My first build

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rizzywizzy

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Hi every one, this is my first build ever, and i was just wondering what you guys thought of it. I want a gaming pc, but I am also an animation student who uses photoshop and maya (3D animation program) alot. I pulled this build off of this website, but I made some changes to better suit my needs. The GPU is a bit expensive and I guess a bit excessive for me because I do not have HD monitors to use it to its fullest, so if any one can recommend a better "bang for the buck" GPU, that would be great.

CPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115214

MOBO: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128409

RAM: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231321
(RAM will be two of those so 8GB RAM)

HSF: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103065

HDD: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152173

PSU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139009

GPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150476

DVD: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827106335

CASE: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119160

My budget is around $1700, but the more money I can save the better.

Thank You
 
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L

Lmeow

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CPU: Intel Core i7 860 - Your processor seems fine for 3D design/animation/photoshop.
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD4P - I'm just supposing that you'd like fast transfer speeds because of the type of work that you do. I'd personally pick the ASUS P7P55D-E Pro though.
RAM:G.Skill Eco Series 1.35V - High speed RAM doesn't really make much of a difference, and these sticks are decently priced. 8GB is a good choice for heavy RAM applications, like Maya I suppose.
CPU Cooler: Hyper 212+ is a very nice price performance cooler, and I'm supposing with this you'll be overclocking your i7 860 a bit.
HDD: Samsung Ecogreen F2 1TB - Don't get this, get a Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB - those things are really, really fast for an HDD, and cost only $10 more.
PSU: Way too overpowered for your uses. Even a 550W PSU would suffice, get something like a Corsair HX520W or HX650W if you plan to add another card later in CrossFireX, and like the PSU to be modular.
GPU: The HD 5870 isn't really too overkill, but a much better price performance card would be the HD 5850, which can max most of today's titles.
DVD: W/e lol, anything would do.
Case: Why get a fulltower, e-ATX case when your motherboard's only ATX sized? Get something like a Cooler Master CM 690 II Advanced, or HAF 922.

My thoughts and opinions on your computer.
 
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S

silky salamandr

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Alright just some suggestions. Because you will be using maya and photoshop alot I would suggest that you switch to X58 and not go with P55. The reason is that maya will benefit alot more with triple channel memory than on dual channel that P55 offers. Thats just a suggestion but I have I7-860 and I love it but I dont use maya either. Its more than capable but triple channel is the way to go for your animation needs. But heres a rundown on your build,

Cpu-Very Good

Mobo-Very bad! Dont get into the hype of usb 3.0 and Sata 6g. At this time its just a marketing ploy to make you think you have to have these things. With this board if you use the usb 3.0 or Sata 6g ports, it will downgrade your first pci slot to 8x. What they dont tell you with these boards is that this extra goodies they want you to believe you need use your pci bandwith and on a bandwith starved platform like P55 thats not good. My suggestion is find a board in that price range that doesnt offer usb 3 and sata 6. Items that even use this tech wont even be mainstream for 6months to a year. Go to newegg right now and find the ones that use this and tell me if you need this right now. If you just have to have it you can add a $20 dollar card down the road.

RAM-Fine cause its just ram. But I think you could save some money here if you went X58. I also think you could get away with less than 8g using a 6g triple channel kit.

HSF-Cant go wrong with the Hyper 212

GPU-Cant go wrong with 5870

HDD-That hard drive you have selected is not and was not intended for a primary os drive. Its too slow. That drive is basically for HTPC and to back up data. Thats not how its advertised but thats what its strong point is. Less heat/noise hence the 5400 platter speed. Find a 7200 rpm drive. Ill suggest a good 1tb offering from WD or Seagate. Its your choice. Im not a hd fanboy because all hd's fail it doesnt matter what company made them. Just look at the reviews on the egg to see how many people have failing drives and make your decision accordingly.

PSU-Fantastic psu cause they are one of the best but try this..http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817814017. I have this psu and no problem to report. Its modular so thats a big plus and 1kw. Spend 10 more bucks and get 150 more watts of power. Just the modular alone is worth the price of admission. But you cant go wrong with the Corsiar!

DVD-Again its a dvd drive what more could you need outta it. I think you could shave a about 5to7 bucks on this one because the lite on is a little more expensive than others.

Case-This made me smile cause I have this case and I couldnt be more happier! Whats not to love? All the room you need,cable management is fantastic(I spent 2 hours on mine and all you see is connections),and unmatched air flow. Now the bad, the case is so huge it needs its own stand if you dont want it on the floor. I had to go out and buy a 32inch tv stand to put this beast on. This thing got to my house and I was like what the hell am I going to with this? The blue power and hdd lights on the front are too bright. It looks like a club in my house with the lights off lol. I took a black sharpie and colored in the lights and they are still bright but not annoying. I love my case but I would like to go smaller someday. So I suggest going with the HAF 922. Same as its sister but shes the thinner more hotter sister. Also its like 30 or 40 dollars cheaper.

I love my P55 platform because I didnt need X58. I think for your uses you should go with X58 but P55 is more than willing to take whatever your gonna give it. The con of going X58 is the price. It will be close but you might go over budget. Just have to message your build ya know, take a little from here and apply it to there type of thing.

Ill post pics of my rig if you want!
 
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geofelt

geofelt

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Good comments above.

On the cpu, see if you can get to a microcenter store; They were selling i7-930 cpu's for $199--carry out only.
Even then, for the same price,as the 860, I like the i7-930 a bit better.

For the hard drive, definitely get a better 1tb drive, like the WD caviar black. For a build in this price range, would you consider getting a SSD for the OS?

XFX has the best warranty in graphics cards, the 5870 is appropriate.

On the case, get it if you love it. Otherwise consider something like the Antec 300 illusion model for $69.99:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129066

Corsair is one of the best psu's around, but the 850 is overkill. The 650TX will power the 5870 or any other single graphics card sold today. If you ever think you need more graphics power, sell the 5870 and replace it with a 5970 or whatever is the best available at the time.

If you are a student, look for a windows-7 academic license.
 
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fastx21

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Get a Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB. Or others will recommend the Seagate 7200.12 1TB. But the seagate has higher fail rates so that's why I personally will not recommend it.

XFX indeed has the best warranty and certainly worth it at only $10-20 above most other cards in their class.

Corsair PSU's are good and 850w is a good number.
It's true that a 650w psu will probably work well for you but it never hurts to get more. Also if you intend to crossfire in the future the 850w will treat you better.

DVD Drive?... get cheapest of cheat but a good brand name.
I ended up getting my cooler master hyper 212 and the dvd drive for $42. So if you do the math that's $7!!!!!! for a dvd drive.
 
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keithblue2

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I agree with most of what's been said already by folks, and esp. Lmeow on almost all points. Definitely do not want a slow drive on these systems, since the HD will be the primary bottleneck. For instance, on an i7-860 box I built, with a lesser graphics card (XFX Radeon 4850) and non-extreme RAM (G.SKILL RipJaws DDR3 1600 4GB, $110), all the Windows 7 experience index subsystems are running high sevens (7.5, 7.6, 7.9), except for the hard drive: it's clocked at a lowly 5.9. And I'm running RAID-10 (mirror of stripes)!! The system, moderately overclocked -- 3.6 GHz -- I have the CoolerMaster 212, too -- rates in the top 10 fastest desktop systems in the world on the PassMark test. So it's fast, and more expensive RAM and GPU, at some point, is going to yield diminishing returns for your dollars. (You'll have a system that might get you laid, if that's even possible.)

So my $0.02 is that if you're going to spend four hundred dollars (really??) on your GPU, you could probably easily back off to something like a XFX Radeon 4850 ($140, NewEgg) or the next model up, whatever that is -- and use the spare $200 to get yourself a fine, wicked-fast WD Velociraptor 10K SATA drive (less than $200!). Go for the 150GB model -- you can always add more regular, cheaper SATA drives to your system later like the Samsung SpintPoint F3 to add storage. You'll thank me later -- everyone raves about this drive. (My RAID-10 array is excellent and runs Win 7 Ultimate noticeably faster in app load times than an identical system I built with the Samsung 1TB that fastx21 mentioned. But I'm running that on four 500GB enterprise Barracudas I had spare, which cost me around $600. If you DON'T get an expensive drive like a Raptor, I recommend using $100 to double-down on your hard drive and run a RAID-1 mirror. This is very easy and protects you from having to rebuild your entire system if your HD bites the dust.)

Lastly, I don't necessarily agree with all the smoke and heat about USB 3.0 and SATA 6 Gbps stealing the bandwidth of the x16 bus... Onboard USB 3.0 will mean you don't have to buy another card AND take a card slot to get USB 3.0 support. And if you're actually using a superfast USB 3.0 device, chances are you'll be appreciating it: if you didn't need it to be superfast, you would turn it off (back down to USB 2.0 and "only" about 60 MB/sec). So the times when all that will make a big difference IMHO are few. It's a little hard to imagine needing your USB 3.0 at full speed while you're gaming away and using the top capacity of the 16 PCIe lanes from your GPU...

Also agree that a good 650W power supply will be way more than enough (Corsair, Antec).

As for the whole i7-860 vs. i7-920/i7-930 thing, it's really rounding error for most of us: I chose the i7-860, in the end b/c it runs a little faster (stock) but uses a lot less wattage. I wrote up a summary of it all here.

Good luck with your system -- let us know how it goes? If you ditch the 5870, you should still be under $1200 or so...

KB
 
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Jinnistacia

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An i7-930 or i7-860, HD5870, and 12GB ram will fit (up to ~$1600), just need to find out how much memory you really need. If we know your resolution, we can suggest a matching graphics card.

--Jin
 
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R

rizzywizzy

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Thanks everyone for the very informative replies, i am trying to take it all in and research a bit more.

As for my resolution, I run a dual monitor setup at 1600x900

??Question?? Is an SSD a spare HDD that is just for storage? Should i get a smaller HDD that runs at fast speed and have a spare slower one for storage?

As for USB 3.0 i don't even think I have anything that is setup for USB 3.0 (actually I don't know much about UBB 3.0) What kind of stuff uses USB 3.0 at the moment?

As for an X58 MOBO could anyone recommend one that will suit me?

I also forgot to mention, I am not that tech savvy so some of the terminology is a bit confusing for me, so a layman's version would be much appreciated.

Thanks
 
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geofelt

geofelt

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SSD=Solid State Drive. They are small, but are very fast since they have no moving parts. A good use for them is for the OS drive, and perhaps a few programs. Your OS will consume about 15gb. Anandtech did some tests on the Intel X25-V 40gb drive in raid-0 with some very good results. It really does make your PC feel snappy. Look at this article:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3618/intel-x25v-in-raid0-faster-than-x25m-g2-for-250

This marketplace is changing daily so do some research on current offerings.

At 1600 x 900, you do not need the strongest graphics card. A 5850 or the new nvidia GTX470 will serve you well. With dual monitors, consider getting a second cheap card(of the same brand as your gaming card) for the second monitor. That will give the full power of the strong card for gaming. I have two 2560 x 1600 monitors, and use a 3450 to drive one, while the 5870 drives the main one.

USB connections have been used for many things, including mice, keyboards, flash drives and backup drives. For backup, the usb2.0 can be somewhat slow. You can expect to see some usb3.0 devices appearing in the marketplace. External backup drives will appear first. There will be pci-e adapter cards, but for a new motherboard, you might as well look for that feature.

Another new motherboard feature is 6gb sata. Available SSD's are now pushing the limits of the original sata speed of 3gb, so a faster sata interface is priming the way for new SSD's that should appear by the end of the year. I would go for that also.


Here is a gigabyte X58A-ud3R that supports those features:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128423
 
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rizzywizzy

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Ok so after reviewing what everyone's input, this is the new build that I was thinking.

MOBO http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128423 $209.99

CPU http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115225 $ 294.99

RAM http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148150 $ 111.99 x2 = 223.98 (8GB)

HFS http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103065 $ 34.99

SSD http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167016 $219.92

HDD http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136533 $119.99 (will buy later if over budget)

PSU http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139009 $ 139.99 (this may be overkill, but I rather not deal with power issues in the future.)

GPU http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102881&cm_re=HD_5850-_-14-102-881-_-Product $369.99 (Main Card)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161287 $89.99 (Secondary card for dual monitors) (Do I really need two cards to run dual monitors?)

DVD http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827135204 $ 23.99

CASE http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129021 $99.99 (A bit smaller then the other one, and cheaper)

So I am going over a bit on my budget, the total right now is $1812.81, If anyone can shave off any more that would be great.

Thanks
 
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rizzywizzy

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Ohh nice, thank you
 
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geofelt

geofelt

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I like the antec 1200 case and psu combo.

No, you absolutely do NOT need a second graphics card to run two displays. Your 5850 has two dvi outputs which will work fine.
I only mentioned a second card such as the 3450 I got on newegg's shellshocker deal for $20 as an interesting way to improve gaming performance by offloading the main card.
 
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Jinnistacia

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whitefang

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I would go for the Haf 922 over the antec 900, and the Corsair 750TX over the earthwatts 750.

Spin point F3 for the HD.

The toxic ediiton gpu you select is no good. Get the 5870 for $30 more.

The cheapest DDR3 3x2GB with Cas 7 and 7-7-7-21 timings.

2969w3.png
 
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rizzywizzy

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The RAM with the CPU+RAM combo deal, will it work with the MOBO? The MOBO's memory standard is SSR3 2200/1333/1066/800.
 
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rizzywizzy

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Here is my current build that I want to make, I went with a bit cheaper GPU because the only pc game I play is WOW, but if I need to I will upgrade later, and I downgraded it from 8GB ram to 6GB in order to get triple channel set. I went with the WD HDD because its setup for SATA 6.0, Is that a good idea?

Newegg-1.jpg
 
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geofelt

geofelt

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Looks good to me.
Onboard sound is very good. I would leave off the sound card and see how you do. You can always add it later.

Go to the crucial web site and check their ram configurator for compatibility:
http://www.crucial.com/index.aspx

I think the ram is good.
Cpu performance is not very sensitive to ram speeds.
If you look at real application and game benchmarks(vs. synthetic tests),
you will see negligible difference in performance between the slowest DDR2 and the fastest DDR3 ram.
Perhaps 1-2%. Not worth it to me.
Don't pay extra for faster ram or better timings unless you are a maximum overclocker.

I suggest you download and read cover to cover the motherboard and case manuals before your parts arrive.

---good luck---
 
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rizzywizzy

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Okay so I am going with the ram that was mentioned
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...cm_re=Mushkin_6GB_DDR3-_-20-226-116-_-Product

ohh i didn't think there is a micro center near me, but there is, so thanks for that, I can save a $100 now :)

As for the SSD, why should I get rid of it? I just figured the OS and programs like photoshop and maya would run faster on a SSD. Am I wrong?

I also can't find a manual for this MOBO so...

Thanks again for everyone's help, you have no idea how much you guys have helped me.
 
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