Possible home build need a expert eye!!

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bendaye12

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Aug 19, 2011
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Motherboard: MSI 890GXM-G65

CPU: AMD Phenom II X6 1055T

Video card: AMD Radeon HD 6850

Memory: 4GB Crucial Ballistix RAM

Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB

Optical Drive: Lite-On DVD burner

Power Supply: Thermaltake TR2 600W

Case: NZXT Vulcan

Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit

what do you think to these components do you think it would be an average gaming pc?

many thanks advice welcome

Benji

 
Get the Phenom 2 X4 955 BE instead. It is much better for gaming and will save you $$$ You get 400 Mhz clockspeed more per core. Quad cores are the sweet spot for gaming at the moment. Games just don't use 6 cores.

As far as the motherboard... Look for a mobo that is AM3+ compatible. That way you will be ready for Bulldozer if and when it comes out. Bulldozer may make a future upgrade possibility if it turns out to be as great as we all hope. Any major manufacturer will do. Asus, AsRock, MSI, Gigabyte...

The Samsung Spinpoint F3 1 Tb HDD is regarded as faster/cheaper/reliable.

RAM prices are cheap right now I've seen 8 Gb kits of DDR3 1600 for as little as $35 within the past few days on newegg specials... Go for 8 Gb and never worry about RAM again. I paid $95 for 8Gb back in February.
 
Most games are optimized for 2-4 cores so getting a 6 core or higher is not ideal for overall gaming but may yield better results in a select few games.

Your MoBo is a gx model which means you are paying for an integrated card that you will not use for gaming. If you are not going to overclock or use the on board video then just go with an 890 northbridge, otherwise go for an FX. Smart move going with an AM3+ motherboard though because that will be compatible with the new bulldozer chips coming out so that will not limit your upgrade paths in the future.

The 6850 is an awesome card for the money that is also readily available. I currently use it in an ITX computer I have due to its amazing performance, low thermals, and only being ~9" long.

WD Blue is a good mix of storage and overall performance. Some elitists will say only go with Black but in gaming you will really only notice it on loading screens and the money saved can be used on components elsewhere.

With RAM as cheap as it is now, I would go with dual channel or triple channel memory depending on what board you go with. See if your MoBo supports dual or tripple and you can squeeze out some extra performance that way rather than one 4 GB stick. If you stick with AMD, most are still dual channel so you can get two sticks of 4GB for pretty cheap.

This is my feedback without playing 21 questions on your exact needs on the computer and frankly overall not bad gaming system and certainly not a bad system compared to what you would buy in the stores.
 
I will agree with pacioli that any major brand will do. A lot of benchmarks tend to show very small differences, but if I had to throw a suggestion out there it would probably be GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD3. Reasons being it is AM3+, newer northbridge that supports USB3 and SATA3, overclockable, supports EFI for when/if you pop in a 3TB+ hard drive, and affordable. That motherboard should have all the bells and whistles to make it a solid investment as the core of your machine for the years to come.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128514
 
Grr, thought I proofed it before I submitted it. The other reason for the 990fx northbridge is it supports both Crossfire and SLi so you care not limited to just AMD GPUs in the future as well.
 
so you have sold me on the GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD3 is it standard size or micro atx?

what about the processor? will be playing alot of blue ray and hd films too. if its atx then i will have to rethink the case too!! what do you reckon open to suggestions as i only want to do this once lol
 
MOTHERBOARD – Asrock 990fx extreme4
PROCESSOR – Amd black edition phenom II x6 3.3Ghz
MEMORY RAM – ????? HARD DRIVE – 2 x sata western digital caviar blue 500gb
PCU - Lepa G900-ma 900w atx
CASE – Cool master HAF 922m atx mid tower
GRAPHICS - ????

i was looking at these anyone with any knowledge on these advice would be appreciated

many thanks
 



hi


MOTHERBOARD – Asrock 990fx extreme4
PROCESSOR – Amd black edition phenom II x6 3.3Ghz
MEMORY RAM – ????? HARD DRIVE – 2 x sata western digital caviar blue 500gb
PCU - Lepa G900-ma 900w atx
CASE – Cool master HAF 922m atx mid tower
GRAPHICS - ????

what do you think of these and can you fill in the question marks for me pleaseeeeee!!]

many thanks
 


You don't want that 6 core processor for gaming. Tom's Hardware does not recommend any AMD processor over the Phenom II X4 955 BE at the $120 price level.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cpu-gaming-performance,3007-3.html
Here is tom's chart that ranks CPUs for gaming performance.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cpu-gaming-performance,3007-5.html
The 3.3 Ghz Phenom II X6 is one tier below the $125 i3 2100. The i5 2300 at $180 is 2 tiers above the Phenom X6 you are thinking about.

If you really want to spend that much on a processor then you'd be better off going with the intel. On Newegg you can get an i5 2400 for the same price. If you have a microcenter nearby you could even pick up the i5 2500K for $10 less than the Phenom II X6 3.3 Ghz.
http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0354589
The 2500K is the best gaming chip for the money at the $180 price.

If you insist on AMD then go for the top of the line Phenom II X4 980 at 3.7 Ghz. It is better for gaming than the six core chips. It is still not as good as an i5 2300 at the same price point.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103934

I always recommend the 1 Tb Samsung Spinpoint F3. It consistently benches faster than other 7200 RPM 1 Tb drives. It is almost as fast as some 10,000 RPM drives. They have a proven reliability track record. and you can pick them up for about $60 and sometimes as low as $50. Check out the high number of reviews and high rating at google shopper
http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=samsung+spinpoint+F3+1+TB&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=shop&cid=1366483808779858026&sa=X&ei=2sl-TuGbDMLjiALA1qS6Aw&ved=0CF4Q8wIwAA#

I love that case it keeps everything nice and cool!

I'd recommend anything from AMD or Nvidia at least as fast as the Radeon 6850 or the GTX 460 1GB, Here is the Hierarchy chart of tom's for Graphics cards
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-performance-radeon-geforce,3018-7.html
As far as brands I like XFX and EVGA because of their warranties. MSI puts some nice aftermarket cooling on their cards. You usually pay a premium for the Nvidia cards of the same performance level. I tend to use Nvidia more because the driver support tends to be better. Sometimes you may have to wait a while for a new driver to come out before you can play a new game with AMD cards.

For the PSU - get a quality power supply from a well known vendor. i.e. Corsair, Seasonic, Antec Thermaltake, OCZ, etc... You will need a PSU 700 watts or above to power a system like this and still have headroom for SLI or Crossfire in the future.
 
What resolution do you plan to game at and what is your budget? That would determine what GPU we'll suggest, which in turn will determine what PSU we'll suggest.
 


That is a standard 1080P tv so the above suggestions still stand.
Is there a preferred website you would like to use to make your PC parts purchase? If so I can price something out for you at £1000 that will be a top performer.
 
I just read the Tom's article comparing the three system builder marathon PCs.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/build-a-pc-value-overclock,3033-5.html
Check out the graph. Here the overclocked i5 2500K in the $1000 is shown to play Crysis better than the $2000 PC at stock and almost as well as the overclocked $2000 PC. I'm guessing for £1000 you could put together something like the $1000 PC in the article.

On the other hand there is the $500 PC that performs adequately in most games. But, think about this, that processor in the $500 PC is the 955 BE which outperforms all the 6 core processors AMD makes in gaming benchmarks. You are looking at a significant increase in performance going from the $500 Pc to the $1000 PC.

As far as the most performance per dollar the 955 BE still wins over them all.
 



hello pacioli

yes i would be very grateful to you if you could give me a build suggestion on a £1000 budget. you seem to know what you're talking about.
i dont know where to buy the parts from here in the uk as never done this before!!! look forward to hearing from you soon :bounce:
 
Well here it is... With your budget you can get the best graphics and gaming processor. This setup will run anything on maxed out settings on your 1080P TV. It is incredible. If you get it I will be jealous of you. You will have not one, but two Nvidia 560 Ti GPUs in SLI. You can raid the two superfast Samsung Spinpoint F3s in RAID 0 striped for speed or RAID 1 for redundancy. It has 8 Gb of G.Skill RAM. If you want to spend a bit more you might get this motherboard for an additional £30.
ASRock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3 Intel Z68. It is a full sized ATX board as opposed to the mATX board I priced out. They are both quality boards but the Asrock will cool slightly better due to the fact that it has an additional slot between the graphics cards.

Coolermaster HAF 922 Tower with Transparent Side Panel - No PSU
£72.49

OCZ ModXStream Pro Modular 80+ Power Supply Active PFC 700Watt
£56.66

GSKill 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 RipJaws X Sandy Bridge PC3-12800 1600MHz (CAS9) Dual Channel Memory Kit
£33.29

2 x Palit GTX 560 TI 1GB GDDR5 Dual DVI, HDMI VGA (PCI-E), Retail with Mafia 2 Game
Each £147.75 X 2 = £295.51

2 X Samsung SpinPoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB 7200RPM SATA II 3GB/s 32MB Cache - OEM 1YR WARRANTY
Each £37.49 x 2 = £74.98

Samsung SH-S222AB/BEBE 22x SATA DVD-RW DL Black - OEM
£11.46

Intel Core i5 2500K 3.30GHz Sandy Bridge Unlocked (Socket LGA1155) Processor
£141.66

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64Bit
£60.79

Asus P8P67-M PRO REV 3.0 P67 Chipset (Socket LGA1155) USB3.0 8CH Sound DDR3 mATX Motherboard
£86.66

Coolermaster Hyper 212 Plus CPU Cooler
£19.16

Shipping:
Tekvalue 2-3 Working DaysFree 3-5 Day Tekheads Shipping Promo (Over £49+vat) Delivery £13.75

Subtotal £843.93

VAT @20% £168.79

Total £1,012.72
 
wow looks really good, thx for your time and effort might take the intel z68 instead i think looks beeter layout for the graphic cards :)
 


You could also go with a single GTX 580 in your budget instead of the 2 SLIed 560 Ti's. The SLI setup of GTX 560 Ti's is quite a bit faster than a single GTX 580 but uses more power and generates more heat.
 
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