$800 budget...Need an AMD X4 955 budget build...

[Guest]

Ok, tried this earlier and didn't get much advice...hopefully this format will work a lot better. I need some help guys, I've been rocking a mac for too long and need a good gaming desktop PC to play current games as well as future games, mostly RPGS's, MMORPG's, and FPS's. I am new to the overclocking scene so I'm curious about that as well. I'm going off the Gamer Dragon 8000 build off of ibuypower.com. I explored the avenue of buying the parts and assembling it myself off of newegg but the price difference was slim considering ibuypower will assemble it for me. Anyways, any help/advice/opinions are greatly appreciated!! P.S. $800-900 budget
APPROXIMATE PURCHASE DATE: Beginning of September as soon as students loan refunds arrive!

SYSTEM USAGE FROM MOST TO LEAST IMPORTANT: Gaming, music/movies, surfing the web, and homework.

PARTS NOT REQUIRED:Not sure yet...taking suggestions on cheap but good keyboard, speakers, and monitor. I will be getting the mouse ibuypower includes as that is no biggie.

PREFERRED WEBSITE(S) FOR PARTS: IBuyPower.com

PARTS PREFERENCES: The only couple things I know for sure is I want the baddest AMD processor out there to be good for now and the future. I also am pretty set on the nVidia GTX 260 core.

OVERCLOCKING: Maybe, need to know more.
SLI OR CROSSFIRE: Maybe, but not soon.

MONITOR RESOLUTION: Probably somewhere around 1680 x 1250 as I would like to be able to get a 22" LCD monitor suitable for the GTX 260 core. NewEgg.com has a pretty nice one on a special sale right now but that's the first one I've looked at...

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS: Willing to skimp on the case, would like a decent MOBO for overclocking and possible SLI in the future...I would like this PSU as it seems like a good option... Sorry I couldn't provide links...this was the best I could do considering time constraints.

CASE: Azza Orion Gaming Mid-Tower Case with See-Thru Side Panel (Silver with Blue Lightning)

CPU: AMD Phenom™II X4 955 Black Edition Quad-Core CPU w/ HyperTransport Technology

CD: LG 22X DVD±R/±RW + CD-R/RW Dual Layer Drive

FAN: XtremeGear Ultra Twin Heatpipes Cool Copper Heatsink CPU Cooling Fan (Extreme Silent at 20dBA & Overclock Proof)

HDD: Single Hard Drive (250GB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 8MB Cache 7200RPM HDD

HDD2: 250GB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 8MB Cache 7200RPM Hard Drive (2 HARD DRIVES? advice...)

MOUSE: XtremeGear Optical USB 3 Buttons Gaming Mouse

MOTHERBOARD: Asus M4A77TD PRO AM3 DDR3 AMD 770 Chipset CrossFireX Technology SATA RAID MB w/GbLAN,USB2.0,&7.1Audio

MEMORY: 4GB (2GBx2) PC1333 DDR3 PC3 10666 Dual Channel Memory (Corsair or Major Brand)

OS: Microsoft® Windows Vista™ Home Premium w/ Service Pack 1 (64-bit

POWERSUPPLY: 635 Watts Power Supplies (Sigma Shark SP-635W PSU - SLI Ready)

VIDEO: NVIDIA GeForce GTX260 CORE 216 896MB 16X PCI Express

 

[hunter315]

Try to get a PSU from Antec, Corsair, PC Power & Cooling, Seasonic, or OCZ. For an AMD build you really should go with an ATI 4870 so you can do crossfire in the future and i would really suggest a 790x or GX if you can fit it in so that you have the option of crossfire, it gives you much better upgrade possibilities.

I would just get a single 500 or 640GB drive rather than two, it should cost about the same. Also does ibuypower offer the core contact freezer? Its one of the best coolers out there.

 

[Guest]

Hey thanks for the quick advice! I was wondering about the PSU, is it just too old or what? I can get the Corsair 650w for like $35 more. Also, with the ATI 4870, is it worth getting the 1gb version or the 512mb version? As far as the hard drive goes, the single 500gb hard drive was my first choice but a friend suggested I go with a single hard drive to keep my OS and common files/applicaitons/music on and a second hard drive(either internal or external) to keep my games on. I thought that kinda sounded like a good idea. I couldn't find a cooler on ibuypower.com called a core contact freezer so I'm not sure about that... But hey thanks again for the help!

 

[hunter315]

The single 500 will be faster in almost all respects. I would suggest the 1 GB version, for the difference in price it is more than worth the difference at high resolutions.

The issue with the PSU was that alot of the random and generic brands dont have good power correction or ripple suppression, bad ripple suppression can lead to burned out components or the PSU has the option of just going BOOM and taking several things out with it. The corsair PSU also provides a fair amount more power.