Black Raven Dragoons

[Highgrade]

So the time has come to build a new rig. I am looking for some part recommendations as I am kind of newb when it comes to hardware. Looking for the whole shibang processor mother board video cards and such. Looking for budget build but I want a fair amount of power too.

[Grimblast]

That can be tricky since the market is always changing but I recommend slowly getting your parts from newegg.com since they tend to have nice specials usually near or on the weekends and holidays. That's how I usually build up my new systems. Oh and for the love of god, get a real tower like this!

It will have all the space you will need for years to come and it just looks great! I will post more in this thread as I have time but keep an eye on newegg.com. Get on their mailing list if you can because they send advertisements of their deals throughout the week and its not too spammy actually. You can also eye ball some deals on amazon.com as well. When I build a PC, I only ever do it through deals rather than going full bore and spending on too many expensive parts. I always go expensive on my video card since you know....video game enthusiast. Nvidia or go home.

[Zancarius]

For a budget build, you'll probably need to stick with AMD. Their processors are at a lower price point than Intel's offerings, generally speaking. Though, you do need to watch out. Some of the 6 and 8 core CPUs don't really have 6 or 8 true cores, per se (it's implemented like beefed up hyperthreading except with real hardware). One thing to keep in mind is that, generally, individual CPU cores on an Intel chip will outperform AMD, but AMD does better at SMP, that is using more cores at once.

You can also get a pretty decent mid-range video card for about $150. As Josh said, I'd pick NVIDIA over ATI. ATI tends to be cheaper, their cards fairly decent, but their drivers have historically been lacking. (I've read on HN that this isn't really any longer the case and ATI has markedly improved, but you can't really beat NVIDIA at the low to mid-range.) NVIDIA labels their cards strangely, though. Anything with a *50 or below tends to be considered a mid-range or budget card. Anything above that tends to be the higher end. So, a 550 or 650 probably under-performs a 470, in spite of the latter being older. They all use the same circuitry as their beefier counterparts, but the cheaper cards have several pipelines and such forcibly disabled.

I would have recommended getting a Seagate or two for your hard disk, but their quality control has sadly gone to crap. I recently purchased one only to discover that they've added crappy laptop grade hardware into the drive. It's a shame, too, because the Seagates are actually the fastest mechanical drives on the market. This pretty much leaves you with getting a Western Digital Black. The only other brand that's OK is Hitachi, but WDC bought them out a couple years ago.

I also own an HAF 932. You might think Josh and I are crazy, because these are bulky cases, but I'll be honest. They're not that bad. They're actually relatively light for given their size, and if you route the cables appropriately, you can get a nice, clean build. Here's what mine looks like in spite of having 3 drives and not having installed long enough cables for most things. The down side is that routing the cables properly requires removing both panels (but they're tool-less). You'll need to buy a separate PSU, though. Good cases don't come with one. And don't worry about the fan size. It's really quiet. It's so quiet, I had to replace the stock cooler on my CPU because the damn thing was noisy. (Which brings me to some other recommendations later if I think about it.)

Here's a $130 AMD CPU versus a $200 Intel CPU, the A10-6800 versus the i5-4570S (non-Intel biased benchmark here). You'll notice that people have differing opinions on them. Some think the AMD chips are slower, some think the Intel chips are slower. Typically, you'll need to do some searching around to see if it's what you want. They all have fantastic reviews anyway.

A shopping list to get you started might be the following:

AMD FX-6300 ($120) or the A10-8000K. I'd recommend the FX-6300, because it's slightly faster and cheaper by $10. This is because it has more L2 cache and it has an L3 cache (the A10 doesn't). The more cache you have at the L2 and L3 level, the more data the CPU can keep feeding its instruction pipeline before it underruns. It's also cheaper. Your choice will dictate the choice of motherboard, so we're going to assume you're picking the FX-6300 (socket AM3+) rather than the A10 (socket FM2).

Read the CPU descriptions closely. Not all of them come with fan/heatsink combos. The best air-cooled heatsink combo on the market IMO is the Cooler Master Hyper 212 (this is the new model, $39, about $10 more than the earlier one, which I have). Other ones are just overpriced for what they do.

A good motherboard will probably set you back about $80. You can go more expensive than that, but it's not going to really net you a huge gain. The quality might be slightly better, but not substantially so. I've seen $150+ motherboards built worse than their cheaper counterparts (and the opposite holds true, obviously). There's no real reason to pick a micro ATX over a regular ATX other than 1) cost or 2) you've picked a smaller case that won't fit a full sized board. Probably something like this GA-970A-DS3P ($80) or the GA-970A-D3P ($95). The latter has better reviews but it also supports AM3/AM3+ sockets. Otherwise the specs are just about the same.

Be warned that EVERYTHING is including a UEFI BIOS these days, so installing non-Windows OSes might be a slight chore to get right. The thing is though that UEFI has been implemented largely to address some of the shortcomings of a traditional BIOS, large more memory and bigger disks.

I'm a big fan of Corsair. Either CMX8GX3M2A1600C11 ($80) or CML8GX3M2A1600C9 ($87) should do. Both are 8GiB × 2 kits at 1600MHz. You can always upgrade this later. If you want something slightly faster, there are 8GiB × 2 kits in 1866MHz, but you're going to pay about $100 for them. Also be aware that the bigger heat spreaders might limit your options if you have to replace the CPU cooler.

You can get pretty in expensive PSUs. It doesn't really matter. Just be warned that the sub $40 ones are hit or miss. I'd probably aim for 500W-600W as a minimum. Any lower than that, and you won't have much surplus power for buying a new video card down the road. Here's some options that go from about $45 on up.

Zotac makes some really fantastic GPUs at the low to mid range. I've bought two and haven't had any trouble with them. Just be aware of the outputs on the cards. Ones like this one, a Geforce 650 GTX Ti are about $130 but it only has 1 DVI. If you ever plan on using dual monitors, you'll need two DVIs or similar. Although this one does come with an HDMI output.

A good case will probably set you back about $100ish. You can get cheaper ones with a PSU included, though, if you're really pressed. And the 1 TiB WD Black drives are about $80 or so, depending on where you source them. So, you're probably looking at about $500-$600ish. Maybe more if you squeeze in higher end components.

This should give you a good place to start, though.

Oh, if you need thermal compound. Don't buy Arctic Silver. That stuff is a scam. Although enthusiasts praise it for being the "best" on the market, it hardens over time and within a year, it can become useless. I'd get the Noctua NT-H1 stuff if you need it. It's not very well known, but it works amazingly well. I've had it on my CPU for about three years or so, and I've not noticed any change in its thermal transfer to the heat sink.

I'll try and post more later, but I have some chores to do.

[Zancarius]

Oh, right. Another thing to keep in mind.

OEM copies of Windows are cheaper than retail, obviously. Besides the caveats you're already aware of, you technically can't reactivate them on new hardware. Worse, if it doesn't reactivate, you pretty well have to call MS and give them a sob story about how your motherboard blew up.

This doesn't apply to the upgrade editions. Though somewhat more expensive, as I understand it, you're only limited to 1 or 2 activations a year more or less indefinitely.

OEM is a deal, but there's also a catch. I'm not especially fond of MS for a variety of reasons, but until game developers make decent Linux versions, well... you see where this is going.

[Highgrade]

http://m.newegg.com/Combo/ComboDetail?c ... 6811119227
Is this worth the price?

[Highgrade]

I'm really bad at hardware stuff lol.

[Zancarius]

Was that on one of their daily deals? It's redirecting to another page:

Code: Select all

$ curl -I http://m.newegg.com/Combo/ComboDetail\?comboid\=1419269\&combotype\=2\&itemnumber\=N82E16811119227
HTTP/1.1 302 Found
Cache-Control: private
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Location: http://www.newegg.com/?FM=1
Set-Cookie: ASP.NET_SessionId=mvhszamk4u2majye2yy1gt3u; path=/; HttpOnly
Server: NEG-Server
x-server-id: 05
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Date: Sat, 08 Mar 2014 21:28:50 GMT
Age: 0
Connection: keep-alive
X-Served-By: E310
X-Ver: 0123201401
X-Cache: MISS


[Zancarius]

Never mind, found it:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboBund ... bo.1419269

[Highgrade]

Yep that's the one.

[Zancarius]

Looks like this is the hardware list?

• 1x Cooler Master Elite 430 - Mid Tower Computer Case with Windowed Side Panel and All-Black Interior (Model:RC-430-KWN1) ($49.99)
• 1x MSI B85-G41 PC Mate LGA 1150 Intel B85 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX High Performance CF Intel Motherboard (Model:B85-G41 PC Mate) ($64.49)
• 1x MSI N650-MD1GD5/OC GeForce GTX 650 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card (Model:N650-MD1GD5/OC) ($109.99)
• 1x Rosewill CAPSTONE-450 450W Continuous @ 50°C, Intel Haswell Ready, 80 PLUS GOLD, ATX12V v2.31 & EPS12V v2.92, SLI/CrossFire Ready, Active PFC Power Supply (Model:CAPSTONE-450) ($59.99)
• 1x Intel Core i5-4430 Haswell 3.0GHz LGA 1150 84W Quad-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics BX80646I54430 (Model:BX80646I54430) ($189.99)
• 1x Kingston 4GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 Desktop Memory Model KVR16N11S8/4 (Model:KVR16N11S8/4) ($39.99)
• 1x Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive (Model:ST1000DM003) ($64.99)
• 1x SAMSUNG DVD Burner SATA Model SH-224DB/BEBE (Model:SH-224DB/BEBE) ($19.99)

Combined Total: $599.42
Combo Discounts: -$67.84
Combo Price: $531.58

Some notes...

To be honest, it looks like a really good deal. The CPU performance is about in line with the A8-6500 and clocked about 500 MHz slower (AMD chips tend to run at higher frequencies). Its performance beats out lots of AMD chips, especially on single-core.

4GiB RAM is a bit low these days, particularly if you're planning on using it for games, and what they're packaging with that is actually a variety of Kingston's value RAM. You can always upgrade later. Personally I'd go with Corsair, but that's an investment you'll need to think about. You'll likely want 8GiB eventually, especially if you're intending to be mostly future proof (and a 64-bit OS), but the general gist with RAM is to buy as much as you can afford. Or, if you can't spare the change, just throw in another stick of the same RAM down the road. It's only $40 after all (but be warned, it may not be as performant as the more expensive variety). Admittedly, anything more than 16GiB right now is probably overkill. 8GiB is about perfect. Again, make sure to have a 64-bit OS installed.

The trick with RAM though is that you don't want to change the brand, the model, or even anything else about it if you're adding more. On most motherboards, you can get away with different types as long as they're on different channels (see the blue and black slots? make sure to keep the same type of RAM in the same colored slot--you probably already know this). The reason you don't want to mix and match is because the RAM performance can differ, and then the BIOS will negotiate to the lowest performing stick. Or you can have really weird compatibility issues, but I think that's fairly rare these days.

Also, be sure to read the manual about where you want to stick the RAM. Dual channel usually means you need to balance the memory between channels for optimum throughput (one in the blue, one in the black), but sometimes, some manufacturers kinda goof the labeling a bit so you have to fill one colored slot first. Gigabyte has done that on some of their boards, for example. But again, be sure to read everything in the manual (I know, I know, it goes without saying).

The PSU looks pretty good. 450W is a tiny bit on the low end (500W is ideal, higher is better, 600W is about perfect, but higher is also more expensive and you reach a point of diminishing returns for your money). However, looking at the specs indicates that it offers 37 amps on the +12V rail, which is very good. You want good amperage ratings on the +12V rail, because video cards like to suck down lots of juice. Rosewill is, overall, quite good from my experience. I have a 10 port USB hub of theirs that's done well, but I've never owned one of their PSUs.

I don't know much about MSI boards. They work, that's about all I can say. It does appear that it uses a Realtek ALC887, which I've had mixed luck with. But fortunately, if sound is that big a deal, you can always buy a discrete soundcard. Most people don't really give a crap about the soundcard, so it's a matter of personal taste. I do like ones with optical output or S/PDIF, mostly for the extra options. It also has 6 SATA ports (2x3Gbps, 4x6Gbps). I usually stick DVDs in the lowest speed port, if there's any available. There were some issues a few years ago with some controller chipsets and some DVDs being possessed by demons sharing scary stories when you're trying to get work done not getting along well and causing some compatibility issues if you stuck them in the higher speed ports with a hard disk, but I highly doubt that's true anymore. In theory, it shouldn't have ever happened considering SATA is one disk per port, but you know how subpar manufacturers can be...

In spite of the case being a mid-sized tower, it appears to offer lots of room. It does have a bottom-mounting slot for the PSU. I actually prefer these, but it can cause an issue if the PSU's cables aren't long enough. Reading the reviews of the PSU they included suggests that this won't be a problem. The Rosewill appears to come with fairly long cables. I suspect this case will be pretty easy to work on, judging by the fact that there's very little to obscure access. You may or may not be able to route the cables on the inside of the opposite panel. I don't see ingress slots, but that's not really a big deal. It's kinda pointless to do that on a mid-size anyway. If you're concerned about how the cabling looks, buy some zip ties.

The curious thing about bottom-mounted PSUs is that you can usually orient them with their internal fan (if the PSU has two fans--not all of them do) facing inside or outside the case. Mounting it with the intake fan inside the case can help limit dust ingestion at the expense of increasing the temperature of the air running over the PSU. I recommend mounting it with the intake fan facing down toward the desk--that way it pulls in cooler air and can extend the life of the PSU simply on the merit that higher temperatures tend to degrade electronics over time. You will have to dust it fairly regularly to keep it happy, but instead of buying canned air, I'd highly recommend getting a DavaVac duster (basically a blower).

The only thing that I'll offer up as a point of warning is the hard disk. I have that exact type (there's actually two different models, 1ch162 which is slightly slower, and 9yn162 which is slightly faster), and it's actually the fastest mechanical drive on the market. However, you need to be aware that it has integrated power management you cannot disable via firmware if it's the 1ch162, and both include parking ramps as you'd find in laptop-grade hard disks. This means that any time the disk is idle for more than about 2-3 minutes, you'll hear it click as the heads park. Over time, this will eventually fail, essentially rendering the disk unusable, and it can happen in less than 300,000 cycles if you leave your system on a lot. It's possible to hit 1000 in a week to a month, depending on use and how often the drive is idle between writes. I'm already at 500, for instance, and I've only had this drive for about 3-6 months, but most of those are from when I forget to disable it in Windows and leave it idle while playing a game.

Fortunately, there are some options you can use to disable this "feature" from within Windows, but because Windows doesn't offer a means of disabling this (nope, the hard disk power management features are for spinning down the spindle--it doesn't disable this), the only way to do so is to use a 3rd party app. So far, I haven't had much luck, but I don't use Windows that much either. If you pull the trigger on this sale, I'll see if I can figure out a way to effectively (and permanently) disable that for you. You can pull some tricks with the Windows port of hdparm and a service loader to load it in the background, even if you're sitting at the login screen, but it takes some trial and error.

Side note: This doesn't come with Windows, as you can see. You'll need to sink about another $100 for the OS or use a license you already have (cheapest option but renders it unusable on your other system). Be aware that OEM licenses are technically non-transferable, even between hardware. You can usually coerce the person on the other side of the line that your motherboard exploded, and you couldn't find a decent replacement because your OEM (that's you) would only ship you this one. Hey, don't look at me like that. It works.

If you have any other questions, I can pop on TS or something. Or just post them here. The biggest issue is going to be the drive, but I have some tricks up my sleeve for contending with that annoyance. I just haven't bothered much with them myself as I'm in Linux most of the time.

[Elade]

Someday, after I've cured cancer and AIDS and stupid people being able to reproduce, I'ma look back here and go "Yep. That still makes NO sense."

[Zancarius]

Someday, after I've cured cancer and AIDS and stupid people being able to reproduce, I'ma look back here and go "Yep. That still makes NO sense."

Yeah right.