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- Apr 6, 2011
- Messages
- 177
Due to a rash of questions about, what is a good system, what card should I buy or what power supply should I buy? I thought I would throw up a little shopping guide and just update it once in a while, it may be fun shopping for other people, but frankly it gets a bit redundant doing it every day, especially if I don't ever get any new swag out of the shopping trips. For the record, my advice and suggestions are aimed at the buyer looking for the very most bang for their buck. Something, I've always stressed to every one of my clients in the past. Spending a premium for the very latest and greatest when in 4 months its going to be old news, is just vain and silly.
System Build: What do you recommend for a new system for X$ ?
Firstly, its always cheaper to build your own. Its even cheaper to pay someone $100 to build you one, many people can do it if your not comfortable doing so, ask your friends, kids, cousins, neighbors, parents, etc. Find someone they know, and hire them with the condition that they let you help. So now you will know too. It only takes about 90 minutes to put together a system from start to finish, plus an hour or so for the software. More if it's your first time, as you might actually want to browse all them manuals first. There is lots of good guides out there for putting one together. Take the plunge.
If you can't be bothered to do this, Go here pick your parts and have them do it for you.
Ok, but now what parts should you buy?
Tom's Hardware's capable crew has compiled their annual Gaming System builders marathon where they build a $500 pc. A $1000 pc and a $2000 pc.
The latest one was just released last month. so if your looking for recommendations for how to stretch your dollar out and what you can expect to give up for doing so, click on the money you want to spend. (May be outdated, Just search on the site if it is, they put one out about every quarter) They test them, compare them to each other, and give you real information on what you can expect to gain or lose by going different routes, and even compare them to the last pc's they built. Use these as a guide. Go to newegg and start shopping and add it to your wish list. Email the wish list to yourself and post it up here for further suggestions.
For the record, I love the $500 PC build on Tom's Hardware. He used high quality parts as it sits, but you can spend $50 more dollars get a quality 650 watt PSU, Spend $50 more and get a 560Ti card and this thing will scream in every game in existence! For $600 that would be one heck of a lot of gaming machine. I have this exact same motherboard and it's great, over-clocks like a dream and is rock solid stable. FYI- Asrock is the sister company of ASUS.
BTW Extremetech did a similar build guide, albiet a bit dated now and with a different structure and shows you the performance gains you can expect in $100 increments going from a $500 pc to a $1500 pc. I do not agree with a lot of their upgrade choices, For example, Why not just buy a good 500 watt PSU and a $50 NZXT case to start with and then start adding more powerful video cards? and at the $500 pc and why buy win7 when you can recycle XP and save that $100 to put towards, better video, more memory and a better PSU and have a much better system? but its still a good read to get an idea on how your system performs with certain upgrades.
Gaming Video Cards:
If your wondering about what video card is faster or what the FPS are compared to others see here.
If your looking to see what is the best bang for the buck right now.Click here.
Keep in mind, often a video card upgrade of note, will require a PSU upgrade..
Power Supply
Is my power supply powerful enough to run this? Or I Have this, yet I keep getting reboots or errors. Then Go here, enter your system specs and see if your powersupply is up to task. What would I recommend? In order of preference? Seasonic, Corsair, Silverstone, Antec, Enhance, Sparkle, Fortrain/FSP OCZ. I personally end up buying more Corsairs and Antec's far more than anything else due to the many rebates and deals they often have. Read the reviews for each of these brands mentioned, from Newegg and make a decision. I would look for at least 18 amps on each rail with no less than 36 amps total for a high power gaming pc. I'd also like to have at least 10% over what the calculator suggests I buy. Keep in mind, with OCZ and others, the build quality can vary greatly between one model and another, and with power supplies you can expect to get what you pay for, do not expect a $30 500 watt OCZ to perform like a $60 500 watt Antec. For more information and a detailed list of PSU's that have been run through its paces, see here.
I'm personally using a $30(AR) OCZ in my sons X3 AMD light gaming system, with no problems. What is the difference between the $30 PSU and the $60 PSU? Usually better construction, better engineering, and better quality parts; basically, cleaner, more stable, power. For a budget build, for light gaming, it may not matter, if you plan to load it up, overclock it, stuff it full of juice sucking video cards, or 3-4 drives and a 6 core processors. You definitely do not want to skimp on the PSU.
When PSU's are stretched beyond capacity they do very bad things to capacitors and other electrical components. A PSU is without a doubt the most under appreciated and least sexy of all our major pc parts.
Platform AMD/INTEL?
This is written primarily for gamers looking for a gaming system.
Ok, first off, us gamers need more horsepower than the average user. I've found for the sub <1k systems, you'll get more value and bang for the buck with an AMD Platform, even more so, if you have less to spend. It's not a surprise to anyone but perhaps the Intel fanboys, that out of the top 20 value/performance cpus on the performance mark list 18 of them are AMD's and only 2 are Intels and guess what, Sandy Bridge i3-i5-i7 is not one of them. Nobody doubts Sandy Bridges, performance numbers, what I doubt is, how much difference its going to make in a game that is largely GPU dependent, but I digress, and back to the point. The Bottom line, I personally would not consider anything less than a athlon ii x3 cpu for a new gaming pc. For a good gaming cpu comparison see here For systems above 1k where your willing to spend more and expect more, you should be looking at Intel, beginning with the i5, and if your pockets are deep enough, the i7.
Over Clocking is something to consider too, but beyond the scope of this article.
In a word, push the FSB, drop your memory speed down and throw a 90 mm or 120 mm cpu cooler on it. You should be able to get another 15-30% on your pc. For more info on that go to overclocker.net I'm personally running a PII 825 at 3.5 ghz on FACTORY AIR and running a chilly 50 C under load in prime95.
Just to be clear, for most people here looking to build a pc. (Us Gamers) The CPU generally does not matter nearly as much as the GPU/Video card. So for people to say this x4 cpu is better than this i5, and all you do is play Left For Dead or BF2 or whatever, Its kinda nonsense. Personally, I think if your looking to really build a kick butt gaming rig, you should look to spend twice as much on your video card as you are on your mobo/cpu combo. For example, if you look to go with a $65 mobo and a $135 cpu You should spend twice that on the video card, which is $400. This is for a killer gaming machine mind you.
You will get far better results with this for gaming, than you would if you just spent $370 on a mobo/cpu and $185 on a video card. It also matters as to what kind of games you play, if you play WoW or Rift. These games are heavily cpu dependent, If you play primarily FPS, they are heavily GPU dependent. It's all about balancing your hardware with your needs.
For a decent gaming rig you should expect to spend at least as much on the video card as you are on the mobo/cpu combo. Look for value and best bang for buck if on a budget. The less gaming you do, the more the focus is off the video and more on the processing power, memory bandwidth, throughput. etc. In that case, you'd be better off with the faster cpu/mobo and the slower video card.
There is so many other things that influence how a pc runs overall, memory, memory speed, timings,cas latency, fsb, network lag, hard drive read/write access times, video rendering, FPS, etc. etc. etc. etc. The cpu matters, but not near as much as we guys with the latest greatest super fast cpu's would like to think, yea if all we ever did was run synthetic benchmarks, maybe it would matter more. FYI- Speed to the end user, is usually based on how it "feels" or responsiveness, when we click on something, the biggest factor to this is more often than not, the hard drive access times. rarely if ever, the CPU/Memory/Mobo.
Both AMD/INTEL make great cpu's and any of the newer quad cores will make a killer gaming rig.
Bottom line, Decide on what you primarily want to do with your pc, decide how much you want to spend, and then get what you want. This thing about upgrade path? and future proofing? Its kinda bogus, nobody really upgrades a cpu to get a 15% improvement in some obscure benchmark. Or even a video card for the same results.
What's the deal with these extra CPU cores? Do I need them?
Honestly, for the most part as of right now. Not really, many apps are not optimized for 4 cores yet, and even fewer games. For instance, of all the game listed here that are optimized for quad cores, BF2 is the only one we as a group support and use. No other source games are. But that friends is about to change, more and more games will be optimized, as quad cores become the new standard on all systems, eventually even for the low budget builds.
Upgrades:
At what point should I consider upgrading my pc or building a new one?
There is no hard and fast rule for when an upgrade isn't worth it. But if you decide to upgrade most of your PC's components with higher-end options, the price can quickly approach the cost of a brand new PC. In that case, you should opt for a new computer, which will give you a system where everything is designed to work together using the latest technology of your choosing.
In addition, many newer applications require fast systems. That's particularly true for editing video from camcorders or playing the latest games. These require fast processors, lots of ram. powerful GPUS's and large fast hard drives. So yes, you can get by with an upgraded system, but you'll have to live with compromises. If you get a new mobo/cpu/memory/video card but keep your 7 yr old sata 1 250 gig drive, It will be a bottleneck. Now for some tasks, say gaming, it wont matter all that much, it might take longer to load, but once its loaded, it shouldn't be much of a factor at all. (This is why SSD are somewhat overkill for a gaming machine) It's really just a matter of what you can live with and what you can't. With 1 TB hard drives costing around $55 I definately would not keep an old one.
Keep in mind, most Mobo/CPU upgrades will require new memory.
Most video card upgrades of note will require a larger more powerful power supply.
Often, you are better of just starting over and selling your system, especially if it's over 3-4 years old.
If there is something I forgot or something you would like further explanation on please don't hesitate to ask.
System Build: What do you recommend for a new system for X$ ?
Firstly, its always cheaper to build your own. Its even cheaper to pay someone $100 to build you one, many people can do it if your not comfortable doing so, ask your friends, kids, cousins, neighbors, parents, etc. Find someone they know, and hire them with the condition that they let you help. So now you will know too. It only takes about 90 minutes to put together a system from start to finish, plus an hour or so for the software. More if it's your first time, as you might actually want to browse all them manuals first. There is lots of good guides out there for putting one together. Take the plunge.
If you can't be bothered to do this, Go here pick your parts and have them do it for you.
Ok, but now what parts should you buy?
Tom's Hardware's capable crew has compiled their annual Gaming System builders marathon where they build a $500 pc. A $1000 pc and a $2000 pc.
The latest one was just released last month. so if your looking for recommendations for how to stretch your dollar out and what you can expect to give up for doing so, click on the money you want to spend. (May be outdated, Just search on the site if it is, they put one out about every quarter) They test them, compare them to each other, and give you real information on what you can expect to gain or lose by going different routes, and even compare them to the last pc's they built. Use these as a guide. Go to newegg and start shopping and add it to your wish list. Email the wish list to yourself and post it up here for further suggestions.
For the record, I love the $500 PC build on Tom's Hardware. He used high quality parts as it sits, but you can spend $50 more dollars get a quality 650 watt PSU, Spend $50 more and get a 560Ti card and this thing will scream in every game in existence! For $600 that would be one heck of a lot of gaming machine. I have this exact same motherboard and it's great, over-clocks like a dream and is rock solid stable. FYI- Asrock is the sister company of ASUS.
BTW Extremetech did a similar build guide, albiet a bit dated now and with a different structure and shows you the performance gains you can expect in $100 increments going from a $500 pc to a $1500 pc. I do not agree with a lot of their upgrade choices, For example, Why not just buy a good 500 watt PSU and a $50 NZXT case to start with and then start adding more powerful video cards? and at the $500 pc and why buy win7 when you can recycle XP and save that $100 to put towards, better video, more memory and a better PSU and have a much better system? but its still a good read to get an idea on how your system performs with certain upgrades.
Gaming Video Cards:
If your wondering about what video card is faster or what the FPS are compared to others see here.
If your looking to see what is the best bang for the buck right now.Click here.
Keep in mind, often a video card upgrade of note, will require a PSU upgrade..
Power Supply
Is my power supply powerful enough to run this? Or I Have this, yet I keep getting reboots or errors. Then Go here, enter your system specs and see if your powersupply is up to task. What would I recommend? In order of preference? Seasonic, Corsair, Silverstone, Antec, Enhance, Sparkle, Fortrain/FSP OCZ. I personally end up buying more Corsairs and Antec's far more than anything else due to the many rebates and deals they often have. Read the reviews for each of these brands mentioned, from Newegg and make a decision. I would look for at least 18 amps on each rail with no less than 36 amps total for a high power gaming pc. I'd also like to have at least 10% over what the calculator suggests I buy. Keep in mind, with OCZ and others, the build quality can vary greatly between one model and another, and with power supplies you can expect to get what you pay for, do not expect a $30 500 watt OCZ to perform like a $60 500 watt Antec. For more information and a detailed list of PSU's that have been run through its paces, see here.
I'm personally using a $30(AR) OCZ in my sons X3 AMD light gaming system, with no problems. What is the difference between the $30 PSU and the $60 PSU? Usually better construction, better engineering, and better quality parts; basically, cleaner, more stable, power. For a budget build, for light gaming, it may not matter, if you plan to load it up, overclock it, stuff it full of juice sucking video cards, or 3-4 drives and a 6 core processors. You definitely do not want to skimp on the PSU.
When PSU's are stretched beyond capacity they do very bad things to capacitors and other electrical components. A PSU is without a doubt the most under appreciated and least sexy of all our major pc parts.
Platform AMD/INTEL?
This is written primarily for gamers looking for a gaming system.
Ok, first off, us gamers need more horsepower than the average user. I've found for the sub <1k systems, you'll get more value and bang for the buck with an AMD Platform, even more so, if you have less to spend. It's not a surprise to anyone but perhaps the Intel fanboys, that out of the top 20 value/performance cpus on the performance mark list 18 of them are AMD's and only 2 are Intels and guess what, Sandy Bridge i3-i5-i7 is not one of them. Nobody doubts Sandy Bridges, performance numbers, what I doubt is, how much difference its going to make in a game that is largely GPU dependent, but I digress, and back to the point. The Bottom line, I personally would not consider anything less than a athlon ii x3 cpu for a new gaming pc. For a good gaming cpu comparison see here For systems above 1k where your willing to spend more and expect more, you should be looking at Intel, beginning with the i5, and if your pockets are deep enough, the i7.
Over Clocking is something to consider too, but beyond the scope of this article.
In a word, push the FSB, drop your memory speed down and throw a 90 mm or 120 mm cpu cooler on it. You should be able to get another 15-30% on your pc. For more info on that go to overclocker.net I'm personally running a PII 825 at 3.5 ghz on FACTORY AIR and running a chilly 50 C under load in prime95.
Just to be clear, for most people here looking to build a pc. (Us Gamers) The CPU generally does not matter nearly as much as the GPU/Video card. So for people to say this x4 cpu is better than this i5, and all you do is play Left For Dead or BF2 or whatever, Its kinda nonsense. Personally, I think if your looking to really build a kick butt gaming rig, you should look to spend twice as much on your video card as you are on your mobo/cpu combo. For example, if you look to go with a $65 mobo and a $135 cpu You should spend twice that on the video card, which is $400. This is for a killer gaming machine mind you.
You will get far better results with this for gaming, than you would if you just spent $370 on a mobo/cpu and $185 on a video card. It also matters as to what kind of games you play, if you play WoW or Rift. These games are heavily cpu dependent, If you play primarily FPS, they are heavily GPU dependent. It's all about balancing your hardware with your needs.
For a decent gaming rig you should expect to spend at least as much on the video card as you are on the mobo/cpu combo. Look for value and best bang for buck if on a budget. The less gaming you do, the more the focus is off the video and more on the processing power, memory bandwidth, throughput. etc. In that case, you'd be better off with the faster cpu/mobo and the slower video card.
There is so many other things that influence how a pc runs overall, memory, memory speed, timings,cas latency, fsb, network lag, hard drive read/write access times, video rendering, FPS, etc. etc. etc. etc. The cpu matters, but not near as much as we guys with the latest greatest super fast cpu's would like to think, yea if all we ever did was run synthetic benchmarks, maybe it would matter more. FYI- Speed to the end user, is usually based on how it "feels" or responsiveness, when we click on something, the biggest factor to this is more often than not, the hard drive access times. rarely if ever, the CPU/Memory/Mobo.
Both AMD/INTEL make great cpu's and any of the newer quad cores will make a killer gaming rig.
Bottom line, Decide on what you primarily want to do with your pc, decide how much you want to spend, and then get what you want. This thing about upgrade path? and future proofing? Its kinda bogus, nobody really upgrades a cpu to get a 15% improvement in some obscure benchmark. Or even a video card for the same results.
What's the deal with these extra CPU cores? Do I need them?
Honestly, for the most part as of right now. Not really, many apps are not optimized for 4 cores yet, and even fewer games. For instance, of all the game listed here that are optimized for quad cores, BF2 is the only one we as a group support and use. No other source games are. But that friends is about to change, more and more games will be optimized, as quad cores become the new standard on all systems, eventually even for the low budget builds.
Upgrades:
At what point should I consider upgrading my pc or building a new one?
There is no hard and fast rule for when an upgrade isn't worth it. But if you decide to upgrade most of your PC's components with higher-end options, the price can quickly approach the cost of a brand new PC. In that case, you should opt for a new computer, which will give you a system where everything is designed to work together using the latest technology of your choosing.
In addition, many newer applications require fast systems. That's particularly true for editing video from camcorders or playing the latest games. These require fast processors, lots of ram. powerful GPUS's and large fast hard drives. So yes, you can get by with an upgraded system, but you'll have to live with compromises. If you get a new mobo/cpu/memory/video card but keep your 7 yr old sata 1 250 gig drive, It will be a bottleneck. Now for some tasks, say gaming, it wont matter all that much, it might take longer to load, but once its loaded, it shouldn't be much of a factor at all. (This is why SSD are somewhat overkill for a gaming machine) It's really just a matter of what you can live with and what you can't. With 1 TB hard drives costing around $55 I definately would not keep an old one.
Keep in mind, most Mobo/CPU upgrades will require new memory.
Most video card upgrades of note will require a larger more powerful power supply.
Often, you are better of just starting over and selling your system, especially if it's over 3-4 years old.
If there is something I forgot or something you would like further explanation on please don't hesitate to ask.
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