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Building a custom PC, need advice/info on parts...

WannaBMW3

WannaBMW3

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 22, 2007
137
0
Central Cali
I originally have a MBP (see specs below)...

But my PC is ancient by todays standards. I used to know which components are the top of the line for that particular item (ie. CPU, motherboard, ram, etc.) Which product is the best for gaming:

1. Graphics card (PCI Express or AGP? Nvidia or ATI)

2. Sound Card

3. CPU (No extreme - too expensive)

4. Power supply (1000 watt?)

5. Motherboards

6. RAM (speed)

Thanks alot guys!!!
 
1. Video: Nvidia PCI Express (there are no new AGP mobos/cards other than value line)

2. Sound: Newest Soundblaster line (or really on board these days is pretty good)

3. CPU: Intel, you can pick up a Q6600 quadcore or similar for pretty cheap

4. PSU: for Non-SLI you will be fine with 500 Watt

5. Mobo: Asus, Gigabit, Abit (stay away from Biostar, ECS and the like)

6. RAM: get DDR3 if the mobo you buy supports it can or just some good brand DDR2 800 or higher from someplace like Crucial or Mushkin

P.S. If you want a OSX compatible system i suggest you head on over to insanelymac.org forums and ask your question there.
 
get a nVidia 9800GT/GTX+ or ATi 4870 1GB…good bang for the buck

oops…i meant 4870 instead of 3870
also, get a zalman 9700 so you can OC intels to 4GHz+
 
How much cheaper is it to build your own mac? And how difficult would it be for a "noobie" computer builder?

And nice Icon Aranince :)
 
- Graphics card, I'd get a 4870 or 4870x2. Ati owns nvidia at the moment.

- Sound, use built-in

- E8500 dualcore (Games don't scale well with quadcore). This will most likely clock to 4Ghz with ease.

- PSU, get a 600w - 750w Coolermaster, Seasonics, Corsair, Galaxy,
Zalman,you can't go wrong with them.

- Motherboards, if you want to run Crossfire get an X48 motherboard, this will run two graphics cards at the full 16x PCI-E bandwidth, like a Gigabyte X48-DQ6 or Asus P5E Deluxe. Alternatively a P45 motherboard can also run crossfire, but at 8x PCI-E bandwidth. The difference between an X48 and P45 is really only about 10%, and only noticeable at high resolution gaming like 1920x1200. A good P45 board is P5Q-Pro, to anywhere up to P5Q Deluxe is good.

- RAM, anything really, the cheapest DDR2-1066 ram. P45 supports 16GB of RAM, X48 supports 8GB of RAM.
 
shoulin333 said:
1. Video: Nvidia PCI Express (there are no new AGP mobos/cards other than value line)

2. Sound: Newest Soundblaster line (or really on board these days is pretty good)

3. CPU: Intel, you can pick up a Q6600 quadcore or similar for pretty cheap

4. PSU: for Non-SLI you will be fine with 500 Watt

5. Mobo: Asus, Gigabit, Abit (stay away from Biostar, ECS and the like)

6. RAM: get DDR3 if the mobo you buy supports it can or just some good brand DDR2 800 or higher from someplace like Crucial or Mushkin

P.S. If you want a OSX compatible system i suggest you head on over to insanelymac.org forums and ask your question there.
Click to expand...



Thanks alot bro...I've been doing some research and found a couple of systems, mainly this one with SLI motherboard, nVidia graphics card, and quad core chip...any good???

http://www.costco.com/Browse/Produc...ang=en-US&Sp=C&ec=BC-EC10600-Cat56671&topnav=
 
The system in my sig cost $1300 with overnight shipping nearly 1 year ago. The same or comparable parts could probably be had for less than $1000 these days. The only exception is that I would not recommend getting the 8800GTX. It's a fantastic graphics card but I believe they've stopped making them and the 8800GT and GTS and 9800 GPUs are cheaper, cooler and perform the same or a little bit better except at very high resolutions. Overclocking is very easy and the payoff can be huge so I'd get some decent cooling.

If OSX is your thing you'll be very pleased. A quad core Mac Pro would cost, at a bare minimum, $2300. Here are the results of a current quad core Mac Pro in Geekbench. Here are the results of my $1000 quad core in Geekbench. Another user on this forum has a similar quad core Hack that performs even better. Photoshop performance is excellent as is 3D application performance and rendering.

The disadvantages would be that you don't have any outside support for your computer. You have to wait for the OSX86 community to patch the patches so you can update (usually takes a matter of days, if that long). You can't add another core. That's probably the biggest disadvantage. But, if you never planned on spending that much money in the first place this is sort of a non-issue. If you do want 8 cores you could always go with an Intel server board and 2 2.33GHz Xeons which will all overclock to 2.8GHz with a very simple operation. If you did that you'd come out way ahead of Apples offering as far as price goes but get the same performance. If you bought a Skulltrail motherboard you could overclock those things even higher for some amazing performance.

For example:

picture1jx3.png


This system will overclock to 2.8GHz easily and it costs less than a current quad core Mac Pro 2.8GHz and the Mac would have 4 less cores, 6GB less ram, a worse video card, and 700GB less hard drive space. If you match those exact specs on Apples web site you come out with $4749. You could buy the bare bones Mac 8 core for $2700 but if cost is an issue, by the time you match the Newegg specs you'll be well over $3000 if you upgrade the hard drive, video card, and RAM. Also, the Newegg system has a Bluray player/burner. It wouldn't be much use to you in OSX but if you dual boot with Vista it'll come in handy.
 
I don't think I'd go with that S510 keyboard/mouse set. I have the same set and its been relegated to ps3 duty. The mouse is terrible and the keyboard is meh?

I think I'd go with a nice logitec gaming mouse (I use a mx518) and probably a new apple keyboard.

But the rest looks pretty sweet.
 
Check out EVGA boards also. If you wanted to go with an Nvidia board, they'd be my first pick. EVGA > ASUS > GIGABYTE > EVERYONE ELSE. Also, the E8500 is a waste of money if you OC. The E8400 will get anywhere the E8500 can.

If you have time to kill and/or money to burn, you might want to wait for the Core i7 line which is launching next month.
 
CarlsonCustoms said:
I don't think I'd go with that S510 keyboard/mouse set. I have the same set and its been relegated to ps3 duty. The mouse is terrible and the keyboard is meh?

I think I'd go with a nice logitec gaming mouse (I use a mx518) and probably a new apple keyboard.

But the rest looks pretty sweet.
Click to expand...

I just picked that M/KB combo as a cost place holder.
 
shoulin333 said:
Actually ya man that is a nice machine, and to top it off costo's awesome 90 day no questions asked no restocking fee return policy will ensure you like it
Click to expand...

Yeah thanks bro...I couldn't believe I found it actually, I was looking to see if they carried 22" monitors and I saw the gaming PC's...

The parts is what draws me...I already have a 20" monitor, 1000w power supply (in my current PC) I can swap into that machine, and a mouse keyboard combo...so the tower is really all I need... More specifically, CPU, motherboard, Ram, Video Card, Sound Card...
 
Sound cards are a way for the store to get more attachments, the benefit they provide if you want to take stress off the CPU is minimal, and the sound quality, if it is better, is not taken advantage of by most computer speakers.

Wouldn't spend $100 on one, but there are cheaper ones than the "performance" sound cards that are just as good at the $30 level.
 
m1stake said:
Sound cards are a way for the store to get more attachments, the benefit they provide if you want to take stress off the CPU is minimal, and the sound quality, if it is better, is not taken advantage of by most computer speakers.

Wouldn't spend $100 on one, but there are cheaper ones than the "performance" sound cards that are just as good at the $30 level.
Click to expand...

Sheesh. I couldn't tell you the last time I spent any money on a descrete sound card. Even on my HTPC systems the motherboard spdif output does a fine job at passing DTS and Dolby 5.1 through to my reciever. Unless you're doing some real fancy audio work or you want to get 5.1 surround sound to your reciever while playing computer games I don't see much reason in getting a descrete card.
 
In short, they're almost as much of a baseless gimmick as the Killer Network cards.

My own personal recommendations:

Wait for Core i7 (November)

Get the EVGA X58 (EVGA > ASUS)

Pick up a GTX 260 Core 216 or 4870 (Whichever you prefer)

Buying the top end graphics card is something that's hard to recommend. The price vs performance is just too hard to swallow. Even though I have an 8800GTX, it's hard to recommend the top end.

Antec 300 case (Simple, excellent cooling)

I'm thinking of doing the same thing but waiting for the Nvidia 3 series and ATI 5 series to see how things stack up when they both have GDDR5. My bet's still on ATI.

Still waiting on those DDR3 triple packs to ship.

If you want to do this for less than a grand, don't do core i7 or the x58 or DDR3.
 
m1stake said:
In short, they're almost as much of a baseless gimmick as the Killer Network cards.

My own personal recommendations:

Wait for Core i7 (November)

Get the EVGA X58 (EVGA > ASUS)

Pick up a GTX 260 Core 216 or 4870 (Whichever you prefer)

Buying the top end graphics card is something that's hard to recommend. The price vs performance is just too hard to swallow. Even though I have an 8800GTX, it's hard to recommend the top end.

Antec 300 case (Simple, excellent cooling)

I'm thinking of doing the same thing but waiting for the Nvidia 3 series and ATI 5 series to see how things stack up when they both have GDDR5. My bet's still on ATI.

Still waiting on those DDR3 triple packs to ship.

If you want to do this for less than a grand, don't do core i7 or the x58 or DDR3.
Click to expand...

I agree that it's tough to recommend the top end video cards but boy has this GTX paid off. This could be the longest lasting GPU in history. I mean in terms of providing excellent performance.
 
Slimdude22 said:
How much cheaper is it to build your own mac? And how difficult would it be for a "noobie" computer builder?

And nice Icon Aranince :)
Click to expand...

I disagree. It's no harder for a "noobie" computer builder or an "experienced" computer builder. If you think and plan before you buy the parts, it's no harder to build a hackintosh then it is to install OS X86 on an intel laptop.
 
thejadedmonkey said:
I disagree. It's no harder for a "noobie" computer builder or an "experienced" computer builder. If you think and plan before you buy the parts, it's no harder to build a hackintosh then it is to install OS X86 on an intel laptop.
Click to expand...

Yeah, if you've ever played with legos, then you can probably build a computer. The toughest part is getting the OS working. That use to be more of an issue with OSX on non-Apple hardware. These days, however, the community has come a long way and I find that installing OSX on my systems is faster and easier than installing Vista.
 
I've been doing this for years, and I helped a friend pick out some parts and offered my help building it since he and his girl friend (The recipient) had never done it. They called me back 5 hours later and said they were setting up Vista on it. It's really easy, just takes time.
 
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