Asess my system - (budget gaming)

[justjohn]

Alright guys, here's my first stab after listening to your advice. Going for the most bang for the buck, quiet parts favored.

1. Did I make any mistakes? Are all these compatible and able to fit in the case and everything?

2. Do you see anything that could be made cheaper without reducing the quality much or improved without increasing the cost?




CPU
E8400
$170 on newegg

Video card
MSI Radeon 4850
$163 AR on newegg, $9 shipping


Hard Drive
WD 640GB
$85 on newegg

RAM
Kingston DDR2 800
$70 on newegg

PSU
Corsair 450vx
$40 AR on ZZF, $10 shipping

Mobo
GIGABYTE GA-EP35-DS3L
$80 on mwave, $9 shipping

Case
Rosewill R6A34-BK
$40 on newegg


Drive
Samsung SH-S203B
$25 on mwave, +$1 shipping

 

[killyou400p]

How much exactly do you hvae though?
Thats much helpful.
1. The PSU is not that good really, pretty weak. You need some cooling beacuse the stock fan is pretty loud under load.
They will fit all together nicely.
2. Not really, you need to chip in a little bit and it will be better.
What is your budget? 700-800$?
Knowing that is 702$ wityh shipping.

 

[dirtmountain]

Nice build

 

[justjohn]

How much what do I have?

1. I only need it quiet at a very low load so I'm going to test it out first and add another CPU cooler if I need it. As for the PSU, it's got 33A on the 12V rail and good reviews. System only drains 350W, so it should be ok from what I can tell...

2. I was hoping to put it at 600 but I really wanted the E8400/4850/good hard drive system and I would have had to put really crappy parts for the rest to get that. Not going to make it any more expensive unless it's a big quality jump for a small price increase.

 

[riffwraith]

That PSU is actually solid.
Unless you want to go crossfire, or have 5 drives or something, it's good.
only 450 watts, but the build quality of corsair psu's is so high.
I just built a computer with a 4850,e7200,zalman 9700led, gigabyte ep35-ds3l with that psu, and it runs great.
I can run crysis on all high settings with 2xaa at 1280x1024, cod4, everything max (4xaa, because that's as high as it goes in the cod4 settings), and fps is WAY over playable. Vsync is limiting it to 75 fps (occasionally drops down to 40, but obv, 40 is perfectly playable for a min fps). I get 3dmark scores of ~12700 as well.
Note that I have overclocked both the cpu (to 3.4, from 2.53ghz) and the gpu, slightly. I've stressed tested for 10 hours and it seems fine.
You should be able to get at least the same performance I do, as long as you get a good cooler. That PSU is perfectly fine for single graphic cards.

 

[ohiou_grad_06]

If it's budget, go less cpu, more psu. A lot of guys seem to like the e7200 chip saying you can overclock and get performance similar to the e8400. How much ram are you getting? 4 gb? 2 would be a good start if on a budget, and you can get 2 gb for about 40 instead of 70.

 

[justjohn]

I suppose I'll think about the 7200, but I've heard the 8400 overclocks really well too. And I like RAM so I'll probably stick with the 4GB since the price difference isn't too bad. Also found a better deal on RAM like 40 seconds ago.

 

[zenmaster]

The PSU is EXCELLENT.
ABSOLUTELY NO Reason to Upgrade that.
Very Sweet Deal.

A Recent AnandTech Review of Dual 4870! and the Quad Core Extreme @ 3.2 Ghz only hit a max of 410w.

His system will never even hit 300w.
There is NO issue.

 

[Nik_I]

build looks fine. and yeah, whoever it was that said 450W isn't enough doesn't know what he's saying. 450W is plenty for a single card configuration. the only reason you would need a more powerful one would be if you have 2+ video cards or something like a 4870x2, more than 1 hard drive, and a huge OC on your cpu.

 

[justjohn]

Alright, well I was able to find the mwave stuff for the same price on zipzoomfly so I merged some shipping costs. Was able to up the DVD burner to the lightscribe version and drop the total price to $686 after rebates.

Now if I can just be patient enough to wait for Nehalem I can probably drop that cpu price a bit as well.

 

[huron]

I believe that the E8400 is only $150 at microcenter.com

Looks like a good build.

 

[Shadow703793]

How much exactly do you hvae though?
Thats much helpful.
1. The PSU is not that good really, pretty weak. You need some cooling beacuse the stock fan is pretty loud under load.
They will fit all together nicely.
2. Not really, you need to chip in a little bit and it will be better.
What is your budget? 700-800$?
Knowing that is 702$ wityh shipping.

WTF are you talking about? That PSU is a very good PSU. It should power a 4850 fine (although I recommend the Corsair 650TX is possible over the 450VX as it's only a few $ more). I believe you are one of the ppl. who believe that a 1kW Rosewill PSU is better than a PC Power & Cooling 750.

 

[Shadow703793]

Also if going with the P35-DS3L you absolutely need to check out:

GUIDE: Overclocking On P35-DS3L

 

[rockyjohn]

If you really want quiet, did you consider the Antec Sonata III case which comes with Earthwatts 500w PSU? On sale at newegg for $100 - so only $20 more than your pair and much better case - PSU's about the same quality, just a little more with the 500w Earthwatts.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129024

 

[justjohn]

I believe that the E8400 is only $150 at microcenter.com

Looks like a good build.

Seems like that's in-store only and I don't think there's one near me. Good deal though. Where did you find it?

Also if going with the P35-DS3L you absolutely need to check out:

GUIDE: Overclocking On P35-DS3L

Thanks, will definitely do that.

If you really want quiet, did you consider the Antec Sonata III case which comes with Earthwatts 500w PSU? On sale at newegg for $100 - so only $20 more than your pair and much better case - PSU's about the same quality, just a little more with the 500w Earthwatts.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129024

Yeah, I think I saw that. I looked again and I'm kind of torn. Yes the case is probably a lot better, but the PSU has multiple 12v rails at lowish amperage and I only need one so the one really strong rail on the PSU I listed suits me better. It's also 18 bucks S&H, so really close to $40 more. That combine with the fact that the case I listed is supposed to be just as good as the majority of $80-100 cases makes me kind of hesitant to change it around. Definitely a good suggestion though. I'm mulling it over. If anyone else has thoughts on it feel free to chime in.

 

[Shadow703793]

For quiet case fans look in to YateLoon and Scyth.