The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

It does indeed use krones, but my money is currently in Euro, and my brain is still wired to that.
Also it's more like 4400kr :/ Assuming I get my parents to give me an exchange rate of 8 and not 7.5, which is the actual one. (yeah I'm 16)
But seriously thank you for your help, I'll look into that right away!

EDIT: Ok, I'll have to cut out a few parts a bit, since else it won't fit.
I have decided to ignore the DVD Drive since I a) have an external one and b) my games are currently on steam and I don't use the DVD drive for much else anyway.
Then I decided to cut the RAM down to 4GB, opting for https://www.amentio.no/amentio/default.asp?page=vare&ProdusentID=CMZ4GX3M1A1600C9 instead.
It won't be amazing, but I can still play games with it, right? Also please tell me if there's something wrong with the ones I choose.

Then maybe I should trim the 1TB to 500GB, since I'll also have to still get a mouse and keyboard.
I could also wait a while, but with only 5€ (40kr) pocket money a week it will take longer than I'd like to, although in 3 months I could afford it.

 

Nothing wrong with those coices. But I think better to wait and get the good stuff. You only do the major purchase once, do it right. I joined Afterdawn when I was 15 back in 2006. The PC I built paled in comparison to that one. We all started somewhere

 

4GB will work, but no less. It's not exactly an issue yet, but you may find for more demanding games you'll need to close your web browser before playing if you keep lots of tabs open like I do. 500GB is as small as you should ever go with hard disks as there's no real cost saving to go any lower than that. As long as you're confident it's not going to be too tight for space, 500GB you can get away with.

 

Ok, I know this isn't exactly your area of expertise, but I have 2 questions I'd need the answer to.
First, do you have any idea if the products of the site you linked me to are send from inside Norway? Because I know there are some insane taxations on stuff that get's in from the outside, and I'd rather not find out I have to pay another few thousand krones I don't have.

Second, do you think I get an invoice with online shopping? I thought yes, but my mom says we might only get a bill, which would not include necessary information about the taxes paid. Usually that wouldn't be a problem but because of reasons it would be in this case.
Also I'm not sure if in english the distinction between the word "bill" and "invoice" is the same as "ricevuta" and "fattura", so I'm not sure if what I just said made sense to you.
(I would check on the site but I don't speak norwegian yet :|)

 

i3 isn't going to cut the mustard, if you are going to use Intel at least get a 3rd gen i5 or better, yes that is more money... Video card would be fine you could always upgrade later when money is better and they fall in price. Otherwise I would totally go with Sam's setup.

If you were to consider pre-built don't buy HP, they are crap software wise as well as hardware these days.

It looks like that is in Norway and you would have to add VAT tax. They should give you an invoice but to make sure request one.

 

A Core i3 CPU is fine for a relatively low-end machine given its price. On that sort of a budget you aren't likely to do any better. Of course, an i5 would be preferable, but really isn't justifiable on that sort of system as you'd have to compromise too much in other areas.

In this example you can see that the Core i3 2100 series does fairly well alongside lots of other more expensive CPUs, and certainly delivers an acceptable experience.

HP machines aren't too bad in the grand scheme of things prebuild-wise as they are at least partially customisable, whereas Dells really are completely bespoke apart from the disk drives. That said, I would say Dells are perhaps slightly better made. All prebuilt machines come with a load of useless junk out of the box these days, though HP's is particularly bad I'll admit.

That's a norwegian site, but all I did was grab a list of sites from searching for 'pc components norway' and a useful forum thread came up detailing half a dozen or so sites.

 

I would go with the i5 or higher and it is justifiable. Even from Sam's benchmarks you can see the i5 is considerably stronger if you judge it from performance levels of each stronger platform.

If you're going to play Skyrim there will be other games like that you'll want to play down the road and you'll find the i3 won't live up to your standards, so go to the middle of the Intel pack. Why do I know this? I've had plenty of friends and foes that where in your exact position and 9 out of 10 times it became a problem and they upgraded to a better processor or with laptops were screwed and had to buy a new system.

I would never put a 16 year old in a weak or bottom of the barrel system, personally speaking, it never works out. Wisdom goes a long way...

 

Yet another benchmark where the Phenom II X6's performance is not fairly represented at all. My CPU performs excellently in Splinter Cell blacklist. Certainly nowhere near what is shown there, overclock taken into account. I really don't believe Bulldozer is that much faster in the game, if faster at all.

 

That's the problem Jeff with bench marks and even specs for anything, they may not be accurate or tell the whole story. Too often they are misused and misrepresented. But they are a great MARKETING tool if you know what I mean....

I can't speak for new games and Intel vs. AMD and if there is a real noticeable difference, since I'm not doing any heavy gaming for the most part with PC's, but in the business world and and encoding I can.

 

Why does it never work out?
Anyway I'd like to buy an i5, but my budget is really limited and I'm cutting where I can even with an i3.
Too bad I can't overclock it...

 

Guys really, the i5 3450 (cheapest contemporary i5) is 1500K - adding almost 15% to his budget.
It's double the CPU, so to you and me it's worth the money, but on a build with this total budget, it doesn't really make sense.

For balance, here are some other graphs of recent titles:

 

OK if the budget is so limited then don't even bother with Intel and smart up, go with an AMD solution and get more power for the money. It's simple!

Because you'll not be happy with your choice, the computer will run slow and you'll have wished that you got something more powerful for your money.

I've been doing this much longer then most and have more then plenty of experience in these exact situations. Unfortunately you may jump into something weak and think it will be just fine for you but, I guaranty you will probably regret that decision if you do.

Experience, I've built thousands & thousands of PC's, MAC's, and Servers... for commercial use as well as personal.

Stevo

 

I'll mention that the AMD boards being used in the benchmarks Sam is showing are very outdated and are severely limiting the Phenom II's. A proper 990X board with DDR3 would make a difference. There are performance advantages on the newer boards. Part of the reason why I've been considering a 990. I'm still on 790 as well, though vastly updated. There are OCing advantages too, including cooler running Thubans that require less voltage.

 

Hmm, I'm sure they had a 990 board, will do some further reading on that one, because you're right, it would make a difference.

 

Well they had to have a 990 for the Piledrivers and Bulldozers as anything older doesn't support them, so it might be what they are using for everything. Please do find out because it makes a drastic difference in my experience.

 

Yeah it turns out they're only using the 990 for FX series CPUs and the 785 for the Phenom IIs which explains the greater performance differences. From a testing standpoint though, a machine built with a P II would have had a board like that in at the time, so I can see why they do it - it makes comparisons between Phenoms and FX series CPUs inaccurate but we already know what the relationship there is anyway.

 

Would there be any specific amd cpu and motherboard you would recommend me for about the same price?

 

The most popular boards are the Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 for entry level plus the Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5 & Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD7 for more featured systems. For you the UD3 would be plenty fine and with a good AMD CPU you shouldn't have any regrets. If you were and intermediate or advanced builder then you might consider the UD5 or UD7, I have the UD7.

There are cheaper boards that you could use as well so if this doesn't fit your budget one of us could steer you in another direction.

If you are possibly going to transcode movies and TV series you should consider a quad core processor or higher as it will speed up you ripping extremely. Again we can help you with that too. For this situation the AMD FX-8350 8-Core AM3+ CPU would be perfect but if you want to save money or stay within your budget any Bulldozer quad core would be fine too.

Other places to save money and expand you system later when you have more money is to buy (1) 8GB RAM module instead of two 4GB RAM sticks. Or with the mainboard above you could buy just (1) 4GB sticks and fill the other (3) memory slots later as well. One issue with doing this is to make sure you get the same sticks when upgrading your RAM memory.

@Jeff
I agree with Sam's conclusion on the bechmark results and different MB's and fore sure motherboards make a difference with performance, it can be subtle or extreme depending.

Hope that helps you skydreamer,
Stevo

 

FX-4300 then? It's within budget I imagine, and you do at least get the benefits of the Piledriver architecture.

 

Nothing really all that wrong with Piledriver. Solid CPU regardless of my issues with it.