Some advice on building a new PC

Hey all, would like a few recommendations on components for the new PC I'm going to build. In fact, I have absolutely nothing in mind other than I want it to be a powerful gaming rig, price range can be flexible, but I'd rather spend something like $1000-$1500.

Last time I build a PC I went just buying and choosing everything right there on the spot solely based on price, and although I managed to build a quite decent rig 5 years ago which can still run today's games decently, I did pick up a rather problematic motherboard, so I'm asking for advice here, to perhaps avoid doing the same mistake this time around.

Should I go single, dual or quad core (when I built this PC there were only single core ones, so I'm not sure what the difference between them is)?

Also, should I go for a top notch graphics card, or is it more worth it to just buy two slightly weaker ones and SLI them?

I figure RAM is just a "as much as you can get" thing, so I'm not too worried about that.

But most of all, I want suggestions on a solid motherboard, meant for gaming which doesn't have a ton of bugs and issues (A8N-SLI Deluxe trauma).

And last but not least, what kind of power supply has the best cost/benefit ratio for the suggested PC, and what kind and quantity of heat sinks will it require?

 

Ok before I get to a build, lets cover the basics.

Cores - This is the number of cores per processor chip. Think of a quad core as 4 of your current cpus, probably on steroids, on one processor. The more cores, the better generally speaking. There is generally one thread per core. Now not to confuse you but theres also HT AKA Hyper threading. This means for every core, there are two threads. This further increases power. HT has never been all that common. Intel is the only company to use this technology, that I know of, and was previously used in the Pentium 4 days. After that the technology died off until a year ago, maybe two, when Intel launched the Core i7 series. Dual Core is the industry standard these days, but there are single core chips still made but there generally geared towards netbooks these days.

For this build you want a Core i5 750. Its a quad core chip, essentially the same chip as the i7 700 series cpus, just with out HT.

GPU - SLI Refers to linking to Nvidia cards together. Crossfire is for 2 ATI cards. ATM ATI cards are killing Nvidia big time. Nvidia has yet to release a card using Direct X11. The ATI cards draw far less power, and therefore create far less heat then nvidia chips.

RAM - As much as you can get is wrong. 4 GB is plenty for 99% of people. Its also best to run 2 or 4 identical sticks of ram. The best option is 2 sticks of 2x2 GB.

Mobo - Well that was your problem. ASUS has poor reliability over the past few years.

PSU - Well the most important thing here, do not be fooled by wattage. Wattage means little compared to the brand name. A 600 Rosewill, for example, will be outperformed by a 300 watt Corsair. With low quality PSUs you also risk trashing your entire system, if not the risk of fire.

http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=13351912
This video card will max out the majority of games. Only thing I cheeped out on was speakers.

 

Thanks Xplorer4, pretty enlightening post.

I forgot to add, btw, I'll use my current PC's headset, mouse, keyboard and monitor, so the budget I had in mind is excluding those (basically just the tower itself, I might even use my old case if the suggested build doesn't need any kind of special cooling).

 

Sorry for double post, couldn't figure out how to edit my own post here (strangely only the thread title).

I might also use my current hard drive, if it doesn't have any compatibility issues with today's motherboards. It's a 2 or 3 year old Maxtor 500GB SATA HD (don't remember frequency off the top of my head, but it seems to perform well).

 

The Edit button is in the top right corner. Its an icon.

Anyways, you still best to go for a new hard drive as you will have to do do a clean install on Windows anyways, and it will out perform the maxtor. The maxtor is probably nothing more then a rebadged Seagate.While not a bad thing, the WD 1 TB Caviar Black is one of the fastest mechanical drives around today.

Now seeing as you already had some parts I was able to knock off a $100, so I used that to upgrade to a 5970. This is the most powerful video card on the market, so dont expect any trouble playing any game.

 

I have no complaint with any of the build Xplorer has outlined, but would want to raise two points:
Firstly, there is often a reasonable wait time for the HD5970, as it's very popular and they don't make very many each month. If you're willing to wait a while for one to arrive, then good for you, it's an amazing card (I'll be buying one soon). However, if you want to guarantee your system being built quickly, you can use two of the cards the HD5970 is based on, the HD5850, as these are commonly available. Using two HD5850s in Crossfire the traditional method has no major disadvantages - you don't lose any performance, you save a bit of money, you will probably have slightly less noise in your system, but the only downside is that you will need twice as many power connectors to run the cards, as there's now two of them being used. This can be resolved by stepping up the Power Supply to the 750W version:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139006
Here are the cards you could use:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161302
Note that despite the increase in the power supply, you are still saving $30.
The reason why the HD5970 is so expensive is that it is the most powerful card you can fit into one slot on a motherboard. Normal high-end PCs have two or more, but if you had a basic PC, the HD5970 would be by far the best card to buy, and if you have a high-end PC with a very high budget, you could buy two 5970s and have four GPUs with two slots being used.
You should certainly keep your hard drive, but do buy another. For one, it will limit performance in your new system more than you might think, and also remember that you need to reinstall windows on a new PC, regardless of if you already have a drive with it on or not. This is due to the drivers it has installed.
So you may as well start fresh with a new drive and use the opportunity to get some more storage space. If you play a lot of modern games, you will probably need some soon.

Also note, if you use two video cards (either in the form of a dual card, or two separate ones) you should ensure you have a well ventilated case. The HAF932 is certainly one example.

Lastly, I'd upgrade the motherboard from a UD3 to a UD4. The reason being is that the board has better voltage regulation so you have the ability to overclock the CPU to gain lots of extra performance should you choose, and it has a second slot suitable for using two graphics cards. The UD3 is limited to 4x speed, which could harm performance.

 

Wow never thought I would hear the day you recommended Crossfire. None the less, thanks for pointing out the wait time. I was thinking it while typing but it managed to slip some where between my brain and figures.

 

Why wouldn't I? I use it... :S

 

Thanks a lot for the advice, guys.

The waiting time and such are not an issue to me since I live in Brazil and I'll be buying everything myself, not through any internet services, so I don't think even Newegg's price figures will be precise, although it was useful to give me a ballpark figure on what prices to expect on the hardware you suggested.

I just don't quite understand how the HD would limit the computer's performance. Will it hamper my FPS or ability to choose higher graphics settings on games? If not, and it just results on a longer booting time and data writing time, it's not an issue for me. I was intending on doing a re-format and clean windows install on it already, btw.

I'll also have to check the prices (and probably even availability) of the HD5850 and HD5870 to decide, knowing how top-end VGA's are usually overpriced way over the top around here, but hopefully not enough to make it twice as expensive as the 5850. If it is, though, I'll just do the crossfire thing, then.

Also, knowing that I already have some parts I'll be re-using and that Xplorer4's build suggestion discounting the ones I already have comes to a grand total of $~900, aren't there any better replacements to make up for the remaining budget, or is his build still optimal even if it doesn't use up all the budget? Don't the more expensive counterparts of those provide enough of an improvement to be worth the higher price?

 

The hard disk only lengthens loading times really, but it's worth noting that some games load data sequentially, i.e. while you are playing, and if the hard disk can't keep up, this can cause lag spikes. Relatively few games operate this way, but it's worth bearing in mind.
As it stands, in the US two HD5850s cost $650 versus $700 for an HD5970. In the UK two HD5850s cost £490 versus £575 for an HD5970 (more of a difference).
The build listed comes to $1500. How have you cut that figure all the way down to 900?

 

Ah, my bad, didn't see the build had changed, thought it was still linking to the build with the monitor/peripherals/etc. included.

I guess I'll keep the hard drive, then. Loading times aren't much of a problem for me and I don't think the difference between my HD and new ones will be that big, anyway.

And yeah, considering price differences are usually even higher over here for top-end hardware, chances are it'll end up being the HD5850 crossfire anyway. Does it miss out on resources/compatibilities compared to the single HD5870?

Btw, on a 0-10 scale on gaming computers, 10 being the ideal dream machine, what would you rate the suggested build? Performance-wise, I mean, noise and power consumption aren't too much of an issue to me.

 

The terminology here is quite important.
The HD5800 series currently comes in four variants, the lessor of which is the recently released HD5830 at $240, which we'll skim over for now. The higher-end models are the HD5850, HD5870 and HD5970, the latter of which has been included in that list.
The HD5850 is a cut down version of the HD5870, which if you like is the 'full' version, but a singular card. The HD5850 is priced around $300, the HD5870 around $400. The HD5970, read closely, is two HD5870s, but running at the clock speed of two HD5850s. This is done to reduce power consumption and heat, since fitting two graphics cards in the space of only one and a quarter is no mean feat.
Now, the fact that the HD5970 is derived from the higher-end HD5870 means its theoretical maximum performance is higher than that of two HD5850s, despite using the same clock speed, as there's more in it (more shader processors and so on). However, due to the fact that the HD5970 has only one slot's worth of bandwidth to share around, the 16x PCI express bandwidth (8GB per second) is shared between both of the "cards", rather than just the one. This therefore reduces the potential maximum performance of the HD5970 compared to two HD5850s when running without this limitation, back to the point where an HD5970 and two HD5850s are essentially identical for performance, there's no difference.
Thus, you have the same level of performance in two cards, requiring two slots, a full sized case & motherboard, and four power connectors (as with two HD5850s). Or, with the HD5970, you need only one slot, two power connectors and can even get away with a microATX case and board, assuming it's deep enough. This therefore commands price premium over the HD5850 combination, which is why the card costs more.
Worth noting here is that the Core i5 platform is limited to 16x of PCI express bandwidth, regardless of how many slots you use. - This means that in an i5 system, two HD5850s do not have the slight advantage over the HD5970 to render them equal, therefore they sit marginally behind the HD5970 in terms of performance. This isn't much, but it's worth noting.

As for the dream machine score, I would say
Processing power: 8/10 (10/10 if overclocked)
Graphics power: 9/10
Overall rating: 7.5/10
The lower total is due to the low amount of storage and speed at which the storage can be accessed.

 

Once again, thanks for the explanation, was quite enlightening.

I totally messed up on my last post, I did mean the HD5970 (not HD5870) versus dual HD5850 since I was referring to your last post, in fact I didn't even know there was both a 5970 and a 5870. My bad. Still not familiar with the names of the current series of video cards.

I'm impressed with the potential of this build according to the score you gave it. I also have an external 500GB HD to increase my storage capacity a bit, so that might up the final score a little bit.

 

^It offers more storage, but assuming your connecting it via USB, this severley limits the read and write speeds of the drive.

Because just the other day we agreed we should convince people NOT to crossfire or SLI.

 

Well raised, USB2 at least, is limited to 30MB/s, whereas a typical hard disk may read at 65-80MB/s when installed internally.

As for the CF/SLI argument, that was in situations where there is a single-card alternative. While the HD5970 is a single card, it does still rely on crossfire to work, so is slightly different, and there is as of yet, no way of achieving that level of performance without CF. The discussion we had I believe was to avoid things like crossfire HD5770s when an HD5870 would be better.

 

Yep, I'm aware external HDs read at slower speeds, at least that much I know, hehe. That's why I wrote it'll add some extra storage capacity. I doubt I'll be using more than 500 GB worth of stuff actively at any given time, anyway, so the external one will just be for storing things for later use, in which case I'll transfer it back to the main HD.

 

Ok, I went browsing what the market here has to offer, and it really took me quite a while to find the parts in this build (way overpriced, too, came to a grand total of ~$2500, so I'm gonna have to find someone to mail me some of them from another country -.-), but that aside I have a few questions:

1) Finding the i5 was really hard, although the i7 was widely available. From what I understand the i7 is better than the i5, but it wasn't suggested in the build due to it's price, or is there some drawback to it (like needing an even better PSU)?

2) Another motherboard I was told is very good is the X58 ZOTAC, is it better or worse than the suggested motherboard?

3) Does the manufacturer of the HD5970 matter, other than for overclocking purposes?

 

The i5 750 is every bit as good as the i7 920, and a lot cheaper, yes. Remember that the i7 920 also requires a different motherboard and RAM, which is what makes it expensive, not just the CPU cost.
If you found an i7 860, then this is a CPU on the same platform as the i5 750, and is a better buy, as it still uses the cheaper boards and memory. Just make sure you can find the memory and board. The i5 750 is a really common CPU, so not being able to find one is bizarre. It's not even that new, it's been out for what must be at least 6-8 months.
Additionally, the i7 920 does use more power than the i5 750, 35W or so at stock, but far more when overclocked.
Zotac motherboards are alright, but they're no better than the Gigabyte boards, and probably more expensive.
The brand of HD5970 is largely unimportant for performance, as even the cheap ones can overclock well, but better brand is better warranty, less likelihood of failure due to dodgy BIOSes, and sometimes better software bundles. It's best to stick with good brands like Sapphire/HIS/XFX/MSI/Gigabyte.

 

Bit of a thread necro, but since I finally found somebody to bring me the most expensive parts from the US or Europe, I was wondering if anybody could give me an update on parts for the same price range. Does the first build suggestion by Xplorer4 still apply, or have prices lowered enough in the meanwhile to go for an i7 CPU with better mainboard and RAM?

I`m actually open to suggestions on any of the needed parts and even if anybody has tips on which are better brought from France, due to the tax refund, or from NY, due to potentially lower prices.

Also, hoping I`m not asking too much with this, but it would also be nice to have suggestions on alternate parts in case I can`t find the specific ones suggested. Since the parts are being brought from another country, I just want to be careful not to accidentally replace something I can`t find with another part or brand which won`t work with the rest of the set.

Thanks in advance.

 

Parts brought in from abroad usually mean huge customs taxes. Where do you live? I'll find a retailer local to your country.