HELP A GIRL OUT!!! 1st build questions Please comment

[HotStuff88]

Hello all. :lol: My brother and I have been playing on an old Dell for the past few years and decided it was time to put our money together and upgrade to a new computer. We both decided that it would be fun to build our own computer because we need a little more performance than a retail one has to offer. I am a film major so i do a ton of video editing/encoding and my brother is into games. We have a budget of around $1500. But we dont need any optical drives/speakers/mouse/or keyboard. After looking around a lot on these forums we got an idea of what we want but i myself, being the older more mature person want to get some imput on what is best. If it were up to my brother that $1500 would have been gone a long time ago. So lets get started.

CPU- Core 2 Duo E6600: Seems to be the best price/performance option. Most likely will be overclocked.

Motherboard- Was looking at the ASUS P5W deluxe but am open for suggestions. I like all the features this one has. But i did notice that they had 2 different versions of this one. One wit ha P965 chipset and one with 975X. Whats the difference.

Memory- 2 GB is a must for the video work i do. At school we have 1GB of memory and even that struggles sometimes. Corsair seems to be one of the most popular for the asus motherboards. Now we might venture into overclocking this computer so i was thinking DDR2- 800. But i'm not sure exactly which one i want. There are so many choices.

Video card- In order to stay with in the budget i was going to go with a 7600GT. The games my brother does play arent too intensive so we dont need anything too great. But once again i saw there are some may different versions of the 7600GT. Which one is the best option.

PSU- I have no idea. Any comment would be appreciated.

Case- Once again no idea. Something with good air flow. And an easy layout.

Heatsink/Fan- The stock one might due for a while but i think we will venture into overclocking it eventually so i want to be ready. The Zalman CNPS9500 seems to be sufficient but i saw some reviews complaning of the bottom of it not being flat so it dosent sit flush on the cpu. If this is true what else would be a good choice.

Hard Drive- I'll probably just pick up a SATA Hard drive at a local computor store. And some goes for the Monitor.


Any suggestion would help out a lot seeing as i am really new to building a computer but after working with them for so long i do know quite a bit about the innerworkings of them.

Thanks a lot guys.

 

[Comp98]

Okay.....here's where I see potential problems. I work at a video production company in the philadelphia area. We do alot of work using Final Cut Pro and an Avid system. My concern comes from the fact that you didn't specify which video editing programs you use.

Final Cut is Mac only btw and costs close to $300 with a student discount and thats te only program I could see a film major student editing on nowadays. Letting us know what programs you want to use with this system and I think we can help a bit more.

 

[shadowduck]

Okay.....here's where I see potential problems. I work at a video production company in the philadelphia area. We do alot of work using Final Cut Pro and an Avid system. My concern comes from the fact that you didn't specify which video editing programs you use.

Final Cut is Mac only btw and costs close to $300 with a student discount and thats te only program I could see a film major student editing on nowadays. Letting us know what programs you want to use with this system and I think we can help a bit more.

I agree... Final Cut Pro OWNS the market, and it will only run on OS X and Apple hardware. So you might want to make sure the software you are using works first.

 

[Dante_Jose_Cuervo]

HotStuff88
PostPosted: Tue Sep 19, 2006 12:08 pm Post subject: HELP A GIRL OUT!!! 1st build questions Please comment
Hello all. Laughing My brother and I have been playing on an old Dell for the past few years and decided it was time to put our money together and upgrade to a new computer. We both decided that it would be fun to build our own computer because we need a little more performance than a retail one has to offer. I am a film major so i do a ton of video editing/encoding and my brother is into games. We have a budget of around $1500. But we dont need any optical drives/speakers/mouse/or keyboard. After looking around a lot on these forums we got an idea of what we want but i myself, being the older more mature person want to get some imput on what is best. If it were up to my brother that $1500 would have been gone a long time ago. So lets get started.

CPU- Core 2 Duo E6600: Seems to be the best price/performance option. Most likely will be overclocked.

Motherboard- Was looking at the ASUS P5W deluxe but am open for suggestions. I like all the features this one has. But i did notice that they had 2 different versions of this one. One wit ha P965 chipset and one with 975X. Whats the difference.

Memory- 2 GB is a must for the video work i do. At school we have 1GB of memory and even that struggles sometimes. Corsair seems to be one of the most popular for the asus motherboards. Now we might venture into overclocking this computer so i was thinking DDR2- 800. But i'm not sure exactly which one i want. There are so many choices.

Video card- In order to stay with in the budget i was going to go with a 7600GT. The games my brother does play arent too intensive so we dont need anything too great. But once again i saw there are some may different versions of the 7600GT. Which one is the best option.

PSU- I have no idea. Any comment would be appreciated.

Case- Once again no idea. Something with good air flow. And an easy layout.

Heatsink/Fan- The stock one might due for a while but i think we will venture into overclocking it eventually so i want to be ready. The Zalman CNPS9500 seems to be sufficient but i saw some reviews complaning of the bottom of it not being flat so it dosent sit flush on the cpu. If this is true what else would be a good choice.

Hard Drive- I'll probably just pick up a SATA Hard drive at a local computor store. And some goes for the Monitor.


Any suggestion would help out a lot seeing as i am really new to building a computer but after working with them for so long i do know quite a bit about the innerworkings of them.

Thanks a lot guys.

Ok... well I'm going to just forego the whole software compatibility thing that the other two have brought up and give you my opinion on this rig.

Overall I think it's pretty kick@$$ For the case I'd maybe get an antec case if the budget allows for it. As for the PSU maybe look at something from... well I can't think of anything right now... oh yeah check out an antec PSU. They're nothing compared to PC P+P but they'll fit the budget. Um.. corsair memory is pretty good overall. I' havne't heard any problems about kingston though so you could check that out too. Valueram would be your best bet simply because anything more is overkill, same performance for less. If I was too vague or anything just let me know! Good luck with this rig.

 

[phreejak]

SeaSonic S12-500 ATX12V 500W Power Supply ($129)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817151024
dual 12v rail with good amps (17, 16 amps), excellent rep, Active PFC

SILVERSTONE SST-ST50EF ATX12V 500W ($89)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817256001
dual 12v rails, strong amps (18 per rail), excellent rep, Active PFC

Thermaltake W0057RU-01 PurePower TWV ATX 12V 2.0 500W ($129)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817153031
dual 12v rail with good amps (18 amps per rail), excellent rep, Active PFC

ENERMAX Liberty ELT500AWT ATX12V 500W ($110)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817194003
dual 12v rail with STRONG amps (22amps per rail), excellent rep, Active PFC

XCLIO X14S4P3 500W ATX 500W ($95)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817189012
triple 12v rails (18, 18, 16 amps), modular, Active PFC, Good Rep

ENERMAX Noisetaker II EG495P-VE ATX12V 485W ($90)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817194009
dual 12v rails, strong amps (22 per rail), excellent rep, Active PFC

FSP Group (Fortron Source) AX500-A, 2.0 version, 2 SATA, PCI Express, 500W ($85)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817104934
dual 12v rails, amps are ok (15 amps per rail), excellent rep, Passive PFC

 

[grant_77]

Hey,

I would recommend saving some money and go with the E6400. If your going on aircooling the Allendale generates alot less heat because it has less transistors due to the 2mb cache. If your going with watercooling the e6400 is your best bet. Since the thermal limits with your heat sink will probably top out around 3.4 like mine or 3.6 ghz if you up the voltage alot watercooling can get very expensive. $500 for a thermaltake watercooling setup.

Go with the Gigabyte ds3 or ds6. The solid state capacitors are the way of the future and the mb offer extreme and easy overclocking. 965 is a newer chipset.

Id recommend ocz or corsair 6400 - 800 mhz ram... best bang for your buck with lots of overvoltage headroom.

With the money you are going to save with the e6400 and since your into games and editing go with a 7900 gt, consider even buying a zalman vf700 cooling system so you can overclock it. If you read some overclocking reviews you can get the 7900 gt to 7900 gtx speeds for free! Youll get more than 2x the graphic processing. Which is way better than a 200-400 mhz increase youll get with the e6600 and watercooling.

Id go with a 550-600 watt ps, thermaltakes got some good quiet ones. This will allow you to drop in some harddrives later, or a more powerful double video card if you ever needed it like the 7950 gx2, or if ever an 8950 gx2 came out.

The blue orb I have works very well. I think if you paired it with ther thermaltake va8003bws is an awesome setup with a 25cm fan cooling your motherboard, video card, and a large cpu cooler. http://thermaltakeusa.com/product/Chassis/fulltower/armor/va8003bws.asp
Ive heard the zalman 9500 is good too, all copper.

Samsung 920 n is not bad, 8ms, cheap!!! or something with a 4 ms for games.

Any more help you can find lots of articles on the net.

 

[doolittle]

Well your power consumption is rather low, thanks to conroe + nvidia

eXtreme PSU calc[/url]"]System Type: Single Processor
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 2400 MHz Conroe
CPU Utilization (TDP): 100% TDP

RAM: 2 Sticks DDR2 SDRAM
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT
Video Type: Single Card

SATA HDD: 1 HDD

DVD-RW/DVD+RW Drive: 1 Drive

Sound Blaster - All Models: Yes

Fans
Regular: 1 Fan 80mm; 1 Fan 120mm;

Motherboard, keyboard and mouse: Yes

PSU Utilization: 100 %

Total: 227 Watts

© 2004 - 2006 OuterVision.com and it's licensors. All rights reserved.

And the +12 demand follows the same path:

cpu - 65w (5.4A)
gpu - 57w (4.75A)
hdd - 13w (1.1A)
dvdrw - 25w (2.1A)
fans - 7w (0.6A)

14A total max +12v current draw, which is high since the 7600gt has been measured at 36w (3A) and the conroe E6600 tops out at 52w (4.3A) so a more realistic +12v current max would be around 11A without overclocking.

My choices would be:

SPARKLE ATX-400PN-B204 ATX 12V 2.0 400W $42 shipped @ ewiz
(29A max on the +12v, high quality components - like all FSP/SPI units - without the high price)

or maybe one of these depending on upgradeability / budget

Antec TP-II 480 480W $71 shipped @ techparadise

Antec TPII-550 ATX12V 550W $85 shipped @ chiefvalue
(everyone seems to love this one, have used it on my last 5 builds)

OCZ Gold 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) $240 shipped @ newegg (w/ 25 MIR)
(if you are going to OC this should help, this is priced at DDR2-667 level w/ the MIR)

BFG Tech Geforce 7600GT 256MB $150 shipped @ newegg (w/ $30 MIR)
(dual DVI, you want this)

COOLER MASTER Centurion 5 CAC-T05-UW, $60 shipped from either chiefvalue or monarch
(it is a high-quality, low cost case with very quiet effective cooling)

Looks like a nice build...

 

[gpfear]

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=140122


$110 free shipping $20 rebate makes it $90

Looks like the case for my next build

 

[HotStuff88]

Wow thanks for all the great info. I will go through all the different options you great guys have posted. This definitly helps out.

One more thing. As we will most likely be venturing into overclocking this pc I think better cooling might be in need. The Zalman CNPS9500 seems to be a good choice but i read a few reviews saying that the bottom of it ws not flat, so it didnt sit flush with the cpu causing heat problem. Is this a real issue and if so what other good choices to i have for cooling. Besides watercooling, that may be a little overboard for this.

Thanks a lot

 

[doolittle]

the Scythe SCNJ-1000 "ninja" is a bit cheaper at $45 shipped, and it has been reported to perform better than the zalman. It is near silent w/ the 120mm fan and looks easier to replace if it ever went bad. Definitly worth considering.

 

[HotStuff88]

The Scythe looks but i would definitly fell better if there was a fan on there. Do you just put any fan on there or do you have to buy a special one. And as for the thermatake one the link is dead. I originally liked the zalman because i heard good things about it and thought it looked pretty unique. Has anyone ever had aproblem with the zalman's bottom being not flat?

 

[doolittle]

Any 120mm x 25mm fan should work with the included clips, I used a SILVERSTONE FM121 in hopes it will last forever since it's dual ball-bearing.

One of my coworkers recently had used the CNPS9500 in his PD950 build a few months back, he didn't have any complaints about it and says it does a great job of keeping the pentium-d under control.

I'm getting paraniod now I'm going to have to test blot all my heatsinks now with some thermal paste and a mirror from now on

 

[jaguarskx]

the Scythe SCNJ-1000 "ninja" is a bit cheaper at $45 shipped, and it has been reported to perform better than the zalman. It is near silent w/ the 120mm fan and looks easier to replace if it ever went bad. Definitly worth considering.

The link you provided is to the fanless version of the Scythe Ninja. Here's the link to the Scythe Ninja with the fan; a.k.a. "Scythe Ninja Plus":

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16835185001

Note: All/most e-tailers are currenty out of stock. Scythe has temporarily stopped shipping this HSF because "revision B" will be coming out that will also be compatible with socket AM2.

 

[HotStuff88]

Go with the Gigabyte ds3 or ds6. The solid state capacitors are the way of the future and the mb offer extreme and easy overclocking. 965 is a newer chipset

I have narrowed it down between the ASUS P5B Deluxe and the GIGABYTE GA-965P-DQ6. Both are around the same price. Which board is easiest for overclocking. Or like the quote says does the gigabye have some seroius advantage over the ASUS.

Or should i just do with the cheaper versions of these boards. The ASUS P5B and GIGABYTE GA-965P-DS3. I did like the features of the higher end ones but is there any huge difference to really sway me. Is the higer end one better for overclocking?

Thanks for the info

 

[Datablitz]

I don't know why i've never seen this Sunbeam PSU being recommended and it is a fantastic PSU:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817709001
or it's 550W sibling:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817709003

Active PFC and modular design, 2 Fans, really quiet and stable.

 

[HotStuff88]

That is a pretty good price for a psu. i'll make sure and thow that in as a possible choice.

can anyone comment on my earlier post on the motherboard options.

thanks a lot

 

[HotStuff88]

Can anyone comment on my earlier post about the motherboards. Its the only thing i'm still contimplating over. I'll post my complete build up list so others can get some ideas too once i pick a motherboard.


thanks a lot

 

[Eurasianman]

ASUS P5W DH Deluxe

If you google it, it's considered the best performer for conroe and has the best overclocking abilities. And you can get it there for about the same price of the ASUS P5B Deluxe and Gigabyte's motherboard.

965 is new
975 is more mature, therefore better choice!

rumor has it, both will support quad core cpu's, but we'll just have to wait and see how that goes.

Other than that, I own the P5W DH Deluxe (as seen in signature) and couldn't be happier!!!

 

[Eurasianman]

hate to say this, but in a way, it's not a very good time to build since RAM is so high!

I got my Cosair XMS2 6400C4 for $250 and now it's jumped to $340!

This RAM overclocks close to 900, which is sufficient enough for conroe! Besides, if you get the ASUS P5W board, you can automatically change the RAM speeds (changing multiplier) to your likings. Easiest motherboard ever when it comes to overclocking IMHO.

Stick with the 7600GT

DX10 will be out soon x.x

 

[Eurasianman]

the Scythe SCNJ-1000 "ninja" is a bit cheaper at $45 shipped, and it has been reported to perform better than the zalman. It is near silent w/ the 120mm fan and looks easier to replace if it ever went bad. Definitly worth considering.

The link you provided is to the fanless version of the Scythe Ninja. Here's the link to the Scythe Ninja with the fan; a.k.a. "Scythe Ninja Plus":

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16835185001

Note: All/most e-tailers are currenty out of stock. Scythe has temporarily stopped shipping this HSF because "revision B" will be coming out that will also be compatible with socket AM2.

Don't these heavy heatsinks put strain on the mobo?!?!?!?

Why not just stick with the AC 7 Pro. QUIET AND VERY SUFFICIENT!!!

And not to mention, you can't beat that for $30!!!

 

[hyper60]

I have the p5w DH deluxe and am using a zalman 9500. I have ad no problems even after an intense video game workout the cpu hit a high of 35C and the MB a high of 41C. I have liked the Zalman. No load temps are running 29 and 35C. Left it on for a 3 day period and averaged (with use) 32 and 37C.

 

[jaguarskx]

Don't these heavy heatsinks put strain on the mobo?!?!?!?

Why not just stick with the AC 7 Pro. QUIET AND VERY SUFFICIENT!!!

And not to mention, you can't beat that for $30!!!

The Scythe Ninja and it's bigger brother, the Infinity, comes with a metal backplate designed to support the HSF. The beauty of the Scythe Ninja (and Infinity) is that it can passively cool a CPU without the fan, thus reducing noise. The included Scythe 120mm is very quiet and effective much makes the Ninja quiet good at cooling an overclocked CPU. My E6600 is clocked at a modest 3.0GHz. When idle it is 39C, underload the temp increases to 55C.

The only real down side to the Scythe Ninja is the size. It is 5.9" tall without the fan. With the fan it's about 6.1" tall.

 

[Eurasianman]

to the person above me and hyper60, I hope you're not using ASUS Probe II, since it seems to be measuring from a different location. I'm using core temp and and Intel TAT and find that ASUS Probe II is 20C off of what TAT and Core Temp read. Also, are those temps with or without speedstep and C1E. That does make a difference and I've found that this motherboard will allow you to overclock and still have speedstep enabled, however, having stock speed at 2.4GHz results in 1.6GHz in idle and 3.0GHz results in 2.0GHz in idle. So, temps will vary. Also, if you have ASUS's Fan control enable, that makes a few degree differences as well. If I leave my fan on optimal, and do a full load at stock, I hit 70C with TAT. If I overclock to 3.0 GHz, I think I go a degree or more than 70C, but I see no need to overclock yet.

IMO, I'd stick with AC7 Pro just because for me, I go to LAN Parties as it's only 100 grams heavier than the stock and seems to be just as sufficient as the Zalman as well as quieter (at least that's what I read in CPU magazine)

If I spent over $250 on the mobo, I'd like to be able to go to LAN parties and not worry about the motherboard snapping on me during the transit.

 

[jaguarskx]

to the person above me and hyper60, I hope you're not using ASUS Probe II, since it seems to be measuring from a different location. I'm using core temp and and Intel TAT and find that ASUS Probe II is 20C off of what TAT and Core Temp read. Also, are those temps with or without speedstep and C1E. That does make a difference and I've found that this motherboard will allow you to overclock and still have speedstep enabled, however, having stock speed at 2.4GHz results in 1.6GHz in idle and 3.0GHz results in 2.0GHz in idle.

I have the MSI 975X Platinum mobo and use Core Temp to measure the temperature (39C idle, 55C load). Speedstep and C1E are both disabled, infact I don't think Speedstep works when the CPU is overclocked, but I have to do a bit of research on that. Therefore 39C is at 3.0GHz, but idling.

 

[blunc]

I noticed you indicated getting only one hard drive, I suggest having a really big second drive for keeping the video projects on. Probably best not to put games on the second drive either, wouldn't want to lose a project just because some ill mannered game corrupts your drive.

An external drive is a good investment to save old projects off to. If you do get an external drive make sure it has a built in fan, after my first enclosure died all my external drive enclosures have fans in them.