Computer build help

[shanvan555]

Hello,
I am building my first computer & I'm having trouble deciding what processor (AMD Phenom II X4 965 or the Intel i7-870 or 950) & what type of RAM (dual vs triple channel corsair XMS) to use. I don't do gaming, & I use it primarily to do schoolwork, internet browsing, stream movies, watch videos, listen to music, & manage/edit photos. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Embra]

Budget? ......................You probably dont need to much if you are not gaming. Games are what will drive up the cost of your build.

 

[shanvan555]

I'm trying to do it for under $1000 (especially since I don't do any gaming)...I am already $540 into it.

I have the following:
EVGA 01G-P3-1465-AR GeForce GTX 465 (Fermi) video card
Western Digital Caviar Black WD1501FASS 1.5TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive
LG Black 10X Blu-ray Burner - Bulk SATA WH10LS30
Rosewill RV2-700 700W power supply
Antec Nine Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower case

I know you're supposed to get your motherboard & processor first, but I found good deals on these 5 items black friday.

 

[tecmo34]

I would look at the Athlon II X3 445 or Athlon II X4 640 for your needs. You don't need the "muscle" of the X4 965 or i7 860 for your needs. Either one of those CPU's will perform nicely for you at a lower price.

 

[warmon6]

Budget? ......................You probably dont need to much if you are not gaming. Games are what will drive up the cost of your build.

Hello,
I am building my first computer & I'm having trouble deciding what processor (AMD Phenom II X4 965 or the Intel i7-870 or 950) & what type of RAM (dual vs triple channel corsair XMS) to use. I don't do gaming, & I use it primarily to do schoolwork, internet browsing, stream movies, watch videos, listen to music, & manage/edit photos. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

+1 to embra. A budget is a very good thing to have when selecting stuff.

Although the cpus your looking into is really wasted money on what your doing. Reason for that is, there both over powered for what your requiring.

I would just Recommend the Althon II x4 as it still a quad core. So its still a good long term cpu to have but it's about $100 or Go for an tri-core Athlon II x3 cpu for roughly $75. Even though there slightly weaker cpu's, for what your doing, you wouldn't notice the performance loss.

With Ram, just go with dual channel. (kind forced to go dual channel as only the Consumer desktop chipset is the intel x58 chip that has triple channel.) Triple channel, unless your running cad or something thats needs lots of memory/memory bandwidth, is not worth it.

4GB is the current sweet spot for computers right now so that all you have to spend your money on.

 

[CsG_kieran_2]

i7 is a tad bit overkill for web browsing and even editing. you could go for an i5, good price to performance

 

[popatim]

The amd quad will save you about $130 (U.S.) over the two i7's and for just about everything you do you will not need the i7's. This is money better spent on a boot SSD in my opinion. Photo editing is the exception but the amd quad will work fine with that. too, just not quite as fast.

Memory will be about the same cost per MB and with a current motherboard would be DDR3 at 1333mhz. 4 or 8gb's should be fine depending on how much editing you actually do. AMD uses dual channel memory currently.

If you have no plans on overclocking the processor then faster memory will not show much of a performance increase.

 

[shanvan555]

Thanks for the replies everyone! I'm just not very familiar with what the different parts of a computer do. I'll definitely go with the AMD. I don't know what overclocking is, so I assume I wont be doing it, so I guess the 4gb will be sufficient!

 

[jsc]

A minor point, but the Antec 900 (or any of the Antec cases) does not come with a system (case) speaker.

And because this is your first build, look at these links may while you wait for your parts to arrive.

 

[shanvan555]

Best answer selected by shanvan555.

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey