First Build - I5 Home PC

Appreciate feedback on my choices of hardware for my first build. This is not intended to be a gaming machine, but a robust home PC.

I am a video card neophyte, so help in that area is especially welcome. I would like to have a card that supports dual monitors if possible. The Radeon HD 5570 appears to be a good “budget” GPU choice. The Shappire brand was selected due to its current price on Newegg.

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APPROXIMATE PURCHASE DATE: Mid September 2010

BUDGET RANGE: $700-ish before rebates.

SYSTEM USAGE FROM MOST TO LEAST IMPORTANT: Mostly MS Office applications and web surfing. Occasionally, I deal with very large spreadsheets and large, complex Visio diagrams. I would like to do some Hi8mm video tape capture & burning to DVD. Mostly, I’m just tired of waiting on my 5 year old HP machine to do almost everything! Needs lots of USB ports for 3 printers, scanner, wireless mouse, keyboard, thumb drives and iPhone.

PARTS NOT REQUIRED: Keyboard, mouse, monitor 2 x Acer X223W 22” 1680 x 1050 DVI-D/VGA inputs, speakers, Optical Drive, Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB (x 2), Windows 7

PREFERRED WEBSITE(S) FOR PARTS: newegg.com, but will search for price prior to buying

OVERCLOCKING: Maybe, but not a priority

SLI OR CROSSFIRE: This will be a single GPU machine

MONITOR RESOLUTION: Acer X223W 22” 1680 x 1050 (I have two of these and would like to have a single video card drive both monitors)

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS: This is my first attempt at a PC build, but I have upgraded PCs before (hard drives, memory, optical drives, add-in cards). I don’t plan on running any level of RAID. The second disk is for backups.



CPU: Intel Core i5-750 Lynnfield 2.66GHz

Mobo: GIGABYTE GA-P55A-UD3 LGA 1156

Video Card: SAPPHIRE 100293DP Radeon HD 5570 1GB 128-bit DDR3 -or- SAPPHIRE 100293L Radeon HD 5570 1GB

PSU: COOLER MASTER Silent Pro M600 RS-600-AMBA-D3 600W

Memory: G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM

Case: COOLER MASTER CM690 II ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

CPU Heatsink/Fan: COOLER MASTER Hyper 212 Plus

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Thanks for the help!

There really isn't any use I see that would require an i5, aftermarket HSF or really good GPU.

To be honest you'd be fine with:

Athlon II x3 $75
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] -_-Product

Ga 770 UD3 $80
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] -_-Product

G SKill Eco $99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] -_-Product

You can swap the PSU to the XFX 650, which is $65 after promo code and rebate
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] -_-Product

Current Case is fine.

GPU
5550 $50 after rebate
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814102892

$375 after rebates, $410 before.

dndhatcher & banthracis

Thanks for your insight!

I knew the I7 was too much for what my needs and I had thought the I5 was a better choice. Oh well, time to do some more research on the AMD side of the street.

A couple of thoughts/questions:

1) Does the ASRock 890GM PRO3 support mutilple montiors. I see it has DVI, VGA and HDMI, but it's not obvious to me if you can drive multilple montior at the same time. Any motherboard alternatives that are ATX sized? I may not be all thumbs, but I do have fat fingers!

2) Can you recommend a modular power supply (I hate all those non-used cable just hanging inside the case)

3) Since the setup dndhatcher listed is about $200 less than what I had spec'd out, I could use that difference to add in a SSD for faster startup/program lauch. Any thoughts on this?

Again, thanks for your help! Tom's Hardware Forums are wonderful!