Building a PC

jamescd

Hi,

I bought my PC about 5 years ago at PC World and it's really slow now. I want to buy a new one so i'm thinking of building one myself this time. I haven't even tried opening up a computer let alone build one so do you think it's alright for a complete novice like myself to try it? Or should i buy a ready made PC instead?

I was thinking of buying from either komplett or hardwareversand or would you recommend another site?

I'd like to put together a fast gaming PC that can handle the latest games at high settings. My budget is around 1000 euros but i'd love to save as much as i can. I tried picking out some parts out at hardwareversand. Will these parts fit together? I just picked them out randomly lol . Are there any parts i can save on or otherwise i need to improve?

ScumLord

Putting it together isn't all that hard, it's like lego and parts only fit in bits there supposed to just make sure you follow all tips to save frying any of the parts. Having said that I've ripped parts out and only noticed afterwards I'd left the psu on.

Getting it working can be frustrating so be prepared to not have a working pc for a few days.

Also make sure you don't overlook any parts. It can be all to easy to forget very obvious components.

Solitaire

Do you want to do anything intensive other than games? If not then X58 is ultra-overkill. There's a couple hundred saved right there

Case also borders on overkill, although it is a very nice case

Also have a look through your old PC and see if you can salvage any goodies from it if you don't intend to donate it in its entirety to a needy cause (i.e. family/friends )

jamescd

Thanks for the heads up ScumLord.

Solitaire i'll only be using it for browsing the web, watching vidoes, gaming etc. Can you tell me what motherboard you would recommend i buy instead? What about the graphics card, processor etc? Can you give me a list of what products you would choose if you were the one buying? Pretty please

Your right the case looks nice so i'd like to keep it

Effluo

Just making sure you know that hardwareversand.de can build your pc for you for €20...

jamescd

Thanks for that Effluo

So here's my updated list. I've gone over my 1000 euro budget. Are there any parts in there that aren't worth buying, as in i can swap it for another brand/model that is just as good but cheaper? Are there any parts in there that are too much for my needs, for example will a 450W PSU be enough instead of the 520W i picked, or is the graphics card too high end considering I will only use it at most for gaming? Any comments would be greatly appreciated :cool:

Solitaire

Short answer:



Long answer:

CPU: Core-i7/X58 is total overkill for a gaming rig, as it's an enterprise platform that doesn't really benefit gaming at all - roughly same computing power per clock cycle as Core2 for gaming. And you'll only see any benefit from a quad in GTA4 and maybe the odd PS3 port. Everything else only uses one or two cores, the rest is dead weight.

So that leaves us in good' ol Core2 land. Gaming favours power over number of cores so the E8400 is your best bet... unless you get adventurous In which case you could risk getting a Q6700 for maximum compatibility (GTA4 does not like dualies!) or strecth another tenner and get an OEM E8500 (or if less adventurous another tenner for a retail E8500) - they're on a later stepping than the E8400 and may be cooler and (if you go that route) better for overclocking, as well as a tad faster at stock speed.

Mobo: Quite a lot of choice on LGA775 at the moment, the MSI Neo2 P45 is the cheapest decent-brand CrossFire board with PCIe*8 on both cards. The cheaper Neo2 P35 is also good but the second card (if you eventually did go CrossFire) would be bottlenecked at PCIe*4 speed. If you really don't want to go CrossFire in the future then you might be able to pick up a slightly cheaper P43/45 with just the one PCIe slot.

RAM: PC8000/8500 is only of use to you if you're into overclocking as many Intel mobos don't recognise the standard (MSI usually do though) so you'd have to muck about setting the speeds in the BIOS yourself. Its not that much better than PC6400 anyway. If you're adamant about high-end RAM then go with the GSkill 4GB 1000MHz kit as they've tighter timings than the 1066MHz OCZ stuff, which hasn't been very good lately anyway

Graphics: Stick with the Sapphire above - it seems to be a "real" HD4890XT (see the GDDR5 is rated at 1GHz rather than 993MHz? ) rather than an overclocked "ordinary" HD4890. That's very, very close to the performance of the GTX285 for a helluva lot less money And it may even require less power to run than an ordinary 850MHz HD4890 as the "XT" cards use higher-binned chips from AMD. This also means they can be overclocked much higher than an ordinary HD4890 to boot. A cheap Asus GTX275 is also plenty good (and probably less power-hungry) but not quite as powerful or overclockable, plus it can't be run in SLI on that mobo.

HDD: Hitachi > WD. And there's no real price difference so why not?

DVD: Whatever

Case: Very subjective these! Given the lack of a Antec 900 MK2 there I find the 1200 a bit overpriced there right now (shouldn't they be more like ~€120? ) but the only other mid-high-end case I really like there is CoolerMaster's Mini-HAF which is nearly as large (and even wider!) but under the €100 mark. TBH even a €30 CoolerMaster Elite 330 would suffice if you're desperate to reduce costs, but I quite like the wee MiniHAF :cool:

PSU: Antec EarthWatts 650W is dead cheap, the slightly less stable TX650 not so cheap (but much prettier ). Both are excellent PSUs that won't break the bank. But neither would suffice if you decided to add a second HD4890XT later They'd work in a trice if they had enough connectors (even four PCIe together - same as two HD4890/GTX275 need - are designed to draw no more than 25A, the capacity of the Antec's 12V3 rail) but they only have enough connectors for a single high-end card (including ones much thirstier than a HD4890!). If you want to run two cards eventually then you could convert other cables to PCIe connectors with adaptors, but its a bit dicey with the EarthWatts' rail setup If you don't want to mess around and do want two HD4890s in the future (unlikely, but...) then you'd be looking at 750W+ models

OS: Yeah, whatever *cough*Windows 7*cough*

Seifer

Solitaire wrote:

Graphics: Stick with the Sapphire above - it seems to be a "real" HD4890XT (see the GDDR5 is rated at 1GHz rather than 993MHz?

While we have you on the subject again Solitaire, this one has a memory clock of 3.9Ghz, what's going on there?

jamescd

Many thanks for that epic post Solitaire

I just looked at that Mini-Haf you were talking about. It looks cool as well but way cheaper so i'll go for that instead .

So hopefully this will be the final build:



I pretty much picked what you had except for the processor, is that alright or should i stick to dual core? I can spend the extra 50 euros on it since i made a saving on the case

One more question, i will also pay for their assembly and installation service for 55 euros so am i right in assuming it will be ready to use when i receive it? Also, do they do a good job or am i better off assembling it myself?

I would appreciate if someone else can comment on whether this is a good build or not, to make me feel better before i finally fork out some of my hard earned money

Thanks a million for everyone's replies so far by the way:)

Solitaire

jamescd: Forgot to say earlier, you'll knock off some of the cost by assembling at home Ikea-style

And as for the CPU, I don't think its really worth the money given it might not benefit you all that much; instead it might actually hold you back just a bit. The Q9400 is basically two E7300's stuck together. But this does not mean it's as powerful as two E7300's. It means it's as powerful as one E7300 that can do twice as many things at once. Unfortunately, the E7300 can already do two things at once, and most games only insist on the CPU doing one or two things at a time. So the Q9400 won't make the vast majority of games faster, it'll just run them with one or two cores while the others pretty much sit there twiddling their binary thumbs Whereas the E8400 etc. will do two things at once, but faster. And with less thumb-twiddling

You'd be best off with a nice retail E8400, or maybe the retail E8500 if you can pony up the extra ~€30 and really intend on overclocking. For power users on a diet the OEM Q6700 is quite compelling as its dead cheap and overclocks much better than the 45nm quads (which were a bit of a damp squib really) but it lacks a warranty so its for the, ah, more adventurous

And while I think everything else is fine I can't personally say how good the assembly service is. In theory if all went well you could literally plug 'n' play the second it arrived on your doorstep but most people here swear by building it themselves not only to save money (or indeed cuz its fun :P) but also to avoid the heartache of a botched/rushed install or similar (then if something does go wrong they can only blame themselves )

Seifer: The HD4890s are all mad as a bag of cats. Heck, AMD was mad as a bag of cats if they ever thought they could get away with using "OC" to distinguish between two different products and expect their board partners to actually play nice

The HD4890Pro (to distinguish it from its bigger brother) usually ships with a stock GPU clock of 850MHz, sometimes upped by the OEM to ~880MHz to create the "fake OC" (fake XT). Memory clocks are usually 975MHz, which given the quad operation cycles of GDDR5 makes an effective speed of 3.9GHz. Again, some OEMs try to give themselves an edge by again parking their GDDR5 clocks at 990/993MHz, just below the HD4890OC's 1000MHz.

The HD4890OC proper (or "XT" to distinguish it from the fakes) has stock GPU clocks of 900MHz, direct from AMD (not raised by the OEM). Memory is supposed to be the same as the basic version according to Tul (Powercolor's OEM) but I've only ever seen it clocked at 1000MHz (4GHz effective) - even Tul's own "HD4890Plus" seems to have been given a boost just prior to launch (early samples were 975MHz in the BIOS but overclocked to 1.2GHz easily). The units chosen for such speeds are usually the highest-binned, i.e. the "cream of the crop". As such they have a higher threshold for overclocking and indeed are slightly more power- and heat-efficient per clock cycle, as this article seems to suggest (that's an XT downclocked to emulate the basic version; see what it does to the HD4870!)

jamescd

Ok i get what your saying lol . I'll settle for the E8500 then

Since you insist, ill try my hands on assembling it myself . So i have one final question, will i need to buy like cables and stuff to connect everything together or does everything i need to assemble it come with the parts i'm buying? This is my last question i swear

Thanks for your help Solitaire.....I'd send you a little thank you present if it was possible

P.S. I'm going on holidays for 3 weeks on the 3rd of June so I'm worried it might not get delivered before i leave if i buy all the stuff now. So I'm thinkin i'll just buy it when i get back .

Seifer

You get everything you need

jamescd

Thanks for the quick reply !!!

So it's settled then, i will try assembling my very own PC. Wish me luck lol

thepcgp

Good luck!