The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

I would build your movie PC starting with the AMD FX-8350 Eight-Core Processor Black Edition AM3+ FD8350FRHKBOX. Then you should look at getting 16GB's of RAM, 8GB would be OK, G.Skill would be a good choice. I would look at a GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD7 if you want high-end but the UD3 or UD5 version would work well too. I would go with a LG or Pioneer Blu-ray burner, I think LG would be the better choice but both are good. A nice video card might be the SAPPHIRE 100355OCL Radeon HD 7850 2GB but if you are only going to use your PC for video rips you don't have to get crazy. Power Supply and case will depend on how many hard drives you want internally and more so your own personal taste.

I would look at these choices and then come back with more questions.

Hope that helps,
Stevo

 

Hi Bryan,

The first bit of advice I can give you is to avoid IBuyPower. They may seem useful on the outside for arriving as a pre-built unit that includes 'gamer' spec components rather than the dreary things you see on the Dell/HP website, but the downside of that is they use the cheapest quality components they can find (say what you like about Dell/HP etc, but they don't do that), and that causes pretty serious issues.

If backing up blurays to disc is the PC's only function, you can forget about needing an external graphics card at all, as playback will be perfectly suitable from an onboard video solution. If you're exclusively going to be video encoding using x264, performance per dollar you're going to do about 20% better with AMD, so the FX-8350 isn't a bad choice. I don't honestly think you need a high-end board with it for your purposes, so a Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 will be fine. 8GB RAM should be sufficient, but don't go any lower than that.

 

Thanks guys, I'm going to price that stuff on Newegg and see how much it would run me, I dont know if the rips will be the only thing i am going to end up doing on it. It is just the only thing RIGHT now ..So i will probably get a high end video card just so i wont have to update next year.

 

If you're not using it until next year, I'd wait until then as there will have been something that supersedes it by that point.

Just remembered the FX CPUs don't have an onboard video adapter though (am too used to specifying Intel boards where they basically all do!) - so you may as well drop in a basic card like an HD6450 until you upgrade.

 

I'll argue that HP have a rather bad habit of matching powerful hardware to horrible PSUs... Dell on the other hand is usually pretty good quality. They have continued to improve in strides.

Have seen whole series of failed Dells, but we're talking in an office that employed the use of some 300 LGA775 Dell Optiplexes. Almost every single one with blown capacitors behind the CPU socket. As far as I remember, this wasn't Dell's fault but a fault of the cap manufacturer.

As far as the build in question, I think it would be better to start simple. No need especially for the UD5 and UD7 boards unless overclocking, as that's the only practical reason to purchase the higher end boards(apart from small details). The UD3 is absolutely overkill for a stock processor.

Also have to agree that a video card as powerful as a 7850 really isn't needed unless gaming. A lower-end card would be overkill as well and still game quite decently for the most part.

As for CPU, the 4GHz Vishera FX8350 should more than suffice. Really decent chips. Not much to complain about there.

AMD's higher-end chips and their prices/TDPs are a joke. The FX9s are basically throwaways considering the FX8350 can easily reach those speeds for about 1/4 the price... Considering a Vishera 8350 if I can snag a new motherboard... their clockspeeds alone make them fairly decent CPUs and finally faster than my 3.8GHz X6...

 

I'd agree that HP are known to use some moderately questionable hardware (Asus motherboards, Liteon PSUs etc.) but the systems as a whole are certainly far more robust than the likes of IBuyPower, which typically last either weeks or at best, months.

Dell on the other hand build stuff very solidly, but to their own quirky designs. They break stuff with BIOS updates etc. and aren't necessarily as easy to deploy in a business deployment environment as seemingly identical machines can have minor variations.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't 8GB still ample memory for 90% of users? I do a fair bit of multitasking and other intensive stuff and have yet to approach my memory limit in that regard. I'm sure some do it regularly, but I just don't see it for playing, ripping and burning BluRays...

 

It is - I struggle to break 8GB unless I really work at it - you really need to be running virtual machines or sever-grade applications like MS Exchange to be using more than that amount of memory.

With two remote desktop sessions, 10-20 windows explorer windows, 5/6 excel spreadsheets, the usual stuff in the background like Skype, and 70-80 chrome tabs, I find I max out around 7GB most of the time.

I see imageshack have taken down my signature image - not bad, lasted just under 5 years

 

I host my sig image at Tinypic and that one has been there for roughly 5 years as well I find imageshack to be rather unreliable for long-term unless you have an established account. Anonymous images disappear eventually.

The only major memory hog I currently have is Firefox. With 10-20 tabs open it usually hovers at just over 1GB of usage. Larger amounts of tabs will cause it to develop a memory leak, but not severe enough to affect anything. Usually approaches some 2GB after extended sessions. I would take the unnoticeable memory leak over Chrome's lack of features any day. I don't like how Chrome handles many things, and find it to be a nuisance. Not a bad browser, I just don't like it after multiple attempts at using it long-term.

Only a very few games are affected by having over 4GB of memory at all. Crysis is one of those as well as Supreme Commander, Wargame, and Sins of a Solar Empire. None of those games actually use that much, but their performance is improved by having 8GB. Being LAA(Large Address Aware), they use up to 3GB of RAM which doesn't leave a lot of room for Windows and everything else. 8GB gives a VERY healthy amount of buffer room.

I have touched 8GB running multiple VMs. Particularly running games on an XP VM plus having several Firefox windows open with multiple tabs and a few RAR files being used here and there will do it. But for daily use? I don't believe it ever uses even half of that.

 

I think both HP and Dell are junk and I've seen both use poor quality parts in their systems. The only plus to both of them is their support for Business systems, only, home users are screwed.

I use to love both HP and Dell but will not buy either until they get better or unless they are giving something away.

If you were using Photoshop and some other programs alike you may see the memory max out faster. It all depends on what you do and how poorly the programs you use handle memory i.e., Adobe products.

 

I used to max out 4gb rather easily. So 8Gb was pretty necessary. I have not reached the 8Gb ceiling. And I've been known to run Adobe photoshop open for days, along side Chrome, and other apps. I haven't used Firefox in an age. Chrome is so much smoother, I see no reason to go back. I do appreciate where you're coming from though, Jeff

 

I stopped using firefox at 3.5 and have never looked back since. Right now, going back to a browser that relies on a single process instance is like going back to the IE days.

 

If I'm going to use either Firefox or Chrome I always use one of their alternatives for security or performance reasons. Firefox --> SeaMonkey -or- Chrome --> Iron Browser

 

maxthon, is quite a good browser, currently using that

 

I also use Maxthon, and the main reason is they always use a new tab in all cases. The bad is Roboform is no longer supported in the latest release, so I have to use IE to fill forms.

 

If I'm going to use Chrome, I prefer to use Comodo's "Comodo Dragon". Essentially Chrome without near the amount of user tracking and all the anonymous usage statistics removed. It also has the option of routing everything through Comodo's own secure DNS servers, though this does slow it down quite a bit and I prefer it turned off. Just a slightly more secure and private way to do things. Again, I have quarrels with Chrome's other design aspects. I find it to be unintuitive to use.

I use NoScript, AdBlock Plus and Flashblock to keep things relatively lightweight and snappy when browsing.

 

Other than "NoScript" we're on the same page Though I may have to check out Comodo Dragon.

 

Read my edit, I include a bit more info.

Comodo Dragon is quite good, though I'm currently not sure about its addon support.

 

Pretty simple here, I just use chrome with AdBlock Plus and that's it. Firefox is the 'second session browser' used for certain things only where I want a second account signed in, and for the FlashGot extension which is very handy for capturing streaming embedded video that isn't youtube (as I have a separate application for the latter).

On the whole though, in stock builds I generally find Firefox a poorer browsing experience than Chrome.

 

That is something that is much more of a personal taste issue Sam. I love Firefox and couldn't imagine being without it. Only during the early release of 3.5 did I ever mave a major issue. It had rather bad stability which has been fixed nicely with the latest patches. Haven't had a problem with in in a long time.