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Son needs PC for school, Thoughts?
theyalllie
Member Posts: 229
I'm building a PC for my son. Comming out of 6 yrs in the Navy as a nuke, he will be starting a mechanical engineering program soon and needs a PC.
He games, and while he may use it for some school work, he has a laptop, also that he will use primarily, for school.
With the $35.00 shipping, from Newegg, the system cannot exceed $1000.00
Ive built , worked on, OC"d various older intel machines, but as yet, to touch an AMD, so this is what Ive picked out, so far, not sure about how hard it is to OC them, I went for a big Proc.
I am concerned that I may be cutting it close on the PSU, and, that he may actually need 8 gigs, if the mechanical engineering program actually needfs him to use any CAD programs, or whatever. Im thinking he may actually need something more than the laptop, and want to cover it here.
Your thoughts? Not sure how to paste this so hope it comes out ok.
Comments
The parts you have there look good. As long as you aren't planning to put in SLI anytime soon I'd say 600W should be acceptable. It roughly takes 50W per hard drive and 300W per GPU. If you are planning on upgrading it though, I would definitely at least get a 750W PSU.
double your ram, beef up the power supply at least 750w, look at the antec 900 case, other wise it is what it is.
BTW Newegg F-n Rocks!
Looks good to me.
PSU & Memory are both completely fine. You may need more memory in the future (next couple years), but as of now it should be alright.
But, with the price you're paying for that AMD you may want to look at an i7. Although, Newegg doesn't carry it, the i7 920 will still outperform that processor. You may have to look somewhere else. (Even Tiger Direct doesn't carry them anymore, weird)
If you can't find it, the i5 760 is about the same price on Newegg and will also outperform that AMD.
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Yeah I considered very much, going with a lesser Denab and just OCing it, to free up money for RAM or a PSU.
As it is with shipping the cost, it's $972.00, so $50 dollar cheaper Proc plus the extra $28 I have to play with, allows me $78, to use. Then of couse I will be compelled to OC, may not need to, but I will be compelled to, lol. I run my dual core at 3.5, for all my games, not for the clock, as much as thats the byproduct of my FSB,however As I read about AMD they are a bit different.
Of course compairing an older intel core duo, to a Phenom II, is a bit like compairing a 70's VW Scirroco, to a late 90's Porche. Both had incredible potential, relatively speaking, but the Porche starts where the VW topped out at.
The last AMD I had was the AM 2 6000, so I may not need to OC a 3.0 Denab.
Goal on Performance is to Play WoW CAT, and Bad Company 2, comfortabl,y at high settings. Probably do-able on WoW Cataclism, but Im not sure about Bad Company. He didnt have a prob playing pre CAT WoW on my machine at Ultra High, But the most I can get Bad Company2 at , and still bench 60fps, is medium, which is fine for me, but trying to do better for him. And no one knows about CAT yet, as I dont WoW, it's a pure guess on my part.
A bigger PSU is especially actractive, for the future, should he go SLI, or 480/5870 etc., but thats on him later.
The RAM, now thats different, to my thinking, as he may get into some programs, from school , that will benefit from it. Again would have to lower the CPU cost, now to do it.
And a better case, well yes the extra fan controls would be nice, but those are the only benefits I see, as this case has several big fans, as is, for 30 dollars less, than the nearest competitor, to my thinking, again are fan controls, worth going from a 3.5 Denab, down to a 3.2 or 3.4, perhaps, if OC'ing a phenom is as easy as OC'ing dual cores and core duo's.
If my budget were higher , even by a hundred bucks, I'd go I5, and if I had $200, well yeah no worries PSU, I5 or better, 8 gigs, 900 case.
I may be trying to do the impossible on my budget, I can up to the same PSU in 650 watt 80 plus also, for $20 bucks more, and that may be the best I can do, but you guys are resourseful as hell, so will keep reading, your reply's, and applying your thoughts.
A Core i7 on that budget doesn't make sense unless it's a strictly non-gaming machine. You'd be looking at an extra $100 for the processor. If it's a Lynnfield, you'd get worse chipset with it, and if it's a Bloomfield, it would be about an extra $80 for the motherboard, on top of the extra $100 for the processor.
I'd actually go the other way on the processor. Lose 100 MHz and save $24. And then save an extra $30 by getting it in a combo deal with the OS:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.510960
That's the next lower bin of exactly the same CPU die, so even if losing 100 MHz bothers you, you can easily overclock it back to 3.5 GHz. I'd say that's well worth $54.
I have no idea how well that CPU cooler would perform, but from looking at it, I'd be shocked if it isn't markedly better than the stock cooler. Of course, it could be a pretty bad aftermarket cooler in that price range and still be markedly better than the stock cooler.
I usually don't look at Cooler Master for power supplies, as some of theirs are rather bad. That one is apparently pretty good, so it should be fine. You're getting a system that will probably never draw 300 W from the power supply, so that's plenty of headroom.
If you're getting a WD Caviar Black, do you want 640 GB, or 750 GB for exactly the same price?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136283
Lian Li makes some nice cases. It can be nice to have a side fan blowing right at the video card, though. Here's an alternative for essentially the same price that does have room for a side vent, though it would take buying an extra fan to fill it:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119197
And here's a much cheaper case (note the shipping cost!) that also has a side vent, though I guess it comes with one fan fewer and you'd have to buy the side fan:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129042
Or you can get a discount on the latter case as part of a combo deal with an optical drive like this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.514335
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You've got quite a choice to make on the video card. What you've picked out is a gaming card. If he plays games a lot, that's fine. For some CAD programs, both AMD and Nvidia make professional cards, the FirePro and Quadro lines, respectively. They're the same GPU chips but with different drivers optimized for CAD programs--and vastly more expensive. Nvidia has most of the market share here, but that's because they're regarded as having better professional drivers, though AMD has been trying very hard to catch up. I'm not sure if that matters, since neither a GeForce nor a Radeon will use those professional drivers.
It may be of interest that Nvidia does feature binning and will artificially disable features on some cards. AMD does not do feature binning, and will allow anything that the card supports to run. Of course, this is partially because AMD doesn't have features that they would get people to be able to pay a premium for in the first place. For example, Nvidia's GF100 chip supports ECC memory, but they disable it on their GeForce cards. AMD doesn't have GPUs that support ECC memory at all, but if they did, they likely wouldn't disable it artificially on Radeon cards. (Of course, for gaming, no one cares about ECC memory anyway.)
You can actually get a little bit faster video card from AMD for a little bit more money:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127500
This is currently their top GPU, so anything that AMD cards can do at all, this card can do. You can actually get the garbage bin of Nvidia's top GPU, too, for around the same price:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130557
I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if that performs dramatically better than a GTX 460 in CAD programs, with three GPCs rather than two for the GTX 460, and no features at all cut out to save on die space. It's no better in gaming, though, and tends to run dangerously hot under realistic gaming loads. It's something you might want to look into. Or it may not matter at all, if the department doesn't expect students to run CAD programs on their home computer.
If he's not a gamer and doesn't need the video card for CAD use, then there's no need for a $200 discrete card. In that case, you could just get a motherboard with integrated graphics and skip the discrete card:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128444
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Another thing to think about is a solid state drive, which will make things load amazingly fast. Hard drives are an intrinsically slow technology that cannot be made fast. SSDs fix the problem and are much faster, so that you don't have to constantly sit there waiting for the computer to do something or other. You can get a small SSD and a much larger hard drive, and put the OS and applications that you use a lot on the SSD, and more lightly accessed data on the hard drive. Then everything on the SSD will run really fast. A quick comparison of SSDs to hard drives, in the things hard drives are bad at:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3681/oczs-vertex-2-special-sauce-sf1200-reviewed/6
The WD Caviar Black isn't listed there, but it will probably be about halfway between the VelociRaptor and the Seagate Momentus that are shown. In other words, really painfully slow.
Something like this would be nice:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227525
This one is substantially faster:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227550
Or if you don't want to bother with a rebate, then this is basically the same thing but a lower base price and no rebate:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231375
Note that you can save $54 with the processor combo deal above. If you need to save a little more to make room for an SSD, it's easy enough to get a slower video card (around 70% of the performance of the GTX 460) that is still pretty good for gaming:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161338
I'm not sure what your son's preferences are. Some people want higher frame rates and image quality in games at all costs. Personally, I'd much sooner take a slower video card than give up my SSD, as I don't like constantly sitting and waiting for the computer to respond every time I want it to do something.
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Also, if your son just served six years in the US Navy, then tell him some random person online said thank you.
I got a core i7 extreme with 8gb ddr3 and a radeon 5770 this was all about 1600$ and it works like a charm for about every task i throw at it look at those parts and build one for your son
Playing: WoW
Waiting On: SWTOR, GW2, Rift, TERA.
Battlefield Bad Company 2 somewhat favors AMD's architecture over Nvidia's. But I don't think that's worth taking into account much, as it's not a good predictor of the future, more demanding games he'll play if he's a gamer.
Another thing I'll mention is that AMD's next video card architecture launches later this month, likely on October 25. A Radeon HD 6770 is likely to be both faster than a GeForce GTX 460 and cheaper. But if you can't wait until October 25, I guess that doesn't do you any good.
Tell him to scrap the pc and not get out stay in till the make him get out.
MAGA
Check out the cmstacker cases, they are the best out there in my opion and are very easy to build inside, excellent cooling.
MAGA
Spending $1000 on the CPU alone doesn't tend to fit a $1000 budget very well.
Yes waiting on the first of the year is an option, tho my soft deadline is, Christmas, build complete, turn key.
As this will be my first experience with OCing AMD, I add a week to that process. I typically take a week to complete OCing, as I do painfull benching, and reading. I wouldn't have selected this proc, if I just had more experience with AMD. The 3.0 would've been my choice, and I think will end up being the way I go.
And yeah if the hard drives are still at that price, of course a black with more space. As for the solid state, am really liking what I see, prices comming down, etc. Making the choice for a larger spinner now more attractive as a great data drive behind the SSD. Hopefully I can do just that, and still make my soft deadline.
He tells me, that he will just be gamming on this rig, I, on the other hand, dont beleive that, (LOL). My gut tells me, this guy who has lived on a stinking ship crammed into a sardine box with alot of other people, will spend way to much time running around living, (go figure), and doing his homework at the last minute, possibly facilitating the need to do at home, what he could've done with an on campus machine. We shall see. For the time being, I defer to his judgement. (Damn I hate letting go)
So I wait, see what AMD brings out, hopefully, We get a beter card, SSD, whatever case with the best airflow, AND, stay under 1000. $1000.00 is fixed, that I cannot change, unfortunately. It's his cash, as I have zero to offer except the grunt work.
Ya never know if I can meet the above, a little more RAM would be nice, but really, if he only games, unnesessary.
The combo's and the cases will all go into the mix, we might just pull this off folks, thankyou very much.
Oh and P.S. , yes Quiz, I will pass your message on to him, all the men and some of the women , in my family, have entered service, and, those of us still alive, are gratefull for all who seek to serve their fellow man, in whatever capacity, TY
http://steamcommunity.com/id/Cloudsol/
I strongly doubt that gaming will be the only thing he ever does with it. Surely he'll use it for web browsing and e-mail, too.
If you're waiting some, then have a look at the Radeon HD 5770 that is likely to launch on October 25 or around there. That should give comparable performance to a GeForce GTX 460 while costing far less to build the card (possibly around half as much), and I'm somewhat expecting AMD to price it aggressively to squeeze Nvidia, since they can simultaneously do that and also reap fat profits at the high end with the Radeon HD 6850 and 6870 set to launch about a month later, as they'll then have the high end all to themselves for a year or so and can charge whatever they like.
As for what else will launch this year, AMD's Bobcat APU may or may not make it out by the end of the year. That should be an excellent chip for cheap laptops or low-end desktops, but it's not really meant for gaming. Intel's Sandy Bridge processors should launch in mid-January. Intel, Indilinx, and SandForce may or may not release new SSDs soon. If nothing else, the transition to ~25 nm NAND flash to cut prices should happen soon.
If you're overclocking the processor, the AMD Phenom II X4 955, 965, and 970 are all black edition processors, so they have an unlocked multiplier. That makes overclocking very easy, as all you have to do is to adjust the multiplier and possibly the voltage and see if it's stable. On the Intel side, you could look at a Core i5-760, but that's more expensive and a lot more work to overclock. It does have a lot more overclocking headroom, though, as Nehalem/Westmere gives around 20% more performance per core per clock cycle than AMD's Phenom II processors. AMD counters by clocking their processors higher, which means they've already eaten up a good chunk of what could have been overclocking headroom right out of the box. AMD and Intel processors will overclock to comparable clock speeds; typically around 3.6 GHz is safe, and 4.0 GHz is riskier.
Personally, I think people who buy new processors and immediately overclock them are nuts. Processors have gotten fast enough that hardly anything is processor-bound anymore. For games, the main example is badly-coded single-threaded games like EverQuest 2 or Civilization 4. Those are older games, but EverQuest 2 was apparently intended to run well on a single-core 10 GHz Pentium 4 that Intel promised should have been out sometime around 2007 or so, not knowing that there were some massive physics barriers that would prevent that.
But mostly, overclocking the processor just means that you get higher power consumption and less reliability with no real benefits. Even for future-proofing reasons, game developers know that clock speeds are pretty much topped out, and future performance improvements will mostly come from using more cores in parallel. Even after 6-7 years of Intel's very heavy emphasis on improving instructions per cycle, Intel's upcoming Sandy Bridge processors are only maybe 70% better at it than AMD's Athlon 64 that launched in 2003 without worrying that much about IPC, as the assumption was that future performance improvements would mostly come from higher clock speeds, since that was what it had been for the last 40 years or so.
Going over 4 GB of memory is useless for gaming. 32-bit programs can only address 2 GB of system memory anyway. Companies aren't going to start making 64-bit games until 64-bit operating systems are nearly universal, and that's still several years away.
For a $1000.00 system, my recommendation is to get a Dell.
You can customize a (close match) Studio XPS 8100 for under 1K and get free shipping and Warr. right now. The GT460 might be tight, but you could get a i-7 with GTS240 or Radeon 5770 and 8GB DDR3 Ram.
http://www.dell.com/us/p/desktops?avt=series&avtsub=studio-xps-desktop-pcs#ViewByTabs
I know the whole build your own side - for those who might go "ewww don't suggest Dell!". I have built more than a dozen systems for myself and others over the years. At this price range, save the hassle.
I am on my third Dell (upgrades not broke/replacement) after building a lot of my own. They have all been reliable and good boxes.
Proprietary systems are not the grief monsters or money sinks they used to be. Just isn't worth it anymore to me. Course the tinkering part is there, which is still fun from time to time.
Well, those are my thoughts.
Wow I just noticed that, the 3.2 is the lowest that the Phenom II x4, goes, in the black edition AM3, and it's just 7 dollars cheaper than the 3.4.
Not knowing, I'm wondering if the 3.4 will do what he wants as is. That would be 30 bucks saved, and, stay with the stock cooler, another $28 bucks.
I just picked up on what you said about the up comming 5770, which would allow me to go down to a good 500 watt PSU, IF, one can be had for $50 or so.
Hmmm, those cuts, and the right combo's, a good SSD becomes real. Or what happens to the 5850 price in October, hmmm food for thought, food for thought.But the 5850 gonna have to have 600 watt two pci 6 pins. My PSU (500 watt) has two PCI 6 pins,but I would'nt be too sure about running a 5850, or a 460 on it, dont they require 550 minumum, in the specs? Take 20 percent off the top of a PSU, yep, 600 watt atleast to be safe. 750 would be super great but that gets way outside the money curve.
Thinking out loud now.
Gonna go put some numbers to this, GJ.
Because someone who demonstrably knows enough to build is own should pay Dell a 50% premium to do it for him? Uh huh.
If one insists on a quad core processor, Radeon HD 5770 or better, and at least 4 GB of memory, you can't stay within the $1000 budget and get an XPS 8100 like you recommend. And that's even if you're willing to accept a far inferior video card, hard drive, power supply, memory, motherboard, and probably case as compared to the original build. Dell will also load you up with bloatware.
buy on black friday...
Here are my suggestions.
Phenom II x6 1055T - In multi-threaded productivity tasks it will outperform any Intel under $500. It only costs $10 more then the card you have.
8GB Ram - In CAD based apps this can actually be used up fairly quickly considering most modern CAD apps are 64-bit.
ATI GPU - Lets seperate Consumer and Professional cards when it comes to CAD. In professional cards you have to do a bit of research to see what card performs best on your application suite. In consumer cards you don't. Quite simply ATI performs nearly 3 times better in CAD then nVidia consumer cards. It just makes no sense to use a nVidia consumer GPU. This has to do with ATIs heavy styream processor approach.
Motherboard is not too good. I would look for an 890FX/GX or atleast an 880G. Unlike Intel, AMD motherboards run pretty cheap. AM3's are all under $300. You can find an 890GX for around $100.
You don't need an aftermarket heatsink. They are only applicable when overclocking, and you won't be able to successfully overclock an AMD to be worth the improvement. They really don't have much headroom.
You might be able to get a cheaper PSU. Try and keep with a good 80+ bronze, silver, gold rated PSU, but go for lower wattage. 500w PSU is fine for the current application. Its not like you are running 10 HDD and multiple GPUs.
You can probably get a cheaper case. The new crop of Rosewill cases look pretty good, come with good internal design and run around $50. Lian Li has become overrated.
If your budget allows for it, you might want a beefier HDD array.
Yes, uh huh. It was a suggestion, like anyone else provided.
50% premium, where? The cost/benefit for built 1K systems is not that wide. I would agree if you are trying to create a high end gaming system (or even $1500+) where the gap increases substantially.
i-7 is a quad core right? You can stay in the $1000 range, the one I spent a couple minutes on was $979.00. What's inferior about the HDD? They aren't setting up a RAID. I've not replaced a power supply, mainboard or memory in any of the boxes received. The user is going to game but this isn't a primary gaming box .
Bloatware is rendered null with a format/reinstall, if you can build you can install Windows.
Sorry, don't want to drive this off topic - suggestions are free to disregard or consider. You are free to critique them as well.
you dont have to buy windows you can get it for free & legit if you have a school email account. https://www.dreamspark.com/Products/Product.aspx?ProductId=17
and dont ever buy a dell
Just to clarify, the Radeon HD 5770 is already out. It's the 6770 and 6750 (Barts) that are coming next month, and then the 6870 and 6850 (Cayman) in November, though those are probably out of your budget.
AMD is in a nice position on video cards right now. It costs less to make a Radeon HD 5870 than it does to make a GeForce GTX 460, but the 5870 is about 40% faster. That gives AMD the option to either run large profit margins, or to be more aggressive with pricing to take more market share and deny Nvidia the chance to make a profit at all while AMD still makes a decent profit. At the moment, they're choosing the former, and kind of need to with their processor division not doing so well. With their new architecture coming, they can do both at once, squeezing Nvidia on prices with Barts and having huge profit margins at the high end with Cayman. AMD hasn't said anything about prices (actually, they haven't officially acknowledged the existence of Northern Islands at all, apart from a few vague comments about refreshing their lineup this year), but that's the approach I expect them to take with pricing.
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Ignore the power supply wattage requirement on video cards. They give massively inflated numbers because they don't know what else you have. Someone with a given video card and a 65 W processor needs a lot less power from the power supply than someone with the same video card and a 130 W processor with a heavy overclock to use 250 W. A high quality 300 W power supply can deliver more power than some of the worst "600 W" power supplies that will explode (literally) if you try to draw 400 W from them under real world conditions.
A Radeon HD 5850 and GeForce GTX 460 barely need the second PCI-E power connector. A PCI Express slot can deliver 75 W, and each PCI-E 6-pin power connector can also deliver 75 W. The two cards have TDPs of 151 W and 160 W, respectively, just over the 150 W that would be available with only one 6-pin connector.
Rather, to figure out how much power supply you need, find the TDP of the processor (125 W for AMD's high end) and the video card. Add these together, and then another 100 W to account for the rest of the system plus some headroom. Get a good quality power supply rated at more than that on the +12 V rail(s) and you'll be fine. Note that it's only the +12 V rail that helps you, and not the total nominal wattage. If there's a large gap (say, 100 W or more) between the +12 V rails and the total nominal wattage, then it's probably a cheap junk power supply that you should avoid.
Well, that's if you're leaving everything at stock speeds. Maybe add 50 W if you're overclocking the processor at the stock voltage, or 150 W if you're both overclocking and substantially overvolting the processor. Do the same for the video card if you overclock that.
Realistically, at stock speeds, you'd be fine with a good quality 400 W power supply, though you'd need a 2x Molex to 6-pin PCI-E power connector. What I'd really recommend if you're not overclocking is something around 500 W like this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151094
Or if you want more headroom to overclock, then maybe something like this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139005
A Phenom II X6 is basically AMD's approach of more cores clocked slower. It's a great processor for programs that can really push all six cores. Games can't yet, and won't in the near future, either. Only a handful of games can even push four cores. Four cores clocked higher beat six cores clocked lower in programs that are unable to take advantage of more than four cores.
If you're going to get 8 GB of system memory, then make it two 4 GB modules. Those have come down in price enough that they're not really more expensive than four 2 GB modules. They also save power and preserve room for future expansion if it becomes necessary.
Do you have a reference on Radeon cards clobbering GeForce cards in CAD programs? It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if it's true, given how Nvidia loves feature binning and AMD doesn't.
AMD's 870 chipset is the low end desktop chipset from their latest lineup, but it includes their top of the line SB850 southbridge. An 880G chipset is basically an 870 chipset with integrated graphics. 890GX is better integrated graphics and CrossFire support, in case you decide not to use the integrated graphics. 890FX is their high end chipset with more PCI Express lanes to properly support CrossFire with two PCI Express slots both running at x16 bandwidth. 880G or 890GX aren't much use if you're not going to use the integrated graphics, and 890FX isn't much use if you're only going to use one video card. Even the 870 chipset has 22 PCI Express 2.0 lanes, which is plenty--and notably more than the 16 offered by Intel's P55, H55, and H57 chipsets.
If you're going to overclock, then you need an aftermarket heatsink. If not, then it depends on how cool and quiet you want the processor to run. The stock heatsink will be safe, but an aftermarket heatsink can offer vastly superior cooling performance with much lower fan speeds.
For what it's worth, Rosewill is New Egg's house brand. They do offer some decent cases, though.
What is a "beefier" HDD array? Hard drives already have essentially infinite capacity for most legal consumer uses. Not so much if you want a zillion pirated movies. Or is it faster, as in an SSD?