Hi. Inventive title, eh? I'm building a general-use and heavy gaming PC for the first time after putting it off last year and have been checking out components. I don't really intend to do much upgrading and will probably just build another computer in a few years. I don't want to break the bank but I do want to be able to play anything for the next few years on pretty high settings. I have little experience in overclocking, but I'll probably experiment.
I've basically assembled two totally different builds that I'm considering. A central difference between them is the CPU: as you probably know, the i7-930 is available for only $40 more at microcenter.com (the same price as the i5-750), but then the mobo costs more. This also changes the RAM, but from what I've read it's negligible for my purposes. I'm not really sure which build to get: if the first one would actually be worth it, I'd buy it.
Probably, an i5-750 build with P55 is a good alternative to both. However, it and i7-930 are available for the same price, so I might as well step up to i7-930 then.
Build 1 (rebuild in 4-5 years)
CPU Core i7-930 $200
Mobo Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R $210
RAM G.Skill 6GB DDR3 1333 (triple channel) $105
PSU Antec TruePower New TP-750 $115
Total $630
Build 2 (rebuild in 3-4 years)
CPU AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE $160
Mobo ASUS M4A79XTD EVO $110
RAM G.Skill 4GB DDR3 1333 (dual channel) $80
PSU CORSAIR CMPSU-650HX $120
Total $470
For either build, I have two GPU choices (and an infinity of small modifications that could be made, say a GeForce GTX 465 instead of 460):
SAPPHIRE 100282-3SR Radeon HD 5850 $270
GIGABYTE GV-R585OC-1GD Radeon HD 5850 $260
MSI N460GTX CYCLONE GeForce GTX 460 $200
What do you think?
General questions:
#1: Builds: As for non-gaming tasks, I am fond of doing many things at once. Say I'm downloading something, watching a high-res movie, browsing Flash-wasteful websites, and for mysterious reasons archiving things in WinRAR all at the same time. Is this going to show a fair difference between the builds?
#2: Build 1 mobo: Would I be all right dropping to the ASRock X58 Extreme 3? From the description, I'm not sure if I'd lose hyper-threading support by dropping down to something like the ASRock X58 Extreme.
#3: Build 2 PSU: Is the PSU sufficient? I'll be running two 1TB HDs on either build as well.
#4: Noise and heat: I'm a little concerned generally about this, and haven't made any cooling selections yet: GPU-wise, after a lot of scouring the net, I've determined that different people disagree on which card would be better along even these lines.
#5: Radeon HD 5850: Is there any point going Gigabyte instead of Sapphire? The only difference I can see is that the "Core Clock" is 765MHz over Sapphire's 725MHz. Is that a real difference, or is that just a tweak? It also has a longer warranty, which is probably more important.
Thanks very much for reading!
I've basically assembled two totally different builds that I'm considering. A central difference between them is the CPU: as you probably know, the i7-930 is available for only $40 more at microcenter.com (the same price as the i5-750), but then the mobo costs more. This also changes the RAM, but from what I've read it's negligible for my purposes. I'm not really sure which build to get: if the first one would actually be worth it, I'd buy it.
Probably, an i5-750 build with P55 is a good alternative to both. However, it and i7-930 are available for the same price, so I might as well step up to i7-930 then.
Build 1 (rebuild in 4-5 years)
CPU Core i7-930 $200
Mobo Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R $210
RAM G.Skill 6GB DDR3 1333 (triple channel) $105
PSU Antec TruePower New TP-750 $115
Total $630
Build 2 (rebuild in 3-4 years)
CPU AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE $160
Mobo ASUS M4A79XTD EVO $110
RAM G.Skill 4GB DDR3 1333 (dual channel) $80
PSU CORSAIR CMPSU-650HX $120
Total $470
For either build, I have two GPU choices (and an infinity of small modifications that could be made, say a GeForce GTX 465 instead of 460):
SAPPHIRE 100282-3SR Radeon HD 5850 $270
GIGABYTE GV-R585OC-1GD Radeon HD 5850 $260
MSI N460GTX CYCLONE GeForce GTX 460 $200
What do you think?
General questions:
#1: Builds: As for non-gaming tasks, I am fond of doing many things at once. Say I'm downloading something, watching a high-res movie, browsing Flash-wasteful websites, and for mysterious reasons archiving things in WinRAR all at the same time. Is this going to show a fair difference between the builds?
#2: Build 1 mobo: Would I be all right dropping to the ASRock X58 Extreme 3? From the description, I'm not sure if I'd lose hyper-threading support by dropping down to something like the ASRock X58 Extreme.
#3: Build 2 PSU: Is the PSU sufficient? I'll be running two 1TB HDs on either build as well.
#4: Noise and heat: I'm a little concerned generally about this, and haven't made any cooling selections yet: GPU-wise, after a lot of scouring the net, I've determined that different people disagree on which card would be better along even these lines.
#5: Radeon HD 5850: Is there any point going Gigabyte instead of Sapphire? The only difference I can see is that the "Core Clock" is 765MHz over Sapphire's 725MHz. Is that a real difference, or is that just a tweak? It also has a longer warranty, which is probably more important.
Thanks very much for reading!
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