls, the majority picks Q6600 simply because... an extra 2 cores is nothing to joke about 🙂 The reason why I recommended E6850 for you is only because you are not into overclocking, and a 3.0ghz E6850 will perform quicker than 2.4ghz Q6600 in today's games and applications. The choice is yours, I'd persoanlly get Q6600 paired with a nice aftermarket cooler, clock it @3.0-3.2ghz and leave it be.
However, both CPU's are great and whatever choice you make will be a good one.

Good luck.
 
Originally posted by: drakore
The seagate 500GB should be much cheaper than 199.99$

Also consider the 2900XT over the 8800GTS.

Other than that looks pretty good.. you may not need 4GB of ram.
Click to expand...


Yep, that 500gb price was a typo on my part, it's $119.99

And I agree with Marc that the Corsair 520 will be plenty if not overclocking, I always overkill the PS like crazy for overclocking and future expandability.

I also agree he may not need 4gb or ram, but with DDR2 prices so cheap and Vista's hog wild usage of ram I wouldn't spec out a new system today with less than 4gb.

And if your waiting for the 7/22 price cuts and not overclocking, you might as well get the quad core Q6600
 
Originally posted by: GuitarDaddy
<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: drakore
The seagate 500GB should be much cheaper than 199.99$

Also consider the 2900XT over the 8800GTS.

Other than that looks pretty good.. you may not need 4GB of ram.</end quote></div>


Yep, that 500gb price was a typo on my part, it's $119.99

And I agree with Marc that the Corsair 520 will be plenty if not overclocking, I always overkill the PS like crazy for overclocking and future expandability.

I also agree he may not need 4gb or ram, but with DDR2 prices so cheap and Vista's hog wild usage of ram I wouldn't spec out a new system today with less than 4gb.

And if your waiting for the 7/22 price cuts and not overclocking, you might as well get the quad core Q6600
Click to expand...

Thirded
 
Thanks a lot. I'm almost certain I'm gonna go with that gigabyte board, 4GB ram, corsair 520, Q6600, seagate 500gb..video card is up in the air, really torn between 2900xt and 8800gts. The 22nd can't come soon enough.
 
Hi all,

New to all this,
If I wanted to have a system build like the one Sin707 suggest then where could I have this done?
My older systems came from Dell but I just don't think I get enough for my money there anymore.

Thanks,

Alain
 
Build it yourself. It's so comically easy that the fact that people like us charge people for it is funny. It's just lego with delicate pieces; everything fits in one way, has a unique slot and is generally colour-coded and labelled. Do it yourself and learn from it, then save your $$$ from some guy putting it together haphazardly and spend it on something else.
 
:laugh:

To change the subject a little, I am a person who has been out of the loop for a long time as well.

I need to build two systems, one for my son heading to college, and one for me. Some questions:

1. How low are Intel quad cores falling in price? Is it half of their current price, as I read somewhere else? I am looking at QX6800's if I can afford them. I am tired of sitting around for hours in Photoshop and video production, and my son is a computer science major who will need lots of horsepower for his stuff. I need fast, and since my system is going to have to last a while (2+ years, I don't to get something that sl o ws d o w n t o a l most p l o d di n g in a y e a r o r t w o.

2. I am torn between quiet and cool, since I want to OC the system. In a perfect world a quiet case that was watercooled (at the least the CPU would be perfect. But, how good is a watercooled case, and is it worth it to get a quiet box? And is there any place that does regular reviews on cases anymore?

3. I am a little lost on HD's. Are SATA II drives like the Raptor only in small sizes (200GB and lower), while you get current "regular drives" at 500 GB and up? Is the Raptor that fast?

4. Video cards these days are unreal as to how much they cost. I may not need a blazing fast video card, but my son might. what is a moderate price card for modern Mobo's going to cost?

Thanks for all the help!



 
Originally posted by: TitleistProV1
:laugh:

1. How low are Intel quad cores falling in price? Is it half of their current price, as I read somewhere else? I am looking at QX6800's if I can afford them. I am tired of sitting around for hours in Photoshop and video production, and my son is a computer science major who will need lots of horsepower for his stuff. I need fast, and since my system is going to have to last a while (2+ years, I don't to get something that sl o ws d o w n t o a l most p l o d di n g in a y e a r o r t w o.
Click to expand...

The Q6600 will be priced at $266 in lots of 1000 (figure available under $300), as will the E6850. The QX6800 will be significantly more expensive- expect the Q6700 to take the Q6600's place at $530/1000. The QX6800 and QX 6850 will more than likely show up at about $1000 each in lots of 1000. Your choice whether or not the performance increase is worth the cash.


3. I am a little lost on HD's. Are SATA II drives like the Raptor only in small sizes (200GB and lower), while you get current "regular drives" at 500 GB and up? Is the Raptor that fast?
Click to expand...

SATA II is very much the same as, say, ATA100 vs ATA133. You will be unlikely to see any real performance increase strictly by going with a SATA II drive. That said, the current 500GB/750GB/1TB drives on the latest techs (Seagate's 7200.10 vs. 7200.9, for example) are faster than the old ones. None of them quite touches the Raptor, but unless you're planning on having a lot of storage separate from the raptor, it's not worth it. Heck, it's probably still not worth it even if you have lots of separate storage.

4. Video cards these days are unreal as to how much they cost. I may not need a blazing fast video card, but my son might. what is a moderate price card for modern Mobo's going to cost?
Click to expand...

Video cards actually aren't that out of range for what they were in previous eras- take the Geforce2 Ultra, for example. There has been a relatively constant trend of high priced video cards followed by lower and then higher and so on. That said, they are relatively expensive.

In terms of a motherboard, your options vary. Do you need SLI? Do you need Crossfire? Do you need a 3rd PCI-E x8 slot, say for a hardware RAID card? If the answer for all of those is "no" then you can certainly shoot for a relatively cheap (sub $150, certainly) motherboard, probably P35 for stability and overclocking. On the other hand, if you need 2 PCI-Ex16 slots, a PCI-E x8 slot, a PCI-E x4 slot, and 3 PCI slots, you're looking at $280 for the DFI nforce 680i board. It really all depends on what you need.
 
Master Ralph and others,

Thanks for the help. Ouch on the QX6800, I may be headed for an overclocked 6700.

The mobo stuff confuses me a little now. I was looking at a P35 board, but I am confused on the flavors of PCI slots you gave me. I am not looking at multiple video cards, though a hardware RAID card would be nice. Are the PCI-E slots for high speed video cards now? Anywhere I can get information on these types of slots?

Thanks!
 
Ok, I'm finally going to make my purchases in the next day or two. Nothing from my original plan has changed. Does anybody have any recommendations/changes? Thanks.

Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R $129.99
Q6600
EVGA 8800GS 640mb $359.99 AR (maybe)
Corsair 520
Patriot extreme 2x2gb DDR2-800 $199.99
Seagate 500mb 7200.10 $119.99
 
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