Building a Computer

[Sevion]

If you don't need that much, then the 320 GB F4 is a good choice. It's fast and reliable. It also uses very, very little power.

What game are you looking at? I have never seen any game need over 8 GB of RAM. Every single game I've played to date has been fine with < 6GB RAM.

 

[Icyculyr]

If you don't need that much, then the 320 GB F4 is a good choice. It's fast and reliable. It also uses very, very little power.

What game are you looking at? I have never seen any game need over 8 GB of RAM. Every single game I've played to date has been fine with < 6GB RAM.

Metro 2033, Crysis 2, Battlefield 3, those sorts of games. You're right, most games are happy with that amount... however, I'm also turning off my paging file so the OS is depending on RAM. Some benchmark showed some kind of bottlenecking/throttling with the page file turned off with under 8GBs of RAM in intensive games. I'll keep that in mind, 320GB F4.

 

[emjlr3]

id say in the end not all that much matter aside from "are you getting what you want for a price in your budget"

if the answer is yes, then go for it

for comparison

I built one last June, and where my aim was probably different then yours (this was to be an energy efficient family computer), my advice remains unchanged

I managed:

Athlon II X3 AM3 @ 3.0ghz (95W)
MSI Mobo w/ SATA III and USB 3 compat. (for future use)
WD Caviar Green 1TB 64mb Cache
2x2GB DDR3 1333 RAM (RAM has gotten a lot cheaper since)
Antec EarthWatts 380W 80 Plus Modular PSU
Antec 300 Illusion Case (came with 4 case fans)
Internal Card Reader and CD/DVD Burner
ATI Radeon 5570 (very low power)
W7 Ult. (free)

System runs at <180W in Performance while gaming, and <90W in Power Saver. You're big power hungry items are the GPU and CPU.

With several MIRs, on sale items and combo deals, I ended with a total system price of ~$380.

Not bad IMO, for what I got with respect for what I wanted.

The system managed SC2 at MAX settings, boots in under 45s, an does just about anything I need.

Prices on some things have changed since (getting USB3 and SATA 3 support w/ a Pentium Mobo is more expensive then with AMD boards), RAM is cheaper, and generally you can get better for cheaper then you could 10 months ago. You can probably get twice the RAM for 33% less then what I paid. And if you have a case, reuse it. You could probably even manage a cheap storage HD with a SSD boot drive for under ~$100 total the way they are basically giving away storage now a days.

Everything purchased from NewEgg, and delivered in under days.

As far as compat is concerned, the things you need to be aware of are:

• Mobo to CPU (AMD/Pentium, and board size)
• PSU Power (people usually go overkill here, unless you have a super power hungry GPU, anything over 500W is stupid)
• Cords for OEM items (for instance, a internal HD)
• Mobo inputs for what you are connecting

And that is really about it. Its not hard, took me about 1 hour to get it all together, after about 2 weeks of shopping

As far as your rig is concerned, for playing SC2:

I'd suggest a faster HD, not that it will really matter for gaming, but in general. The GPU is overkill. The CPU is overkill. Like i said, my rig above can play SC2 at max, and it has a $40 GPU and $60 CPU (again though I was going for energy savings) (not including combo deals you can get).

About OCing.

I have both my CPU and GPU OCd to their max values w/o changing voltage, and they both run icey cold on stock heatsinks. My CPU doesn't get above 35C at full load, and the GPU doesn't see 50C.

Good luck

 

[Sevion]

Generally about the PSU, you're right that lots of people go overkill.

I usually go for over 500W because I usually plan on upgrading (Crossfire or SLI). It saves me from having to buy another PSU.

As for the rest of emjlr's post, I agree.

 

[codemonkey]

I've never seen Metro 2033 use over 1.5GB of RAM.

As for Crysis 2 and Battlefield 3, neither are out and I would be very surprised if they use over 2GB of RAM.

 

[Varine]

4 gigs will pretty much have you set for almost anything. I don't really know much about those games, but based on the small amount I've seen of Battlefield 3 I'd imagine it would need at least two gigs of RAM, four or more recommended.

Most any modern processor will do. Even tech that is several years old will probably run fine.

 

[SerraAvenger]

>Don't get Windows 7 Ultimate unless you absolutely need some kind of feature that the other versions don't have. It's not worth the extra $150.
Will do. Excellent advice, Ghan

We students get Win7 Professional for free.

Btw, I recently bought a cheap (600EUR) notebook and it runs SC2 on high just fine. Dualheading with a 1680x1050, works fine. CPU is a bit crappy but my. Dunno what you're throwing all that money at...

EDIT:
Be a nice guy and get some AMD/Ati shit, kkthxbye

 

[Icyculyr]

Yeah, it appears I was wrong... it seems for gaming that you don't see that much of a difference. But I'd like to see the chart with Crysis 2, and games like that. Even so, I still have my page file off and I'd like something higher than 8GB. I might more thoroughly check what my RAM usage is the next time I'm in Windows 7, when running an intensive game.

 

[Varine]

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/crysis-2-performance-best-graphics-card-multiplayer,2901-2.html

System has four gigs

 

[Sevion]

I still stand by my other posts. You do not need over 6 GB RAM for gaming. Ever.

 

[emjlr3]

i don't see why you would need over 2, unless you are planning on multitasking while gaming - which doesn't make any sense

 

[Sevion]

I always recommend 4 because I idle at ~2.6 GB RAM with Chrome (Rockmelt) open (and a few other programs for assorted accessories).

I also sometimes have things like TeamSpeak, Ventrilo, or Skype open.

 

[Slapshot136]

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/crysis-2-performance-best-graphics-card-multiplayer,2901-2.html

System has four gigs

system has $100 spent on ram, you could get 8gb for ~50, or 8gb high performance ram even for $100

 

[Varine]

Yes, you can also get about 3 1 gig sticks of slightly older tech for that amount as well, as I learned last week. Fluctuations in price happen, it doesn't mean it has a significant effect on the fact that it still only has 4 gigs of memory.

 

[codemonkey]

You're linking to tom's hardware? Really?

 

[Varine]

Do you have an actual, legitimate issue with that?

 

[codemonkey]

Maybe it's because they have had 0 credibility since they sold their site. What's hilarious is that a lot of people think they're still a legitimate source for hardware information.

http://scientiasblog.blogspot.com/2006/09/toms-hardware-guide-sells-its-soul.html

Maybe its different now, but Tom's used to be incredibly biased. It wasn't a review site as much as a huge advertisement for whatever manufacturer paid them the most money. They'd set up horribly biased tests, manipulate data, and basically be all around shady. They also happened to be loved because they were very good at hiding it.

They used to be biased. Now they are just incompetent. I read a review on multicore performance in BC2 that concluded that it was a waste of money. They used a multithreaded i series processor as their basis, which really like starting out with a tri core instead of dual core that they represented it as. They skewed the results further with their choice of video card for the tests. Their end results concluded exactly the opposite of what everyone knows to be true. I quit using tom some 15 years ago.

It wasn't just bias. I remember some of their articles just had really poor research and technical knowledge behind their conclusions. Tom's was "fine" most of the time for users with very little technical knowledge, yes. I'm honestly surprised how well they seem to be portrayed here. A few years ago they were the laughing stock of hardware sites.

Good hardware sites:
AnandTech
Hardware Secrets
Johnny Guru
Hardware.fr
Bit-Tech (though tends to be slightly biased)
...and many more that I can't think of right now

 

[Samuraid]

Maybe it's because they have had 0 credibility since they sold their site. What's hilarious is that a lot of people think they're still a legitimate source for hardware information.

http://scientiasblog.blogspot.com/2006/09/toms-hardware-guide-sells-its-soul.html






Good hardware sites:
AnandTech
Hardware Secrets
Johnny Guru
Hardware.fr
Bit-Tech (though tends to be slightly biased)
...and many more that I can't think of right now

I regularly read both Toms and Anandtech, and have for years now. Truth be told, there is seldom a time when the two sites come up with drastically different benchmarks or drastically difference conclusions.
You have a few opinions and possible sources of evidence as to why Tomshardware might be biased. Good. Those are worth keeping in mind. However, it is absolutely wrong to assume that Tomshardware is automatically biased and can never be any different. Every hardware site is biased.
The far more responsible and reasonable stance is to do what any researcher should do: read and corroborate information from multiple sources to determine what is trustworthy or not.

As for the RAM debate...
I agree with those who said to get 8GB. DDR3 is still recovering from oversupply, and is still exceptionally inexpensive. I'd even suggest maxing out your machine's RAM. It won't be a whole lot of money in the grand scheme of things, and programs are only going to use more RAM in the future.
Likewise, you can disable your pagefile (as others have mentioned) which will improve performance in many situations and will decrease disk IO. If you ever start using an SSD for your operating system drive, you'll appreciate not having a pagefile as the reduction in writes will improve the life of the SSD.