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Building a new computer

 
Old 07-04-2010 at 06:48 PM   #16
mcmurdd1
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Hey man,
i was recently in the exact same boat as you. I bought a 1500 custom built computer using NCIX with some really good price matches. Similar to what thew guy above me said, get a hexacore AMD, the new intel I7, even though very good performance, only has 4 cores, and the AMD is cheaper, which lets you put more money into a good graphics card. Below are the links to the parts I am putting in my computer.

Video Card:
http://www.ncix.com/products/index.p...ufac ture=XFX


CPU:
http://www.ncix.com/products/index.p...promoid=1 078

I also put a liquid coolant system in it, a blue ray drive, extra HDMI port, tower shell,its a pretty beefy computer.

If you are going to use your game for video game, a 5750 is all you need, buyinh a 5770 is about 10% better in terms of graphics.

I was at first going this computer off tiger direct:
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applicatio...491&CatId=4928

but through building the computer customly, i am getting a computer that is roughly 2x better.
Old 07-04-2010 at 08:32 PM   #17
blackdragon
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I wonder, how practical is it to build your own laptop... hmmm...
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Old 07-05-2010 at 02:18 AM   #18
Toast
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Quote:
Originally Posted by reeves View Post
Yeah, think I may order a case for now, since that's the heaviest thing, and take advantage.
Look into the CM 690 II: http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=49...COOL ERMASTER

Pricematch for $71. I have the CM 690 I, and at that cost it's an outstanding buy (widely praised build materials, features, cooling, etc). You can buy a windowed panel with it and grab some cold cathodes as well, if that's your thing.

Unless you're one of those individuals who like the crazy acid-trip cases, which I find utterly disgusting: http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applicatio...&Sku=A406-1117

Note that you would have to get the case with the rest of your parts, however, since it wouldn't
be over $ 100.

Quote:
Originally Posted by mcmurdd1 View Post
Hey man,
i was recently in the exact same boat as you. I bought a 1500 custom built computer using NCIX with some really good price matches. Similar to what thew guy above me said, get a hexacore AMD, the new intel I7, even though very good performance, only has 4 cores, and the AMD is cheaper, which lets you put more money into a good graphics card. Below are the links to the parts I am putting in my computer.

Video Card:
http://www.ncix.com/products/index.p...ufac ture=XFX


CPU:
http://www.ncix.com/products/index.p...promoid=1 078

I also put a liquid coolant system in it, a blue ray drive, extra HDMI port, tower shell,its a pretty beefy computer.

If you are going to use your game for video game, a 5750 is all you need, buyinh a 5770 is about 10% better in terms of graphics.

I was at first going this computer off tiger direct:
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applicatio...491&CatId=4928

but through building the computer customly, i am getting a computer that is roughly 2x better.
The i5 750 is only $6 dollars more than the AMD hex-core mentioned above. If your looking at gaming, the i5 750 currently outperforms the AMD hex-core in virtually every title:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3674/a...55t-reviewed/9

Most games in the past couple years have used 2 cores. Quad-core support for games is a relatively new concept, and as far as I know no game can currently take advantage of six cores. You could argue that the hex-core is slightly more future proof, but by the time titles that efficiently use more than 4 cores become mainstream, there will be much better processors than the AMD Phenom II X6 1055T, which makes it kind of redundant. This reminds me of the people who paid all that money for the very first intel quad-cores, when much cheaper dual cores would give equal or better gaming performance. Now that you are starting to see quad-core games, you have much better (i5, i7) processors at a cheaper price than the originals.

You're only going to see the hex-core be truly utilized when editing and encoding videos, which I'm not sure is one of your hobbies.

If you have a 1920x1080+ monitor, a 5770 is definitely not all you'll need for gaming. A 5850, at 1920x1080 will let you max out the general settings of the latest games, but if you want to up the AA filtering you'll need something better (but I don't really care about AA anyways).

Quick note on above quote: What does it mean to/why did you order an extra HDMI port? Do you want to display your pc on two separate TV's, side by side? Did you mean an HDMI cable?

All these questions and more answered next week; same bat time, same bat channel...
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Last edited by Toast : 07-05-2010 at 02:24 AM.

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Old 07-05-2010 at 03:23 AM   #19
Ownaginatios
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lol, AMD has sucked compared to Intel ever since the socket 939 stuff. I would avoid their processors for now, since almost all of them are obsolete compared to what Intel's got. Also avoid the Intel i7 processors. I remember hearing a while back that Intel wasn't planning longterm support for them (which will make it difficult to upgrade in the future) and that i5 is what they're focusing on (which are generally more efficient). I could have it backwards or completely wrong... someone lectured me on this like 6 months ago :p.

Also, I think if you're gonna cheap-out on anything, I would say do it with the motherboard. If you aren't gonna require many PCI slots or SATA ports, you should be able to get something good enough for ~$80 to $100.

P.S. I remember long ago that AMD had some quad-cores planned, but realized something was messed up in the design making one of the cores broken. By that point the design had been released to manufacture, so the best they could do to remedy the problem was turn off the broken core, marketing the thing as a "tri-core".

I'm wondering if something similar happened with their hex-cores. Maybe they were originally supposed to be 8-core .
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Last edited by Ownaginatios : 07-05-2010 at 03:26 AM.

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Old 07-05-2010 at 03:36 AM   #20
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Toast View Post
Unless you're one of those individuals who like the crazy acid-trip cases, which I find utterly disgusting:
Yes I am. My last gaming tower literally lit my room when it was dark. It was awesome. Then I killed it.

I'm currently leaning towards this one, but am not fully decided yet.
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Old 07-05-2010 at 05:41 AM   #21
Toast
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Quote:
Originally Posted by reeves View Post
Yes I am. My last gaming tower literally lit my room when it was dark. It was awesome. Then I killed it.

I'm currently leaning towards this one, but am not fully decided yet.
Nah man that's not an acid-trip case, I can look at it without tearing my eyes out. If you like that kind of design you may want to see:

http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=33...COOL ERMASTER

or

http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=53...COOL ERMASTER
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Old 07-05-2010 at 05:28 PM   #22
reeves
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Toast View Post
Nah man that's not an acid-trip case, I can look at it without tearing my eyes out. If you like that kind of design you may want to see:

http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=33...COOL ERMASTER

or

http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=53...COOL ERMASTER
That second one is pretty sweet. I may have to rebudget my shit now for a $200 case.
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Old 07-05-2010 at 05:46 PM   #23
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Quote:
Originally Posted by reeves View Post
That second one is pretty sweet. I may have to rebudget my shit now for a $200 case.
Pricematch it for $176.

That one is a full-tower so its going to be pretty massive if you're buying a regular motherboard. This one: http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=38...COOLER MASTER is pretty much the same case, but smaller- its doesn't have a window though (only the see-through grate/fan), or a few features (ie: 1 or 2 less slots for fans). It's sold on NCIX for $130, but you can pricematch it for $84. Then you can take the $60 you'd save from not buying the original one you posted, and put it towards something more important like a GPU or motherboard.
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Last edited by Toast : 07-05-2010 at 05:53 PM.
Old 07-05-2010 at 05:54 PM   #24
Toast
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This video shows the two cases side-by-side, you can see how massively over-sized that $200 one is if you're not going to be super hardcore with quad-SLI, etc.

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Last edited by Toast : 07-05-2010 at 05:57 PM.
Old 07-05-2010 at 10:32 PM   #25
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Toast View Post
This video shows the two cases side-by-side, you can see how massively over-sized that $200 one is if you're not going to be super hardcore with quad-SLI, etc.
Cases for me are purely aesthetic. I never use a case to its full potential, so I may as well get a nice looking one.
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Old 07-05-2010 at 10:49 PM   #26
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I would not recommend buying anything from newegg,tigerdirect, ncix. You would have a better deal buying used computers on http://kijiji.ca/, buy a used one for $500 and upgrade it with ebay.com

I got a i7,gtx 280, 4gb for like $500 bucks, and you can bargain like mad.
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Old 07-05-2010 at 10:57 PM   #27
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and you dont know what you are going to get...I wouldnt want to be stuck with vid card that has a busted fan but there was no mention of it...im sticking with NCIX
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Old 07-06-2010 at 04:13 PM   #28
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It's like trading, I go to the seller's house, check and inspect that everything is working then purchase. The hassle is setting up the time to meet the person.
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Old 07-06-2010 at 05:19 PM   #29
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NCIX is probably best I assume, since they price match. I only discovered this recently, and will definitely make future purchases from them!
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Old 07-06-2010 at 07:40 PM   #30
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Hey, see details below to amazing $1,500.00 desktop I recently build. I just manager to beat the HST so it may be a bit more expensive. All pictures and details can be found by copy and pasting name into www.ncix.com. This computer was built specifically for gaming and watching blu rays, the video card is most expensive piece.

CPU: (Came with free shipping)
AMD Phenom II X6 1055T Thuban 6 Core Processor 2.8GHZ Socket AM3 Retail Box
Original Price: $201.00

Shell / Tower:
Lancool PC-K62 Black ATX Advanced Mid Tower Case 5X5.25 4X3.5INT No PS USB Audio
Original Price: $104.99
Price Match: $89.73

Liquid Coolant:
Corsair Cooling Hydro Series H50 High Performance CPU Cooler System LGA775 LGA1366 LGA1156 AM2 AM3
Original Price: $89.99
Price Match: $64.13

Blue Ray / DVD RW / CD RW Combo Drive:
Samsung SH-B083L 8X BLU-RAY BD-ROM & DVD Writer Combo Drive SATA 2MB Retail Box *IR-$10
Original Price: $99.99
Price Match: $89.99

Video Card: (came with free game, S.T.A.L.K.E.R Call of Pripyat Steam)
XFX Radeon HD 5870 HD587XZNFV 1GB GDDR5 2XDVI HDMI DP DIRECTX11 PCI-E Video Card W/ Avp Game
Original Price: $439.99
Price Match: $392.49

RAM: (bought 2 to get 8 GB of ram
G.SKILL F3-12800CL9D-4GBRL Ripjaws PC3-12800 4GB 2X2GB DDR3-1600 CL9-9-9-24 Core i5 1.5V Memory Kit
Original Price: $109.35 x 2 = $218.70
Price Match: $104.99 x 2 = $210.00

Motherboard:
Gigabyte 890FXA-UD5 AMD890FX ATX AM3 DDR3 3PCI-E 3-WAY CrossFireX 2GBLAN SATA3 USB3.0 Motherboard
Original Price: $209.99
Price Match: $179.99

Power supply:
Corsair TX750W 750W ATX 12V 60A 24PIN ATX Power Supply Active PFC 140MM Fan
Original Price: $112.99
Price Match: $109.35

SUMMARY PRICE:

Before Price match (GST): $1,593.91 +$79.69 gst = $1,673.61
Before Price match (HST) *effective July 1/10: $1,593.91 +$207.21 HST = $1,801.12

After Price Match (GST): $1435.65 + $71.83 GST = $1508.48
After Price Match (HST): $1,436.65 + $186.76 HST = $1,623.41


I hope this may serve as a guideline to building a dirty computer for everyday gaming usages. if you want to save a significant chunk of change, i would suggest downgrading the video card to a 5850, will save you over $100. It is about 10% less in terms of quality screen.

Last edited by mcmurdd1 : 07-06-2010 at 08:07 PM. Reason: FORMATTING

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