[gamehead200]

Hey all,

I'm back from the dead, kind of. I've missed out on a lot of hardware-related news over the years. Anyways, I haven't built a desktop in about 10 years (about the same time I joined MSFN) but am planning to build one since I won't be on the go as much as I have been while I was in school (holy crap, just graduated!).

This was my first attempt at speccing it out: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/bNUV
Here's my revised build: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/bP6J

Trying to get the built closer to $1k as much as I can, just not sure what to cut. I would cut the SSD down to 128GB if I wasn't planning a dual-boot with Linux and Windows 7, so I'd like to keep that if possible. The Samsung HDD is there for storage and I'll eventually have another one in there for some RAID1 action.

What will I be using this for? Occasional gaming, media playback, photo editing, file/media store/server. I also need it to have some pep for running some CPU-intensive apps on occasion. What exactly? No idea yet, but it happens from time to time.

Tripredacus will wine about how I asked /r/buildapc before coming to MSFN for help, but that's only because a bunch of friends recommended it.

[MagicAndre1981]

why do you use the old 570? They use more power compared to the 670. Or you can try the AMD Radeon HD 7950 or 7870.

The rest seems to be ok. If you only do gaming the CPU is over-sized. Games need a fast GPU. The CPu is less important here. Only a quadcore is required for todays games. So an i5 (with K) is enough.

[gamehead200]

Why? Trying to save some $$. The 570 fits my budget. Unless you can suggest something comparable for the same price? Again, this is for occasional gaming.

[dencorso]

Well, as you fully know, I hardly am the one to come to, when thinking of new hardware, since my main interest is elsewhere, but I think even 7 x64 has plenty of space in 64 GB, which is also faster to image... so, I'd like to suggest a RunCore SSD. I use them in my netbooks, and they never gave me grief. The RunCores are not exactly cheap, but they're fast and rugged.
Visit their site and look at the specs. You may find faster elsewhere, but not even near as rugged (while still pretty fast).

[Kelsenellenelvian]

Can I ask why you are sticking with intel?

I can easily build twice the system with AMD.

I also think that vid card is pretty pricey.

I would go with something like this:

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16819103961 8-core CPU $170

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16813157305 SATA 6 & USB 3 MOBO $67

http://www.newegg.co...=9SIA0ST08P6223 32 gigs 1333 ddr3 ram $199

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16814150599 XFX 1gig ddr5 vid card $150

$586 so far with lots of room for the rest. (Plus I went pretty high on the ram)

This post has been edited by Kelsenellenelvian: 12 July 2012 - 06:39 PM

[gamehead200]

I always thought the new Intels used way less power than AMD chips, so I stuck with that. Might consider it, though, for my purposes, I think 8 cores is a little overkill.

[Kelsenellenelvian]

8 cores is $20 buck more than 6 cores right now.

it does use @ 70 watts more but it is twice the cpu too.

This post has been edited by Kelsenellenelvian: 12 July 2012 - 07:39 PM

[gamehead200]

How hot will it typically run compared to the Intel chip?

[CoffeeFiend]

Kelsenellenelvian, on 12 July 2012 - 06:25 PM, said:

Can I ask why you are sticking with intel?

My guess would be: because nobody else builds nice fast CPUs at the moment.

Kelsenellenelvian, on 12 July 2012 - 06:25 PM, said:

I can easily build twice the system with AMD.

That's *nowhere* near twice the system!

For starters, the AMD CPU is a Bulldozer which are very well known not to perform so great (even compared to their older chips like the Phenom II), it uses about 20W more of power idle (and like 100W extra at full load) which translates into real costs (and heat), and the i5 3570K wins universally across all benches, and by quite a margin. For example, if you look at a simple but decent synthetic bench like passmark, you see the FX8120 scored 7078 vs 7942 for the 3570K. Yep, its 8 cores are slower combined than the i5's 4 cores. That essentially means you get twice as many cores, but that each core runs at less than half the speed of the cores in the i5. That's a very, very bad thing: unless you do a handful of very specific tasks like LOTS of video encoding, you'll never use anywhere near 8 cores in the first place. You just get lots of slow cores that always sit idle and still use power. And when the vast majority of simple apps only have one thread the i5 wins big -- it'll run those programs (the CPU bound part of it) twice as fast. In fact, the cheapo dual core i3's win against the FX-8120 in a lot of benchmarks -- every single-threaded benchmark for starters (and then everything that doesn't make use of a lot of threads for heavy processing, like basically all sysmark benches). Even a mid-range i5 from the previous generation wins against the FX-8120 in all benches, and the 3570K is faster than that. In fact, THG places the FX-8120 in the same "category" as the Core 2 Duo E8600, E8500, E8400, E7600 for gaming... So again, too many slow cores = bad (slow, power hungry), half the cores that are more than twice as fast each = MUCH better.

Kelsenellenelvian, on 12 July 2012 - 07:38 PM, said:

it does use @ 70 watts more

70 watts extra (assuming that's true), at a reasonable 8.5¢/kWh (cheap hydro power like we have here, taxes in) * 70W/1000W * 24h * 365 days = $52 extra on you power bill per year. Assuming a lifetime of 5 years on the machine, that means $250 wasted, for a CPU that's actually much slower! And based on his current location and what Google finds, it seems to be closer to 22¢/kWh there, so that would be $135/year, or $675 wasted over 5 years. Once you factor that extra cost in, it becomes pretty clear what the best pick is: $230 for the much faster i5 3570K or ($170 + $675 extra power used by it over a 5 year usable lifetime) $845 for a much slower AMD CPU. Assuming they were the same speed (which they're not), the AMD CPU would have to cost negative $615 (as in, "here, take this CPU and $600 in cash with it") to be worth buying!

Kelsenellenelvian, on 12 July 2012 - 06:25 PM, said:

I also think that vid card is pretty pricey

It's a mid-end gaming card. Considering he wants to do gaming and that it's the main bottleneck on such a system for gaming, I'd say it's a very good pick. Your card is definitely cheaper (by $100) but when you look at any gaming bench, it really shows too (the FPS are almost half of the GTX 570). Now, the card MagicAndre1981 picked is what I would personally call pricey ($400+). It has better performance for sure, but I'm not personally spending that much on a video card anytime soon. Then again, it's by far the easiest piece to replace years down the road when it's become too slow.

dencorso, on 12 July 2012 - 06:08 PM, said:

I think even 7 x64 has plenty of space in 64 GB

I never looked at RunCore SSDs before (don't recall seeing them in any bench either, but either ways newegg/ncix/etc don't sell them) but 64GB is definitely on the small side. Yes, Win7 by itself will fit, but modern apps can be quite large (e.g. 15GB for the Adobe CS6 suite), and modern games (which he wants to play) even more so! The last game I played (Max Payne 3) takes 35GB by itself... A 120GB SSD would be very restricting to me, but with 240GB or 256GB I'd be OK.

Either ways, I was looking at building a machine fairly similar to what he picked (same exact CPU, same chipset, same SSD, similar video card, etc -- it's also pretty close to my PC at work). My main gripe with it is the ASrock mobo (I'm not really fond of that OEM but I'm not saying it's junk either, just that I'd pick something else).

[gamehead200]

OK, that all made a lot of sense. CoffeeFiend, if you're not very fond of ASRock, what would you suggest instead?

[CoffeeFiend]

ASUS and Gigabyte are the best two IMO, but that comes with a slightly higher price tag. But there are other decent OEMs like MSI. Here's my current shopping list for my upgrade (ncix.com):

Antec P280 XL-ATX Tower Case Black 3X5.25 2X2.5 6X3.5IN 2X120MM Top 1X120MM Rear Front USB3.0 No PSU $104.99 (nicer case IMO)
NCIX Gaming Bundle Deal Intel Core i5 3570K Unlocked CPU & MSI Z77A-G43 DDR3 CrossFire Motherboard $344.99 (great CPU and you essentially get a pretty decent Z77 mobo for $100)
G.SKILL F3-12800CL10D-16GBXL Ripjaws X 16GB 2X8GB Kits 240PIN DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 Desktop Memory $98.99 (8GB doesn't cut it for me)
Crucial M4 Micron C400 SSD 256GB 2.5IN Solid State Disk Flash Drive SATA3 6Gbps $209.99 (a Samsung 830 would be somewhat nicer, but that's $75 more and not in stock)
XFX Radeon HD 6870 900MHZ 1GB 4.2GHZ GDDR5 2xDVI HDMI 2x Mini DisplayPort PCI-E Video Card $174.99 (good enough for my needs, fits my budget -- your GTX 570 gets about 25% higher FPS)
(keeping existing 750W 80+ PSU and hard drives, no optical drive, probably the same HSF as you picked), for a total of $933.95

Edit: I don't think thunderbolt is mature enough to bother (drivers and OS, devices availability, etc), and there's far less of an incentive on a desktop (which already has plenty of PCI-e slots and tons of video connectors on nice superfast GPUs)

[dencorso]

I do like ASUS too. Do visit the RunCore site, and look at the specs.

[CoffeeFiend]

dencorso, on 12 July 2012 - 09:53 PM, said:

Do visit the RunCore site, and look at the specs.

The specs of the RunCore Pro VI are alright, 562MB/s read (max) 389MB/s write (max) which is alright. There are tons of SSDs around those speeds, including the $65 60GB OCZ Agility 3 at 525MB/s read 475MB/s write. It comes down to pricing mainly, and availability (seemingly you can't buy RunCore products in North America)

Edit: comparing based on MemoryC's prices:
120GB RunCore Pro V
560 MB/s read, 525 MB/s write, 50K random 4KB write IOPS, $131.44 + international shipping from Ireland (and customs clearance)...

Mushkin Enhanced Chronos MKNSSDCR120GB 2.5" 120GB at newegg (free shipping)
550 MB/s read, 515 MB/s write, 90K random 4KB write IOPS, $89.99

[dencorso]

I usually buy mine from MemoryC. Yes, I know it's in Ireland... but it can give you an idea of the prices, because they certainly have almost whatever other brand you may think of.

[MagicAndre1981]

I like ASRock, their support is fantastic. ASUS and Gigabyte don't have good support.

[Kelsenellenelvian]

Coffefiend = Thanks for schooling me.

The reason why I said what I said was because I was a HUGE intel only guy for a really long time.

Then last year I got aghold of $500 ish bucks and built a AMD system:

CPU = 1100t Black Ed
Ram = 16 gigs ddr3 1333
Vid = AMD Radeon HD 6450
Mobo = ASUS M4N75TD

Its actually the Fastest system I have ever owned. Except for the video card (I have a older geforce in my sons pc thats quit abit better) I am EXTREMLY happy with it.

[tomasz86]

MagicAndre1981, on 13 July 2012 - 08:52 AM, said:

I like ASRock, their support is fantastic. ASUS and Gigabyte don't have good support.

I also think that ASRock is underrated. They've got decent motherboards for very reasonable prices.

[CoffeeFiend]

Kelsenellenelvian, on 13 July 2012 - 09:22 AM, said:

Coffefiend = Thanks for schooling me.

That wasn't really the intent (not in a bad way at least) but just to point out that the current AMD offerings very much suck compared to Intel's (with some explanations to back it and perhaps help him make his choice too)

Kelsenellenelvian, on 13 July 2012 - 09:22 AM, said:

I was a HUGE intel only guy for a really long time.

At the beginning, Intel was clearly the best (the NEC v20 was alright though). Then many years later, AMD had some decently priced alternatives (Athlon era), and then they peaked with the Athlon64. That was a far better CPU than the P4 (architecture, speed, etc), but Intel basically surpassed it with the Core 2 Duo. AMD then released some quad cores that were cheaper and that were a good alternative to the Core 2 Quads but that only lasted for so long. Beyond that point AMD's offerings are extremely deceiving. Their current desktops CPUs seem to be all about having a very large number of useless cores (more cores sitting idle 100% of the time, not helping performance but just increasing your power bill) while having a deceivingly low single threaded perf (making everything run much slower) which is completely the inverse of what most people want or need. And they seem to be focusing on super slow APUs in the mobile world, like laptops with ghetto Fusion E-350 CPU (APU) that's actually slower than an old Intel Pentium D 3GHz from 2005 (there are i3's that are more than 6x faster!) Even on the server side, they're focusing on the same tons of slow cores approach, where their 16 core monster is barely faster than their previous 12 core beast (and even sometimes slower). That misguided strategy of just adding more which remind us of shavers (now with 17 blades!) will only last them so long. They desperately need to increase IPC, reduce cache latency, reduce the penalty of a branch misprediction, etc.

MagicAndre1981, on 13 July 2012 - 08:52 AM, said:

I like ASRock, their support is fantastic. ASUS and Gigabyte don't have good support.

That's anecdotal evidence at best. It comes across as baseless accusations out of asrock fanboy-ism or whatever. I've had great support from both ASUS and Gigabyte (even smaller players like Zotac recently), and I'm hardly the only one. Their products are very solid and reliable, and they are top rated on every site with reviews as well. There's nothing wrong with liking ASRock (I'm just not a big fan of their products myself) but to say the two biggest both suck is preposterous.

[jaclaz]

CoffeeFiend, on 13 July 2012 - 01:26 PM, said:

That's anecdotal evidence at best. It comes across as baseless accusations out of asrock fanboy-ism or whatever. I've had great support from both ASUS and Gigabyte (even smaller players like Zotac), and I'm hardly the only one. Their products solid and reliable, and they are also top rated on every site with reviews as well.

With all due respect , I completely fail to see how yours is NOT as well anecdotal evidence at best , or if you prefer, apart the divergence of opinions, your post contains the SAME *whatever* you are saying MagicAndre1981's post contains .

I also completely fail to see the BIG differences between Asus (Asustek), Asrock and Pegatron:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asustek
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASRock
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegatron
http://en.wikipedia....ron_Corporation

To me they are just names/brands all revolving around the same "main group".

jaclaz

[CoffeeFiend]

jaclaz, on 13 July 2012 - 01:59 PM, said:

I completely fail to see how yours is NOT as well anecdotal evidence

Which part? Where I say I got good support from Gigabyte and ASUS? Yep, it is anecdotal evidence, just like his. I meant that he might have had a bad experience with them before, but there's millions of us on other other side of the fence who haven't. And that no company would get so big with bad support, or that they wouldn't care if they provided bad support thus damaging their reputation and ending up losing their large share of a lucrative market. And as you said, ASrock and ASUS are the same group, and it would be kind of funny if the "prestige" division (ASUS) offered lesser support than their "value" division (ASRock)

jaclaz, on 13 July 2012 - 01:59 PM, said:

your post contains the SAME *whatever*

I'm not saying the same thing at all:
I said I don't like ASRock products as much (as in, not a real fan of their actual mobo designs -- call it nitpicking), not that they're a bad product, but it's rather a personal preference, so I'd pick another OEM first.
Whereas he claims that both of the most popular OEMs, which also happen to have fantastic reviews everywhere (and countless millions of happy customers) have poor support, without providing anything to back it up. That's something else entirely.

Then again, if someone has a spare ASRock X79 Extreme11 taking up space, I'm taking donations Seven x16 slots (two PLX chips!), 8 DIMM slots, 14 SATA ports (8 actually being SAS ports on a fancy LSI logic controller), 8 USB3 ports,etc. It's quite a beast, but it'll be incredibly pricey too.