Thinking about building a new PC, what's good these days?

I already have GeForce 560 GTX, a sound card and wireless card, and a 550w power supply. Also a mouse and keyboard.

It looks like the Intel i7 Quad Core is pretty solid. I was thinking of getting that along with a H80 cooling system and maybe overclocking the processors to 4.5 Ghz. I can get both of those for about $400. How hard is it to hook up a water-cooling system like that in comparison with the usual fan coolers? Do I have to feed it water regularly to keep it from drying out? I'm guessing the cooler is larger than a fan cooler, so that's a consideration when looking at possible motherboards and cases.

What I don't know how to figure out is what motherboards are compatible, and then I need a case that fits the motherboard. I was looking on NewEgg at processors and they don't seem to give you a list of compatible motherboards. Also, I want a 1 TB hard drive plus room to have my existing drive as a non-boot drive, new DVD drive (mine has had a malfunctioning door for years, very annoying, I want it gone), and 16 GB of RAM. Also my speakers are half-dead, so I'd like to get new ones (not pricey). And a new monitor with a DVI connection so I don't need a VGA-DVI adapter to connect it to my video card.

With a set-up like this, I should be able to run most games at max or close to max settings, right? And probably can run all games for at least the next 5 years at at least medium-low settings, right? Also, this should be sufficient to work with 25 megapixel images with about 5-10 layers in Photoshop, right?

How much would something like this set me back? If it would be more than $1500, I can skip the speakers and monitor.

EDIT: Wait a minute, what's this 6 core shit.

Installing a liquid cooling system is simple provided you have a regular sized case. I've installed a couple H60 cooling systems with no installation issues. It is a sealed unit so 'drying out' is a non-issue.

Buy a second generation i5 or i7 instead of a first generation i7 Intel processor. Price point is almost the same and the performance is dramatically better (e.g. an i5 2500K vs i7-960).

I would skip on water cooling and go with air. The i7 xxxxk series can be overclocked quite high on just a good air heatsink.

I had watercooling 6 years ago but it leaked one night and burned my motherboard and CPU.

Water cooling is not worth the hassle. Just go with good air cooling and never look back.

Not really an installation hassle - takes the same amount of time as installing a regular CPU heat sink and case fan. It costs a bit more and the i3/i5/i7 processors run much cooler anyway so it isn't worth the incremental cost. Put the $$ saved towards better RAM.

The water cooling I had was kind of a pain. Part of that was me not having a bigger case and part of it was keeping the reservoir filled. And the temperature difference was minimal. Just left me feeling very "meh" about the whole thing.

The one I have now is a sealed unit that requires no maintenance - came ready to install (earlier model of the one Tech was asking about). I picked it because I was curious about how well it would perform (noise and cooling ability) but the new Intel processors really don't need that level of cooling capacity.

Wish mine were sealed.

So how does this setup look?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115095
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128506
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835181015
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129021
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231487
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827135204
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136284
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16836121002
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824116452

This comes out to $1,423.91 on NewEhh. I went up to 32 for ram because I figure, the board will support it, and I'll just end up regretting in a few years that I didn't get it, much as I currently regret not getting 4 instead of 2 on my current machine.

Oh, and I also need an OS... so throw in Windows 7 Professional, and it comes to $1,673.90... which is a little over what I was aiming for, but I'm also getting something better than what I was planning on...

Would you guys consider this a pretty good machine?

NewEhh

I'm not a fan of Gigabyte motherboards - I prefer ASUS. Do you really need 32 GB of RAM?

One other thing to consider is using a solid state drive for your OS partition. From a performance point of view, the difference is huge, perhaps the single best performance choice you could make (other than the CPU). . I'd scale the RAM back to 8 or 12 GB and add the SSD. The rest looks .

I don't need 32 GB of ram now, but who knows in another 4 years? Like I said, when I built my last computer about 5 years ago, 1 GB was kind of average, and I went with 2 thinking I was going to be ahead of the curve. And I was for a while, but not for the 5 years the computer lasted. 4 would have been useful for a significant amount of time that it was working (even though my 32-bit OS could only use 3.5 of it).

To be honest, I don't even need anywhere near a TB for hard drive space. my music takes up about 50 GB, and I uninstall games I never plan to play again. My existing hard drive is 200 GB and it's never been full. If I were to have a drive just for the operating system, how big would it need to be? So I would have that, maybe a 250 GB drive for installing software, and my old 200 GB (which has irreplaceable data so it is necessary).

Seriously consider adding the solid state drive, especially for photo editing. You could get by with an 80GB drive, 120GB+ would be a bonus. Look for SATA III. RAM always can be added later.

Since I have your attention, do you ever check your PMs? I sent you one a few months back.

Yeah, I am looking at the Intel 120 GB SSD... From the comments, I can fit Windows 7 professional, Skyrim, a couple other big games, and still have room to spare. So I think I'll just get that and use my existing 250 GB drive for data storage (photography stuff, music, as well as simpler games that don't have any need for the SSD). This bumps the total to a little over $1700... yikes. Well, if I think I can still do it by the end of February, maybe.

Uh, oops. I do check PMs but I usually say "cool... I'll get to that another time." and then I forget.

You spend a lot of time using Photoshop, right? Have you considered using an extra SSD as a scratch disk?

There's a budget here, right?

fuck budgets, buy SSDs

building a new pc soon myself. planning on getting this case, i just love the clean & simple look and it has ample room, great cable management and plenty of cooling options

Tech, I used the guide at http://www.hardware-revolution.com/ to build mine last August (tier 6 gaming). He throws tons of options out there for customization and variable total cost, and it's all mostly compatible to just swap out. He also writes pretty good articles on why he thinks certain parts are the best value at different price points.

The budget is basically time. The more expensive it gets, the longer I wait to get it.

Oh man, I want this thing:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147136

It's more space than I'll probably ever need for everything I own (so I can eventually ditch the old hard drive after copying my files over, or maybe keep it as a backup drive for some things. That Intel SSD I had picked out before is also more than $2 per GB... this is much more reasonable.

Maybe I can wait another month (end of March) and get this instead.

Forgot I still had $1000 in an ING account (which wasn't reserved for anything, I just figured it should be earning interest instead of sitting in my checking).

Back to end of February.

You guys have ING Bank there?

Yup, they're pretty damn big (not specifically here, but overall worldwide). They sponsor a lot of marathons in the USA. http://ing.us/about-ing/sponsorships

I found it strange in Italy because they only have ING insurance, so i figured it's not that big even in Europe. It's my main bank so it's awesome to know that i can rely on my cards even far from home.

Sorry for the off topic, but is it true the fact that most americans ATMs have a limit for withdraws per day? There was one episode in The Office where Michael couldn't get more than 60bucks from his ATM.

It depends on what kind of account you have. There are some that have limits.

Yup, and your bank's rules. I can get 800 per day. Most ATMs will limit you to 200-400 (200 being most common), but the ones at my bank allow the full 800 in one transaction.

Ha, i was equally surprised that there are ing banks outside of the Netherlands.

I love it because they keep the contact with tellers to a minimum. The last time i talked to one of them was when they gave me my credit card. Self Bank is awesome.

hey dudes will these things function together?

http://msy.com.au/product.jsp?productId=8103 mobo
http://msy.com.au/product.jsp?productId=8653 case
http://msy.com.au/product.jsp?productId=6837 video card
http://msy.com.au/product.jsp?productId=7581 processor

or recommend anything that will stay at a similar price or lower?

also to be clear, the main thing I want is a new video card, but I need a new powersupply, mobo and case to do that, the processor is just to keep up. Already have RAM, hard drives, peripherals. Would I need to buy additional cooling?

yes they will. is the memory that you have already ddr3, though?

you might want to use an aftermarket cpu cooler as well, it'll give you more overclocking potential in the future, as well as make the system quieter

I don't believe so, no. So will DDR2 function? The slot's different isn't it, damn. My plan was to get the necessary things to have a functioning PC and get a few other things over the coming months (new and additional RAM, SSD, blu ray, maybe even one of those funky mechanical keyboards you're always talking about)

okay well at this point, I'm probably getting those things tomorrow plus some RAM, thank you Zorbo

watch out vast catalogue of games I've accrued on steam because they were on sale for ridiculous dollars, even though I knew I wouldn't be able to play them

ram is so dirt cheap now you'd be daft not to get some, and lots, and high speed

get a mac

Is this for computer games

I started building my desktop last year and I followed this forum advice and went for amd instead of intel. It turns out it was the right choice, you just have to do a little more research since AMD branding is not as linear as intel with their i3/i5/i7. I got a Phenom II x4 (i think it was the Phenom II X4 970 black edition), which is as powerful as a midrange quadcore i7 for nearly half the price. Intel does have the 32nm architecture though, so if you REALLY want maximum performance, go for them, but they are far more expensive.

PS: now i remember another reason i chose amd. CPU clock is the product of the front side bus clock by the cpu multiplier. CPU clock represents how fast the cores process information, but other processes (read/write, video, etc...) are constrained by the front side bus clock.

According to wiki, top notch i7s tend to have HIGHER multipliers than phenom ii's for the SAME total cpu clock. This means that the front side bus on intel actually runs SLOWER than in amd. At first glance this might imply intel is slower, which might not be right given the complexity of modern architectures, but was enough to convince me not to put my money on intel.


PSS: and yeah, dont buy a cpu which doesnt support at least 1333Mhz DDR3 RAM. In fact, if you find 1600 DDR, consider it.

Question: Is 550W Power Supply adequate for the GeForce 580 (which recommends 450W) plus a high-end quad-core processor, plus 32 GB ram and 2 hard drives? Or should I get a better power supply? There's a deal to get a 850w with the case I'm getting, so I'm kind of tempted, but if the 550 is fine I might as well save the money.

2nd question: considering I am going to be ordering about $2200 of stuff from NewEgg, I REALLY don't want something to happen to my package. Do you think I should order stuff in a couple orders (which will increase the total shipping charge) just to make sure if there is a loss, it's not as bad? I've had times before where UPS or the Post Office leaves stuff on the porch even though I used a shipping method that requires my signature, which is fucking stupid considering the neighborhood I live in.

As a followup, if I go with FedEx, how accurate are their delivery dates? I could schedule a day off of work to make sure I'm home to get this stuff, but it had better come on that day if I do that.

I say go with FedEx to cut back on chrono's bonus.

I got all of my stuff from NewEgg the day that it was predicted with signatures required. Granted, I live in suburban Texas rather than urban Boston, so take that for what it's worth. Also, if you are using NewEgg preferred so that you can get 12 month financing, make sure that each individual order you place is over the amount required for 12 month rather than 6 month (I think it's >500 for 12 month, >250 for 6 month). I mixed up the two (made a second order of just more memory and another graphics card) and on the statements I received they weren't paying off the 6 month first, so I ended up paying it all in 6 months anyways (last payment is actually scheduled in a few weeks) to make sure no interest would be charged (I thought it was against the law for them to do that now....guess not, good thing I actually read my statements). Given your past posts about credit I'm guessing you're not using that method, though.

Yeah, I was planning to just buy it all at once. However, you did just give me an idea. I do need to get a credit card at some point anyway so I can have a credit rating for getting a car eventually. Should I hold off buying this stuff until I have a cc, since I'd be able to put a big purchase on the card right away and hopefully give myself a nice boost in rating? Or does it not work like that?

Credit score is based on many factors, credit card utilization (used credit/available credit) being just one of those. The number of open accounts, average age of accounts, on time payments and number of credit inquiries in the past year are other factors. To build credit you should open up maybe 1 or 2 lines of credit a year until you have a decent number of accounts. Doing so all at once may be harmful due to the average age and number of credit inquiries.

I would apply for the NewEgg Preferred account and maybe one other credit card. Pay off your NewEgg within the financing term and maybe spend 50 bucks a month on the other one, paying it off each time. You should have a nice jump in score after the first year doing that. Opening a credit card alone, buying the NewEgg stuff and then immediately paying it off within one month will help a little, but not nearly as much.

... I'm kind lost. I'm sure what I had in mind isn't the most efficient way to build rating, but can it be as simple as just having a card, pay for things with it like I do with my debit card, get a bill in the mail each month (or whatever), pay it off, credit rating goes up a little bit? I definitely don't want to juggle more than one card because I'll get really mixed up and confused fast, and probably end up in debt trouble as a result.

Also, making one order may still result in multiple shipments. I got my case separately from everything else, the day before everything else arrived.

Did you use UPS or FedEx?

The NewEgg preferred account isn't really a credit card though, it's a line of credit available at their storefront alone. Your plan of just getting a card and charging it would be fine as well, but you may not get that high of a limit on your first card to get everything you want, plus maxing out the card immediately is not too great (although paying it off in the first statement period would minimize the effect of that). Definitely do not do anything you are uncomfortable with.

Looking at all three orders I've ever made, which were four total shipments, it appears all were via UPS. I don't remember having the choice, or if I did I probably went for the cheapest. There may have been incentive to use UPS after I signed up the Preferred Account, I do not recall.