Budget Gaming Rig REVISED

[Gautama2]

Some of you may remember my old rig i had specced out, turned into a flame war of which psu to use. My dads backing my budget, and hes been blowing cash like crazy lately so i had to back down on some thing if i want to get it this month. Downstepped from a x1800xt to a 7600 gs and that will work fine since all im playing lately is the Hl2 source games. Also i bumped the the processor from a 3000+ to a 3500+. I realize i skimped on quite a few things, such as the case, keyboard, and mouse. But unless its a glaring problem, dont comment on me going for cheap components.

EDIT: Forgot the link to the components XD
https://secure.newegg.com/NewVersion/Wi...hListNumber=3409086&WishListTitle=zomg

 

[pkme2]

Good build!

 

[ddviper]

spending about $50 more on another gig of ram would be optimal and give you a better look for the future

Its looking like 1GB of ram is becoming the low end of the requirements for all the new games, so personally I would go for 2GB (2x1GB)

 

[Gautama2]

Im considering going with AM2, im not sure why AM2 exceeds over s 939 (someone care to explain?)


So if im going with AM2 I'll have
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103633 (how does this compare with my current processor i have picked out?)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813138026

Will i have any compatibility issues with my other hardware?

 

[BigCoolJesus]

Originally posted by: Gautama2
Im considering going with AM2, im not sure why AM2 exceeds over s 939 (someone care to explain?)


So if im going with AM2 I'll have
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103633 (how does this compare with my current processor i have picked out?)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813138026

Will i have any compatibility issues with my other hardware?

Well if you go AM2, you need a new Motherboard and youd need DDR2 memory as well.

 

[Gautama2]

So DDR 400 i had picked out wouldnt work?

 

[mpickle]

Originally posted by: Gautama2
So DDR 400 i had picked out wouldnt work?

Nope. AM2 is great for future upgrades, but it will probably put your price over $1,000 considering you need a new mobo, DDR2 800Mhz, and a newer CPU. Also, you sure you want to go with only a 80GB hard drive? I know a lot of source games take up lots of space, and if you have music, movies, files, etc.. you may need more...

 

[DasFox]

Gautama2, bad choice for a PSU, to small, only 400W, get at least something around 550W.

ALOHA

 

[polypterus]

The 3800+ is only $10 more than the 3500+ now, so definitely get that. Also that seems kinda expensive for a 17" LCD, unless you know it to be a particularly good one. Usually you can find a 19" for around that price, 17" is kinda small for a gamer (or anyone).

The only other thing is that you might want to look into is that in the manual for the A8N5X it says that it doesn't support 2 DIMMS of Corsair VS, only 1 or 4. It's on page 1-14 of the manaual if you want to see it, there's a chart where they list different brands of RAM. It seems odd. I was thinking of getting that mobo too but I already have the VS so now I don't know.

Don't you hate trying to pick out stuff?

 

[KoncreteAngel]

LCD's, especially ones that cheap have very poor image quality compared to a crt,

 

[acegazda]

you need not worry about watts when considering a psu. As long as the unit has sufficiant amps on the 12v, 5v and 3.3v rails you will be set. Fortron is good for your purposes, has 18amps on each 12v rail, and they are pretty reliable. DasFox, why fdoes he need a psu with more juice? a 3500+ only consumes 89 watts stock, and the downgrade to the 7600gs will run him very little wattage and amp requirements as well. However, If you're overclocking, there is a different story going on... you will probably need a little more ampage on the 12v rails, as the cpu and gpu will draw the increased power needs from these. If you feel you need ddr2, go with conroe, IMO, there is a better price/performance point and the minute perfromance increase for AM2 doesn't justify the price increase for an AM2 MoBo and CPU. Just some thoughts...

 

[Gautama2]

Won't be overclocking, and the outlook now looks grim if i will even get it.

I was having a friend i met on counterstrike (we now run a clan togehter) who owns a custom pc building company in michigan build it. My dad was ok with it at first, but no he doesnt trust them. He would rather go with a dell, that would mean i would wait like 3 months for him to gather funds and I'd be getting a crappier computer which i wont even be able to overclock the processor cuz its a dell.

*sigh

 

[DasFox]

Well I was just thinking about future upgrades was all.

ALOHA

 

[Gautama2]

Seriously tho, i strongly oppose dell. But he is the man with the money

 

[Gautama2]

K so heres how its going down. What my dad is worried about is fraud. Nick (guy whos building it) is gonna put it on ebay, then i just buy it right off there so that way ebay would have its fraud protection. Now i know my dad will counter with, what if doesnt even work. I know ebay doesnt gurantee it will work, but if Nick gurantees it will work in the ebay page, wont ebay have to gurantee that it will work that way?

 

[DasFox]

Gautama2, what are you doing, ordering those parts off of NewEgg, then having someone build it for you?

ALOHA

 

[acegazda]

Awww...thats no fun, I suggest learning how to do it yourself. That way, you can build in the future and if something goes wrong, you'll know your pc inside out.

 

[Gautama2]

Yes im ordering the parts from Newegg and having a friend build it. Right now I'd like to learn, but again, i dont have the money if i do break something

 

[Tostada]

That's a decent build. You can do a little nit-picking about individual things, but I don't think there's anything wrong with any of it ... except for the PSU. Fortron makes good PSUs, but their cheap ones aren't the same as they used to be. The Blue Storms just seem to be significantly higher quality than the cheaper Fortrons these days. If you don't want to spend the extra for a Blue Storm, get the XClio. As far as a $40 PSU, you can't compete with the XClio.

The thing is, I just don't see any single-core 939 system being anything exciting for the budget-conscious.

You say you're playing a lot of HL2 games ... How long are you planning on keeping this rig before you upgrade it? What's your current rig?

Currently, I'd say that as far as budget systems (that is, not considering AM2), either you have the cash to drop on a 939 dual-core system or you should just stick to a Sempron 64. The Venice just doesn't have that much more balls to it than one of the Sempron 64s with 256K cache.

As far as the DVD-RW, you should really pay the extra $1 to get either a Pioneer or NEC drive. They both have excellent burn quality. Most people will say to get the NEC because of a ridiculous bitsetting feature that you will never use (it's only useful for compatibility with ancient DVD players, and it requires a firmware hack to use). I'd go with the Pioneer because they rip DVDs a little faster (especially DVD-Rs).

I understand that maybe you only need an 80GB hard drive, but $20 will get you a SATA drive with twice the capacity, an 8MB cache and a 3-year warranty. You have to be able to get something to give.

The Logitech keyboard/mouse combo is more than $10 cheaper than getting that Rosewill keyboard and Logitech mouse separately. Newegg has it, but with shipping ZZF is about $1.50 cheaper.

Your current build is:

CPU: AMD Venice 3500+ $139 (newegg)
mainboard: ASUS A8N5X Socket 939 $81.66 (newegg)
video: eVGA GeForce 7600GS 256 $115.45 (newegg)
HDD: Western Digital 80GB IDE WD800BB $49.95 (newegg)
RAM: Corsair 2 x 512MB DDR400 $86.98 (newegg)
CD: Samsung black 16X DVD+/-R $40.45 (newegg)
w. adapter: Zonet 802.11g PCI adapter $24.98 (newegg)
case: Xion Solaris XON-406 $50.6 (newegg)
PSU: Fortron 400W $50.19 (newegg)
input: Rosewill black keyboard $15.66 (newegg)
input: Logitech black optical mouse $16.98 (newegg)
LCD: Hanns-G 17" 1280x1024, 270 cd/m2, 500:1, 12ms, speakers $169.71 (newegg)

That's $841.61 delivered.

You've got some rebates in there that you just might get in 6-8 months, but the bottom line is that you're spending over $800 for a system with 1 GB and an 80 GB hard drive, and you're just squeezing things a little too tight to fit that Venice 3500 in there. It's simply not worth getting a trashy generic keyboard or monitor just to spend a little more on your CPU. Anytime you're not actually playing a game, the only thing you're really even going to notice is what keyboard/monitor you have and if you have enough RAM that you're not hitting the swapfile.

What I would build would be more like:

CPU: AMD Sempron 64 2800 Retail $69.99 (newegg)
mainboard: MSI K8N NEO3-F $65.45 (newegg)
video: eVGA GeForce 7600GS 256 $115.45 (newegg)
HDD: Western Digital 160GB SATA WD1600JS $69.5 (ZipZoomFly)
RAM: Corsair 1 x 1024MB DDR400 $80.4 (ZipZoomFly)
CD: Pioneer DVR-111D black DVD-R $41.45 (newegg)
w. adapter: Zonet 802.11g PCI adapter $24.98 (newegg)
case: Xion Solaris XON-406 $50.6 (newegg)
PSU: Xclio 450BL $50.36 (newegg)
input: Logitech black keyboard, mouse $19.99 (ZipZoomFly)
LCD: Hanns-G 19" 1280x1024, 250 cd/m2, 700:1, 8ms, speakers $209.8 (newegg)

That's $797.97 delivered with a bigger monitor. If you want to get everything from NewEgg, it's only $7 more. I guess if you don't care about the monitor, you should keep the 17" and bump the RAM up to 2 GB. The Patriot 2GB kit is $1.60 cheaper than the Corsair, and it comes with head spreaders:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820220079

I'm sure there are better monitor suggestions out there, but I haven't really looked into 17" and 19" screens too much. Are you set on having the speakers in the monitor?

My main point is that unless you're doing some really hardcore CPU-intensive stuff, you're not going to notice the difference between the Venice and the Sempron, and even if you are doing hardcore CPU-intensive stuff, you might as well just overclock a Sempron anyway since you're concerned about budget.

 

[Tostada]

And seriously, if you're smart enough to join a forum and spell your name, you can put together one of these basic systems. Just get on here and ask some dumb questions if you have to. There are very few things you can do to damage a system. Take your shoes off and make sure you discharge any static on something grounded and there's just not much you can screw up. Find some geek at your school and tell him you'll give him $20 to help you out or something.

 

[Gautama2]

I really do think I need a more powerful cpu. Im a multi-tasking freak, and when im not playing a game im generally doing some graphics rendering in Cinema 4D. And the 7600 gs is just to carry me over until the dx10 cards, and with them im sure i will need more power than a sempron to make sure im not bottlenecked.

And im not sure where you live, but shipped the rig i had picked out was $815 not $840.

Im just fine with a 17 inch, right now im on a laptop with a 15 inch and 4 more inches added would seem way too big to me.

As for the DVD-RW, I burn about 3 cd's a year. So really speed wont matter, i know its just a dollar, but its unnecessary.


Otherwise, you made some good points and i'll consider them.

 

[magomago]

How about a copy of windows?

 

[Gautama2]

Using the reinstallation cd that came with my dads dell.

 

[DasFox]

Building a PC isn't that hard, ONCE you know how to pick good parts, and blend them together in a nice, what I'm sure we can all agree on is a symbiotic relationship.

Understanding quality parts, then picking the right ones to do the job is a tougher chore then building it.

So with all that said let's see now:

1). Use a Anti-Static Wrist Strap:
http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Merchant_Id=&Product_Id=41700

2). Motherboards come with manuals and show you how to put just about everything in.

3). Push Gently and screw easily, don't FORCE, or CRANK anything down.

4). Use good grease for the CPU, like "Artic Silver 5", or "Artic Silver Ceramique"
http://www.arcticsilver.com/

NOTE Nervous jittery handed newbies PLEASE use "Artic Silver Ceramique", because Artic Silver 5" can cause short outs if it comes in contact with circuits.

5). Last but not least, when in doubt, ASK questions, BUT if you go slow and easy, building a box for the first time can be done safely, and easily, plus it's FUN TOO!

ALOHA

 

[Tostada]

Originally posted by: Gautama2
I really do think I need a more powerful cpu. Im a multi-tasking freak, and when im not playing a game im generally doing some graphics rendering in Cinema 4D. And the 7600 gs is just to carry me over until the dx10 cards, and with them im sure i will need more power than a sempron to make sure im not bottlenecked.

Look at Tom's CPU charts for 3D Studio Max 7 rendering:

Athlon X2 2.0 GHz 512K cache = 1 min 31 sec
Venice 2.0 GHz 512K cache = 2 min 51 sec
Sempron 2.0 GHz 256K cache = 2 min 52 sec

So, it's understandable if you don't want to overclock (though impractical for your budget, since Semprons overclock so reliably), and it's understandable if you want Socket 939 for upgradability (though also impractical, since by the time you upgrade you'll want a new motherboard anyway), but you can't say that you need to pay extra for the Venice for the performance, because it's just not faster.

I mean, if you totally refuse to overclock, you're still saving a decent amount on the CPU/motherboard by getting one of the higher-end Sempron 64s.

If you're going to specifically say you're a multi-tasking freak who does a lot of 3D rendering (which is what you just said), and you also said you're worried about your CPU being a bottleneck for your future video cards, you really just need to be waiting till you can put together a dual-core system, since, as you can see, a dual-core CPU makes a huge difference, but having a Venice instead of a Sempron 64 makes almost no difference.

And im not sure where you live, but shipped the rig i had picked out was $815 not $840.

Well, if you add up all the shipping charges, shipping is $73.71, but if you actually go to the checkout, they only charge you $47.05. So actually your rig is $814.95 and the example I put together is $759.22.

Im just fine with a 17 inch, right now im on a laptop with a 15 inch and 4 more inches added would seem way too big to me.

That's cool, but consider how impractical it is to put a lot of effort into getting a good video card (you're getting a good one and still talking about it just being a temporary card till you can upgrade!) when you're using a 17" screen. And on top of that you're saying you only play HL2-based games. Even an old GF6600 which was around $100 a year ago can hit about 100 FPS at those resolutions in HL2. I mean, most of the reason people are buying badass modern video cards is because they've got 20" 1600x1200 displays, or maybe they've got a 19" display that they want to turn up AA on, but if you're happy with a 17" screen you really don't need some great video card.

As for the DVD-RW, I burn about 3 cd's a year. So really speed wont matter, i know its just a dollar, but its unnecessary.

Otherwise, you made some good points and i'll consider them.

If you burn that few CDs, why even get a DVD burner to begin with? Why not get a cheaper combo drive, or just use the CD-RW out of your old machine? If you're going to build a system with the capability of burning DVDs, I have no idea how you can justify not spending an extra $1 to get something with the best burn quality.