Help building a computer

[chewy360]

I am new to building a computer and would like some thoughts and opinions about what I have so far. Any suggestions or ideas would be greatly appreciated. This is what I have so far:

MohterBoard: Asus M4A797 Deluxe

Processor: AMD Phennom IIx4 965

Graphics: ATI Radeon 5770.

I have yet to figure out my hard drive.(still need to do research). I do lots of downloading and will be a moderate gamer.

Thank you for any input on this matter.

 

[hunter315]

I assume you mean the M4A79T deluxe, i have that board and personally i havent used most of the features i wanted it for like the 16x/16x CF, and its not worth the premium. With the new 8xx chipset out i would suggest an 890GX instead of a 790FX board, it will give you 8x/8x CF which doesnt impose a significant performance hit.

Dont get the 965, get the 955 for $20 cheaper and get a good heatsink to OC with.

For the HDD i suggest a 1TB Samsung F3.

 

[chewy360]

I am a noob to all of this please forgive me if this is something I should already know. what did you mean by "get a good heatsink to OC with." also I am completley clueless to what 8x/8x cf is.

 

[chewy360]

I am a noob to all of this please forgive me if this is something I should already know. what did you mean by "get a good heatsink to OC with." also I am completley clueless to what 8x/8x cf is.

I assume you mean the M4A79T deluxe, i have that board and personally i havent used most of the features i wanted it for like the 16x/16x CF, and its not worth the premium. With the new 8xx chipset out i would suggest an 890GX instead of a 790FX board, it will give you 8x/8x CF which doesnt impose a significant performance hit.

Dont get the 965, get the 955 for $20 cheaper and get a good heatsink to OC with.

For the HDD i suggest a 1TB Samsung F3.

 

[hunter315]

The 955 and 965 both come with an unlocked CPU multiplier which makes them super easy to overclock, but overclocking increases heat output so you need a good heatsink to keep your CPU cool if you want to overclock it.

When you put two graphics cards in a motherboard the PCI-E lanes have to be split, most boards only have 16 lanes so they give each card 8 lanes, higher end chipsets like the 790FX, 890FX and X58 have 32 so they can give each card the full 16 lanes it wants, the difference in performance is minimal but the price difference between a chipset with 16 lanes and one with 32 lanes is usually significant.

 

[popatim]

If you have money to spare, I would suggest a solid state drive (SSD) for your main drive and gaming drive and a samsung Spinpoint F3 Ecogreen 2Tb drive for your storage needs. I have 4 of them drives and they have been dependable in my 6 months of ownership.

 

[popatim]

By the way, If you start looking at drives 1TB and up, you will want to pay look into if they are advanced formtting drives or not and research what you need to do in order to get them to work.
The F3's I mentioned are not AF drives and will work in raid unlike some Western Digital drives i looked at.