Holiday Build for a Friend

[Kenshai]

I had a $600 budget to build a friend of mine a nice pc. It comes to $598.89 just trying to cut it as close as possible ends up being $500 with bing cash back and mail in rebates, let me know what you think.

 

[Mussels]

you could save a chunk of money going an AM2+ board, and getting DDR2 memory - it honestly wont affect gaming performance much at all.


cooler master make crap PSU's, i'd definately grab something from corsair over that (a corsair 450W would still be better than that CM 500W, probably by a large margin)

 

[Kenshai]

you could save a chunk of money going an AM2+ board, and getting DDR2 memory - it honestly wont affect gaming performance much at all.


cooler master make crap PSU's, i'd definately grab something from corsair over that (a corsair 450W would still be better than that CM 500W, probably by a large margin)

My only issue here, DDR2 prices are near that of DDR3 prices. Cheapest DDR2 2x2 kit on Newegg currently, so the DDR2 is more than the DDR3. A similar quality AM2+ board would be around the same price.

DDR2 is becoming like how DDR was when DDR2 was mainstream same price or more expensive.

The Power supply ends up being 1/3 the price of the corsair I was looking at getting. I know that the Power Supply is backbone etc etc, but the reviews were pretty decent so I decided to jump on it. I do realize it isn't the best, but I also realize two12v rail @ 18 amps will be more than enough for this particular system.

 

[Mussels]

DDR3 still costs a lot more here, if its the same price - stick with DDR3


while the PSU may still be 'sufficient' its going to be a major weakness. my last 600W unit had four 18A rails - by coolermaster standards that would have been a 1000W PSU

 

[Kenshai]

DDR3 still costs a lot more here, if its the same price - stick with DDR3


while the PSU may still be 'sufficient' its going to be a major weakness. my last 600W unit had four 18A rails - by coolermaster standards that would have been a 1000W PSU

My other option was this which I've used before, worked flawlessly in the 3 builds I've used it for. But decided to try the Coolermaster this time. Time will tell I suppose.

Just so you know 18A x 12V x 4 is 864 watts just on the 12v line. Which PSU are you referring to that had that rating?

 

[Mussels]

My other option was this which I've used before, worked flawlessly in the 3 builds I've used it for. But decided to try the Coolermaster this time. Time will tell I suppose.

Just so you know 18A x 12V x 4 is 864 watts just on the 12v line. Which PSU are you referring to that had that rating?

my old OCZ gameXstream


thats my point tho - many PSU makers under-rate their PSU's (calling an 800W unit a 500W unit) so that they never fail, while others (coolermaster, cough) rate them as high as they can and over-state their abilities, since 90% of the people who buy them stick them in a dell machine that only uses 200W at load and give them a 5 star rating for achieving half what they're advertised to do

 

[Kenshai]

my old OCZ gameXstream


thats my point tho - many PSU makers under-rate their PSU's (calling an 800W unit a 500W unit) so that they never fail, while others (coolermaster, cough) rate them as high as they can and over-state their abilities, since 90% of the people who buy them stick them in a dell machine that only uses 200W at load

Honestly that's pretty close to what this machine will use. Which is why I wasn't really worried about it.

 

[Mussels]

fair point that.

PSU's are just the one thing i never skimp out on - that OCZ PSU i mentioned is running my media PC (sig pic), and i've got it down to ~70W load

 

[brandonwh64]

THat 620 X4 isnt really a gamer CPU :/ i just built one using that CPU for a guy to do business on and its great mulit tasking but didnt do well on gaming needs

 

[Kenshai]

THat 620 X4 isnt really a gamer CPU :/ i just built one using that CPU for a guy to do business on and its great mulit tasking but didnt do well on gaming needs

Honestly at stock clocks, it doesn't do too bad. Especially considering that the resolution that anything will be played at would be 1920x1080, the processor will matter less and less. The graphics card will have more of an effect. Either way I'll let you know benchmarks.

I ordered that with changing the LG drive because of the firmware they put on those.

 

[brandonwh64]

the cpu has alot to do with how well games run and if they dont bottle neck during hard loads. say i took my GTX 285 and put in in a computer with a smaller quad core and did benchmarks then i moved it back my 940BE it would make a huge diffrence

 

[Mussels]

its only a midrange gaming machine, it'll be fine.

if my friends can game on my media PC's dual core and have no complaints (with a better GPU, that is) then that one will do fine.


With the budget they have, its probably the best choice to make

 

[brandonwh64]

yea your right. budget builds are a great stepping stone to upgrades and with that board you picked out he can really upgrade to a better cpu later

 

[Kenshai]

Hopefully it'll do 3ghz at stock voltages and I won't have to touch anything else. If so I'll just leave it at that.

 

[Soylent Joe]

I know that everyone thinks that the 300 is just the best case ever, but I think it's extremely plain, and no "average" user is going to need 2 120's on the front. Here are some suggestions that are actually cheaper and have a bunch more features:
*Apex Vortex*
Azza Orion 202
CM Elite 330
Rosewill Wind Knight
Raidmax Hurricane

I think the first one is going to be the best here.

 

[Kenshai]

For the case I went with it because it'll be 24.99 after rebate and the guy wants a plain looking case. The 300 doesn't come wiÞh front fans onlý top and rear. This isn't for a teenager or even for someone in their twenties. He probably won't even use the 5770 to its full potential but I wanted to make sure he could use it for a few years. Which no doubt in my mind this will easily do for him.

 

[stanhemi]

fair point that.

PSU's are just the one thing i never skimp out on - that OCZ PSU i mentioned is running my media PC (sig pic), and i've got it down to ~70W load

+1 to mussel. Do not touch this psu my brother in law wanted to save 30-40$ so he buy the coolermaster 500watt and 2 month after the psu die and kill the motherboard .:shadedshu

no overclocked at all/e5200-p5k-8800gt-1hdd-2x1g

 

[Soylent Joe]

For the case I went with it because it'll be 24.99 after rebate and the guy wants a plain looking case. The 300 doesn't come wiÞh front fans onlý top and rear. This isn't for a teenager or even for someone in their twenties. He probably won't even use the 5770 to its full potential but I wanted to make sure he could use it for a few years. Which no doubt in my mind this will easily do for him.

Well a lot of those cases I linked also have MIR's.