I bought all this for my wife as a valentines day gift, let me know if i made th

[roundeye]

was this the right choices or could i have done better

2012 BUDGET BUILD $750 GAMING PC, VALENTINES DAY GIFT


PARTS FROM AMAZON.COM

EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Superclocked 1024 MB GDDR5 01G-P3-1463-KR $195.99
Elite 311 Black with silver Trim COOLERMASTER CASE $48.25
Raidmax Hybrid 730W ATX12V/ EPS12V modular Power Supply RX-730SS $59.99
Cooler Master blue led Cooling 120MM FAN R4-L2R-20AC-GP $6.49
TOTAL $310.72

PARTS FROM TIGERDIRECT.COM

Intel Core i5-2400 Quad Core 3.10 GHz Socket H2 LGA1155 w/ 95 fan $189.99
Sony Optiarc 24x DVDRW Sata Drive (OEM) $17.99
TOTAL $207.98

PARTS FROM NEWEGG.COM

Gigabyte GA-Z68MA-D2H-B3 INTEL Z68 6GB/s USB 3.0 ATX MOTHERBOARD $107.99
Seagate Barracuda st500dm002 500GB 7200RPM 16MB CACHE SATA 6.0GB/s $84.99
G.SKILL VALUE SERIES 8GB (2 X 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 1333 $36.99
TOTAL $229.97

YOUR GRAND TOTAL $748.67

THINGS I NEEDED BECAUSE I DIDN'T ALREADY HAVE A PC AND SHIPPING TO HAWAII

High Speed HDMI Cable $3.76
Logitech Keyboard K120 $11.97
Samsung S22A350H 22" led Monitor 1080p 2ms $139.99
shipping from tigerdirect.com $25.84
shipping from newegg.com $26.25


MY GRAND TOTAL $956.48



sappy stuff
Why give a woman jewelry when all it does is look pretty? Give her something useful. Build her something from the heart, build her a gaming pc. I am building this gaming pc for my wife for valentines day so she can play her favorite game, "AGE OF CONAN". She has been playing it on a macbook via bootcamp, which doesn't do the game justice. I love you sweetheart.

stuff you really want to know
The reason for some of the high prices was that I live in Hawaii, which accept for amazon.com is a horrible place to internet shop from. Shipping from ibuypower.com and cyberpower.com was $150 just to ship. So I definitely decided to build one instead. I would have ordered all items from amazon.com but doing the math and price shopping around it was cheaper to order from newegg.com and tigerdirect.com even having to pay shipping. All other sites I looked at had outrageous shipping prices to Hawaii. A good example of this is the computer case on amazon.com sold it for $48.25 with free shipping, newegg.com sold it for a cheaper $41.99 but had $34 shipping. Also ordering the HDD and DVD drive OEM saved some money. It took me about a day to figure who to order from. I understand I could have gone cheaper on some components but I wanted something I could upgrade later if need be. So the PSU is 730W and supports SLI. The motherboard supports SLI, has 6.0 GB/s Sata3 and 4xDDR3 RAM slots that support upto 32GB. I was given a copy of Windows 7 Ultimate edition for free and I already have a nice logitech wireless mouse. The case and monitor could have also been cheaper but I know my wife would only want something that was pretty and made games look good. My budget for this build was under $1000 for everything. I am an Intel and Nvidia guy so keeping with that what would you have done different in my case if anything?

 

[g-unit1111]

Why give a woman jewelry when all it does is look pretty? Give her something useful. Build her something from the heart, build her a gaming pc. I am building this gaming pc for my wife for valentines day so she can play her favorite game, "AGE OF CONAN". She has been playing it on a macbook via bootcamp, which doesn't do the game justice. I love you sweetheart.

Take that, Jared! :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

The reason for some of the high prices was that I live in Hawaii, which accept for amazon.com is a horrible place to internet shop from. Shipping from ibuypower.com and cyberpower.com was $150 just to ship. So I definitely decided to build one instead. I would have ordered all items from amazon.com but doing the math and price shopping around it was cheaper to order from newegg.com and tigerdirect.com even having to pay shipping. All other sites I looked at had outrageous shipping prices to Hawaii. A good example of this is the computer case on amazon.com sold it for $48.25 with free shipping, newegg.com sold it for a cheaper $41.99 but had $34 shipping.

Believe me - as someone who deals with UPS and Fedex on a daily basis I totally understand shipping costs.

What you have is pretty good, but if you can you should exchange that PSU - I don't have a particular fondness for Raidmax and that PSU does not appear to be certified or rated. This is what I'd recommend for the same price: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139028

 

[Raiddinn]

The weak point in the build is definitely the PSU. I wouldn't bother trying to SLI with it if I were you. That is unless you keep your house a nice frosty 25 fahrenheit.

Good PSUs give you 10w for $1 or even only 8 - 9w per $1. The Raidmax is more like 14.

Good deals are a lot rarer than bad labeling.

You also might want to re-evaluate your graphics card ideas. Nvidia usually has more powerful cards if you are talking about raw performance, but you pay more for every bit of processing power.

Barring particularly good deals, I usually suggest AMD cards for anyone with $225 or less to spend. Parts reviewing websites mirror this philosophy.

Also, I would definitely stay away from 8GB sticks if I were you. Go with 4GB sticks rather than 8gb sticks for your RAM needs.

I probably would have gone with a HAF 912 instead of the Elite 311 too, if the price was reasonable on in. The Elite 311 just doesn't have good enough cooling options. The HAF 912 is 3x or 4x better than the Elite 311 and only a couple bucks more.

That matters to you, because a proper cooling setup adds years to the life of the computer and greatly increases their performance potential.

With proper fan configuration taking the laws of thermodynamics (heat rises, etc) into account, each additional fan tends to more than pay for itself by reducing the temps of the motherboard, processor, and video card.

With better cooling, you can potentially OC the video card more and make it work like a more expensive one.

Just some thoughts for next time you build a computer.

 

[roundeye]

I went with the Raidmax psu because of the 496 reviews on new egg it got a 4 out of 5 rating also the price for a modular psu.

 

[Raiddinn]

Modular is worth maybe $15 to $30, call it $15, so you take that off the price of the PSU and you are looking at about $40 for a 750w PSU, or about $1 per 19 watts.

Definitely the sign of a PSU that will not perform as you would expect it to based on the label.

The people on Newegg, sadly, don't have the tools or the technical skill to correctly evaluate a PSU especially when they have no testing equipment and they are asked to review it within 2 days of receiving it.

Try reading this thread from people who are a bit more knowledgable

http://www.overclock.net/t/909463/raidmax-hybrid-730w

or this one

http://www.overclock.net/t/959134/raidmax-hybrid-2-rx-730ss-730w


I am going to hazard a guess that most of the people that did get this PSU were probably using about 250w for their entire system and that is well low enough for the PSU to hold out for 2 days to get a review.

Around here, you will find that people only advise others to get PSUs from one single PSU OEM, which is Seasonic. That OEM makes parts branded under the names XFX and Seasonic. It also makes a portion of the lineup for the brands of Antec and Corsair, but other OEMs also supply those two makers as well. The ones people suggest from those two brands are the ones made by Seasonic.

I would highly suggest you think about restricting your choices for PSUs to only the XFX and Seasonic brands in the future. You won't get $1 per 20w with these brands, but you will get PSUs that work like they say they do. For the after rebate prices, XFX has about the best deals in the PSU business too in terms of $ for performance.

As in many things, you get what you pay for with PSUs.

- Edit - Just noticed g-unit's post. The CX 600 is not one of Corsair's best PSUs in my opinion. The TX ones are a lot more solid in my experience. Also, per Jtt's below comment, Enermax is quite good in the extremely high wattage space (850+). In that range Seasonic really isn't much of an option since they don't make any PSUs higher than 900 that I know of. I would say Seasonic is the best OEM at 850w or less and Enermax the best one at 900+.

 

[Onus]

I'll echo the sentiment about the PSU. It wasn't that one, but Corsair blew up a bunch of Chokemax PSUs at 75% load a while back. Seasonic, Antec, Corsair, XFX, and Enermax/LEPA are among the better brands. New FSP designs (e.g. Aurum) have also reviewed very well. They also make Antec's new VP line; a budget unit, and it lacks active PFC, but otherwise it is very efficient. HardwareSecrets just reviewed the VP-450.
Since they also put liar-labels on some of their PSUs, I consistently recommend against ANY Coolermaster product, to avoid supporting a dishonest company.
All that aside, I think your parts choices were basically good, and I'm not inclined to look for minor points just for the sake of niggling.

 

[g-unit1111]

The people on Newegg, sadly, don't have the tools or the technical skill to correctly evaluate a PSU especially when they have no testing equipment and they are asked to review it within 2 days of receiving it.


Try reading this thread from people who are a bit more knowledgable

Not to mention if you look really closely at the 5 star reviews a lot of them are given after the first week or so. It's that "new car smell" type of review. If you get something like that you should look more carefully at the 2, 3, and 1 star reviews to see what issues people are having with that particular product.

Since they also put liar-labels on some of their PSUs, I consistently recommend against ANY Coolermaster product, to avoid supporting a dishonest company.

I agree about the liar labels. But why is Cooler Master a dishonest company? Is it because of their PSUs? I've never bought their PSUs but I've had great success with the HAF 912 and great success with the Hyper 212 Evo.

- Edit - Just noticed g-unit's post. The CX 600 is not one of Corsair's best PSUs in my opinion. The TX ones are a lot more solid in my experience. Also, per Jtt's below comment, Enermax is quite good in the extremely high wattage space (850+). In that range Seasonic really isn't much of an option since they don't make any PSUs higher than 900 that I know of. I would say Seasonic is the best OEM at 850w or less and Enermax the best one at 900+.

I have a CX430 in an HTPC and it hasn't given me a lick of trouble yet - it's also one of the quieter PCs I've used.

As in many things, you get what you pay for with PSUs.

Not to mention the "buyer beware" and "if it sounds too good to be true it really is" rules come heavily into effect here. I've been building and tweaking systems since I was 15 and I know that things can be mislabeled and with PSUs - a lot of the times the cheaper they are the worse they are.

 

[Raiddinn]

The CX600w is rated at 30c which is probably the temperature in the PSU when the computer is idling.

If you care to have PSUs with wattage on the label that the unit can't actually reach, then go for the CX600, but to me it isn't overly much different than a regular liar brand PSU.

Maybe the internals are such that you only lose maybe 100 or 150w off of the 600w to give you a good 450 - 500w, but either way you are still supporting dishonest labeling.

Compare to the TX models which can achieve more than their labelled wattage.

The CX600 is obviously meant to compete for the customers that have no idea what they are buying. The ones that go for the highest wattage per unit of price.

- Edit -

You have to take each product type individually that a company produces. Some companies like OCZ make bad products of every type of product they make, but others like Cooler Master have many good product lines (HAF series cases, CPU coolers) and many bad ones too (liar brand PSUs).

If you have a good product of one type, that doesn't mean the company can be trusted to make a good product of a completely different type.

 

[g-unit1111]

If you care to have PSUs with wattage on the label that the unit can't actually reach, then go for the CX600, but to me it isn't overly much different than a regular liar brand PSU.


Maybe the internals are such that you only lose maybe 100 or 150w off of the 600w to give you a good 450 - 500w, but either way you are still supporting dishonest labeling.

Well the thing is the more expensive offerings in that range from say PC Power & Cooling or Seasonic will run more but is it really that much of a difference?

You have to take each product type individually that a company produces. Some companies like OCZ make bad products of every type of product they make, but others like Cooler Master have many good product lines (HAF series cases, CPU coolers) and many bad ones too (liar brand PSUs).

I definitely agree there - there's companies like Raidmax, Apevia, OCZ, Xion, and so on that produce plenty of crap but there's also some companies like Cooler Master and Antec that also make excellent products, I really like the HAF 912 and the Hyper 212.

 

[Raiddinn]

Well, here is my XFX 650w being tested at 815w.

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/XFX-PRO-650-W-Power-Supply-Review/1165/8

So the difference between a CX600 and an XFX 650w could potentially be a difference of over 300w at room temperature.