Help me buy a computer

You should be just fine with Win 7 with that setup I'd think. I don't understand why you'd be spending more and essentially get less than what I did, but you're in Canada so...

Also, do you really need 1 TB? The WD Caviar Blue 500gig 16M cache, 7200 RPM was the price/performance sweet spot for me. 56 bucks.

Originally Posted by javyn

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You should be just fine with Win 7 with that setup I'd think. I don't understand why you'd be spending more and essentially get less than what I did, but you're in Canada so...

Also, do you really need 1 TB? The WD Caviar Blue 500gig 16M cache, 7200 RPM was the price/performance sweet spot for me. 56 bucks.

I have 600 gigs full right now...

Yowsa! If you use that much space, I'd go full ATX so you have plenty of bays to add HDDs to later on down the road.

Originally Posted by javyn

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Yowsa! If you use that much space, I'd go full ATX so you have plenty of bays to add HDDs to later on down the road.
Mid-tower is fine, as all you'll have is HDD's and a DVD drive. Should be able to get 3-4 HDD's in there easy.. I still think the mATX motherboard is strange though.

Originally Posted by imschatz

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Mid-tower is fine, as all you'll have is HDD's and a DVD drive. Should be able to get 3-4 HDD's in there easy.. I still think the mATX motherboard is strange though.
Yeah, I'd definitely get an ATX mobo and mid-tower case. I love my Antec 300!

Mid-tower is fine. The only potential hangup is if you decide to go with a big honking video card (e.g. Radeon 5970) sometime down the road. But seeing as the OP's system isn't designed to be a gaming rig that is not going to be a problem. I love Antec cases; my previous system was built around an Antec 640B and an Antec 400W power supply.

My Antec 300 has room for any video card it seems, motherboard limitations notwithstanding. But this is the first mid tower I've ever owned, so maybe this 300 is bigger than most.

Originally Posted by javyn

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My Antec 300 has room for any video card it seems, motherboard limitations notwithstanding. But this is the first mid tower I've ever owned, so maybe this 300 is bigger than most.
I have an Antec 900. Only problem I run into is with my Radeon HD2900XTX and ASUS A8R32-MVP Deluxe is the end of the video runs into the HDD bay. If I wanted too I could still fit HDD's in every slot, but it takes some wiggling to get the SATA cables all hooked up in a couple of the slots.

That video card seems to be half a square foot though. Never seen one quite that big.

Holy crap. I knew video cards were getting bigger, but no idea there were that monstrous!

I never buy ATI due to Linux driver issues. Nvidia or bust here. Got my Asus Geforce 9500 GT in there with room to spare. Even has a fan.

Runs Half Life 2 and Oblivion great maxed out.

OP's build would run Win7 very, very well and I suggest it.

Do not get the value ram, you really don't save much. Get the Gskill Ripjaw DDR3 1600. Much, much faster without a large price hike, with excellent reviews. Get the 955 or 965 CPU, whichever is fine. Only spring for the added video card (the integrated HD 4250 will not play games made within the last 2 years very well). 4gb of ram is more than you'll need, even with a 64 bit OS. People go nuts on ram and then realize that they barely use 20% of it at any given time. Speed is more important than capacity once you hit 4gb and up. HDD is up to you, sounds like you'd be better off with a smaller, faster HDD for your OS (maybe an SSD) and a large one for your movies, games, pr0n, etc.

Get an ATX board to go into the mid tower case. Make sure you have some quiet 120mm fans with a quiet PSU. I'd suggest getting an aftermarket CPU cooler, something like the Cooler Master 212+ (used to be $25 but got really popular as of late).

And if you're interested in the Antec 300, don't let the bad reviews re: cable management throw you off. I don't think most people writing negative reviews have realized if you take off the other side panel, there's a cable bay right there for you to run your wires to to keep them out of the way.

If you have a modular power supply (thanks again for the rec!), it's even less of an issue. Granted, some people avoid modular b/c of imagined degradation from the plugs, but that doesn't even come close to the degradation you get from the wires themselves on any old power supply, so that's not even worth worrying about.

white/asian, was it you who recommended the OCZ PSU + DVD writer combo off newegg? If so, thanks again, that was an incredible deal. Essentially that combo makes the DVD writer free, not to mention a nice fat 20 dollar mail in rebate. 60 bucks after rebates for a 700 watt modular PSU and LiteOn SATA DVD writer can't be beat!

unjung: Your setup looks great to me. I'd go for an ATX mobo over mATX and get a good mid tower case, which can last you forever. I checked the mobo you chose, and my ATX Gigabyte cost just as much as that, or even a little less with a rebate, it just didn't come with integrated video. But, if you're building it for gaming, you won't be using integrated video anyway.

Also, good for going DDR3 and socket AM3. Newegg has lots of combo deals on Socket AM2+/AM3 boards, but I'd be hesitant on getting those. You won't be saving that much money, and you'd be stuck with DDR2 800 RAM on most of those AM2+ boards.

I'd also go for a good case, I like my Antec, and Lian Li was highly recommended to me here as well, but that's up to you.

I'd pony up the extra dough and get one of those name brand modular power supplies and a decent case, since you can keep that for future builds. Just something to think about.

edit 2: If you are planning on carrying this box around to LAN parties and such, maybe mATX would be better, but I don't know about air flow, cooling, space for video cards. But I've seen some neat mATX cases with bar handles on top for carrying around.

I just noticed also, my 4 gigs of G.Skill DDR3 1333 has a cas latency of 9, and for not much more I could have gotten a latency of 8. Not sure how much of a difference that would have made though.

Originally Posted by javyn

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Holy crap. I knew video cards were getting bigger, but no idea there were that monstrous!


The ATI Radeon 5970 is almost a foot long! Then you'd want some space around the card to give it good airflow. Videocards are getting monstrous. I have a full tower case so I've got plenty of room but frankly the footprint is huge.

When it gets to foot long video cards, I'm tempted to say, just buy a god damned Xbox lol

Haha yeah the 5970 is a ******* massive card. But so nice. I'll agree with the others that valueRAM should be avoided...

And just go Windows 7 out of the box. If there are programs you need to run that ONLY work on XP, just set up XP virtualization in Win 7. Sticking with XP at this point is just silly

K keep this thread alive because I want to build a PC very soon (ie as soon as I get my starting bonus for the new office). What I want to do is grab a 46" HDTV and hook up the desktop sort of as a media PC, but also, if need be, a gaming PC. I probably won't play many games on it but it would be nice to have the option. I'll mostly use it for watching downloaded TV shows / movies, hockey games through nhl.com. Also for browsing teh interwebz when I'm not using my laptop.

I haven't really kept up to speed since I haven't built a desktop since... like 5+ years ago. So I'm not sure what I'll need processor-wise. I'm thinking I'll want 6-8 gigs of decent memory, a good but not top of the line video card (~$150-200), a blu-ray player, and... what? HD space is probably not an issue since if I max out I can always just add a 1TB external.

So my questions are, I guess,

1. Does this idea even really make sense?
2. What processor should I be looking at, and what speed?
3. What do I need to know to pick the right memory setup?
4. What are good video cards for my purposes?
5. Somewhat unrelated, but anything anybody can tell me to help me pick a TV would be appreciated since I know relatively little about that, I'm trying to find a 42-46" HDTV that'll be good for ~4-5 years, but have little grasp of terms like "contrast ratio".
6. Anything else I should know?

If there's a substantial benefit to stepping up a bit in price I'm okay with that but I really am looking for something that's good value and will do the job, not something that'll develop sentient thought or support a national intelligence agency.

If anyone can help me out with this stuff I'd appreciate it, feel like the guy wandering into SW&D asking others to dress him, but salespeople just want you to buy **** and that'd be the other major source of info I have.