Help choosing some parts

[jasonwr6000]

Hi again. I’m about to build a pc ( 1st time) and need some more help on choosing parts. I’ve already got some help here with picking the CPU and motherboard, so now would like some advice on RAM and PSU and HDD. The Motherboard I’m going with is the Asus P8Z77-V LX and the processor I’m going with is i5 3550…( once again, this Pc won’t be used for gaming )

So now on to the PSU, RAM, HDD

Firstly, what wattage should I get for the PSU ? I was thinking of between 450 and 550 ?
What brands should I chose between?

I definitely want a modular PSU as I don’t want all those unnecessary excess cables.

So could someone recommend a good Modular PSU

I did a search and all of the Modular PSU’s I found online were very high watts, 700+, which I don’t think I need….. The lowest wattage one I found was this one

http://www.scorptec.com.au/computer/44967-hcg-520m

is it ok ?


Next on to the RAM.

My last post here, someone recommended I get 8Gb Ram (1600Mhz 1.5V kit 2X4GB

Firstly, what brands should I chose between ?

Also as this motherboard supports up to 32gb, I’m just wondering why I should only get 8gb?

I was thinking of getting 16gb. Would there be any vast difference between 8gb and 16gb, or would it just be a waste of money ?

Now on to the HDD.

A couple of people suggested a normal HDD for storage and a SDD for the OS or a cache drive…. I haven’t decided if I want to get a SDD yet, so in terms of a Normal HDD what Brand should I go with. WD or seagate ? In terms of capacity I think 1TB would be more than enough for me

I researched WD and Seagate and seem to get mixed reviews on both. Some say WD is better others say Seagate

Advance Thanks for your help, its much appreciated !
Jason

 

[avenseth12]

Your other components will determine your PSU. For example if you decide to run a high end video card if you will be game playing (you will need a good 550 to 650w PSU) and if you SLI or Xfire you will need more like a 750w to 800w PSU.

For your Memory; 8 gbs is inexpensive and will run most games with no problems

What are you doing with this build and what GPU are you thinking?

 

[TheBigTroll]

550w is a safe bet for any system that is lower end

good ones are from xfx, corsair (tx, hx, and ax series), seasonic and PC and Power Cooling

8gb of regular 1.5v ram is good enough. 16gb will be useful if you video edit.

seagate is usually cheaper than WD but they do that by shrinking the warranty. WD has a 5 year warranty for their black series while seagate i believe has 3 years. i personally dont think the 20 dollar price premium for 2 extra years of warranty is worth it.

nice SSD is the crucial m4, samsung 830, sandisk extreme, mushkin (if you have them in australia), and intel. whichever drive is cheaper. always get at least 128gb as 64gb is very tight

 

[inzone]

It would help us if we knew what the computer is being used for because when it comes to certian components it makes a big difference as to the use of the Pc.
The Antec psu that you listed is a good choice and a good name brand and I know you said no gaming but are you putting a video card or are you going with intergrated? If there is no video card then the psu that you listed will be plenty for your needs.
The ram is next and unless you are doing video/photo editing od some kind of graphics work you don't need more than 8gb. Motherbaords will list what they support so that when your looking for a MB you will know what it can do for you. So at this point I would say 8gb is enough and you can't use it even if you put in 16gb or 32gb , it would be a waste of money. What you can look at is faster ram such as faster timings and overall speed.

G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-8GBXL


G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL8D-8GBXM

G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1866 (PC3 14900) Desktop Memory Model F3-14900CL8D-8GBXM

Of these three sets of ram the first is a normal set that is always recomended and the second set has faster timings than the first , while the third set has the same faster timings but also faster speed (1866 vs 1600)

The hard drive I would go with Western Digital and you want sata3 (6gb/s) and a large cache (64MB)

Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

A SSD does make the overall speed of the computer faster as programs open faster web pages load faster and things are for the most part just faster because there are no moving parts and it's like having ram for a hard drive. The 128gb/120gb would be the smallest to get as I have had the 64gb for the OS drive and it's too small because it fills up fast and your forever moving files off it and trying to make sure everything you load goes onto the scondary drive. So with a bigger SSD if something slip[s through it's not as much a big deal. I like using a 240gb/256gb SSD as the OS drive because you can then have a lot on the OS drive and not worry about space.

 

[121ryanmah]

I would go with any kingston ram, they have higher read and write speeds than competition

 

[TheBigTroll]

kingston ram? they can damage your memory controller over time due to higher voltages

 

[jasonwr6000]

Best answer selected by jasonwr6000.