Building a PC

[Dazureus]

I figure that we probably have some folks who could help me out with this stuff. So I want to construct a PC, but in two stages- one cheaper and more immediate, and then another with better components more suitable for gaming and grace under pressure. So, I'm starting with what I'd like to have and working my way down to something more reasonable. However I'm also a first-timer at this stuff and want to make sure I'm not getting a piece that will be totally incompatible with everything else.

Spoiler: Ideal Parts

$200: Motherboard- Intel DZ68ZV Motherboard
$230: CPU- Intel Core i5-2500K
$94: RAM- Corsair Vengeance 4Gb DDR3 1600MHz (x4)
$700: Graphics- Sapphire Radeon HD 6970 2Gb (x2)
$850: Storage- Samsung 830 Series SSD, 512Gb
$67: Optical- Samsung SH-B123L
$---: Power Supply- ???
$130: Case- NZXT Phantom White (ATX)
---------
$2271
Prices taken from Amazon and rounded a bit, I could probably shave some off by shopping around, maybe take it down to 2k total. And yes, I haven't a clue how to determine what PSU I need, or whether I'll need cooling beyond what the case provides.

But that won't happen right away. I think I want the CPU, motherboard, just one of those graphics cards and a normal hard drive right off the bat and I'll add in other things as I go. That's about half of the whole thing, and I'll give about 350ish for the case and stuff to make it operational.

So, I just want second opinions from people who have perhaps done this before, and also power supply help. Thanks for looking!

 

[Seratt]

There's no reason to get such a large ssd. I'd go with a 80 or so, and purchase a 2nd hdd for backups.

Might take the vid card down a notch or two also. 700 bucks is insane. You can pick up a gen older and be plenty happy.

PSU is easy. I'm sure someone will post a decent one for you. Air cooling is simple. Get a good cpu cooler and keep all the air flowing the same direction.

 

[jwplayer0]

If you want an immediate computer but then want to build a good one later on, i Suggest starting out with the best motherboard you can afford and getting inexpensive parts for now, then when you want to upgrade, all you need to do is upgrade the parts and now buy a whole new motherboard.

For your power supply, i would also do the same thing, buying crap or cheap power supplies almost guarantees the compactors to explode in 2 to 6 months, I suggest going with a namebrand power supply and getting a good amount of wattage, at 800w should be a good amount that will work with your upgraded pc.

for the CPU, if its not an i7 I would just get an AMD and a motherboard compatible with it, AMD is alot cheaper in price and pretty good. If you play on upgrading to an i7 in the future however then get the i5 with a motherboard compatible with it and an i7.

Thats all my imput

 

[jwplayer0]

There's no reason to get such a large ssd. I'd go with a 80 or so, and purchase a 2nd hdd for backups.

Might take the vid card down a notch or two also. 700 bucks is insane. You can pick up a gen older and be plenty happy.

PSU is easy. I'm sure someone will post a decent one for you. Air cooling is simple. Get a good cpu cooler and keep all the air flowing the same direction.

For the SSD it depends on what he might be doing, if he does video editing then getting a 512gb one isnt that bad.

I agree with you on the video card, i found some really great nvidia ones for really cheap on newegg
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133416

Really you should be able to build a really good computer for about $1200, i had planned out my cousins computer for about that much

 

[strongholdx]

There's no reason to get such a large ssd. I'd go with a 80 or so, and purchase a 2nd hdd for backups.

Porn - lots of it

 

[Aerokii]

That... is an absolutely ridiculous price for a hard drive... even in Canada, I've seen 1TB hard drives for MUCH cheaper... since I'm too lazy to look it up, is there any reason this particular drive is worth $850?

 

[strongholdx]

Hard drive prices are up 300% due to a flood in Taiwan that decomissioned the only factory that assembles a certain part essential for ALL hard drives. Did I mention that this factory was the only one in the world

 

[Aerokii]

Hard drive prices are up 300% due to a flood in Taiwan that decomissioned the only factory that assembles a certain part essential for ALL hard drives. Did I mention that this factory was the only one in the world

A: What idiot decided to make only one factory for these things? Or genius, for themselves, I guess.
B: That price will go back down eventually, so under no circumstances should a hard drive be purchased for that much money...

 

[kperkins1982]

a really good value on video cards is the radeon 6850, its one of the top video cards on the market for only 149.99

check out http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

also I agree about the ssd, prices are so high right now, might wanna hold off on a crazy hard drive until prices stabilize, maybe just an ok drive now and then good ones 6 months from now

you can cut some money out of the hard drive/video card budget to get better cpu and mobo, maybe an i7 gpu, I'm running this one currently http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115224&Tpk=bloomfield 960

 

[Seratt]

The production of ssd drives shouldn't have been affected by the flooding.

 

[Dazureus]

I don't do anything very memory-intensive, but I primarily attribute that to having a cruddy PC in the first place. I do agree that a 512 SSD is probably excessive. Don't know that I'd want less than 128Gb and I sort of have my heart set on a solid state drive.

Thanks for the help so far, guys! I really appreciate it. I still know basically nothing about the PSU, though. :| A review for the GeForce jw found suggested a... 400w, I think.

 

[kperkins1982]

maybe prices are just high for ssd's in general, if I was gonna get one it would be an OCZ Vertex 3, seems to be getting solid reviews, but it's a new industry so I'm waiting for prices to go down or sizes to go up,

as for regular hard drives, more smaller drives are better, to protect you from data loss due to failures, so its smart to buy an affordable one now and when prices go back down get one larger, but I'd rather be running 2 1tb drives than 1 2tb drive

 

[kperkins1982]

an alternative would be to have an 80gb SSD just for windows, and have a large hard drive for regular data use, this will enable you to format the main drive if there are problems without losing any data

 

[Thoth]

If you format a drive with data on it...you're going to lose data.

 

[Thoth]

yah i want like 100 10gb drives, never lose data =\

 

[kperkins1982]

If you format a drive with data on it...you're going to lose data.

what I mean here, is that people want 3 things: speed, size, and low cost. You can do 2 of the things most of the time, but not 3. So if you went with a SSD large enough to hold all your data you are looking at astronomical prices, if you went with a regular hard it is larger but not as fast, and either way, if you get a virus or have a hard drive fail you are in trouble if you don't plan ahead.

So an alternative, is to have a c: drive that is very fast, but small say 80gb, and another hard drive for storage of movies/music/pics/installation of games. This enables you to have windows run fast, have lots of room for storage, a low cost in total, and if for whatever reason your windows drive messes up, you can copy data over to the other drive, format the c: drive and not lose any data you care about, compared to just having 1 drive where you are screwed.

I have 6 hard drives running raid 1 and 0, I know quite alot about this area.

 

[jwplayer0]

I don't do anything very memory-intensive, but I primarily attribute that to having a cruddy PC in the first place. I do agree that a 512 SSD is probably excessive. Don't know that I'd want less than 128Gb and I sort of have my heart set on a solid state drive.

Thanks for the help so far, guys! I really appreciate it. I still know basically nothing about the PSU, though. :| A review for the GeForce jw found suggested a... 400w, I think.

get 800w, if you ever want to add a second videocard for sli or add in some extra expansions your gona need the extra power

 

[kperkins1982]

agreed, always go for more wattage than needed, because a power supply puts out a ton of heat when at max load, the larger ones have better cooling

 

[Thoth]

what I mean here, is that people want 3 things: speed, size, and low cost. You can do 2 of the things most of the time, but not 3. So if you went with a SSD large enough to hold all your data you are looking at astronomical prices, if you went with a regular hard it is larger but not as fast, and either way, if you get a virus or have a hard drive fail you are in trouble if you don't plan ahead.

So an alternative, is to have a c: drive that is very fast, but small say 80gb, and another hard drive for storage of movies/music/pics/installation of games. This enables you to have windows run fast, have lots of room for storage, a low cost in total, and if for whatever reason your windows drive messes up, you can copy data over to the other drive, format the c: drive and not lose any data you care about, compared to just having 1 drive where you are screwed.

I have 6 hard drives running raid 1 and 0, I know quite alot about this area.

Just because you're running 6 drives doesn't mean you know (a lot)* about the area. Anyone with a computer and internet can do raid 1 and 0, anyways why would you use raid 1 or 0 when 0 is just as bad as using one large hdd. You do know what raid 0 actually is, right? Also raid 1 is a waste of space as it uses half of ur total disk space for redundancy.

Better to go with raid 5 or 6 by means of striping your drives as to get the most usable space as well as good data protection from failed drives. While these raid levels may be slightly system intensive if you don't have a raid card, it's well worth the it for the space efficiency.

I don't doubt you know about this field, using drives is pretty widespread when you own a computer. Using your drives effectively is another thing you have to consider, in this case I'm not sure you did.
Back to the OP topic, you would be fine getting a 10000rpm drive rather than a sdd, it will give you speed and it wont be as expensive.

 

[Aerokii]

Just because you're running 6 drives doesn't mean you know (a lot)* about the area. Anyone with a computer and internet can do raid 1 and 0, anyways why would you use raid 1 or 0 when 0 is just as bad as using one large hdd. You do know what raid 0 actually is, right? Also raid 1 is a waste of space as it uses half of ur total disk space for redundancy.

Better to go with raid 5 or 6 by means of striping your drives as to get the most usable space as well as good data protection from failed drives. While these raid levels may be slightly system intensive if you don't have a raid card, it's well worth the it for the space efficiency.

I don't doubt you know about this field, using drives is pretty widespread when you own a computer. Using your drives effectively is another thing you have to consider, in this case I'm not sure you did.
Back to the OP topic, you would be fine getting a 10000rpm drive rather than a sdd, it will give you speed and it wont be as expensive.

Funny I was just studying raid 6 anyway... you're much safer with raid 6 when you get right down to it. Though honestly you're probably going to be safe just doing regular backups on an external drive.