Hi guys, Ive been to this site many times before but never joined but i have now =). I have embarked on the journey of building my first pc. I'm going for a cheap to decently priced cost for hardware since it is my first and since i wont really do much with it probably just play world of warcraft and some other low end pc games (unless i get into real pc gaming which is something else). I have done quite a bit of research over the last couple of days and compiled a list of what i need. I would like to ask you guys your opinions of whether im on the right track or not, also I am buying most of the hardware from newegg to keep it simple and cut shipping costs but if anyone knows it can be bought at another site cheaply then please mention so. Thanks Processer - Intel Core2 Duo E7500 Link Motherboard - GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P Link Case - COOLER MASTER HAF 932 RC-932-KKN1-GP Link Power Supply - CORSAIR CMPSU-400CX 400W Link Harddrive - Western Digital Caviar Blue WD3200AAJS 320GB 7200 RPM Link Video Card - Nvidia Geforce 9500 GT Link Cd/Dvd Drive - SLG Black 22X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW Link Overall it should cost me about 700.00 us and i already have a 19 inch monitor and im getting 2 gigs of memory to start off with along with windows 7.
Prcessor: Not bad, should work OK with everything, plenty of power for WOW. Motherboard: Good build quality & feature set...just keep in mind that that second PCIe-x16 slot is actualy just a PCIe-x8 slot. Case: I wouldn't spend that much on a case for a I7 system; but to each his own. Power Supply: Junk; get a corsair...their 400W unit is $50, and should be more than enough for this system. Hard Drive: Hard to comment; WD has been very bad to me & I can't recomend them...still, it is pretty hard to screw up a drive that is less than 1 TB. If it was me, I would go Seagate instead. Video Card: Not a great card, but very good for the price. Burner: Sony is terrible at making optical drives. Here is a decent unit from LG for about the same price: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136144 If I were you, I would look for a cheaper case so that you can start with 4-6GB of memory and Windows 7 x64.
Thanks for the reply. Ive had some experience with WD drives as well as seagate and tbh i never had problems with either but ill do some research and see if one is more prone to malfunction then the other and make my choice. My choice of case is indeed ridiculous for this system, seeing as i want it to be low budget but my reason is that i saw some videos and read reviews of this case and loved it (cant go wrong with 3 fans!) maybe ill buckle and switch to some cheap case later. As for your suggestions on the Power supply and cd rom ill definetly take those since i didn't really do much research into them and just threw the two best ones i could find quickly together. Thanks and any more opinions would be appreciated.
Just one more opinion...you can get cases with more than 3 fans for under $50...the case for the system I am using now costed just $30, and has room for 3 case fans.
I would try to work in a quad core in the build rather then a dual. It will cost you a bit more in the cpu department, but the mobo can support it fine. For the hard drive spend an extra $2 to get this drive: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136074 It offers 16 MB cache vs 8 and will offer better performance. The video cards not the greatest, but as Killer said good for the price. The Sony drives are very very popular right now. I havent heard anything negative about them except maybe the odd reviews here and there, but that goes for any quality hardware.
To be fair, I am still holding a grudge against sony for all of the drives I have had fail in the past (mostly PS2 drives, but a few PC drives as well). I have not tried their current generation of drives with the exception of my PS3 (so far, so good) and my newest PS2 (virtualy no use so far). Overall, my experience with Sony drives and sony readers in general has been very negative...they can't even get a turntable to work correctly...yet Technics (a division of sony) is able to make a great record player. This leads me to believe that the "Sony" line is intended as a low-quality, cut-corners brand...and this has been my general experience with them.
The new Sony drives are ex-NEC designs after Sony bought out NEC's share in Optiarc. They seem quite reliable. Others might not pick up on the 9500GT, but I will. The 9500GT is a terrible card, even for the price. Get this instead: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102854 That's pretty much double the performance, if not more, for $5 less. I'd ignore the WD vs Seagate comment, because WD's drives don't work perfectly in RAID, you find a lot of people talk trash about them, that's really the only issue they have. Seagates on the other hand, will quite handily lose all your data without warning, hence why I do not recommend buying them. Stay safe and stick with WD.
