The (new) Official PC building thread!

You can get it cheaper by not paying for the OS. Just sayin...

 

Too many times when I tell people to get a decent PSU it goes unnoticed. Thought I might make it a little more brash this time!

 

@jtan189
I would go with this burner:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827151153
It's a bit cheaper and faster. It's also quieter. I have both.
That is an excellent motherboard, great RAM, a small but always potent C2D cpu. You could save a few dollars with a different board but you would loose some upgradability. No video card?? Do you have one to use? You are going to need one as this board does not have onboard video.

@Lp
All those rebates do are stress me out. You have to get a form, fill it out, find the package and cut out the code. Find an envelope, stuff it, find a stamp and mail the thing. It's easy enough to do but I still think it's a hassle. It's a sales gimmick. Some folks don't get them done in time.... Like me. The company makes the sale and keeps the money... I'm out about $100.00 for my last build.

 

I probably would be too if they did them over here.
I RMA'ed a hard drive to WD and never sent the original back in time. Got charged far more than the drive was worth for the new one.

I think I'm the one that put him off Samsung drives btw, going on the experience of lots of others in the forum I wouldn't recommend them, but then I refuse to buy Benq drives, and everybody else seems to like them, so opinions differ I suppose.

 

I recommend this case. they had it for $30 after MIR earlier this week. I have one, except mine is all aluminum construction and brushed aluminum color, and I really like it. true tooless design and no drive bay door in the way.

I would also recommend this p/s or this one even more. just my 2 cents.

 

@fasfrank
It is a pure scam...I personally think they should be outlawed...

I believe he already has a 7600GT he is planning on using...

@Mort
I recommended the same case to...Its just that he is trying to build with a $600 budget which is why I recommended the Antec combo as well...

The CM is probably the best case buy right now...I am tempted to pick one up just as a stash...

 

sam,

I have a 400gb samsung hdd and it is the quietest and coolest running of my three (one a WD and the other a junk maxtor). then again I've only had it about 6 months and as you already know, I have a benq DVDRW and really like it too

 

I'll agree with those choices.

 

double post. sorry.

 

Lp, Good deal, it would really suck when jtan goes to plug the monitor in for the first time... and finds nothing there!

That's actually going to be a nice PC when jtan gets done. Good parts!
I'd go with the case Mort mentioned though. I find too many LEDs kinda blinding. I'd get a cpu cooler as well, I know I'd be overclocking that C2D somewhat.

 

LEDs are cool and all, but they're not always useful. Watching a film in a dark room for example, becomes watching a film in a dimly blue lit room.

 

The Cooler Masters are Sold Out...Damn...should have pulled the trigger earlier...hopefully SVC will have a deal on them...they consistently have the best prices on Cooler Master Cases...I will bet they have a matching deal this week...

 

Hey, All I'm building my first computer and naturally it's a gamer. I'd like to know what you all think, and get some educated suggestions. Some of the parts have been bought. I still need sugesstions on a power supply, memory, hard drives, optical drives, air or liquid 8800 gtx(2x),and cooling.

Purchased:
NZXT Nemesis Elite case
Asus Crosshair Mobo
Amd 64 x2 6400+ black box
Bigfoot Killer NIC
Asus Ageia Physx P1

Planned purchases(?)
4x1024 Corsair Dominator 800 mhz DDR2
NZXT 1200 watt psu
Logitec Z-5500 500watt dolby digital 5.1
Logitec G7 Mouse
Logitec G15 Keyboard
Samsung 226bw 22"widescreen

I"m looking to save as much as possible but it's HARD!!!

 

fasfrank,

I've only had experience with one samsung DVDRW and that's the one in my laptop. it's a piece of crap and all the dvd's (verbatim dvd+r's) I burn with it skips in my set top dvd players. besides I'm a bitsettting nut and booktype all my dvd+r's to dvd-rom. I don't believe the samsungs are capable of bitsetting. all the liteys should be with exception to the laptop slimdrives.

 

XTRMN8TR, should have gone with a Core 2 Duo build. Also if you want ot do SLI then try 2 8800GTs instead of GTX.

 

@XTRMN8TR
For use to see if we can help you on prices...you need to link components to retailers you are looking at...so we have a parts list with prices...also where are you?..

 

@ abuzar 1 Why 8800gts 640mb instead of 8800gtx 768?

@ lp531 I'm looking at newegg.com and tigerdirect.com here some links

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130093
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814143085
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145165
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817116006 (would like to go with cheaper)
btw what do you mean where am I?

 

He actually means the 8800GT 512MB. It's nearly as fast, but half the price and half the size, not to mention it uses half as much power.

 

XTRMN8TR'
Hi guy,
Well it looks like you have a great overclocking board to base your build around. Let's see what we can do to help you complete this puzzle.
A bit of advise... You do not need much help when it comes to buying the newest, most expensive part out there. Here though, we can help you make some intelligent choices that will produce a system with excellent performance within a reasonable budget.

Memory:
Two gigs for now. Do you really need those kind of latencies?(3-4-3-9) I would think 4-4-4-12 would suffice. Save yourself a few hundred dollars by going with two gigs of 4-4-4-12 stuff.

Cooling:
You should be using air cooling for your first build. You will need an aftermarket cooler because you should overclock this motherboard. Otherwise you wasted some money buying it.
Here's one to look at:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835154001
PSU:
The power supply is way to big and certainly not the best.
A quality 750 Watt is the way to go. I'm buying one of these for my Phenom build:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153038

Video Cards:
Two 8800GTs in SLI will be excellent. Almost the same performance as the GTX cards, much less heat production, less power consumption and a lot smaller. You can actually fit other cards in. Doing that with GTX or GTS cards blocks their airflow.

8800GTs are not available anywhere right now. In fact Newegg just went to "0" balance and removed them from my shopping cart. Wait one week and see.

You are going to need a hard drive and an optical drive as well.
More items I'm buying...

HDD:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152052

DVD Burner:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827151153
If you want bitsetting or lightscribe, get a Lite-On burner.

What operating system are you going to use?

Here's part of a pretty good chart from Toms hardware that rates current video cards... check where the 8800GT is:

 

I was hoping to get a "cool-looking" case. But I suppose that's not important...the quality of the case is. And since it's my first build with a small budget, I can't really have both. Therefore, I probably will go with the ANTEC Sonata III. But I have another problem. I was assuming the motherboard would have onboard video. I was planning on using no videocard for a while, and then installing it when I got the money. Obviously, this won't work with the mobo I was looking at (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128050).

So my question now, is: Should I get a different mobo with onboard video or should I stick with the one I have and buy a graphics card? And if I were to get a graphics card, what's the best one, considering my budget? I think I would want this computer to be at least equipped with an nvidia 7 series card eventually..