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Lots of Hardware Questions!
Well, I've been researching on what to get for my new PC and the more I search, the more questions I have. The main game I'm looking into playing is Age of Conan, but I want to be able to run other games like CoD5 and Crysis. Lets start out with the CPU.
I am almost certain I want a Phenom II. At the store I'm going to buy my PC at, the difference between a 920 and a 940 is $50. Is the .2Ghz worth the price? It isn't Black Edition. How about a Phenom 9850 @ 2.5Ghz Black Edition? It's the same price as the Phenom II 920. I intend on buying an aftermarket air cooler and Overclocking the processor. I don't want to Overclock it too much, though, maybe bump up .5Ghz-.8Ghz. I've never overclocked before, thus I'm looking into a Black Edition because I heard it's easier to overclock since you only need to change the multiplier.
The price for the Phenom II 920 is $210, the Phenom II 940 is $260 and the Phenom 9850 is $200. Would you guys reccomend any Intel processors for this price range?
Videocard!
The store offers a couple of HD4870's. The one I want to buy is a HD4870 512MB GDDR5 Sapphire. For a price increase from $210 to $260 I can get a HD4870 1GB DDR5 Sapphire. Now, I play on a 1280x1024 resolution, would this memory upgrade make any difference? I heard AA is quite a memory-hungry technology, does that make 1GB necessary? I've never really used it, is the visual difference too big? I'm not really too keen on overclocking this video card because of the hot temperatures it runs at (I'm afraid to fry it), but if I need to, will it be responsive? Will I need an aftermarket cooler?
The store also offers a GTX260 for $274. Performance-wise, is it better to pick a HD4870 or spend the extra price and get a GTX260?
Hard Drives!
I have 3 possible options here. My first one, which I thought would be the most interesting, is to get 3x250GB HD's and set them up in a RAID0. Now, I do play a few different games and downloading them all again because one HD failed isn't really appealing, so I'm also considering making those three a RAID5. My last option is a RAID0 with 2x500GB. What performance upgrade do I get with a RAID5? Only read speed? Has anyone's HD ever failed? I have never had one of mine fail, so I want to know if it's common and what not to help decide.
Motherboard, Memory and PSU!
Asus M3N-HT Deluxe was my choice here for the 3 PCI-Express x16 slots here. Does anyone know if this is good for overclocking? I settled for 2x2GB DDR2 800 Samsung memory. Is there any need to even overclock this? Would a Huntkey 550W be enough to power this system up?
Sorry for the massive wall of text, I just have a lot of questions. Thanks a lot for your time!
Comments
my advice,
Processor:
If you're going for Phenom II I'd advise going for a socket AM3 one, leaving you with a choice of X3 710, X3 720 BE, X4 810. I've already bought the X3 720 BE, but if you're not bothered about overclocking I'd go for the X4 810 (it can OC fine also). But the X3 720 BE is good for OCing and has a large memory cache of 7.5mb between three cores, and is pretty cheap at about $145.
Motherboard:
It's a toss up between budget AM3 board or a real man's AM3 board or you could use an AM2+ motherboard as the CPU is compatable with it and DDR2 but not good for future upgrading.
RAM:
I went with this Corsair DDR3 1600mhz it's cheap but gives good performance, you'll have to OC the motherboard until there's a good BIOS update as the BIOS isn't good at handling DDR3 over 1333MHZ automatically ATM.
PSU:
I'm looking at this EZcool 700W I'm not sure if the 500W would be good if you wanted to upgrade or do crossfire.
Hard drives:
Never done a raid setup myself and never really needed it, so can't help you there.
Videocard:
I'd go for the HD4870 because I'm an AMD fanbois. If I were you I'd buy a hd4850X2 1GB, you don't need a full 1GB for gaming and for a similar price to a HD4870 1GB you can get the HD4850X2 1GB and get a massive performance boost with no need to overclock.
Hope that helped.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"
CS Lewis
CPU 920 vs 940 get 920 , 920/950 vs 9850BE hard choose , 9850 has 2Mb 920/940 have 8Mb total if possible look for 940BE .940black edition is 219$ at newegg
VGA , 4870 1GB looks expensive ,where are you living ? you can get 4890 1gb for 250-260$ if you are in us www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx
Motherboard , M3N-Ht deluxe has SLI (nvidia tech) you are buying ati vga ,i would go for a motherboard with crossfire option later you can add another 4870/4890 and crossfire your cards or if you will not add 2nd vga than buy a cheaper (but overclock friendly )motherboard with one pci-ekspress 16 slot .
I live in Brazil, but I'm going to buy these components in Paraguay. Just so you can have an idea a GTX260 is around $500 here.
Is there really a need for DDR3 1600Mhz RAM? I thought there wasn't much of a difference. I will look again at the power supplies, a 700W should make me feel safer. As for the CPU, isn't it better to get a quad-core? I would get a 940BE if I ran across one, although the shop doesn't seem to have it.
I actually looked into HD4850x2, but that accounted for an extra $100.
The pricing can differ wildly from region to region on electronics so I'd say the 4870 512mb sounds fine if you can't get the 1gb version.
If you're going to get an AM3 board then you'll need DDR3, but it doesn't have to be 1600mhz, 1066 mhz would do fine. But to cut costs you an AM2+ with DDR2 would cost alot less than a AM3 + DDR3 setup.
As for the CPU the three I mentioned are the only AM3 phenom IIs available right now, with the X4 810 being the only quad. It's better to get a quad for the future but it's about wether you upgrade or not. If you upgrade and want to get an AM3 board in the future get the X4 810, if you don't upgrade but buy a whole system each time then maybe go for the 940.
I just like to future proof for atleast the next year or so incase I want an upgrade.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"
CS Lewis
I'm going for the best system I can get that actually makes a difference. This upgrade can wait until I get more money, if it's worth it. For example, I postponed getting an Athlon x2 because I'd rather get a Phenom and future-proof.
So while DDR3 can be very expensive, if it actually makes a noticeable performance impact I will wait and buy it. Same thing goes for the video card, if 1GB has a noticeable difference over 512MB on the screen I'm using, I will get it.
At 1280x1024 512MB should handle fine - in AoC, CoD5 and Crysis there's very little difference in performance between 512mb and 1gb going up to 1900x1200 and only a couple fps dropoff at higher than 1900x1200 resolution with 512mb. Other games like Fallout 3 and Farcry 2 aren't quite as friendly with the smaller video memory in higher resolutions but again at 1280x1024 you shouldn't hit any bottleneck.
In most games the 4870 1gb, GTX 260, and 4870 512mb benchmark in that order but are so close in performance to be equal. I would recommend a 4870 512mb. I do have to agree with agricola the 4850 x2 is an awesome deal but.. again at 1280x1024 you're only pushing the video card so much and I don't think you would need the 4850 x2 for that resolution at all.
CPU.. the 720 X3 BE is actually probably the best deal of the Phenom II's.. it benchmarks right behind the 920 x4 in games. All the Phenom II's are very close in game benchmarks though, and it wouldn't hurt to get the 810 X4 but it's about 40 bucks more. For memory if you go the AM3/DDR3 route just use the 1066 stuff - there is only like .8 fps difference going from 1066 to 1600 so I hardly find it worth the cash. But you'd be just fine on an AM2+/DDR2 setup too. Also games that are optimized for quad-core benchmark identical (and sometimes better) on 3-core, but suffer on dual-core, but that may change.
edit: after reading your last post about your preferences, I'd go with the 810 x4 AM3/DDR3 - but sorry to hear you skipped the Athlon x2's, they were a huge improvement over the single cores and still do well in games
If you already own the Huntkey 550W I would just try it out - it should work. If you're looking to buy a PSU here's a decent list of PSU manufacturers and quality: www.computer-juice.com/forums/f40/unofficial-power-supply-rankings-14076/ You *may* want to google 'power supply rebranding' because most PSU's get sold under various names and since you're outside the states the brands may not be as relevant (apparently Huntkey is Dynex and Rocketfish here in the states) - and keep in mind some manufacturers sell both top tier and bottom tier PSU's so pay attention to the model.
just to tell you the phenom ii x4 940 is a black edition..and i believe only black edition is released
I'm 90% sure there is the normal edition too.
As to getting the 810, the store I'm buying the stuff at doesn't sell any of the AM3 boards or processors, so I'll have to rule that out (it'll triple the price of the system if I buy it here). I do not own the PSU, I'm looking for one to buy. Thanks for the link, I'll take a look and let you know which one I think on getting.
A SevenTeam ST-750ZAF seems like what I'm getting.
can you show me a link to where a normal edition can be bought so I can check it out..
You're right, seems like I've chosen a processor.
To tell you the truth I doubt there is a normal edition for Phenom II X4 940. I've only seen Black edition on Newegg, and TigerDirect. But I just checked and Tigerdirect does not even carry the 940 anymore. I've typed in Phenom II X4 940 Normal Edition in search engines and nothing popped up with normal edition. Only Black. So I cant see that there are normal editions for the 940. Not even AMD's Official Website says so. So either you read it wrong. Or the store you went to made a fake box, or are false advertising. There's nothing bad if they call it normal cause it would be a better deal. The pictures at ebay are wrong pictures that they used 920 boxes.
Yep, my mistake. Well, processor issue is solved. Now to decide for HD, Video Card and if that Seventeam PSU is any good.
Oh as far as your RAID setup goes.. personally I've never had a HD fail so drastically I didn't have enough warning to backup my data or have the data on the drive be 99% recoverable after the failure. Either a SMART warning goes off or you hear grinding, or notice some data keeps turning up corrupt. Sometimes even if a HD dies you can throw it in the freezer then get enough use out of it to save any important data.
So I just use a RAID 0 for performance, but I just use this PC for gaming.. if I lose everything it's not a big deal to just pick up a new drive and reinstall some mmo.
Ok, RAID0 it is. Does anyone have any experience with freight forwarders? I'd like to know how they work, I might potentially order my video card from the USA if it saves me some bucks.
You are going to be paying alot for Tariffs and importation costs. Its better to buy it locally if you can because they usually get a bulk shipping discount when its crossing the border. Also there is the likely hood it could be stolen in transit depending on the shipping method the carrier chooses. Sometimes they choose to ship by truck and that truck will be going through alot of crime ridden areas.
I would actually find it hard to O/C a processor in Brazil. With the higher ambient temperature it would be hard even with an aftermarket cooler to keep it within safe temps. When overclocking a Phenom II its a bit easier to get to those rather high temps. Such as my 940BE when I overclock it gets to 63C at full load with an aftermarket cooler. A 720BE would probably be the best choice in overclocking. It would be rather annoying to overclock off FSB and adjusting the other multipliers for the higher FSB.
After doing some more research there apparently is very little real world benefit to RAID 0 unless moving/editing very large files or running disk benchmarks
A Raptor would give you better actual performance than a RAID 0 if you want to invest the money. A common option is to get a Raptor for OS/apps and a cheaper large drive for data storage.
You're right, I researched and it seems besides the shipping I'd have to pay a 60% import tax (OUCH!). Better to buy it off Paraguay.
I do live in the Southeastern part of Brazil, so we get mild temperatures, except in the summer (25-35 in the summer and 20-25 in the winter).
I'm getting together with a couple of friends to manufacture our own liquid cooling system (more for fun than anything else). We have a test computer which we don't mind frying so we make sure the liquid cooling works. After that we'll install it on my computer so I can overclock. I do know this won't be as effective as a professional liquid cooling system, but it should do the trick. Besides the fact I don't want an extremely high overclock, only some .4Ghz.
Noquarter,
It improves read times so gaming load times will be faster. A 320GB 15k RPM disk goes for twice the price of a three-disk RAID0 array in Paraguay. Surprisingly, they sell a 320GB 10K RPM disk for the same price as the 15K.
The 15000 RPM Drives are specific to SAS. Only 1 non-server motherboard even supports SAS Connections. In order to use it on another board you need to get a RAID controller card that supports it and those can cost as much as another drive. They cost more because you are paying the premium for higher speed. You can RAID 2 7200RPM drives for 2x the speed, or you can RAID 2 15000RPM drives for 4x the speed and 6.5x the price.
Well that was always my impression, and is the reason I bothered to do it when I needed more space. But after reading some reviews of real-world testing of RAID0 they actually reported identical load times in games and even slightly longer load time in one game. Apparently the RAID0 only shows benefits in reading/writing very large, contiguous files, and video editing/working with large files. Most benchmarks don't reflect the way the HD actually gets used in common operation.
So a Raptor or drive with a much higher spin rate would have better performance in real world use. Anandtech's raid overview says RAID0 provides insignificant benefit for the majority of users as well. I'm kinda disappointed to hear it myself.