Building A Custom PC Question

[jono_0101]

hey guys, im going to be building my next PC, and while i do have the knowledge of what parts i need and how to put it all together, im not totally sure what i should be looking for in specs or what price range i should be looking for on certain pieces, so hopefully i can get some answers from you all here

up first, can someone recommend a good motherboard to go with an i5 processor? this is the one im thinking about getting

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115215

seems like a solid, middle of the road or maybe slightly better processor, i wont need anything really high performance, i wont be doing anything really taxing on this PC

thanks for the help in advance!

[binarymelon]

Originally Posted by jono_0101

hey guys, im going to be building my next PC, and while i do have the knowledge of what parts i need and how to put it all together, im not totally sure what i should be looking for in specs or what price range i should be looking for on certain pieces, so hopefully i can get some answers from you all here

up first, can someone recommend a good motherboard to go with an i5 processor? this is the one im thinking about getting

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115215

seems like a solid, middle of the road or maybe slightly better processor, i wont need anything really high performance, i wont be doing anything really taxing on this PC

thanks for the help in advance!

You can also check here.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...=Barebone-Kits

[Xerios]

things needed to make accurate suggestions

Overall Price Range
Type of Use (storage for movies music, hooking it up to the tv, general home computing like web browsing and homework, or all out work horse gaming rig / graphical design heavy use)

based on those 2.. i can pick out all the parts at the cheapest price and paste post a system for you, you just need to click and buy =P

im partial to certain brands too, but open to all suggestions... Gigabyte motherboards, western digital drives, intel over amd... things like that

[danthaman2786]

you will be happy with the i5 i just built an i7 (860) rig last month and its truly overkill i could have saved $100 and gone with the 750 and you can overclock the hell out of it if you're interested in that.

[jono_0101]

Originally Posted by Xerios

things needed to make accurate suggestions

Overall Price Range
Type of Use (storage for movies music, hooking it up to the tv, general home computing like web browsing and homework, or all out work horse gaming rig / graphical design heavy use)

based on those 2.. i can pick out all the parts at the cheapest price and paste post a system for you, you just need to click and buy =P

im partial to certain brands too, but open to all suggestions... Gigabyte motherboards, western digital drives, intel over amd... things like that

its going to be mostly for basic home computing (internet, research, word processing, work spreadsheets, etc...), a lot of media storage, and some occasional gaming, but nothing really crazy, and i didnt really give myself a price limit or anything, but i dont really want to go over $1000

[Xerios]

ill base it for 850... leaving u/me 150 to play with at the end for things... check back tomoro for my analysis

i love nerdy talk!

EDIT... got one more question... the space the tower is going into, is it a confined space, like does the tower have to be a regular size tower?

i bought a large tower once and it was 10x bigger then i thought it was, so i wont recommend that for what your doing but its good to have a decent/regular size case to put fans in for cooling and extra hard drive bays for expansion

[PS3-Playb3yond]

Have you thought about the i7 series? I didn't know anything about it until a couple of week's ago and now I want it bad. It's going to take me a while to save for it though.

[jono_0101]

Originally Posted by Xerios

ill base it for 850... leaving u/me 150 to play with at the end for things... check back tomoro for my analysis

i love nerdy talk!

EDIT... got one more question... the space the tower is going into, is it a confined space, like does the tower have to be a regular size tower?

i bought a large tower once and it was 10x bigger then i thought it was, so i wont recommend that for what your doing but its good to have a decent/regular size case to put fans in for cooling and extra hard drive bays for expansion

awesome, cant wait to see what you come up with, i built an amazon wish list with a few choices for each piece, and i was going to compare and see what advice i could get, but itll be funny to see if im anywhere close to what you come up with though, and i was planning on a mid tower, it wont be in a confined space at all

[jono_0101]

Originally Posted by PS3-Playb3yond

Have you thought about the i7 series? I didn't know anything about it until a couple of week's ago and now I want it bad. It's going to take me a while to save for it though.

i thought so, but like danthaman said above it was overkill for him, and i dont have a need for a whole lot of processing power, so im pretty sure ill be fine with just the 5 series, i could probably even be fine with the 3 series, but we'll see when its decision time what i go with

[supersix4]

Mobo
CPU
PSU
Video Card(s)
Sound Card
Fans for cooling (and/or liquid cooling)
Heatsink for cpu (and/or liquid cooling)
Ram
DVD drive(s)
Hard Drive(s)
Case

Externals
Keyboard
Mouse
LCD


I think I got it all.

Originally Posted by jono_0101

up first, can someone recommend a good motherboard to go with an i5 processor? this is the one im thinking about getting

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115215

I'd personally go with the P55-GD85 simply because its i7/i5 ready and you can crossfire or use Nvidia cards giving you an even greater choice for videocards.

But again if you let us know what the primary use of it is we might better recommend things for it seeing as how my first thought always gose towards gaming.

[Xerios]

Processor (As chosen by you)($200)
It's definitely better than your average processor, and with the one you picked out, you wont run into any roadblocks or maxing out its usage in the foreseeable future

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115215

Motherboard ($120)
More than enough expansion for what you describe it will be used for, enough SATA connections for your hard drives and optical drives. I'm partial to GIGABYTE products and have not had any issues with them. Also it's certified for USB 3.0 the emerging faster USB technology.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...425&Tpk=GA-P55

Memory ($135)
If your running windows the max caps out at 4gb (which i think is enough unless youre doing extreme gaming with tons of processes running in the background and graphical design... unless its a 64 bit version (which you might want to use since you have a quad core processor)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820104155

Main Hard Drive With OS Loaded ($70)
Thats right for 70 bucks you mine as well take this 800gb drive for yourself as your main hard drive.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136517

Secondary Storage OS (As Chosen By You)($140)
2TB... what more do you need right now?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136514

Optical Drive ($22)
Since optical drives have reached an all time low you can get a DVD burner for cheap... hell you could put 2 of these in if you wanted to copy dvd's or whatever you needed. I put (2) bluray drives in 1 burner 1 reader cause i had the money at the time.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16827106289

Optical Drive Alternative ($150 not included in total at the bottom)
If bluray burning was a need for you, scoop one of these. If not pass it on by and add it at a later date (its a luxury not a necessity)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16827136181

Video Card ($135)
Not much to say here, you need video output, it will handle any game put out up until this point... I like GeForce over Radeon, only GeForce now has 13+ manufactures building cards for them, i find XFX is a higher end manufacture with more heatsinks and cooling to the card then the others.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-478-_-Product

Power Supply($50)
Given the above configuration, this has all the connectors you would need plus expansion.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817182075

Total is $872 (without a case involved) i let people make the mistake of picking there own case, your probably looking at 70-80 bucks for the case so my budget of 850 went over... i can certainly tailor the config if you want to tone down some pieces and beef up others..

[jono_0101]

cool, yeah, i have the list of what pieces i need, im just looking on advice on what to get to fill those needs, thanks for the mobo suggestion, ill check it out, who makes that though? looks like you just listed the model number

[supersix4]

Originally Posted by Xerios

Motherboard ($120)
More than enough expansion for what you describe it will be used for, enough SATA connections for your hard drives and optical drives. I'm partial to GIGABYTE products and have not had any issues with them. Also it's certified for USB 3.0 the emerging faster USB technology.

I still think he should spend a little more on the Mobo so when things roll out later he'll have some room to upgrade rather then have to take the entire thing apart to do an upgrade if something big comes out that he wants.

Originally Posted by jono_0101

cool, yeah, i have the list of what pieces i need, im just looking on advice on what to get to fill those needs, thanks for the mobo suggestion, ill check it out, who makes that though? looks like you just listed the model number

Thats made by MSI... I'd say spend a little more get a nice roomy case, a mobo thats as up to date as it gets, because everthing else can be hot swapped where as those two require a ton more work to do (besides re-wiring a new psu) if you feel the need to upgrade.

[PrivatePixel]

Originally Posted by PS3-Playb3yond

Have you thought about the i7 series?

A Core i7 CPU would offer great overclocking potential, but if you're not gaming or graphics editing (e.g. Photoshop), it's just wasted money. A Core i3 or i5, or an AMD Phenom II X2 or X4 has more than enough processing power for the average user.

[PrivatePixel]

Originally Posted by jono_0101

its going to be mostly for basic home computing (internet, research, word processing, work spreadsheets, etc...), a lot of media storage, and some occasional gaming, but nothing really crazy, and i didnt really give myself a price limit or anything, but i dont really want to go over $1000

A few questions:

• Are there any existing components from your current PC that you can transfer over to the new build (that includes mouse and/or keyboard)? This could help with reducing the overall cost.
• Will you be doing any overclocking?
• Will you consider an AMD-based system?

[Xerios]

Originally Posted by supersix4

I still think he should spend a little more on the Mobo so when things roll out later he'll have some room to upgrade rather then have to take the entire thing apart to do an upgrade if something big comes out that he wants.

im curious as to what you mean? it has 6 sata ports/ 2 pci-e (i mean if hes gonna do quad SLI 11 years down the road then yeh hes gonna need a new mobo) supports DDR3 ram with a front side bus speed of 2200 which is rare because its too expensive for a consumer level yet...

by no means am i attacking you, im really curious as to what u think he would need to upgrade for? (even in your case) what would you be upgrading in the future that would outdate that mobo?

[supersix4]

Originally Posted by Xerios

im curious as to what you mean? it has 6 sata ports/ 2 pci-e (i mean if hes gonna do quad SLI 11 years down the road then yeh hes gonna need a new mobo) supports DDR3 ram with a front side bus speed of 2200 which is rare because its too expensive for a consumer level yet...

by no means am i attacking you, im really curious as to what u think he would need to upgrade for? (even in your case) what would you be upgrading in the future that would outdate that mobo?

Losing that x1 slot because it'll get blocked (not to mention it'll down the 2nd card to x4)

1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x4 (PCIEX4_X1)*
* When the PCIEX1_2 slot is populated with an expansion card, the PCIEX4_X1 slot will operate at up to x1 mode.

...

and maybe he wants a SLI which which wouldn't work since based on the features says its a ATI board...

I think its a great board if you aren't planning on doing a ton of gaming but if he's got any intention of doing gaming I just figured he should look at some other ones but we really don't know what his goals are with the system which like I said before I always think people want to game

[PS3-Playb3yond]

How about this for a motherboard?

http://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-4DDR3...709983&sr=8-14

The reviewer on the bottom of the page has some good specs to go along with it as well.

[Xerios]

Originally Posted by supersix4

Losing that x1 slot because it'll get blocked (not to mention it'll down the 2nd card to x4) ...

and maybe he wants a SLI which which wouldn't work since based on the features says its a ATI board...

I think its a great board if you aren't planning on doing a ton of gaming but if he's got any intention of doing gaming I just figured he should look at some other ones but we really don't know what his goals are with the system which like I said before I always think people want to game

we gotta believe that if he wanted SLI, he would know what hes doing in the first place and wouldnt be asking us such a generic question haha.. i know jono on some level and im betting he doesnt know what SLI is...

other than graphical design and i mean heavy graphical design like multiple cad, autocad, cadkey, cimatron programs i dont know any consumer level person who needs sli... its just cool to say i have 4 video cards operating as one lol

[PS3-Playb3yond]

Anyone here use 12GB RAM? I wonder how fast the speed would be on such a machine.