I am currently trying to get together a build for a new computer to be ordered around late August. My focus for this desktop, is for me to be able to use it throughout college. I plan to go to a college like Digipen, or something very similar, which has some excellent sounding game design programs (I actually plan to visit Digipen early August).

I plan to be multi-tasking quite often, as well as playing many newer games. I have around 700$ to spend, and I've been doing what I can on my own to find out what would be the best choices for me to make. I have a friend that will sell me a flatscreen, which will cost me 25$, and that should be factored into the overall budget of around 700$. I also have speakers, keyboard, and a mouse, so I don't need those bought brand new. I do need a tower, a CPU, a video card, RAM (I plan to use a 64bit OS, preferably windows 7, which does not need to be factored into the cost), a hard drive, and a motherboard.

I believe I have the motherboard, hard drive, tower, and RAM covered -but I would absolutely LOVE some advice on what to pick out for my CPU and video card.

Here is the list I have gathered so far, and it is ever changing since I keep learning new facts and details about computers in general:

CPU choices:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115017
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115037

I am currently leaning towards buying the quad-core because it is more expensive, and I think it will be useful longer than the dual-core will be, as more multi-threaded games are produced.

Video card:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102801

I'm really unsure as to what I should get for a video card, but I believe I want something similar to this one..

Ram:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231122

Hard Drive:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136319

Tower:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811103011

lol this tower looks awesome

Motherboard:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128358


If you have any advice for me, or a question, or have something that would better than something I have listed here, great! I would love some suggestions

Thanks in advance for any help!

Your ram is somewhat low for that motherboard cause it can handle higher speeds

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227289

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145214

(These might not fit into your pricing though)

697$ after tax and shipping. Anyone who recommends you anything else on any parts other than the DVD drive or HDD is GROSSLY UNINFORMED and you should not listen to them.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119152
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136320
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150394
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827118031
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371007
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227362
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128372
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115056

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Jul 23 2009, 1:28 pm by Excalibur.

Agreed on Excalibur's build. Killer for the price.

Also, holy crap at that GPU. $150 and free shipping?

It gets better:

They list it as a 90$ card with 2x 30$ gifts. I wish you could refuse the gifts and get the card for 90$.

Ok cool. I already have a power supply, and I forgot about the DVD drive altogether, so I'll have to include that in the purchase. That video card looks great. As for the harddrive, why did you change it from the one I picked out? About the processor, I was actually considering that exact one for some time, but I decided that I wanted to go for something better, as I'm willing to spend the extra 50-100$, what do you think?

[Edit] On second thought, I just remembered that the power supply I have is extremely whiny.. I should probably get a newer one.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jul 24 2009, 3:39 pm by CecilSunkure.

Okay first off if you have a good PSU that cuts some price off it. No DVD also cuts a few more dollars off. GFX is great, highly recommended. Either of the HDDs will work, I honestly didn't bother to check the first post much. If you want to step up to an E8xxx that's fine, get whatever the lowest E8xxx is you can find, you can clock an E8200 to E8600 speeds in two seconds. However I think the lower E8xxxs like the E8200, E8300, and maybe the E8400 right now, are out of production. I honestly haven't kept up in that respect. But if you want to go into the Q range, nothing lower than a Q9550 is recommended for gaming.

Edit: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3574301&SRCCODE=PRICEGRABBER&cm_mmc_o=2mHCjCVybgwTyz__wyCjCVqHCjCdwwp
E8200 from tigerdirect. Costs a bit less than the E8400 at Newegg and will clock just as high easily.

I knew it

Could you recommend a quad-core CPU for around 150-200$, maybe even a little more?

Thanks for the help, I really appreciate it.

Again when it comes to gaming, nothing lower than a Q9550 is acceptable. An overclocked E8400 out preforms nearly every low-end quad core in gaming due to lack of core optimization. The Q8xxxx and lower Q9xxxx don't have enough L2 cache to go around on the cores, and coupling that with core optimization that doesn't take advantage of all four cores just screws you over twice.

Right, because a lot of games haven't been multithreaded to take full advantage of quad-cores yet? But I would like what I buy to last as long as possible, which is why I'm leaning towards buying a quad-core.

How does this look:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115041

Yep, that's the Q9550. An absolute beast of a processor. It'll last you a long time, nothing short of a core i7 can compete with it.

How much better would an I7 be, like this one:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115202

Compared to the 9550 this doesn't seem cost effective.. But would this I7, or something like it, be worth paying the extra 50$ for?

It's a different socket, all i7s are their own socket, separate from the others. You'd need a different motherboard (more expensive) and DDR3 RAM (also more expensive.). Core i7 is currently not cost effective.

Oh oh I didn't know that I would need to spend more money on everything else as well..

Allright, well thanks a lot you all for the help. I'll probably come back with some more questions later.

But Excalibur.. How do you know what you know about computers? Do you have some sort of computer engineering job? Or is making builds for PC's just a hobby of yours?

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Jul 24 2009, 5:04 pm by CecilSunkure.

When I was 7 years old we were given a Gateway desktop by some friends of the family, it was outdated and they were going to get rid of it. Before that I had played SC and Diablo on my babysitter's PC, and learned that computers made me happy in a way nothing else did. So about a year later that Gateway broke, virus or something, and no one really cared to fix it except me. So it was either I do something about it, or I don't get to play games anymore, I don't get to be happy anymore. Obviously that wasn't something I was going to take lightly, so I started reading the errors, paying attention to every little detail, and problem solved until I got it working again. I self taught myself a lot of things when I was younger, because if I didn't, no one was going to. It is true that necessity gets a lot done.

When I turned 13 I think, I got my first PC that was just for me, not a family machine. It was a Dell XPS 410 and it was little more than a media center PC with a Geforce 6600 thrown in it. But I was so happy. This was also when I first encountered routers and ports, and I had this lovely desktop in my room that I couldn't play SC on. I was so angry I nearly threw it out the window because I didn't understand why quite yet. But I learned about ports, and routers, and kept learning. When that PC met its limits a couple of years ago, I started researching computer parts, I wanted to upgrade.

In a matter of months I knew 90% of what I know now. The other 10% is just whats recent, what are the deals, what overclocks well and what doesn't. Not a lot changes with computers or at least it hasn't so far, and I know I haven't been into it that long either. Anyway that PC met its limits, I learned enough to build my own, and I did. I built another for a friend because he had the money but not the know how.

And I continued to give advice to a lot of my friends who build and just aren't as in-the-know as I am. I know maybe 3 people that build, and out of all of them, I'm the only one who can OC, I'm the only one who knows the good budget OCers and why NV is currently losing this round of GPU wars. Maybe it's all the free time on my hands, but this is one of the few things in life I seem to have a natural talent in, I just haven't found a way to make money with it. Because although around here I'm one of a few, in the grand scheme of things, I'm pretty damn low down on the ladder.

Where I live isn't very built up. There are no PC shops of any sort, the closest thing we have is a Staples and a Walmart who's smallest section is their electronics and games. There's really nowhere for me to go with all this know how, so I come here, and a number of other places, and give what advice I can.


This was a lot longer than what I intended, and probably really off topic. Oops.

Ok so it looks like I have a pretty awesome build going:

Power:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371007

DVDD:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827118031

HDD:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136319

Tower:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119152

CPU:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115041

Video Card:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150394

Motherboard:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128358

Ram:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227362

Ok so this comes out to an estimated 800 dollars, perfectly acceptable for my budget.

How well will I be able to overclock this CPU and RAM with the motherboard I have listed? Also, I want to compare the motherboard I have picked out, and the one Excalibur picked out, as mine is pretty much twice as expensive. I didn't check to make sure all the parts in the above build were compatible with this motherboard that Excalibur picked out, but I'll assume everything is compatible. So here are the two motherboards in comparison, what do you think?

The one I picked out:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128358

The one Ex picked out:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128372


And as a side note, I live in a place with really no computer sales options as well. I only recently started becoming seriously interested in computers, probably a couple months ago..

Anyways, I just finished reading some articles on overclocking, and I would like to know how to best OC the build I have listed above

[Edit]I would like to know what to buy to allow the best OC with the build listed above**

Either board will do just fine, and overclocking isn't all that hard. You could probably do 3.2Ghz or upwards on stock cooling. Anything higher and you might need an aftermarket cooler.

I would imagine the more expensive board might have better OC options, but the cheaper one will probably still do everything you need it to do. You aren't trying for a world record and you don't have watercooling so I doubt you'll reach any FSB limits.

Ok cool. I'll probably go with the more expensive board, as in the future I'm sure I'll sometime decide that I want to OC more and spend some money on an aftermarket cooler.

Man, thanks a ton for the advice!

Anytime.

If you plan to get the cooler sooner than later, a Sunbeam Core Contact Freezer + OCZ Freeze thermal paste is what you want.

Oh that's pretty dang cheap, 25$ after rebate! Plus, the thing looks pretty darn cool: