The Official PC building thread -3rd Edition

Mr.eglian likes it he's a Army Guy!

 

Sorry a lot of my posts tend to be done in at as little time as possible and end up coming out odd as a result. To me the bandwidth of the PCI slots seemed to work the same although I will admit I didn't look into it that closely. For the record I would never use a different bios for MB unless I was ready to throw the board out if it didn't work. Thanks.

I use DHCP on my network and even after restarting the device it's usually assigned the same IP to the extent that it can be 6+ months before something changes. While how you do it probably saves time and energy in the end, I'm just too lazy to make the changes lol.

 

Big will, what have you done to that poor HAF! LOL! Naw, it doesn't look too bad. Not my style though

Sam, well then in my opinion, any router with at least 2 ethernet ports, is also a switch. Because I still don't understand how a router with only one ethernet port can BE a router. The super basic definition of a router, allows two or more computers to hither/intercommunicate, correct? I don't see that as being possible with only one ethernet port on a router, and PC. That allows 2 single devices to connect to one another. Then what LOL!

 

Rob,
The reviews I read on it seem to indicate that it's a decent enough PSU. I'm thinking a 550w myself, and I am going to give this antec a try.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371016
80%, Active PFC and Modular!

Russ

 

I also have been curious about the OCZ Fatal1ty PSUs. They can definitely make a good product if they have a good design to work with. I have a feeling it may be more of the same guts used in my StealthXStream 600W.

 

I'm new, willing to learn, listen, help. Probly don't have the intel like you guys, but i want to help people with computer problems from my local area, and make extra boocoos$

 

well listen in you'll get alot of information from this thread and different of opinions also from us on everything!

Welcome

 

I agree with bigwill68 all the small question i had have been answer.I may not help other much as i dont know much in computer myself but by searching this site i was able to build a computer that will play my games for less than 600$

 

Afterdawn is the shiznit FTW!

 

Since this is the PC building thread i will post my PC specs and use the good and bad to upgrade as needed overtime.Other people like me who don't know much about PC will be able to find info on a cheap,reliable, everyday use workstation.I do play games,an hour or 2 of modern warfare and an awful lot of burnout paradise and everything works fine at mid to high setting on modern warfare and same for burnout paradise.As for other games setting are left untouched and they still work fine no lag no freeze no PC crash.

I will not include the price of fan because they are easily found for dirt cheap unless you want fancy blue led like i have and even there all 5 of these fan have been bought on eBay for 3$ a piece and does the same job a blue led fan paid 15$ at future shop would do i know i tried the future shop one quit 2 months after purchase the one i got off ebay are still going strong

So here it is

The Motherboard:GA-P35-DS3L (Not bad specially when its your girlfriend that doesn't know anything about computer gets it for you as a Christmas present)Cost:120$cdn

The CPU:Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 3.0ghz Cost:found on eBay for 100$ free shipping (anything was better than that E2140 1.6ghz i used for 6 month)

CPU Heat-sink and fan:Cooler Master V8 with 120mm clear blue replacement fan Cost:115$cdn

Memory:4x 1gb Patriot Dual Channel PC6400 DDR2 Cost:190$cdn(when i say for under 600$ before these i had 4 stick of 1gb PC 5400 from the source i paid 20$ a stick,and i didn't really notice a big difference in performance except the patriot has heat shield and looks good)

The Video Card:Asus En9400Gt 1GB Cost:70$cdn

The hard drive:250gb seagate barracuda Cost:50$cdn off eBay free shipping 2yrs ago (it was bought as an upgrade for my xbox but didn't check the specs and got a sata drive,so for 2yrs i used it in my old pc with a sata to ide converter)this drive is storage purpose only the drive holding windows is a 100gb seagate barracuda which was given to me 5yrs ago sat in my xbox for all this time and is now sitting in my new computer.i love seagate never had a problem with their harddrive and will keep buying them.

The DVD-Drive:LG super multi lightsribe 22x rewriter Cost:35$cdn (i got lucky it was an open box deal at future shop marked at half price)

The power supply:500W cooler master Cost:50$

The Tower:Chieftec Dragon server tower Cost:free (The tower has been given to me by a friend for helping him move)

As for the fans i have 5 blue led 80mm and an a 5.25" drive bay hard drive cooler that has 3 40mm fan to keep it cool.

So if like me you have an extra tower laying around for 550$cdn no tax include you can build a pretty cheap computer that will last.Ive been using this setup for 6 month(yup the board sat in the closet in its box for almost 6 month but that's another story) the only thing that changed was the ram and the CPU and i will change other thing overtime.
Well this is my rig,critics are welcome because even bad critics are good critics

Peace Steeve

 

Steeve,
In general everything looks good, except the memory. First you would be better served with 2x2GB in two slots, than 4x1GB in all 4. Especially if you plan to overclock. Stability is usually a problem when trying to overclock with all 4 memory slots filled. Corsair Dominators work very well in Gigabyte motherboards and they are on the memory support list. You can get a matched set of 1066MHz PC8500 Dominators with timings of 5-5-5-15, for a lot less than the Patriot memory. If you are going to leave it at stock settings, you might as well have the faster 1066 memory to begin with. They may need to go in sockets 3 and 4 because they are tall, and might interfere with the CPU cooling fan, I do it with mine and it's no problem.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145214
I don't know if Newegg sells in Canada, but they are available at a good price from them. G.Skill would also be another good choice, but stay with the 1066MHz memory.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231246
Those would be my two choices for myself.

Welcome to AD,
Russ

 

WOW i know someone who has that CPU and paid almost 3x that.....lol


seriously now.
for your budget id say you did a pretty good job. im with Russ you could do better on the memory, myself i would try the G-skill mem on that gigabyte board. from what i have found from personaly trial and error the G-Skill work better than the dominators.yes i know i will be beat up for that comment but like i said its from my personal expereinces with both sets of mem. ive had 2 different sets of dominators and neither impressed me. and the g-skill has allowed me to get over 4.0ghz on my OCing. here is a link to both of them.plus the G-skill is about $30 cheaper.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...mpareItemList=N82E16820231166,N82E16820145214

 

Here ya go......

Antec Truepower TP-750 Blue

$94.99 delivered with promo code: EMCYNYN52 and $25 MIR

 

Excellent board. Was using one in my main rig for a while. Overclocks good, durable, and well designed. One of the best series ever made.

Good deal. Relatively fast dual core. You can overclock it too pretty easily with your board. No reason not to.

Good RAM. But like others have mentioned you would get better performance and overclocking out of 2 x 2GB.

This would be the first thing I'd upgrade on your rig. Especially with newer games coming out. A Radeon 4670 can be had for pretty cheap and will blow that card away.

Seagate makes good drives. I would recommend a newer, faster one though for running your OS. Any other drive is fine for storage.

DVD Drive - Eh Whatever works I say

If it's the unit I'm thinking of it's probably solid. If it works for you stick with it but if you're ever in the market for a new one an OCZ StealthXStream 600W or Corsair 450VX can be had for cheap and will have more connectors, more stable power etc. Consider a new one if you make any major upgrades.

Ouch the case is a bit dated as are 80mm fans. A Cooler Master Centurion 5 can be had for ultra cheap(<$60 US) and will cool better with just 2 120mm fans. Also it will be worlds quieter.

All in all though it is a solid rig. I definitely understand what working with a budget is like and I'd say you did pretty well for yourself. Just consider the suggestions I and others have made. For not much money at all that can be taken from a "solid" rig to an "above average" rig.

 

Not seen a noise review of the OCZ Fatal1ty. All I can say is that any LED fan PSU will likely be noisy (on the basis that there has yet to be one quiet LED fan PSU made). With regard to the electrical quality I can't be sure either way. Suffice to say if you wanted red LEDs that much, I'd try and retrofit a red LED fan to a Corsair VX 550W unit. Still wouldn't be quiet, but it would be red LEDs in a guaranteed solid unit.
Will: An interesting case mod, not seen it before. I personally think it's ghastly. I actually think the white finish (from the splotches, not the grey overall) on its own is quite nice, ignoring the grey and rhe black splodges. The red coolermaster badge looks kind of tacky but with the front red LED fan I can kind of see why they've done it. The window system is odd, I'm not sure whether to like or dislike it. The lack of a window in the main section of the HAF was a disappointment when I first bought it, but now having fitted four 120m fans instead of the stock 230x190, it's immediately apparent why there isn't one, there's no point! The fans occupy all the potential space anyway.

Omega: "Sam, well then in my opinion, any router with at least 2 ethernet ports, is also a switch" - correct.
The tricky thing with the one-port modems is that they are routers, just routers without switches. Remember that a switch has absolutely no effect on the control of a network, I suppose it's a bit like an analog audio splitter cable, it has no effect on the sound that comes out, it's just sending it in multiple directions. A switch does still 'think', since unlike a hub it only sends the data coming in to the IP address it is meant for. A hub sends anything coming in on one port out all the other ports regardless, slowing down the network substantially.
You can also buy managed switches which do have interfaces on them, allowing you to monitor dataflow from individual systems. These, however, are very expensive and utterly unnecessary for all but proper system admins and networking geeks/showoffs
Moving back to the reason why a single-port modem can still be a router, is the software on it. Within my single-port modem, the AM200:

The ethernet connection effectively goes straight into a switch (it goes into a router first, but into the LAN port, not the WAN port, so the router does not do anything to the internet connection, it simply attaches a wireless signal broadcast to the rest of the switch), thus every PC on the network has internet access, fair enough (and since switches always work two way, anyone who connects wirelessly to the router can not only use the internet, but also the network of the other PCs as well).
The software on this modem, though basic, does allow firewalling, UPnP and port forwarding. We have control over the internet connection on a per-IP basis, so any particular computer can be given special access through a program should UPnP be disabled, or not working for that particular program. That is what a router can do. A "dumb" modem can not, since it merely converts the incoming DSL data into a digital datastream a PC can recognise, nothing more (Modems like this are typically USB only so they aren't confused with proper modems).
Thus, all we have done is split a modem router's three component parts into three separate devices, rather than one big box, as you see in a standard modem router. The modem part, the wireless part, and the switch part.

Russ: The advantage of 550W is that it is where most PSU brands begin to offer PCIe power connectors. This is true of Corsair (in the US at least) and several other brands. What's handy about the Nexus unit I use is that even though it's only 430W it's still got two connectors. Of course, the downside is that it still costs as much as a 550W unit, and isn't modular, but that to me was worth paying for a PSU you'll never hear

Parish: Welcome to the thread, we all started somewhere, myself just like you did here. Six years at aD have treated me quite well

Whysper: An interesting build. Far be it for me to criticise it since you're using it, rather than thinking of building one, but I wouldn't have thrown away $115 on such a monsterof a cooler when running just a dual core. Even the stock cooler for the E6850 would handle it when overclocked up to a reasonably high clock speed. The 9400GT is probably the main weak point of the system, the rest is pretty solid. That'd be my first upgrade when the time comes.

Greensman: Quite a reasonable deal. Of course, given the choice, I would be voting for this one:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139010
Want 8 S-ATA connectors? Try Twelve lmao. Eventually Will will probably want even more connectors - an extra $20 doesn't seem much to pay for that
On the other hand, even the 650W version comes with 9 S-ATAs, and costs $120 before the $10 rebate. Granted, maybe no promo code though.

Jeff: Looks like we agree on the graphics issue The Chieftec dragon case is old, but not bad. It's got plenty of room to work with if it's the full tower version, and although it won't be quiet, five 80mm fans can take care of cooling for midrange parts reasonably well enough.

 

Well he asked for some criticism
There's nothing that really needs to be changed except the video card.

 

I'm of that opinion as well. The CPU cooler may have been overkill, but it's a good cooler, so there's no reason to change it now it's there. The CPU, while no longer a top-end performer still has quite a reasonable amount of per-core performance, enough to compete with most of the $100 or less CPUs out there today, and for midrange gaming purposes, per-core performance is typically still the most important.

 

Wow so all in all its a decent computer im happy with it. working on a budget suck monkeys butt but like i said i plan on upgrading overtime which mean the CPU will eventually be a quad,ive been looking to get the OCZ platinum 4gb kit.i am not an extreme gamer and do not plan on overclocking.The reason i went cheap on the video card is because im lazy lol future shop is too far from my and the local computer shop is almost beside my house and since the p35-ds3l has no onboard video i needed something quick and cheap.as for the CM V8 heatsink for a while i was looking at the V10 but then decided to go with V8 i was afraid the V10 would of been too big and as for the tower sorry but free is free. I do intend on buying newer but im not sure on what just yet the bigger the better.

Thx for the critics guys now i am more sure on what to do with my pc starting with the video card like.I said im no extreme gamer and i do not intend on killing my pc by trying to overclock.

Peace Steeve

 

Well it's just as well you did get a board with no integrated video then, if you were thinking of using onboard graphics for games. The 9400GT may not do that well, but you wouldn't be able to play the games you do at all on integrated graphics without disgusting minimal graphics settings and some pretty severe lag.
You should really order parts online, it's much easier (and cheaper) than going to a PC shop if it's any distance away.
A big cooler really isn't that necessary for a dual core CPU at all, but for an upcoming quad core it will prove useful. That said, if you're not overclocking, it's still a waste, as even if you didn't keep the stock cooler, a $30 CPU cooler a quarter of the size of the V8 would be more than sufficient.

 

Agreed, i may have gone overboard with some stuff but the quad-core cpu is coming sooner than i think as my game collection is getting bigger and demands more performance out of the pc.As for the board i did not pick it,it was a christmas present from the girlfriend who has no clue about computer and for some weird reason i have a weak spot for aesthetic i buy according to review and the looks so if the review are good and its going to look good in my pc chances are ill buy it.

I buy most of my stuff on ebay,tigerdirect.ca and somebody mention if newegg sell in canada,well they do i bought some stuff off the canadian site