YABT (Yet Another Build Thread)

[joecool]

With apologies to those who are sick of build threads, I am hoping to get some feedback on this one. I'm not going for the perfect high-end rig here, so I don't need small tweaks, but if I've got a glaring performance hole or mismatch please let me know!

Regarding the Phenom, how much difference in performance is there between the dual core and the quad? Not sure I need the quad, but it sounds cool, and if there is a noticeable bump then maybe it would be worth the $50 price increase.

My usage model is pretty simple: surfing, Office apps, Quicken, photo and video editing, and occasional gaming. Also want this to be the media server for my family. I'm thinking video editing will be the biggest load on the machine.

Here's the details:

CPU: AMD Phenom II X2 550 Callisto 3.1GHz
Mobo: ASUS M4A785TD-V EVO
RAM: CORSAIR XMS3 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3 1333
Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda ST3500418AS 500GB
PSU: Sunbeam PSU-COM680-BK-US 680W
Case: COOLER MASTER RC-690

/edit

I'll be using my existing optical drives and relying on the onboard audio and video to start. If I don't like the audio I can revert to my old SB Audigy card, and in a month or two I'll probably get a separate video card, but for now I want to keep the price under $600. I'm also getting Win7 Home premium, 64-bit, but I'll set it up for multi-boot w/XP and prolly a few linux distros. As far as oc'ing goes, it'd be fun to play with, but it's not a priority, and if I do it will only be to see what kind of perf. numbers I can get - for day-to-day use I'll run it stock.

Finally, cool, quiet operation is more important than speed. This rig will be in a small office; I'd like to leave it on 24/7 and not heat up the room or be annoyingly loud. If heat is an issue w/quad cores (and I'm guessing it is given the power requirements) then the quad is out.

 

[Fhistleb]

I know most Photo and Video apps utilize quad-core cpu's. It also wouldn't hurt to get a little something to future-proof your system.

 

[Davidh373]

CPU: AMD Phenom II X2 550 Callisto 3.1GHz

To me it seems more worth it for you to get the $100 Athlon II X4. It performs better multitasking and will get you better performance in multi-threaded games and professional photo/video apps.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-704-_-Product

Mobo: ASUS M4A785TD-V EVO

For the same price you could get a nice 8xx series motherboard. You have no need for 2 x PCI-E x16 slots since you will not be using SLI oe CFX. Get a 870 for ~$90

ASRock w/ SATA III and USB 3.0
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-198-_-Product

ASUS w/ SATA III and USB 3.0
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-651-_-Product

Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda ST3500418AS 500GB

Seagate isn't great like they used to be. If you take my advice and get a mobo with 6GB/S it'll be able to handle a new 6GB/S drive, but I would simply recommend a 3GB/S for you for now. Wait until the 6GB/S drives are in larger numbers and are of lesser price.

1TB Samsung
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822152185

1TB Western Digital Caviar Blue
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136534

PSU: Sunbeam PSU-COM680-BK-US 680W

I have never heard of this brand, but it seems overly expensive and it isn't even 80+ certified...

Antec Earthwatts 500W
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-007-_-Product

EDIT: If you plan on adding anything to your build in the future consider a 650W PSU, you had a 680W, which was of poor quality, but I feel the 500W 80+ (80%+ efficiency) will be enough if you don't modify much.

Coolermaster GX 650W
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-052-_-Product

I also notice you are missing a graphics card. Even if you do occasional gaming or video/ photo editing you will need this.

Sapphire Radeon HD 5770 (mid-quality)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-873-_-Product

Sapphire Radeon HD 5750 (low-quality)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-859-_-Product


EDIT: The case is pretty much the same as THIS and my pic is $10 less expensive in price and has free shipping.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-161-_-Product

This totals out to 401.94 with shipping with the 650W and 5750 graphics card or $421.94 with the 5770 graphics card. With windows 7 and ram the price comes to $580 with the 5750, with the 5770 it comes to $601.94

 

[joecool]

davidh, thanks for all the details, just what i was looking for. a few followup questions for you:

1) why athlon II over phenom? i thought phenom was better?

2) thanks for the tip on the asrock. looks awesome. wish it had onboard video tho. per my edit i'd like to save on a vid card for now and add one later. any suggestions for a board w/sata3 and usb3 that also has on-board vid?

3) the thing i love about seagate drives is how quiet they are - literally never hear them. had several wd's years ago and the high-pitched whine drove me crazy - and they went belly up much faster than the seagates. are sammys quiet? how is their reliability?

4) the coolermaster psu looks good but i really want modular. any suggestions there?

5) per my edit, like to avoid the expense of a vid card for now. hope to add one in a few months but for now looking for a mobo w/integrated video.

 

[Davidh373]

davidh, thanks for all the details, just what i was looking for. a few followup questions for you:

1) why athlon II over phenom? i thought phenom was better?

2) thanks for the tip on the asrock. looks awesome. wish it had onboard video tho. per my edit i'd like to save on a vid card for now and add one later. any suggestions for a board w/sata3 and usb3 that also has on-board vid?

3) the thing i love about seagate drives is how quiet they are - literally never hear them. had several wd's years ago and the high-pitched whine drove me crazy - and they went belly up much faster than the seagates. are sammys quiet? how is their reliability?

4) the coolermaster psu looks good but i really want modular. any suggestions there?

5) per my edit, like to avoid the expense of a vid card for now. hope to add one in a few months but for now looking for a mobo w/integrated video.

Alright.

1. Quad Core over Dual. Benchmarks are better for the Phenom Quad over Athlon Quad, not Phenom Dual over Athlon Quad.

2. Onboard video (unfortunately) will not suit your needs. As much as i'm sure you'd like it to, Onboard video will choke on video editing and even year old games.

3. Get Western Digital Caviar Green Drives. Silent and energy efficient. As for the samsung I cannot say. I would rather have my drives be reliable and a little noisy instead of unreliable and a little more quiet.

4. This
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-002-_-Product

May I ask why you need modular? It seems like a waste of money to me...

5. I did forget to add the processor in, so that brings the total without OS to $531.94 (still with the graphics card). I would like to reiterate that you WILL need a video card to smoothly edit video and play somewhat new games. All you will be able to do with onboard is do the whole media server thing, which is a waste of the system's resources in my opinion.

 

[mfenn]

davidh, thanks for all the details, just what i was looking for. a few followup questions for you:

1) why athlon II over phenom? i thought phenom was better?

2) thanks for the tip on the asrock. looks awesome. wish it had onboard video tho. per my edit i'd like to save on a vid card for now and add one later. any suggestions for a board w/sata3 and usb3 that also has on-board vid?

3) the thing i love about seagate drives is how quiet they are - literally never hear them. had several wd's years ago and the high-pitched whine drove me crazy - and they went belly up much faster than the seagates. are sammys quiet? how is their reliability?

4) the coolermaster psu looks good but i really want modular. any suggestions there?

5) per my edit, like to avoid the expense of a vid card for now. hope to add one in a few months but for now looking for a mobo w/integrated video.

1) The Phenom is better than the Athlon on when talking about equivalent core counts. The core count is much more important for editing than the speed of each core. Agree with David on the 635.

2) An 880G board is probably what you want then. Here's an ASRock that will do what you want.

3) By and large, new drives are much quieter than those from a few years back. The WD Black or Samsung F3 are both high-performance and quiet.

4) For power supplies, you can pick two: quality, modular, inexpensive That sunbeam is modular and inexpensive, but the quality sucks. At your budget, modular is not a luxury that you can afford. The Corsair 400CX would be a good choice if you don't want to power more than a 5770 or so.

5) That's fine, but be aware that you will severely limit any gaming potential.

 

[joecool]

Alright.

1. Quad Core over Dual. Benchmarks are better for the Phenom Quad over Athlon Quad, not Phenom Dual over Athlon Quad.

2. Onboard video (unfortunately) will not suit your needs. As much as i'm sure you'd like it to, Onboard video will choke on video editing and even year old games.

3. Get Western Digital Caviar Green Drives. Silent and energy efficient. As for the samsung I cannot say. I would rather have my drives be reliable and a little noisy instead of unreliable and a little more quiet.

4. This
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-002-_-Product

May I ask why you need modular? It seems like a waste of money to me...

5. I did forget to add the processor in, so that brings the total without OS to $531.94 (still with the graphics card). I would like to reiterate that you WILL need a video card to smoothly edit video and play somewhat new games. All you will be able to do with onboard is do the whole media server thing, which is a waste of the system's resources in my opinion.

k, next round:

3) are you saying seagate drives are unreliable? of all the drives i've ever owned (and i've had a bunch!) i've found them to be the best. i'm currently running 7+-year-old pata drive that is still going strong. my two oldest sata drives recently went belly up but they were over 5 years old so not surprising.

btw, i currently have seagate sataII 500gb drive that i would like to use in this new system. i always like to have two internal drives w/all data copied to both in case one dies. this has served me well more than once (see note about old sata drives above). if i go w/a sataIII drive and use that for OS, will i lose the performance improvement if i've got a sataII drive in the system as well?

4) no great reason for modular except i'm anal about cable management and love the idea of not having to mess w/the cables i don't need.

thanks again,

joe

 

[Davidh373]

k, next round:

3) are you saying seagate drives are unreliable? of all the drives i've ever owned (and i've had a bunch!) i've found them to be the best. i'm currently running 7+-year-old pata drive that is still going strong. my two oldest sata drives recently went belly up but they were over 5 years old so not surprising.

btw, i currently have seagate sataII 500gb drive that i would like to use in this new system. i always like to have two internal drives w/all data copied to both in case one dies. this has served me well more than once (see note about old sata drives above). if i go w/a sataIII drive and use that for OS, will i lose the performance improvement if i've got a sataII drive in the system as well?

4) no great reason for modular except i'm anal about cable management and love the idea of not having to mess w/the cables i don't need.

thanks again,

joe

3. They are going in that direction. I've not been into tech long (about 1.5 years and still learning) but just about a year ago I heard less and less good and more and more bad about Seagate. Now it is to the point where when Seagate is featured in a build it is an automatic red flag.

4. Then get a regular one and unlimit yourself by getting a GPU. Performance before beauty and all that .

 

[joecool]

should have mentioned this: mobo needs to have firewire as my old videocam just has firewire out and i'm still not done downloading all my old videos.

cpu: sounds like quad atlonII is the way to go. does that fit socket AM3?

mobo: so the 880 chipset is better than the 785 on the asus i picked out?

psu: willing to pay a little more to get modular. nevermind if you think it's a gimmick, i want it. suggestions?

video: gaming is a low priority. i can live w/on board video for a little while as i will be adding vid. card at a later date, but that means i gotta have on-board now.

 

[Sp12]

3) are you saying seagate drives are unreliable? of all the drives i've ever owned (and i've had a bunch!) i've found them to be the best. i'm currently running 7+-year-old pata drive that is still going strong. my two oldest sata drives recently went belly up but they were over 5 years old so not surprising.

They've had a lot of issues with the 7200.12 series.

btw, i currently have seagate sataII 500gb drive that i would like to use in this new system. i always like to have two internal drives w/all data copied to both in case one dies. this has served me well more than once (see note about old sata drives above). if i go w/a sataIII drive and use that for OS, will i lose the performance improvement if i've got a sataII drive in the system as well?

Sata 2/3 doesn't matter for mechanical hard disks.

4) no great reason for modular except i'm anal about cable management and love the idea of not having to mess w/the cables i don't need.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817207003

Better value, silver efficiency too. Might put your idling wattage below 20% though.

 

[joecool]

4. Then get a regular one and unlimit yourself by getting a GPU. Performance before beauty and all that .

you are underestimating how anal i am.

 

[joecool]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817207003

Better value, silver efficiency too. Might put your idling wattage below 20% though.

pretty ... wouldn't idling wattage under 20% be a good thing?

sadly, while i am willing to pay a LITTLE more for modular, price does matter. oh, well.

 

[Davidh373]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817207003

Better value, silver efficiency too. Might put your idling wattage below 20% though.

He doesn't need a 750W PSU does he? As far as I can calculate he barely needs a 650W for when he gets a graphics card. A 550W 80+ would work fine if he got the 5770 (and if there were any decent manufacturers at that range offering 80+...).

 

[Davidh373]

you are underestimating how anal i am.

I'm anal about well balanced computer performance. You aren't going to see the inside of your case once it's built, but you will see it's failing performance... (not that it will "fail" but I think you know what I mean).

 

[Sp12]

He doesn't need a 750W PSU does he? As far as I can calculate he barely needs a 650W for when he gets a graphics card. A 550W 80+ would work fine if he got the 5770 (and if there were any decent manufacturers at that range offering 80+...).

Yeah but the 10$ investment in silver efficiency does make sense. Of course, if he's willing to go nonmodular the Corsair is a better buy, but still.

 

[mfenn]

pretty ... wouldn't idling wattage under 20% be a good thing?

sadly, while i am willing to pay a LITTLE more for modular, price does matter. oh, well.

No, idling below 20% is very bad. The reason for this is that a power supply's efficiency curve resembles a bell curve. You'll see a very sharp drop in efficiency below 20% load.

 

[joecool]

k, so you guys have pretty well convinced me to punt on the modular psu and go w/the corsair. they are a great brand anyway.

also sounds like i should go w/the athlon II quad.

still not ready to pop for a gpu right away. if i get one it'll be a good one so need to save my dimes for a few months. so i still need a mobo w/onboard video. and its gotta have firewire. are you saying i should get an 880 series board rather than 785?

 

[mfenn]

k, so you guys have pretty well convinced me to punt on the modular psu and go w/the corsair. they are a great brand anyway.

also sounds like i should go w/the athlon II quad.

still not ready to pop for a gpu right away. if i get one it'll be a good one so need to save my dimes for a few months. so i still need a mobo w/onboard video. and its gotta have firewire. are you saying i should get an 880 series board rather than 785?

The 880G is all around newer, better, and not much more expensive than a 785G. It has a faster IGP, is usually paired with the 850 southbridge that has integrated SATA 6Gb/s support, better chance of support for future processors, etc.. I usually don't recommend a 785G anymore unless you're really pinching pennies.

Here's a board for you with Firewire.

 

[Davidh373]

k, so you guys have pretty well convinced me to punt on the modular psu and go w/the corsair. they are a great brand anyway.

also sounds like i should go w/the athlon II quad.

still not ready to pop for a gpu right away. if i get one it'll be a good one so need to save my dimes for a few months. so i still need a mobo w/onboard video. and its gotta have firewire. are you saying i should get an 880 series board rather than 785?

Define "A Good One", because a 480 (a $500 GPU) thrown into an Athlon system (~$500) isn't going to be taken full advantage of. I would say a max of a 470, but the 460 is a reasonable limit. The 5770 is just about right for that system and you are still under budget buying that with the rest of the build. So why not complete your build now since you already have the money?

 

[Davidh373]

The 880G is all around newer, better, and not much more expensive than a 785G. It has a faster IGP, is usually paired with the 850 southbridge that has integrated SATA 6Gb/s support, better chance of support for future processors, etc.. I usually don't recommend a 785G anymore unless you're really pinching pennies.

Here's a board for you with Firewire.

you brokeded it man...

 

[joecool]

Define "A Good One", because a 480 (a $500 GPU) thrown into an Athlon system (~$500) isn't going to be taken full advantage of. I would say a max of a 470, but the 460 is a reasonable limit. The 5770 is just about right for that system and you are still under budget buying that with the rest of the build. So why not complete your build now since you already have the money?

if i could i'd love to ... but remember i'm buying win7 as well. thats $100. i need to add it all up again but i think that plus the gpu would blow me out of the water price-wise.

btw, why isn't a 480 gpu any good w/an athlon? should i go w/the phenom after all if i want a high-end gpu (which, come to think of it, i don't, actually)? just wondering ...

 

[Davidh373]

btw, why isn't a 480 gpu any good w/an athlon? should i go w/the phenom after all if i want a high-end gpu (which, come to think of it, i don't, actually)? just wondering ...

Well, you are buying a $500 computer, it would be extremely unbalanced performance spending just as much on one part as the rest of the computer. Besides that with the 480 and the Phenom you would be investing way more than you need to. Your OP suggests Video/ Photo Editing with light gaming. The most you would ever need is a 460.

If you had an initial budget above $800 you could be getting more premium parts to match performance with the 480 and Phenom II X4, but the fact is you're not. Be happy though, what you'll have is more than enough for what you do .

 

[Davidh373]

Just curious, you aren't editing 1080p are you?

 

[joecool]

no. actually not sure what the resolution is. it's off an older analog cam.

 

[Davidh373]

no. actually not sure what the resolution is. it's off an older analog cam.

That shouldn't even require the 5770, probably the 5750 will do you fine. I have a friend that plays games triple monitored with the 5770 (at resolutions above 1080p) and he never complains about framerate. So no problems with games and no problems with video editing.