Trying to build on a budget

[bluearth]

Processor
$190 - AMD Phenom II X6 @ 3.3 GHZ 1100T - INFO

- I went 6 cores to try and future proof myself.

Motherboard
$140 - Gigabyte AMD 990X + SB950 AM3/AM3+ SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard GA-990XA-UD3 - INFO

Key reasons I chose this motherboard:

- 4 memory slots for future expansion (up to 32 GBs)
- AMD Phenom II support
- 3 PCI express, one 16x and another 8x. Two 16x slot boards were $70 more.
- nvidia SLI support when I add a future GTX 460
- 6GB/s SATA support
- 4 USB 3.0

Graphics Card
$150 - EVGA GeForce GTX 460 1 GB GDDR5 PCI-Express 2.0 - INFO

- Best performance in its price range.
- I like how it comes with a HDMI miicro to HDMI adaptor

Operating System
$95 - Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64bit (Full) System Builder DVD 1 Pack - INFO

Hard Disk Drive
$55 - Seagate Barracuda Green 1.5TB 5900RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache -INFO

- 6GB/s SATA takes advantage of motherboard's 6GB/s SATA
- fast 64MB cache
- 5900 should be stable
- best 1TB+ HDD in this price range IMO

DVD Drive
$20 - Sony 24X SATA Internal DVD+/-RW - INFO

Power Supply Unit
$65 - Corsair Builder Series CX600 600 watt - INFO

- recommended PSU for my setup is 425 watts. 530 if I go SLI. So I went 600

Memory
$73 - Corsair Vengeance 8 GB ( 2 x 4 GB ) DDR3 1600 MHz - INFO

TOTAL
$788

I have a few old PC boxes laying around will use one of them

Any problems?

[wormraper]

looks pretty solid. although I would suggest beefing up your graphics card a tad, that's a little underpowered.

[Toptube]

I know you said this is your first build and you are being cautious, so let an experienced professional help you out:

as I said in the BF3 thread, if you want to be recording video, especially HD video, you need a fast storage setup. That 5900RPM is not going to cut it for capturing video while playing a resource hungry game like BF3.

6GB/s SATA is just a number. Standard hardrives don't perform well enough to benefit from it, its just an ahead of its time feature grandfathered onto current tech for marketing. Don't feel bad about picking a 3 GB/S hardrive.

As just a storage drive, that 5900RPM will be fine. Its large and that's all that matters for general storage. You can move your video data here after its been captured.

But whatever you are recording onto needs to be performance minded, and that starts with 7200rpm drives.

This Western Digital is one of the fastest 7200rpm drives available, due to a low platter count/high data density and lots of cache.
link
If you can only afford one hardrive, you should get that. If you can afford two drives, run them in RAID 0, and have a super fast setup. (If you don't know what RAID is, read up on it. Someone who wants to be capturing video often, in a performance environment, needs to know about RAID and how to configure it).

now, those western digitals are relatively small compared to what is available. its still a lot of space, but if you really want more---

---Another thing you could do if you can afford two drives is to buy two larger 7200rpm drives and run them in RAID 0. You'll still get a nice speed boost from it and you'll also have the space it seems you desire.

If you really are truly worried about having reliable storage, you should consider spending the money on a server class drive, like a Seagate Constellation. They cost double, but are much higher quality/reliablity and rated to be "always on". Regular hard drives are made cheap and made to be sold cheap.

If RAID sounds too much for you to handle (its simple though, really). You could always spring for a 10,000 RPM drive... or try to find a deal on a solid state drive that is actually worth its salt performance wise (they aren't all really fast).

Additionally, SLI is generally considered a shit or stay off the pot sort of deal. See: buying one card now with plans to add another much later is not usually an effective deal. Because, graphics card tech moves so fast, a year later there will probably be a SINGLE card that matches or beats your two old cards, for a pretty smart price. Its rare that you have two older cards staying competitive through more than one extra card generation.

Additionally, SLI/Crossfire comes with extra setup/settings/and problems. Games have to have support for it to work. Its quite common for games to ship with broken multi card support. Its quite common for games to have visual glitches or other issues early on or even through most of their life, when running with multiple cards. Especially if the game is not a mega popular blockbuster game.

Third, you should jump to a higher class of power supply if you plan to run multiple cards. That Corsair is a very nice budget power supply. Similar to the Antec Earthwatss series, you get a lot of quality bang for the buck. I know it says its SLI certified, But its not a smart choice for a multi-card setup.

Running multiple cards is generally considered something for PC enthusiasts. People who want Extra peformance now, are willing to pay for it, and are willing to deal with the shortcomings. Its never really worked well as an incremental upgrade path. I'm not telling you to stay away from a multi-card setup, I'm just trying to educate you as a new builder. If that stuff doesn't sound good to you, then I would say buy the best single cards that you can afford at any one time. That 460 is a sweet ass card and has plenty of power for now, for awhile. Unless you are trying to crank some crazy resolutions or run multiple monitors, that card will not hiccup on most games for awhile.


If you don't mind buying factory refurbished, you can get that card for $110 here:
http://www.evga.com/products/prodlist.asp?switch=20


and finally, if you decide not to do a multi-card setup, there's no point in gettting a motherboard that's setup for it! Saves money!



*also an FYI: FRAPS uses a modified codec for recording that is very wasteful by design. Your recorded video will initially take up a ton of space VS. the amount of record time.Its supposed to be like that for performance reasons, but it also means that you don't need to be keeping the raw FRAPS data. There are forums out there to help with this sort of thing, but you should convert your FRAPS data into whatever formats you want right away, store those converted versions, and then delete the raw data.

[bluearth]

Thank you wormraper and Toptube for the replies.

Its interesting to see your conflicting views on the GTX 460. If I were to step up a notch or two what price range would I be getting in? My budget is extremely tight as it is and there is very little wiggle room. I originally planned for the build to be right at $700, but at the last moment I decided to go 6 cores instead of 4 and get a SLI board in hopes of future proofing myself. That added $70, $80 and severely limited my options on other parts but I could not skimp on the board and processor.

Now onto the HDD. I am interested in recording footage, and in HD would be nice if not necessary in this day and age. The 1.5TB Seagate I'm looking at is not very practical if I'm going to do that, which you have proved. However though, sadly with my budget I may have to go that route, at least initially. HDDs that would be better suited to HD recording in the similiar price range offer half the space. I filled up my 120GB PS3 rather quickly with 1080i cam footage. 650GBs wont last long. So I have to choose between quality HD recording or essentially lifetime storage. I have to say I'll go lifetime storage, for now. With my proposed setup, do you think I could get maybe 50fps while recording BF3 at 720p on medium graphics settings? I remember my old PC which met just the minimum specs of BF2 could record 480p at roughly 25 fps. I'm willing to turn the graphics down a notch to help with the FPS. But is it really all about HDD speed?

Now that is disturbing news with SLI. I thought it wasn't something that had to be supported, that it was just there and every game accepted it. I've already ordered the mother board and processor so thats that. I could have saved maybe $40 or $50 buying a lesser board with no SLI support but theres nothing wrong with having that option for later if I choose to go that route.

What I think I'll do is this. I'll run the Corsair 600 PSU and the GTX460 by itself for now. In the future, maybe 1-2 years, I'll sell the PSU on ebay, upgrade to 750W and go SLI while upgrading the memory to 16GBs. I'll check the performance and prices of the cards to see whether I should get a second GTX460 or sell the original GTX460 on ebay and buy two newer cards together for SLI. Maybe just one card will be the solution, but my options will be open with a SLI capable board.

I dont trust refurbished products, I had two refurbished 60GB PS3s fail on me within 6 months after receiving them.

I understand what your saying about FRAPS and I will convert what videos I choose to keep and delete whats left. Do you know of any program that records like FRAPS? The price is a little steep and I'm not sure if it even does HD recording. I only used the trial for BF2 and recorded in 30 second spurts with 5 second interruptions to restart it when I was in heavy action. Loved reliving taking on an apache as a foot soldier 1 on 1.

Thank you Toptude for your continued assistance

EDIT: OK Toptude your argument for 7200 RPM is breaking me. Hard disks are something I'd rather not be upgrading any time soon

What do you think about

http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digita.../dp/B0036Q7MV0

How can you tell if it has few platters?

I need at least 1 TB and under $90

[Toptube]

"Fraps can capture audio and video up to 2560x1600 with custom frame rates from 1 to 120 frames per second!"


FRAPS has a ton of documentation and support generated officially and by users. If you buy it, I think you'll find it to be a very usable and flexible program.

I personally have not gotten into video capture too much, so I can't recommend any alternative programs that might be free. Try searching around with google. CNET has a pretty comprehensive section for reviewing free programs. Or pop over [H]ardocp's hardforums and get tons of help there.


As for hardrive platter counts and speeds, this seems to be a pretty good resource:

http://rml527.blogspot.com/2010/09/h...-database.html


*at the $150 range, it doesn't really get better than the 460. ATI has the 5850 which if you look hard, can be found for a similar price
http://www.amazon.com/Sapphire-Radeo.../dp/B004W75ATI

The general consensus is that the 5850 is usually a little faster in many games. But not every game.
Also worth considering is this 2GB 460 for the same price.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814500182

Its going to preform the same most of the time, but due to the larger memory footprint, it may allow you to raise texture settings and stufff in some games VS. the 1GB and still have a decent framerate. Though, the comparisons on this usually say that the card itself runs out of steam before the 2GB gets a chance to make a real difference. But, since you can get it for the same price right now, you may as well. *this would be a killer card to run SLI though, as then you have the power to really open up the potential of the 2GB of VRAM.

[Albatross365]

You're on Blu-Ray.com and you're mentioning a DVD+/-RW drive.

Tut tut tut. Stick a Blu-Ray drive in there if you're future-proofing.