Advise for my first build

What site will you be buying from? Doesnt matter if its in english or not, helps us see your selection and pricing.

I would suggest dropping down to the home premium edition of windows 7, i havent noticed any difference between it and the professional edition that i have installed on my desktop. That should free up a bit of cash. I suggest a 1TB drive like the Samsung F3 or the 1TB Western digital Caviar black with model number WD1002FAEX, the WD1001FALS is a bit slower.

You dont need nearly that large of a power supply for your build so you can save quite a bit by dropping down to something like a Corsair 550VX, Seasonic M12II 520W, or Antec TP-550

CPU : You can go with the i5 760 if you really want a quad.

Mobo : Keep the mobo.

RAM : I dunno bout 3ds-max, but Autocad, gaming, surfing definitely wont require any more than 4 GB. The rest will be mostly a waste of money. So I'll say go with 2 X 2 GB DDR3 1333-1600 and save the rest of the money.

HDD : Seagate barracuda / Samsung Spinpoint F3 are better options. If you wanna go with WDC, stick to Cavier Blue. Black does'nt really give you that much of a performance gain to justify the price.

GPU : I know this is an American website. But just an idea as to what you need.

SAPPHIRE Vapor-X Radeon HD 5770

Just a few bucks more, but much more efficient.

PSU : You certainly don't need 850 even for SLI / Xfire. Go with something around 600 from Seasonic, Corasir, Antec, or even OCZ / Coolermaster. (I don't know what's available in your country).

That should do it, I think  

Thanks for the very quick reply!!

I am not buying from a site cause i had some bad experiences! I am buying the components from different stores (i live in Greece).

I can give you links to the stores i intend to purchase the components or i can write prices and specifications.

The prices here (in Greece) are of course higher than several sites i have checked but as i said due to my bad experiences i dont mind giving some extra cash in exchange for my mental health (LOL).

I am also panning of getting a proffesional graphics card in the near future. Will the 550w power supply will be ok?

And also i was wondering (and forgot to ask). Window 7 or XP?

Thanks!!

Hey man, as its your first build, (and i'm undergoing my first too) i strongly reccommend you use this power supply calculator tool from antec...
it helps alot so that your not wasting money on your PSU for no reason  
basically its good  
PSU calculator

Thank you all for your replies!!

I know that 8GB of ram may be a lot but from several forums that i have seeb most of the ppl say that the more ram the better. Is this true?

I know i need a proffesional graphics card and i am going to get one in the near future and give the 5750 to a friend of mine.

Thanks for the advise about the hard drives. I will probably go for cavier blue (was thinking about getting the blue for lower noise).

So i will not see much difference between i5 760 and i7 860?

And psu calculator is really helpfull.

XP does'nt make sense anymore. They are not even selling that at the retail level any more, I don't think. Win 7 - 64 bit is the way to go (if you don't have any older hardware lying around. If so then you need to check for compatibility.

PSU : Depends on which 550 watts. If you never intend to SLI / Xfire, then any 550 will do. But if you do plan to do so, then some 550's (like OCZ Modstream PRO) are compliant, while others are not.

For 3ds Max and autocad you will likely see the benefit of the extra threads that the i7 860 has over the i5 760.

I have one of the previous generations 1TB caviar blacks, its pretty close to silent and i can never hear it over my fans.

More RAM is good upto a point. As I said, I dunno 'bout 3d max - you gotta ask somebody else 'bout it. But for sure, the rest of the stuff, keep the money in your pocket. It's a lotta extra money for virtually no performance increase.


The difference if any will be negligible. Again the 760 is the best price / performance quad in the market today & untill & unless you can go upto the i7 930 on the LGA 1366 (newer) platform, it does'nt make a lotta sense to put down the extra for an 1156 CPU.

As it is come next year, the 1156 is gonna be replaced by the non backward compatible 1155 and also the 1366 is gonna make way for the sandy bridge ones based on the x68 platform.

I will probably listen to your advise calguyhunk and get 4GB and if i have the need for more in the future i will upgrade then.

I know that sockets will change in the near future but this is the way of technology. Also i know that the difference between 760 and 860 is not much but i really am confused about this. Some say that i will benefit and others not. I will have to think about this a lot cause i will use this pc for work and any benefit is welcome  

Is it worth it to spend a liitle more and go for 1366 socket and go for 6GB and i7-930?

Again thank you all for your replies.

Check out the charts for some numbers on their performance in 3DS Max and Photoshop CS4, they dont have the 860 but they do have the 870 which is only slightly faster, the 860 would be between the 870 and 920. As you can see the 860 always beats out the 750 in those two because they are able to use more than 4 cores so the hyper threading assists.
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2009-desktop-cpu-cha...
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2009-desktop-cpu-cha...

Thanks for the links hunter. I will likely stick with the 860. I also have checked in several forums about RAM and some ppl say that they have problems with OCZ memories. Do you know anything about this? I have Crucial as an alternative but i also heard problems regarding those. Unfortunatelly there are no G.Skill availiable  .

OCZ had some bad batches recently, i havent heard of any significant issues regarding crucial RAM, but if you do get a bad kit you shouldnt have too much trouble getting it replaced.