The (new) Official PC building thread!

Whats the Pros & Cons on P/S on the top or bttm.I've seen a lot & most don't like P/S on bttm,but don't say WHY..Is their a significant difference.About the only thing I can think of is Heat,and it rises.

 

Heat does indeed rise, yet oddly the best solution for me seems to have my top fan as intake, my bottom fan as exhaust. Consequently, a PSU on the bottom logically seems a better idea.

 

Its $20 more then it was yesterday...I do not like that it has 4 exhaust...counting the P/S...with 1 intake...not a very well balanced airflow design in my opinion...what are you looking for in a case?...

Mostly heat...however...P/S on the bottom can be a pain to wire...especially the 24 pin connection...most M/B are designed with layouts that benefit the standard design...

 

Guess your right.Better to take air from top,maybe less dust intake as dust does settle to bttm and,or intake fans

 

Hey guys, instead of reviving my old thread ill post in here. My ideal PC specs are as follows, bear in mind i won't be overclocking(not now anyway)

System Specs Now -

Processor - Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 S775 2.66ghz 4mb Cache 1333FSB

£109.90

PSU - Corsair HX 520W ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU

£65.21

GPU - NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT BFG

£163.19

RAM (Memory) - OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC2-6400C4 Dual Channel Platinum Revision 2 XTC Series DDR2

£37.59 x 2 (for 4gb)

Hard Drive - Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM

£72.84

Optical Drive - LG 18x GSA-H66NBAL DVD±R, 10x DVD±DL, DVD+RW x8/-RW x6, DVD-RAM x12, SATA, Black, OEM

£17.74

Case - Antec Nine Hundred Ultimate Gamer Case

£69.80

MotherBoard - Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R

£71.90

Cooling - For CPU

Thermalright Ultra-120A

£25.83

Fan for CPU - 120mm Scythe S-FLEX SFF21F Fan 1600 RPM (Also the same fan for Graphics card)

£12.33 x 2 = £24.66

Total = £646.33

I am open to any suggestions of what to change.

 

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-101-GI&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1015 will get the 3750 to its max of 3.66 GHZ on air. and very cheap.

fully recomended according to Custom PC.

or cheaper here:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=657881

 

I didn't know they make a P31 chipset. It seems like the P35, but uses an older model southbridge. Seems good for budget builds.

I just read a review and the performance is on par with P35, that's very good.

 

From the reviews I remember seeing I don't think it was quite up to par. Besides, the P35C-DS3R is a better board anyway.

He-Man: That's pretty much the exact build I would recommend to any gamer now, apart from the fact I would use an HD3870 Graphics card over an 8800GT (now that they're in stock again!)

 

Rob the 550 watt PS should be enough BUT if you can swing it i would go bigger like a 650watt to be on the safe side

 

550w is, to be frank, overkill. My PC never uses above 250W, yours will hardly use any more. At full load, it will certainly be under 300W.
The whole z0mg n33dz m0re p0w4z!!!1KW PSU ftwzomgxorz!!1!! came about simply because there were (and still are) so many "500W" power supplies on the market that were absolute garbage and couldn't keep up with a 150W system. So the natural assumption was that they needed more wattage. While that was true, it was not because 500W was enough, it was because the power supply could only put out a third of what it said it could. A 520W Corsair PSU will power pretty much anything on the market. There is only one system config that wouldn't work with it, and that's a pair of 2900XTs in Crossfire. With the advent of the HD3870, that's no longer a viable configuration anyway.

 

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sorry frank missed this post in with all the others

the Optical drives i have now are not sata. IDE right now
Lite-on SHW-160P6S
Lite-on LH-18A1P
both are good drives so for now im keeping them and not worrying about getting any sata's right now. gonna use the money on the main stuff for the build. but i will be getting a sata HDD.

ive been looking at the different PSU and from the looks of them there is onlt 1 or 2 sata connectors.if isay get 2 sata drives and 2 sata HDD will i be able to connect them all? can you piggy back/split the power connectors?

 

Many HDD have not only the SATA power connector, but also a place for the more familiar 4 pin molex. Some of the newer ones may not, but as little as a year ago many still did.
Also there are adapters for molex-to-SATA also that are inexpensive in case there arent enough for you.

 

I believe it's primarily older WD drives that include both the Molex and S-ATA power connectors. However, NEVER connect both at the same time, or you may destroy the hard drive.

 

So from my setup mentioned previously, the stuff on the Corsair 520W will be able to physically connect everything?

Permanently connected:

19" cable for main 20+4-pin ATX connector
19" cable for 4x12V EPS12V
19" cable for 2x12V AUX12V

Detachable:

2 x 21" cable for 6-pin PCIe connector
2 x 31" cable with three 4-pin IDE drive connectors
1 x 16" cable with two 4-pin IDE drive connectors
6" 4-pin IDE to two 12V only 4-pin IDE connectors (meant for fans)
6" 4-pin IDE to two floppy drive power connectors
2 x 25" cables with two SATA drive connectors



And those 4 sata ports will only be occupied by my sata dvd burner and sata hard drive? And the PCIe will be used for.........I don't know

 

Well, your graphics card if it's a powerful one. Most GPUs only require one. I think it's only the HD2900XT and 8800GTX that need two.

 

Some cards that go in the PCI-E slots, especially video cards, need some extra juice.
BTW- just got my Armor case and XMS2(DHX) memory delivered. The armor, I could rent out the space in there to a small family and make some extra cash its so big and has so much room. Pictures dont do the sheer size justice. Now, to send in the rebates before I forget, and wait the next few weeks for more sales to develop to purchase the rest of the beast.

 

So guys, I just sold my PC for 800. This is what was in it:


Intel Core 2 Duo E6400
3 GB Crucial Ballistic Tracers RAM
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro
Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 rev 3.3 Motherboard
Ultra GRID case(
Ultra XVS Modular 700 Watt Power supply
7900 GTX 512MB
Lite-On DVD burner
Maxtor 320GB SATA HDD

Now I have 800 to spend on a new one!

 

You better come up with another $200-$300 for us to get you something to be proud of. hehehe. You want help picking stuff or are you just bragging about the $$$MONEY$$$ you made??

...gm

 

Well yeah I probably will. I just wanna see what's the best I can do with 800.

 

My knowledge with computer is really limited but I wanted to build my own PC for once and that's what my friend who work in computers and got his own providers recommended me (I wanted to build it around the 8800GT).

Video Card: Evga 8800GT SuperClocked 512mb pci express 2.0
Case/PSU: Anten Sonata Designer: 500w PSU ---> http://www.antec.com/us/productDetails.php?ProdID=15135
Memory: Kingston HyperX Memory -2 GB ( 2 x 1 GB ) DDR2- 1066 MHz
HDD: Barracuda ES SATA 3.0Gb/s 500-GB
DVDD: LG DL SATA
Processor: Intel Core 2 DUO E6750 2.67GHz (LGA775 4MB 1333/FSB) ---> Will get changed to a 3.0 for 80$ more
Mobo: Asus Desktop Board P5K-e /WiFi-AP
Monitor: 22'' Acer

Excluding the Video Card and Monitor, It'll cost me 900$ CAD just the PC.

Note that I am going to pay 80 more $ to change my processor to a 3.0.

I also got told by some people to change my memory to OCZ which supposely is much better etc.. I said that to my friend and he told he that's what he got and strongly recommended me HyperX (he also gathered info about it and most people said the same thing), not the standard one. He also told me Corsair is much better but honestly, I am quite lost with all those DDR things. I don't wanna pay for in the future, just for now. Adding another 50$ to get something that'll make a difference right now, is fine for me.

Is it worth it to change the current DDR2 written above for the latest DDR3 that recently came out?

Also my biggest concern right now is the PSU ( http://www.antec.com/us/productDetails.php?ProdID=15135 ).I don't really care about the case, I want it to look clean and have it quite silent. I wanna game a lot (play Crysis at max and everything else, I FINALLY wanna be able to play games at the highest settings instead of the lowest ones with my past crappy already built-in HP pavillon PC's). My PSU dilemma come from a lot of people who told me ''prock (what is that?), HDD and drive will take a lot of juice and only 500w won't be enought, get better or you will regret it''. Looking at the specs of my future PC, how can it not be enought? I mean, it's not like I will have 2-3 burners and 3 HDD's.

I also know absolutely nothing about mobos but I think that mobo got problems with 8800GT. Do you guys have any feedback on it?

What I want is a fast, silent, performing computer which will be able to play every games up to date as of right now! No more lag/slowdowns.

How does it look like?