Building a new PC: comments?

Posted By: CannotResolveSymbol | Jul 11th @ 1:12 PM
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Comments: 23 | Views: 1157
#Jul 11th @ 1:12 PM
CannotResolveSymbol
CannotResolveSymbol
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To preface: I'm building a PC with a budget of around $800. This box will mainly be used for development, but I also do some light gaming (right now, mostly stuff like Quake Live and Flight Simulator X, although I will probably start playing some more intense games once I have the hardware to handle them: I'll probably pick up Left 4 Dead once I've built this box, for example.) I also do a bit of digital photography, but I'm not willing to spend tons on a fancy monitor, so that's not much of a consideration for me.

So, priorities: good performance for potentially lengthy compiles (although I don't have anything too long to compile right now, I could potentially in the future). My graphics target is to be able to run FSX at its highest settings, although I'll probably be playing some newer games, too. This machine will probably be lasting me the next four years of grad school (with the possibility of incremental upgrades), so it doesn't need to be too out-of-date already.

Here are the parts I've picked (thanks mostly to Tech Report's Summer Systems Guide; this is a mix-and-match between their Econobox and Utility Player):

Total - $769.94, approximately $868.08 with tax and shipping.

So, what do you think about this build? Any suggestions for improvement? Any incompatibilities that I might be missing?

A couple specific questions I have:

* Is this triple-core processor worth the extra $10 over the dual-core X2 550 (clocked at 3.1 GHz, versus 2.8 GHz for the triple-core processor)? How will they compare in terms of power draw and heat produced while idling (this box will probably be always-on during the day)?

* Likewise, is the 4870 going to be worth the extra $60 over the 4850? Tech Reports really likes the 4870, claiming its AMD's second-fastest single-core GPU and claiming it actually draws less power than the 4850 in their testing; is this consistent with anyone else's experience?

* What DVD burner do you recommend if this Samsung drive doesn't come back in stock in the next few days? Almost everything in this build is on sale; I don't want to lose too many of the discounts by waiting too long (especially on the case, which is normally a $150 case).

* Anyone have horrible experiences with any of these manufacturers? Specifically Gigabyte and XFX... I'm not expecting anything bad (XFX has a freaking awesome warranty; you don't do that if your products are crap), but I just want to be safe...

#Jul 11th @ 1:27 PM
ManipUni
ManipUni
Proving QQ for 5 years!

- Eww AMD. Intel have been ahead for years.
- *only* 4 GB of RAM with a 64 bit OS? You know the allocations are 2x as large, right?
- I like the Hard Disk, $30 more for around 50% more space though (1 TB WD Black 32 MB Cache @ $99.99)
- *only* one monitor? My productivity is MUCH higher with a second monitor. In fact I would rate that as the best value for money in terms of computer upgrades you could buy. Better than RAM, CPU, Hard Disk Speed, or any other metric.

I like Gigabyte and WD a lot. Crucial I have had mixed experiences with (but memory is touche). I've never owned anything by XFX.

#Jul 11th @ 1:30 PM
Ion Todirel
Ion Todirel
buuu

errr, no i7? no SSD? no development box, the RAM also looks weak, not to mention the PSU

#Jul 11th @ 1:34 PM
blowdart
blowdart
Peek-a-boo

You'd be better off with two hard drives, especially if you're going to use virtual machines.

#Jul 11th @ 1:42 PM
CannotResolveSymbol
CannotResolveSymbol
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I think you forgot the "budget" bit...  no i7 or SSD--  they'll both push me way over budget.  Plus, Intel can't make up their mind what socket they're going to use...  going with Intel now limits me in terms of future expansion.  AMD is committed to AM3 until at least 2010--  Intel's got several different sockets in their roadmap right now.

Same with the second monitor and second hard drive (although those are probably purchases I'll make later).

I'm going to stick with 4GB RAM for now; if I'm not happy with performance (anything is an upgrade from the 1GB I have in this machine now), I can buy a second set of the same and bring it up to 8 GB (this motherboard has four slots for RAM).

I'm doing this on a $2000/month graduate student stipend...  I can't splurge too much.

#Jul 11th @ 1:44 PM
ManipUni
ManipUni
Proving QQ for 5 years!

As opposed to what?

I agree that two Hard Disks are ideal. But with a 64 bit OS, having 4 GB of RAM is going to be nasty too. It is like having only 2 GB on a 32 bit machine (although obviously less so if you run a lot of applications in 32 bit mode).

I wouldn't trade two monitors for anything. At least for programming. But even day to day the productively improvement is just too high to measure. It is hard to quantify how good having that second monitor is... Imagine if you never had a mouse, and then one day you tried a computer with a mouse, after that day you'd never go back to just a keyboard. That is what having a second monitor is like. You never go back.

SSD is too expensive right now. Plus a lot of the SSD drives on the market are poorly designed. Only now are we starting to see drives that offer better levels of performance (with the right OS). If you go out and buy a SSD drive off the shelf you could end up with a great drive or you could end up with a lemon.

#Jul 11th @ 1:53 PM
blowdart
blowdart
Peek-a-boo

having 4 GB of RAM is going to be nasty too. It is like having only 2 GB on a 32 bit machine (although obviously less so if you run a lot of applications in 32 bit mode).

It's really really not, I don't know why you keep saying this. Pointers double in size, but ints, chars, remain 32bit. Even long remains 32bit (unlike under linux where it becomes 64 bit). You can get a little more cost on alignment, depends on the compiler. Plus there's no loss of memory for mapping PCI in.

#Jul 11th @ 2:01 PM
ManipUni
ManipUni
Proving QQ for 5 years!

I'm being a little overly dramatic but there is an additional memory cost associated with running on a 64 bit OS. You're still looking at Ints, Longs, and Pointers doubling even if perhaps chars, objects, and other misc data take up a similar amount of space.

#Jul 11th @ 2:06 PM
AndyC
AndyC

Um no, Ints and Longs remain he same size. Pointers doube in size, but that's not going to be a massive issue unless you have very pointer heavy code (and you have a whole raft of other issues if you do).

#Jul 11th @ 2:07 PM
blowdart
blowdart
Peek-a-boo

Umm no. Pointers yes, alignment yes, ints and longs remain the same. Even in .NET it's just the pointer sizes that change, nothing else does.

In fact under 64bit you can get away with a little bit more. Writing to a 64bit value like a long, or double under 32bit should involve a synclock, because it takes two operations to do. Under 64bit it's one operation.

#Jul 11th @ 2:18 PM
ManipUni
ManipUni
Proving QQ for 5 years!

Fair enough. I guess I misunderstood AMD's 64 bit implementation.

#Jul 11th @ 3:11 PM
gadget
gadget

For machine that is to last 4 years I would suggest one with at least 2 x16 slots.

#Jul 11th @ 3:51 PM
CannotResolveSymbol
CannotResolveSymbol
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That would be important if I were a gamer, but I'm not.

You pay a fairly substantial premium ($100) for an equivalent board with two x16 slots that both actually run at x16 speed.

#Jul 11th @ 3:52 PM
stevo_
stevo_
Human after all
#Jul 11th @ 4:16 PM
CannotResolveSymbol
CannotResolveSymbol
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General consensus I've found is that AMD is still the better buy these days at this price point.  And Intel has issues in the upgradability department; they can't make up their mind what socket they're going to use.

Plus, Intel's offering at the same price point, the C2D E7400, lacks VT.  That's a dealbreaker--  Virtual PC in Windows 7 requires it.

#Jul 11th @ 5:31 PM
RoyalSchrubber
RoyalSchrubber
One. How many time travellers does it take to change a lightbulb?

What do you have now?

I've got 2.5 years old Conroe (E6600) and have no intention of leaving it, seems like C2Ds are built to last. I've upgraded my computer to 4 GB (from 2 GB) and bought 4850 (purchase rationalized by convincing myself it could be useful for learning shader/stream computing, thus far used only for purposes of playing GTA4 Smiley ) and it feels I won't have to buy new computer for quite some time because Vista/other software just flies on this machine. So if you have any decent C2D maybe you want to skip i7. Smiley

#Jul 11th @ 5:42 PM
CannotResolveSymbol
CannotResolveSymbol
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I have a four year old laptop with a Pentium M 1.86 GHz processor and 1GB of RAM.  Just about anything will be an improvement.

Visual Studio is tolerable; Flight Simulator X runs (but not all that well; 10-15 fps @ lowish settings and 1024x768 isn't that great for a flightsim).

I'm definitely skipping i7 at this point.  Even if I did go Intel, i7's not in my price range yet.  And Intel's been doing some stupid crap in regards to market segmentation, doing stupid crap like disabling VT on their lower-end processors to force people to buy more processor than they need.

#Jul 11th @ 6:22 PM
mastermine
mastermine
See.Hear.Frag

This is the system i have just built it cost me about £1,450

Intel Core i7 920 D0 2.66GHz Overclocked to 3.20Ghz
Corsair 12GB DDR3 1600MHz XMS3 Triple Channel
Coolermaster 1100W UCP PSU
Coolermaster HAF 932 Full Tower Case
Hitachi DeskStar 1TB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm
XFX GTX275 896MB DDR3
ASUS Rampage II Extreme iX58 Socket 1366 8 Channel Audio ATX Motherboard
Noctua NH-U12P Special Edition Socket 1366 Dual Fan Heat Pipe CPU Cooler
BenQ G2410HD 24" TFT Monitor 1920x1080 300cd/m2 40000:1 (dynamic) 2ms 16:9
LG Electronics Blu-Ray & HD-DVD-Rom Combo 16x DVDRW Black SATA

#Jul 11th @ 6:26 PM
Ion Todirel
Ion Todirel
buuu

that's what I was thinking for my work desktop, except the PSU, case, HDDs, cooler and MB which will be chosen for optimal performance Smiley

#Jul 11th @ 6:35 PM
W3bbo
W3bbo
The Master of Baiters

My Tecra M4 is based on a 4 year old model (introduced in 2005) and has a 2Ghz Pentium M and 2GB of RAM. It has a good GPU (GeForce Go 6600) which compensates for gaming performance. Visual Studio runs just as fast on my laptop as it does on my desktop (even faster, in fact, since VS on my desktop does some network polling on startup for some reason, which slows it down somewhat).

If you want to breath life into your old laptop, install a fast HDD and add another gig of low-latency RAM, the difference is night and day. I reckon I'll get at least another 2 years out of it.

I am concerned about the possibilities for good laptops in future though, the only laptops that meet my requirements (lightweight, high-res display, thin case, and dedicated GPU) are all "business class" ones, particularly the HP EliteBook, and they all start at over £1,100.

#Jul 11th @ 6:35 PM
mastermine
mastermine
See.Hear.Frag

the only thing that i plan to change it to get a SSD other than that the system is perfect

#Jul 11th @ 6:49 PM
CannotResolveSymbol
CannotResolveSymbol
{insert caption here}

I could install more RAM into this laptop, but I can't do a faster HD...  this laptop not only doesn't have SATA (which limits me to 5400 RPM drives), but is affected by the 137 GB issue, which means that a Windows partition cannot cross the 137 GB point and reliably boot.

I already have a 160 GB 5400 RPM drive in it, though.  The performance difference was pretty surprising, as the drive it shipped with was also a 5400 RPM drive.

#Jul 12th @ 3:14 AM
elmer
elmer
I'm on my very last life.

As a "development" machine, I recently built a G45 + Q9650  SFF box, and it's WAY more than I need for a reasonable price. I used some Seagate 7250rpm 500GB 2.5" drives, which I could afford to double-stack, to give me raid-1 in a single 3.5" drive space. Again, more than enough performance for a development computer.

Obviously, it's not a "gaming" machine, but I'm not into computer games (I've never played one) so that's not an issue for me.

#Jul 12th @ 12:35 PM
Dovella
Dovella
Go Microsoft !!!!!!!

See this monitor  Dell

and try Nvidia GTX 275 (Work very amazing)

ps. remember buy case with separate Power  (Power like this  )

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