Help me spec a PC!

J.DavisNJ

J.DavisNJ

\m/
Nov 8, 2005
3,401
0
36
NJ, U.S.A.
I've ditched the laptop route and want to get a rough list going for my PC build. A couple guys at the studio can help me build her.

So far I've compiled:

Intel® Core™ i7-930 Processor
Asus P6T Deluxe V2

Haha, not much at the moment, I know...but I've just started. It's been a while since I've been in the PC world.

I'd like recommendations on graphics card, RAM, CPU fan, and any other essential accessories. It will be a workhorse PC, but I will watch the occasional movie on it, so a *decent* enough graphics card will do.

Tips, tricks, recommendations welcome. I haven't done this in a lonnnng time. The amount of stuff out there is overwhelming!

thanks

EDIT: 930 i7, not 940

Joe
 
Also I'd like to know what the best cash-saving areas are, i.e. stuff I REALLY don't need to spend the extra cash on. I know processor, motherboard should be solid.

Joe
 
Why in your right mind would you drop that kind of price on a motherboard and basically cheap out on the processor, if anything it should be the other way around. But since you are looking Intel, the amount more the next step up in their chips is just fucking ridiculous, just shows how people will pay anything for the most popular brand name just because the name. But I digress.

Something bothers me about that mobo though, a micro ATX with an X58 and its almost $300. If you look around enough you would see that you could get extreme gaming boards for the same price.

For the past few years the general consensus has been to stay away from ASUS. While they used to be great, since they moved their factories to china, their quality and reliability have been lacking. The current king it Gigabyte. Don't get me wrong ASUS is still good, but its sad even when the fanboys turn away because for the price, you are kind of getting ripped off.

For PSU and memory, I can't say enough good things about corsair. Reliable, top quality, cheap prices. Look into the 1600MHz speed, and however much you want/need. Depending on the model you get should start out at $150 for 6GBs. PSU, you will need at least 700 Watts just to play safe, as while I know you will never get that close because you won't have insane GPU work going on, CPU's can fuck with PSUs real quick as a 140 watt CPU can brown out and shut down a poorly designed 650 watt PSU when you are trying to boot up the PC, I have actually seen it happen, this again why I recommend Corsair, or Antec, Silverstone and Thermaltake 700w.

If your not an absolute Intel fanboi and HATE AMD, in terms of GPU's, the ATI cards are killer. Honestly the lowest of the low will do, but I would recommend a 5750 so you would never have to worry about any issues if you ever ran into anything graphics intensive, but it may be a bit over the top, but you can't be too safe.

Although I would recommend to opt for SSD, if they are out of the budget, Western Digital Caviar Black. Those drives are insanely fast and are cheap as hell as a few months ago a 1TB was $100. I don't have too much experience with Seagate other than an external drive used to data storage and after two years it is beginning to make the clicking noises of the heads bouncing around which is a symptom of a complete HDD failure. I don't know how their internal drives stack up, but I can't say much about their externals.

would be nice to know what specs you generally want and whats the budget.
 
TheWinterSnow said:
Why in your right mind would you drop that kind of price on a motherboard and basically cheap out on the processor, if anything it should be the other way around. But since you are looking Intel, the amount more the next step up in their chips is just fucking ridiculous, just shows how people will pay anything for the most popular brand name just because the name. But I digress.

Something bothers me about that mobo though, a micro ATX with an X58 and its almost $300. If you look around enough you would see that you could get extreme gaming boards for the same price.

For the past few years the general consensus has been to stay away from ASUS. While they used to be great, since they moved their factories to china, their quality and reliability have been lacking. The current king it Gigabyte. Don't get me wrong ASUS is still good, but its sad even when the fanboys turn away because for the price, you are kind of getting ripped off.

For PSU and memory, I can't say enough good things about corsair. Reliable, top quality, cheap prices. Look into the 1600MHz speed, and however much you want/need. Depending on the model you get should start out at $150 for 6GBs. PSU, you will need at least 700 Watts just to play safe, as while I know you will never get that close because you won't have insane GPU work going on, CPU's can fuck with PSUs real quick as a 140 watt CPU can brown out and shut down a poorly designed 650 watt PSU when you are trying to boot up the PC, I have actually seen it happen, this again why I recommend Corsair, or Antec, Silverstone and Thermaltake 700w.

If your not an absolute Intel fanboi and HATE AMD, in terms of GPU's, the ATI cards are killer. Honestly the lowest of the low will do, but I would recommend a 5750 so you would never have to worry about any issues if you ever ran into anything graphics intensive, but it may be a bit over the top, but you can't be too safe.

Although I would recommend to opt for SSD, if they are out of the budget, Western Digital Caviar Black. Those drives are insanely fast and are cheap as hell as a few months ago a 1TB was $100. I don't have too much experience with Seagate other than an external drive used to data storage and after two years it is beginning to make the clicking noises of the heads bouncing around which is a symptom of a complete HDD failure. I don't know how their internal drives stack up, but I can't say much about their externals.

would be nice to know what specs you generally want and whats the budget.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info man. Honestly, like I said earlier, I really don't know much about this whole process. I was simply browsing motherboards and came across that line from Asus. I'm certainly open to checking other boards out!

I would, however, like to stay with Intel on the processor.

For the mobo, as long as the chipset is correct (duh) and it has the ports I need, what else should I be looking for?

Budget? Hmmm, hard to say really, but I would like to spend around $1,200, give or take some dough.

I just want it to be a solid workhorse with minimal issues.

Joe
 
Also, is it wise to use externals for project files? Meaning, my case will obviously have enough space for multiple hard drives, but is there any benefit of going external in this scenario?

Joe
 
That gigabyte was the one that I saw, its the most expensive one they make.

Chipset really doesn't matter when you are talking about non gaming PC's, but the X58 can do both SLI and Crossfire and I do believe that gigabyte firewire use T.I. chips, but don't quote me on it.


J.DavisNJ said:
Also, is it wise to use externals for project files? Meaning, my case will obviously have enough space for multiple hard drives, but is there any benefit of going external in this scenario?

Joe
Click to expand...

running externals for project files is generally not a good idea, as the speed that the audio can travel is bottlenecked and you will find yourself with many dropouts and a failing external drive relatively early.

Its just cheaper and faster (in performance) to have multiple HDD's partitioned for storage only to have your project files on.
 
TheWinterSnow said:
That gigabyte was the one that I saw, its the most expensive one they make.

Chipset really doesn't matter when you are talking about non gaming PC's, but the X58 can do both SLI and Crossfire and I do believe that gigabyte firewire use T.I. chips, but don't quote me on it.




running externals for project files is generally not a good idea, as the speed that the audio can travel is bottlenecked and you will find yourself with many dropouts and a failing external drive relatively early.

Its just cheaper and faster (in performance) to have multiple HDD's partitioned for storage only to have your project files on.
Click to expand...

ah I see, thanks very much again dude.

My problem is, I'm not the most technically adapt person when it comes to PC specs, so checking out pages of motherboards is a bit daunting.

Is there any fat I can trim from my motherboard choice when looking at these Gigbytes? some seem to have almost identical features so I'm a bit lost.

thanks

joe
 
Trimming down...price/how much you want to pay, double or triple channel RAM, IO connections. Thats really about it. Normally you would have to look at the chipset too, but that seems to be only an issue with AMD since all the new intels are X58's. You still have the P55 and the X55, but right now most of the boards listed are the X58
 
TheWinterSnow said:
Trimming down...price/how much you want to pay, double or triple channel RAM, IO connections. Thats really about it. Normally you would have to look at the chipset too, but that seems to be only an issue with AMD since all the new intels are X58's. You still have the P55 and the X55, but right now most of the boards listed are the X58
Click to expand...

Thanks very much, you've been quite helpful!

Joe
 
Thanks!

I've seen a ton of guides online for PC building - does anyone have a trusted source that I can do some reading on? I'll be getting help of course, but I'd like to learn as much as possible myself.

thanks

Joe
 
yea a 9800GT will be more than plenty, not overkill as it keeps you safe, but isn't way over the top.

the hardest part of PC building is finding parts that are compatible, and as long as you keep up with the new technology, its not that hard to remember.
 
TheWinterSnow said:
yea a 9800GT will be more than plenty, not overkill as it keeps you safe, but isn't way over the top.

the hardest part of PC building is finding parts that are compatible, and as long as you keep up with the new technology, its not that hard to remember.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that is my main concern, but I've been researching like crazy so I'm paying close attention to specs!

Who would you guys say is the leader for DVDR/W drives nowadays?

Joe
 
in terms of compatibility, is motherboard, CPU and memory. What is compatible with what depends on the CPU that you want. Check the socket of the CPU that you want, search for those socket motherboards, now depending on the socket also determines what type of memory you are getting, it usually says in the specs, but right now on the intel platform, the 1156 and the 1366 use DDR3 Memory

so it goes

Intel 930 (1366 socket)
1366 socket motherboard
DDR3 Memory

everything else really doesn't matter, those are the three things you need to match.

tomshardware.com is a great place for information about everything computers, and the information is reliable.

DVD writers, doesn't matter the brand, just try to spend at least $30-40 on a drive
 
TheWinterSnow said:
in terms of compatibility, is motherboard, CPU and memory. What is compatible with what depends on the CPU that you want. Check the socket of the CPU that you want, search for those socket motherboards, now depending on the socket also determines what type of memory you are getting, it usually says in the specs, but right now on the intel platform, the 1156 and the 1366 use DDR3 Memory

so it goes

Intel 930 (1366 socket)
1366 socket motherboard
DDR3 Memory

everything else really doesn't matter, those are the three things you need to match.

tomshardware.com is a great place for information about everything computers, and the information is reliable.

DVD writers, doesn't matter the brand, just try to spend at least $30-40 on a drive
Click to expand...

Awesome, thank you man...really appreciated!

Joe
 
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