Building a Computer - 2nd opinions

ben62670

Sami wrote: »

No, I don't defrag because there is no need to, they won't get fragmented.

So all those temporary files from the internet, temp files from installing programs and updates, and spaces from uninstalling software don't make a mess of the HD. Windows has been tricking me for years with those silly charts that show the fragmentation? It must also be in my head when I notice a big difference in performance when I tune up a machine that hasn't been defraged in a long time:rolleyes:

Sami

ben62670 wrote: »

:rolleyes:

ext3 and ext4 in theory can fragment but in reality it is not a problem. Now, fat32 and ntfs, that's a different story.

ben62670

OK I thought you were talking Winders OS's:D
You had me nervous for a few there!

renowilliams

Anyway MacLeod, lots of good suggestions have been made regarding configuring your drives and backing up important data. Using programs like acronis or ghost will work nicely for this. If you want to have some more fun, there is a disk out on the net called Hiren's boot disk which has a lot of interesting utilities on it.

As for, this manufacturer is better than that one, in my experience they have all had bad runs of gear at one time or another. People who have done a lot of building tend to recommend what they have had luck with.


Have a great time with your build and let us know if you have a problem.


Tim

Systems

I would go with a Velociraptor for your main hard drive and use the one you have listed for a second drive....

MacLeod wrote: »

Ive decided to build a computer instead of buying one for no other reason than I think it would be a lot of fun.

Im pretty settled on most of the components and wanted to get some thoughts and input from you guys. Ill be building this piecemeal - buying a component as I get the funds together.

Uses will be primarily for internet (forums, Apple trailers, Youtube, Hulu) and iTunes with occasional Photshopping. While Im not a gamer the new PC games do look interesting so I want it to be a capable low end gamer with potential to upgrade later if I wanted to. Its also going to be a severe BUDGET compy. With a baby due in August, WAF is not very high so the more this is off the radar the better.

Antec 300 case. Already bought this. Got it for $60 shipped and it looks mean as hell. Top mounted fan is cool and plenty of room. Seems well built.

Antec 650 watt PSU. I know 650 watts is overkill but should I get into gaming and want to beef up my video card, this should give plenty of headroom. I wanted a good quality brand and Antec seems to be regarded as quality gear.

Corsair 4 GB DDR2-800 RAM. Ill be running Vista 64 bit so 4 GB should be enough to run everything smoothly and Corsair seems to be a quality brand.

LG DVD drive/burner Dont need anything fancy here. No interest in Blu-Ray or even DVD playback - just need something to read CD-ROM's and burn some music CD's and an occasional home movie to DVD.

Western Digital Caviar Black 640 GB hard drive. I know WD is a top brand and the one in my trusty 9 year old Sony is a WD and still works like a charm. 32 MB cache, dual processors and 640 GB for $75 seems like a solid piece.

Now the parts Im not 100% on is the CPU and motherboard. Im almost certain Ill be using this AMD Athlon X2 7750 Its $60 shipped and while its 2.7 Ghz stock, itll overclock stable to 3.10 without raising the voltage. This should be PLENTY of muscle for what Ill be doing - even with light gaming on a modest monitor. I know Intel has better CPU's but this one is competitive with the E7### series but at half the price. Also, the AM2+ will be easy to upgrade as the AM2+ socket is still going strong whereas Intel is dropping its 775 socket.

For motherboard Im clueless. Its almost overwhelming the info out there on mobos. What I think I know so far is that Asus and MSI are considered the best quality boards with Gigabyte getting an honorable mentions. Looking for one under $100. Im leaning towards this Asrock A790GHX mobo for $92. It seems to get good reviews wherever I look and has decent onboard video so I can get my system up and running while I save up for a GPU later.

The GPU will be something like this Geforce 8800GTS which seems to be a lot of beef for $110.

So thats what Ive come up with so far. Id appreciate any thoughts, opinions or insights. This is my first build and Im a rookie so feel free to be blunt and tell me Im an idiot.

Pauly

Nice lil setup. Just built mine few weeks back. I would suggest one thing since you are using AMD i would go with ATI card as they do better on AMD boards. Ive always heard/said Intel = Geforce, AMD = ATI.

Good Luck.


BTW you can download AMD Overdrive to OC from here

http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_overdrive.aspx


Pauly

Hillbilly61

renowilliams wrote: »

Anyway MacLeod, lots of good suggestions have been made regarding configuring your drives and backing up important data. Using programs like acronis or ghost will work nicely for this. If you want to have some more fun, there is a disk out on the net called Hiren's boot disk which has a lot of interesting utilities on it.

As for, this manufacturer is better than that one, in my experience they have all had bad runs of gear at one time or another. People who have done a lot of building tend to recommend what they have had luck with.


Have a great time with your build and let us know if you have a problem.


Tim

Some +1 advice/commentary here!

MacLeod

Thanks for all the input guys! Lots of good info here.

One question - am I reading right that its best to have a separate drive for my OS and other programs along with a dedicated drive for music, pics, movies and so on? Does this keep things running smoother? My Sony Vaio has a 20 GB drive for OS and programs and 60 GB for storage and its ran pretty smooth over the years but Ive noticed that most computers from Dell or HP have one big **** single drive. Whats the difference?

I could pick up a 80 GB drive for $30 to use for my OS and then a $60 500 GB drive for my storage if thats what works best - or would I be better off sticking with my $75 640 GB single drive?

For PSU, Ive not heard anything really negative about the Antec units. The reviews on Newegg seem pretty solid as do reviews on websites. Ill check some more. I know PC Power seems to be highly regarded as is Seasonic.

Sami

MacLeod wrote: »

I could pick up a 80 GB drive for $30 to use for my OS and then a $60 500 GB drive for my storage if thats what works best - or would I be better off sticking with my $75 640 GB single drive?

I personally would do two drives, and I would spend an extra $20 on a Raptor drive as your OS drive.

http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136033

Promo code EMCLSNM47 will get you an extra $8 off, after MIR the Raptor is $52 shipped.

Hillbilly61

MacLeod wrote: »

Thanks for all the input guys! Lots of good info here.

One question - am I reading right that its best to have a separate drive for my OS and other programs along with a dedicated drive for music, pics, movies and so on? Does this keep things running smoother? My Sony Vaio has a 20 GB drive for OS and programs and 60 GB for storage and its ran pretty smooth over the years but Ive noticed that most computers from Dell or HP have one big **** single drive. Whats the difference?

I could pick up a 80 GB drive for $30 to use for my OS and then a $60 500 GB drive for my storage if thats what works best - or would I be better off sticking with my $75 640 GB single drive?

For PSU, Ive not heard anything really negative about the Antec units. The reviews on Newegg seem pretty solid as do reviews on websites. Ill check some more. I know PC Power seems to be highly regarded as is Seasonic.

Antec are name brand and generally reliable PSU units. Just get a PSU well over rated for your system. 50% over your best guestimate should keep you out of trouble.

You ask a good question about two physical partitions and a single drive with logical partitions. 80 GB is overkill for just OS storage. Will come in good for storing installed programs too. Data (movies, pics, etc) will do just well on a second drive and is highly transportable to A) a future PC and if the OS drive fails. Data is what matters most (although re-installing applications is a major bummer).

The big mfgrs don't do this much anymore as mutiple logical and/or physical partitions take too much work (and increases costs). PC's are very cost sensitive to mfgr (and then mark up for a profit), as a competitor will take the cheap way out (and get bought ... people will readily buy bigger numbers in MHz and GB ... even if the overall matchup is pretty senseless). Taking time to install logical and/or physical partitions cost too much and still make a profit, even when it makes sense to do so.

Sami

What I would recommend would cost much more money than you're looking to spend but it's worth a consideration...

Raptor as your OS drive, two 500GB or 1TB drives in RAID1. Do regular images of your OS disc into your larger disc, delete old version as needed. Then get a external HD that matches your larger RAID array in size. Sync the RAID array with the external disc.

It might be overkill but it's pretty safe to say you won't be losing data in case those hard drives fail as I doubt they all fail at the same time.

MacLeod

I bought my CPU today. Settled on the AMD Athlon X2 7750 2.7 GHz Black Edition. It was $60 shipped from Newegg. In all the benchmarks Ive found online it beats anything in its price range and puts up a good fight against the Core 2 Duo's from Intel that cost 2-3 times as much. It should be more than enough muscle for 85% of what Ill be using my computer for. If I do get into gaming pretty heavily I think that so long as I pair it up with a beefy GPU it should be capable of playing most of todays games fine so long as I dont try to power a 24" monitor at full resolution.

the motherboard will probably be my next purchase. Still leaning to the Gigabyte boards. Does anybody have any experience with Elitegroup? Computer Shopper magazine did a couple budget builds in a recent issue and they used Elitegroup mobo's.

On the hard drives, Im thinking I might wait and buy that last. Ive noticed the price on the Raptors is dropping like a rock! Not 2 months ago, the 300 GB Raptor was $300 - now its just below $200. Maybe in a couple months when I scrape all the other components together, I can pick up an 80 GB Raptor for $40, then pair it with a 640 GB Caviar.

renowilliams

As I stated earlier, people tend to recommend what they have had luck with. In my case, I have had luck with Asus motherboards. They are not cheap though. I have a 5000+ black edition cpu and an asus M2N32 sli deluxe motherboard. I originally bought it after reading reviews on Tom's Hardware web site. This is now an old set up but I advise going there and doing some reading. My philosophy is to never go cheap on motherboards and it has served me well.


Once again, good luck with your build.


Tim

Sami

I've done a few builds with ECS in the past. I bought from Fry's so I could do a return in case something was wrong, and about 25% of the boards I did have to exchange. This was a while back, I haven't used them in a while.

If you are waiting 2-3 months for the build, why buy anything now? You will most likely save money by buying all of them later. I don't see hardware prices going up...

Marty913

Just random opinions for what it's worth.

I built approximately 10 systems over the last couple years (I do it for other people / family etc.) with Gigabyte motherboards and have yet to have a failure. Currently my 2 machines are Gigabyte (one 8 years old). Highly recommended.

I favor the two hard drive approach, especially using the second one for music & video. It makes backups so much quicker plus allows backup (or syncs) from one to the other as a safety measure (in addition to occasional image backups to an external drive. If you do any video editing two hard drives is almost a must have thing. Your idea about the 80gb & the 500gb is fine - or anything similar.

A good free imaging backup program is Reflect Image Backup. Fast, works great, and the price (free) is hard to beat. I used Acronis for years and still use their Disk Director products but Reflect for imaging is much faster.

In the past year or two I've replaced a lot of Hitachi/IBM, Maxtor, and a couple Samsung hard drives. Admittedly most were failed laptop drives. Not sure what's going on there. Right now I'm buying Western Digital. Don't seem to see many failures with them except for the very old ones.

CaligulaPolk

i suggest HDMI card, sorry i didnt read whole thread, just popped in my mind when i saw the title.

WilliamM2

If you are waiting 2-3 months for the build, why buy anything now? You will most likely save money by buying all of them later. I don't see hardware prices going up...

I agree. Not to mention Newegg's 30 day return policy. If you do get a bad component, and don't build for 30 days, you will have to send it back to the manufacturer, much more hassle than a newegg RMA. I recieved a DOA DVD burner just yesterday, I always test all components immediatly.

JohnLocke88

I know I'm really really late coming to the party here, not sure how many decisions have already been made; but for the card I'd look into an HD4850 by AMD/ATI. It's a solid card with great bang for the buck. Even if you're not into games this thing will play almost everything, and with current rebates, they're going from anywhere to $80-$110. Most of the other stuff looks solid; For your uses, stick with a DDR2 board.

And 64 bit OS : I ragged on them too, until I realized that vista is a great os, just with 4gb + installed; My friend does autocad for school and has his loaded up with 8 GB.

MacLeod

Sami wrote: »

If you are waiting 2-3 months for the build, why buy anything now? You will most likely save money by buying all of them later. I don't see hardware prices going up...

I know it doesnt make sense buying piecemeal like this but for one, Im really lousy at saving money. Im likely to spend any excess cash on car audio competitions or something like that. By buying the gear as I get the money, Ill actually get things done a lot faster.

Also, I figure that no matter what I buy or when I buy it, as soon as I check out itll immediately go down in price and be obsolete. So once I decide on what I want and it hits a good price for free shipping, I might as well get it. However it does appear that the hard drives are dopping in price a lot faster than anything else so thats why I would wait til last for them.

Lastly, I tend to suffer from a severe case of over-research-itus. Ill read, and search and look up stuff on all the different CPU's for months and change my mind on what Im going with almost daily. Since I just bought the AMD chip, Im done with CPU's. Cant talk myself out of it and wast time anymore. The CPU was the component I was most undecided about and the one that was keeping me up nights. I wont be this obsessive-compulsive about the mobo and PSU and Ive already decided on the hard drive and optical drive.

It wont be 3 months - probably another month maybe 6 weeks at the most til I get everything up and running so the only thing that might not qualify for Newegg's return policy would be the CPU.

Sami

If it is a month, then yes considering the circumstances. Two months, no.

If you want a budget mobo, I always recommend a CPU/mobo combo. If you want a better mobo then I would go separately. Too late for that now, but you usually get that budget mobo for a few bucks when it's a combo, instead of the $40-60 you would normally pay for it.

Systems

Sami wrote: »

I personally would do two drives, and I would spend an extra $20 on a Raptor drive as your OS drive.

http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136033

Promo code EMCLSNM47 will get you an extra $8 off, after MIR the Raptor is $52 shipped.

I'm getting Deja Vu......

MacLeod

Sami wrote: »

If you want a budget mobo, I always recommend a CPU/mobo combo. If you want a better mobo then I would go separately. Too late for that now, but you usually get that budget mobo for a few bucks when it's a combo, instead of the $40-60 you would normally pay for it.

I am wanting a budget mobo but not necessarily a flea market mobo like the ones that come with combos. I will spend the most on my mobo because when I want to upgrade my CPU or maybe add a fancy GPU, Ill have the mobo to do it.

Im strongly considering this Elitegroup board for $75 + $10 rebate.

It has decent onboard video, has 6 SATA inputs, holds up to 8 GB RAM up to 1066, SB750 southbridge that supports AMD's ACC for easier overclocking and will accept Phenom II chips for later down when they get nice and cheap. Doesnt do Crossfire or SLI but I seriously doubt I would ever want that (I just dont see me prefering PC over Xbox/42" plasma and home theater for gaming).

Sound about right?

potee

I also don't like raid. I would think about a board with sata connections much cleaner and makes it easyer to get around stuff.Amd has some good boards with it. I'v built 3 systems with asus boards and amd chips all worked fine including this one

Hillbilly61

MacLeod wrote: »

I am wanting a budget mobo but not necessarily a flea market mobo like the ones that come with combos. I will spend the most on my mobo because when I want to upgrade my CPU or maybe add a fancy GPU, Ill have the mobo to do it.

Im strongly considering this Elitegroup board for $75 + $10 rebate.

It has decent onboard video, has 6 SATA inputs, holds up to 8 GB RAM up to 1066, SB750 southbridge that supports AMD's ACC for easier overclocking and will accept Phenom II chips for later down when they get nice and cheap. Doesnt do Crossfire or SLI but I seriously doubt I would ever want that (I just dont see me prefering PC over Xbox/42" plasma and home theater for gaming).

Sound about right?

I haven't built in a while, so some things may have changed. Are you sure that this is an AMD board? Southbridge (and accompanying Northbridge) board architectures used to be strictly Intel centric design parameters. (The two "bridges" catered to Intel processor limitations that were not present in AMD designs).

A good place to read up on concerning boards is Tomshardware. www.tomshardware.com

mshan242700

http://www.mechbgon.com/build/index.html

Windows 7 is supposed to be released later this year and it is supposed to be much, much better than Vista.

You can download the Windows 7 RC1 from Microsoft for free, but it expires sometime next summer (starts auto shutting down a couple months before that).

If you aren't a hard core gamer that needs a massively powerful computer, I'd also take a look at http://www.silentpcreview.com to start thinking about the noise profile of your rig.

MacLeod

Hillbilly61 wrote: »

I haven't built in a while, so some things may have changed. Are you sure that this is an AMD board? Southbridge (and accompanying Northbridge) board architectures used to be strictly Intel centric design parameters. (The two "bridges" catered to Intel processor limitations that were not present in AMD designs).

Yeah, it says in the title its an AMD motherboard and the specifications list it as Socket AM2+ compatible with Phenom, Phenom II, Athlon 64 FX, Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core, Athlon 64 and Sempron.

This review on Legitreviews.com also says its an AMD board and they also give it pretty high marks. Im just concerned about build quality but Im getting the feeling that just like in car audio, the quality differences between MAJOR brands in the budget price range are all going to be the same. So Im thinking a $75 Asus board is just as good as a $75 MSI, Gigabyte, Asrock and so on. The only real differences will be in features.

Windows 7 for free?!?! Now we're talking! I can use the beta version of 7 to get my rig up and running then when it comes to market Ill get the official version. That just saved me $100....at least til next year when I have to get the full version.

exalted512

is win 7 beta still available for free? Might want to check into that.

Was the CPU on sale? I was going to say memorial day weekend sales should have started today...if they are holding any.
-Cody

MacLeod

Thought Id update for anybody that still cares:

Finished up the buying just now. Just ordered the last few pieces tonight so I should have everything here and ready to put together by Tuesday. Ive already bought and installed the PSU, motherboard and CPU. Just bought the hard drive, DVD drive and RAM. Im gonna use Windows 7 RC for now because itll get my computer up for free and when it comes out in October Ill buy the OEM version and stick it on here for good.

I decided on this PC Power Silencer 500 watt unit for my power supply. Its no longer available but I got it for $70 shipped with a free card reader. 500 watts is overkill for my base system but should provide some good head room should I want a beefier GPU or processor down the road. PC Power is one of the top brands and this PSU got very high marks on all the blogs.

Went with this Asrock motherboard. Got very high marks in all the reviews and places like Anandtech and the like thought highly of it. Got the micro-ATX version because it was $25 cheaper and only gave up a PCI slot which shouldnt be a problem. It also has the SB710 southbridge which works with AMD's ACC overclocking utility which should make overclocking pretty easy if I decide to play with it. It also accommodates the new Phenom II quad cores so when I want to upgrade my CPU, Ill just have to drop the new one in.

Picked up this Western Digital 320 GB hard drive. I know its only 320 but it should be more than enough for me to get started with and I plan on throwing in a 640+ drive later down the road. I went with the 8 MB cache because of the tests on Toms Hardware. They showed virtually no difference in performance between 8 and 16 MB cache and Ive read elsewhere that there is almost no difference between 16 and 32 MB caches either and most recommend against spending the extra money unless you just want to.

Went with this Sony DVD drive. Nothing fancy here - just a dvd drive. I like Sony stuff so thats the brand. And free shipping.

Corsair DDR-800, 2x2 GB of RAM. Nothing fancy here either. Good, reliable brand and should be more than enough for my applications even light gaming. I couldve gone 1066 with my motherboard but 800 should be plenty fast enough for me. Plus I shouldnt have any compatibility problems with 800 as its pretty much standard these days.

Will eventually get a GPU, most likely a Radeon 4850 or the like. Doubt Ill give up my couch and plasma for PC gaming but I may try a few out.

So thats it. A grand total of $385 - and $485 after I buy the OS in a few months and (assuming I can actually get it all to work once I put it together) I should have a very capable computer that is built with high quality parts from high quality manufacturers and should be able to hold its own with an over the counter desktop costing twice as much.

So Ill have this together by next week and assuming nothing was DOA, Ill report back to how these things all work together.

Thanks again to everybody that helped me out!

renowilliams

Congrats on the new system, I'm sure you'll be happy with it. If you need any software ie, Office, good burning software or even 64 bit xp, so you can duel boot let me know.



Tim

DeusExa

Not bad....I'm actually considering a rig to build - for one of my lecturers who wants a budget gaming rig (he's 27)...this looks perfect!

(now i wish I didn't spend all that money on Quad cores/Nvidia GTX275...)