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Putting together new PC. How does it look?

J

johnnycakes

Junior Member
I'm building a PC for the first time in years, so I'm not confident in my knowledge of the latest technology.

This PC will be for everyday tasks/work. I'm not a gamer, so I don't need an awesome video card. I just need one that will run one or two 30" monitors.

Listed below is what I've tentatively picked out.
Do you see any glaring errors (parts that won't play well together)?
Any no-brainer additions or substitutions?

Today I went to BB and picked up the Rocketfish case and two Seagate 1TB SATA 32MB drives.

The rest of the stuff I plan to buy:

Also, what is Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound and do I need it?

I'm thinking about getting a Blu-Ray ROM. Will any modern video card be fine for playing back Blu-Ray media?

On board sound should be fine.

Thanks a lot.
 
I would get a video card with lifetime warranty, such as XFX or eVGA. The 8800GS is a good choice, but on second thought might be a little overkill for you.



That power supply is way way overkill. 500W or 550W is plenty for you.

If you are not overclocking, there's really no compelling reason to get an aftermarket CPU cooler. Just stick with the intel retail ones, they work fine and they carry the intel 3 year warranty, whereas your aftermarket one does not.

Arctic silver 5 is good stuff, but there are a lot of people on anandtech who seem to prefer other thermal compounds. In short, you don't need it, but it can be useful even with the stock heatsink/fan that comes from intel (you'll have to scrape off the thermal paste that comes included, then clean up the residue with isopropyl alcohol).

Any quad core CPU will handle blu ray just fine, even without a hardware / video card decoder.
 
There's absolutely no reason to get a Video Card with a lifetime warranty if you must pay a premium to do so. Most video cards come with 3 year warranties, which is about the maximum amount of time one would want to wait before a video card can be rendered obsolete by new games. As the OP said though, he is not a gamer, but I still don't think paying extra for a lifetime warranty makes sense, as by the time your 3-year warranty runs out, the price to ship the card to/from the manufacturer will be about the same as buying a whole new card, especially if he's going for a cheaper version...
 
Originally posted by: johnnycakes
This PC will be for everyday tasks/work. I'm not a gamer, so I don't need an awesome video card. I just need one that will run one or two 30" monitors.

The rest of the stuff I plan to buy:

Also, what is Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound and do I need it?

On board sound should be fine.
Click to expand...
1. For "everyday tasks/work", you don't need a $235 quad core CPU. A nice E4700 will do fine, if you're not OCing.
If you plan on OCing, save some big $$$ and get an E2160 OCing it to 3GHz.

2. The Gigabyte MB you picked is good to go.

3. For some reason I do like MSI video cards. But I'd bump up from your 8600GT pick to the MSI 8600GTS.
It's a little cheaper (AR), than your GT and the extra speed will more than make up for the memory difference.

4. Never would I install a component from Raidmax. Their reputation for quality is just too dodgy. A better and cheaper pick would be the Antec Earthwatts 500W or the Corsair 550VX

5. Your AC Freezer 7 Pro is a fine cooler. But I prefer down-blowing coolers that also help cool MB components like the Zalman CNPS7000B-AlCu.

6. Your A-Data memory is ok, but the better pick (IMO), would be the 4GB Mushkin kit. I know it's not the absolute cheapest 4GB kit. But it's Mushkin, is rated at 1.8v and has heatspreders.
All those factors make it a winner in my book.

7. The AS5 is fine.

8. I likes my dedicated sound cards. 😉
 
Don't 30" monitors require two inputs for maximum resolution? You may want to make sure the 8600's support that which may also hinder your desire to have one card run two monitors. Of course I could also be way of base here but I am pretty sure about this.
 
Originally posted by: letired
There's absolutely no reason to get a Video Card with a lifetime warranty if you must pay a premium to do so. Most video cards come with 3 year warranties, which is about the maximum amount of time one would want to wait before a video card can be rendered obsolete by new games. As the OP said though, he is not a gamer, but I still don't think paying extra for a lifetime warranty makes sense, as by the time your 3-year warranty runs out, the price to ship the card to/from the manufacturer will be about the same as buying a whole new card, especially if he's going for a cheaper version...
Click to expand...


He picked a 1 year warranty card FYI

I'm sure 3 year warranty would be plenty, but you don't have to argue just for the sake of arguing. Lifetime is still a nice feature, and there are some nice deals on video cards that have lifetime warranty and can still drive 2 30" monitors.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814150258

And it only gets cheaper if you are fine with only being able to drive 1 monitor.

This one's a little cheaper but doesn't have dual DVI out,

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814150265

I don't know of any 30" LCDs that can handle VGA cable
 
Originally posted by: johnnycakes
This PC will be for everyday tasks/work. I'm not a gamer

Click to expand...

Just get an E2180 and any cheap P35 board. While a lot of new technology is tempting and certainly gets good reviews from enthusiasts you need to consider if you need it; hell, if you'll even be able to take advantage of it when you buy it. A low-end Core 2 is more than enough for blazing through office tasks, "multitasking" and even recent-ish games. Don't waste your money on a quad core when you'll be leaving three cores idle.
 
Thanks for the comments guys. I've made some adjustments.

On Blain's suggestions, I've replaced the RAM, video card, and cooling fan.

I think I'm going to get the power supply chuckm linked to.

Couple questions: I didn't think to ask before, but will all these components run pretty quietly? I don't want the sound of a jet engine coming from under my desk.

About the quad core processor....I'm thinking about sticking with it.
Here is a likely and probable scenario of everyday use for me:
I play poker online for a living. So, at any given time I could be:

Running a poker client and a number of tables.
Importing hands into my database and querying the database a lot.
Burning/Ripping DVDs.
Playing music/other media.
Other normal stuff like surfing the web.

If I was doing all that at once, would the quad core be useful, or still overkill?
The database work is quite processor intensive for my current Centrino laptop.
Also, I will probably have this build for a while and who knows what I will be using the computer for in the future.
Also, I want to be cool and tell my geek friends I have a quad core. 😉
 
For your usage a e8400 should be plenty fast. But I bet a e8400 and a q6600 will both have no problem running all those tasks. Depending on how much money you make playing poker, it doesn't even matter ?

The setup should be fairly quiet, the PSU is for sure, and when doing basic stuff the arctic freezer 7 pro shouldn't spin up at all and be virtually inaudible. Depending on the casefans in the rocketfish you might want to replace them with some quieter ones. Depending on how much gaming you do, you could actually go with a PASSIVELY cooled videocard, depending on the AIRFLOW in your case. It has to be at least sufficient, like ONE in the front and ONE in the back.

Here's just a suggestions: http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814121077

There's also the more powerfull 8800gt: http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814134035
 
How huge is the database? Also, your Centrino laptop likely has one core. Q6600 is probably overkill, but hey, if you can afford it, why not? Unless you change PCs every 1-2 years, you'll probably make use of all the cores sooner or later.
 
The DB is just 4GB, but it has >500K hands in it. When I run a query/filter in my software on that many hands it can send the CPU usage through the roof and make the PC useless until it's finished.
 
Originally posted by: MarcVenice
For your usage a e8400 should be plenty fast. But I bet a e8400 and a q6600 will both have no problem running all those tasks. Depending on how much money you make playing poker, it doesn't even matter ?

The setup should be fairly quiet, the PSU is for sure, and when doing basic stuff the arctic freezer 7 pro shouldn't spin up at all and be virtually inaudible. Depending on the casefans in the rocketfish you might want to replace them with some quieter ones. Depending on how much gaming you do, you could actually go with a PASSIVELY cooled videocard, depending on the AIRFLOW in your case. It has to be at least sufficient, like ONE in the front and ONE in the back.

Here's just a suggestions: http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814121077

There's also the more powerfull 8800gt: http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814134035
Click to expand...

Here are some good pics of the case. It has "Advanced triple-fan cooling system with three 120mm cooling fans (1 front ball bearing fan, 1 rear ball bearing fan and 1 side fan); washable front fan air filter", so those cards should be fine, right?

Thanks.
 
I think based on your post about poker, you really wouldn't notice a difference between the E8400 and Q6600. That said, I'd go for whichever is cheaper.

And don't forget that dual core will use less power, and 45nm uses less power as well.

I'm sure the E8400 can handle as many poker windows as you want to throw at it.
 
Originally posted by: wired247
I think based on your post about poker, you really wouldn't notice a difference between the E8400 and Q6600. That said, I'd go for whichever is cheaper.

And don't forget that dual core will use less power, and 45nm uses less power as well.

I'm sure the E8400 can handle as many poker windows as you want to throw at it.
Click to expand...

I agree, I don't think the Q6600 would improve performance over the E8400, especially when he's just querying large databases.
 
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