Building a PC With Money Problems.

[Halt]

Hey, I have been trying to get some money together, to build whats about a $900-$1000

PC Without a monitor, I havent got one picked out yet. But. I cant even afford to buy it piece by piece. What am I to do about this? a New job is not an option right now.. I have my Antec 900 PC Case, thats it.

Just looking for Ideas, on how to maybe get the ball rolling, money is quite a problem at the moment. my tax refund is going to the PC. But other then that. i cant seem to grasp enough money..

[Moseph]

... bank heist?

Do you need a $1000 computer, or could you get by with a cheaper one? Not spending as much money tends to be easier than getting more money.

[Halt]

... bank heist?

Do you need a $1000 computer, or could you get by with a cheaper one? Not spending as much money tends to be easier than getting more money.

Well. I was hoping, not having to lower my specs too much, I Suppose i dont NEED it. but, it would save me money.. Hell, my power supply is 160 alone.

when i say, "Save me Money" i mean that in a sense of a long-term way. not having to upgrade.

a few things i need at least. a good gfx card, and processor, that way, i can play some decent games,

[Dhsu]

You can play decent games for $500-600 if you pick the right parts. I built my TF2-playing box for under $800 and prices have plunged since then. I'll let prophet give you an actual quote though because I'm too lazy to do research.

[Halt]

Yeah, I also cant be asked to rummage around newegg lately. Not sure which parts i would need. still new to comp building.

[zircon]

$900-1000 can get you an extremely good quad core computer with 4gb of RAM, a great video card, 750gb (or more) of storage, DVD RW/R, gigabit lan, and basically anything else you would need. That's more than enough.

For example, a Q6600 would be an ideal processor. Quad 2.4ghz, easily overclockable, $190.

4gb of DDR2 ram from Corsair or Crucial will run you no more than $80.

A Geforce 9800gt (seems like a great gaming card) is like $130, so you could even potentially pick up two.

Huge hard drive is less than $100.

etc.

[kitty]

I'd get a quote from Prophet and then you should ask for a list of alternate parts that would work just as well or within a threshold of specs that you want. Then you should subscribe to the Newegg newsletter. Over the past several weeks I've seen awesome prices on storage, memory, power supplies, mobos, you name it. Enough variation to buy a new computer. That's where the list of alternate parts comes in. Buying the parts over time would compliment this strategy.

[prophetik music]

I'd get a quote from Prophet

wondered when this would come up =)

if you're browsing newegg, sort by number of reviews. it's easy to see trends that way.

zircon, no offense, but for the normal person a quad-core isn't a good idea. most applications can't even use quad-core computing yet.

an e8400 would be a great processor. 170$ for a dual-core 3.0ghz processor with a super-fast (1333mhz) bus, way faster than the quad. and since the 8400 is based on the 45nm tech instead of the older 65nm that the q6600 is on, it's more overclockable and has less heat problems. don't get anything older than the e8400, they're just not worth the time anymore.

a wd caviar or seagate barracuda that's 500g is like eighty bucks. make sure it's SATA, and the larger the cache size, the better.

4 gigs of ram is 80 bucks, g.skill has a deal on newegg for about 65 bucks. make sure it's the right size, don't go over what your mobo can take. if you take what i think you should, get ddr2-800 (pc6400).

an asus p5n-e is a good mobo for what you need.

the 9800gt is a terrible graphics card for the money, it's way overpriced and is exactly the same card as the 8800gt with a new (less efficient) cooler. buy a 9600gt if you don't have much cash (evga sells one for about 125), or a 9800gtx+ or a radeon 4870 if you have more. i prefer evga for nvidia cards. they have a lifetime warranty. i'd say to go with nvidia, i'm not an ati guy. better driver support IMO.

if you go with a 9600gt, get a 500w power supply, preferably one from rosewill. make sure it's got at LEAST 2 12v rails. if it's the 9800gtx or 4870, i'd bump it up a bit.

any case is good, it's just a case. sort for ones with free shipping, then just pick one that looks good.

any dvd drive is fine. make sure you get a burner, they're only like ten dollars more. make sure it's a SATA drive.

did i miss anything?

a system with an e8400, at least a 9600gt, 4 gigs of ram, and a decent cooling solution on a good power supply and on a good mobo can run crysis at medium-high settings and get more than enough FPS to make it worth the time. and it'll scream with xp. don't bother with vista.

pm me if you have an issue.

[Dhsu]

the 9800gt is a terrible graphics card for the money, it's way overpriced and is exactly the same card as the 8800gt with a new (less efficient) cooler. buy a 9600gt if you don't have much cash (evga sells one for about 125), or a 9800gtx+ or a radeon 4870 if you have more. i prefer evga for nvidia cards. they have a lifetime warranty. i'd say to go with nvidia, i'm not an ati guy. better driver support IMO.

Prophet may not be an ATI guy, but I'm just going to jump in and vouch for the Radeon HD 4850. It's got ridiculous amounts of power considering the $140-150 price range (after rebate), even beating the 9800GTX+ in certain benchmarks (ATI's always had the upper hand when it comes to anti-aliasing), and the initial complaints of heat are no longer an issue now that dual-slot versions have been released. That's the key thing to remember, though - get one with a dual-slot cooler, or else you'll be looking at 70-85C idle temperatures.

As sort of a side-perk, it comes with an onboard 7.1 sound card, which'll be invaluable if you're into home theater. The 9800GTX+'s gimmick seems to be the onboard PhysX processor, so if you plan on playing games that support physics acceleration (there aren't a whole lot) it might be the card for you.

[Pyrion]

The 9800GTX's gimmick isn't even specific to that GPU. Everything nVidia makes from the GeForce 8 line up does onboard PhysX. The problem is that there just aren't that many games that support PhysX in the first place.

but for the normal person a quad-core isn't a good idea. most applications can't even use quad-core computing yet.

Single applications no, but the computer as a whole would benefit from two additional cores. I mean, it's not like every other process sitting in the background behaves itself and doesn't consume CPU cycles.

if you go with a 9600gt, get a 500w power supply, preferably one from rosewill. make sure it's got at LEAST 2 12v rails. if it's the 9800gtx or 4870, i'd bump it up a bit.

It isn't how many +12V rails they have, it's how many amps are on the +12V rail in the first place. For most PCI-Express graphics cards, you want at least 28A per card.

any case is good, it's just a case. sort for ones with free shipping, then just pick one that looks good.

Honestly?

Get an eATX case if you can afford it. You simply have a whole lot more room to work with. The standard ATX mid-towers that are a dime a dozen on NewEgg are a pain in the ass to get everything fitting in perfectly, especially those with the front-loading 3.5" slots for hard drives, cuz the cables almost always have to be routed around or behind the video card. Even better if you get a case that has the power supply at the bottom, instead of the top, so that the poor thing doesn't overheat by cooling itself with hot air from your CPU.

any dvd drive is fine. make sure you get a burner, they're only like ten dollars more. make sure it's a SATA drive.

If you're only shopping for one DVD drive, then yeah, but I'm of the opinion that you should only be using a burner for actually burning discs, so as to not wear the thing out with regular disc reads. Get a DVD-ROM drive for that.

don't bother with vista.

What, because you don't like Vista? I mean you recommend getting 4GB of RAM, and then you recommend XP, which we all know means XP Professional 32-bit and not XP Professional x64 edition cuz that one's got practically no driver support. What's the point of recommending 4 gigs of memory (or more, "up to what your board supports") if he's just going to come back and complain that his system's only seeing about 3.5 gigs, if at that?

[Kanthos]

zircon, no offense, but for the normal person a quad-core isn't a good idea. most applications can't even use quad-core computing yet.

Um, maybe I'm wrong, but I thought that you'd only need a total of 4 simultaneous threads from all processes to make use of all cores on a quad-core at the same time. I'd be surprised if many current-gen PC games had fewer than four threads, let alone the OS and any background processes you may be running.

Quad-core is overkill if you just want to surf the web and make Word documents, but for gaming and remixing, quad-core is nice.

[prophetik music]

The 9800GTX's gimmick isn't even specific to that GPU. Everything nVidia makes from the GeForce 8 line up does onboard PhysX. The problem is that there just aren't that many games that support PhysX in the first place.

i've been pleasantly surprised with the power my 9800gtx+ has. it's been exceeding most benches on a daily rate, and since it doesn't run so hot it's got a good amount of overclockability.

Single applications no, but the computer as a whole would benefit from two additional cores. I mean, it's not like every other process sitting in the background behaves itself and doesn't consume CPU cycles.

yeah, but unless you shell out big bucks each core is still only 2.4 ghz, throttling most of your speed. two 3ghz cores is enough if you don't run a million processes at any given time. being someone who benches systems on a daily basis, i can say wholeheartedly that quad core processors are great in some things but useless in most day-to-day activities. dual-core is more than enough, unless your processes in the background take up the entire second core (in which case you're an idiot and should get rid of some of them). i never have slowdown with mine.

It isn't how many +12V rails they have, it's how many amps are on the +12V rail in the first place. For most PCI-Express graphics cards, you want at least 28A per card.

and if he gets at least a 500w psu with two rails, he'll get that. if you didn't know much about computer building, would you really want to dig through technical specs on how many amps are on each rail, or would you just rather look at the number of rails? i tried to simplify. the one i suggested in PM had two rails with 28 each on it.

Honestly?

Get an eATX case if you can afford it. You simply have a whole lot more room to work with. The standard ATX mid-towers that are a dime a dozen on NewEgg are a pain in the ass to get everything fitting in perfectly, especially those with the front-loading 3.5" slots for hard drives, cuz the cables almost always have to be routed around or behind the video card. Even better if you get a case that has the power supply at the bottom, instead of the top, so that the poor thing doesn't overheat by cooling itself with hot air from your CPU.

the cases i suggested were much larger than your average mid tower, and they'll be fine for what he needs. he doesn't need a 300$ monstrosity of a case.

If you're only shopping for one DVD drive, then yeah, but I'm of the opinion that you should only be using a burner for actually burning discs, so as to not wear the thing out with regular disc reads. Get a DVD-ROM drive for that.

i agree wholeheartedly with this statement. and, dvd-roms actually read much faster than burners - 48x or 52x instead of 24x or 26x.

What, because you don't like Vista? I mean you recommend getting 4GB of RAM, and then you recommend XP, which we all know means XP Professional 32-bit and not XP Professional x64 edition cuz that one's got practically no driver support. What's the point of recommending 4 gigs of memory (or more, "up to what your board supports") if he's just going to come back and complain that his system's only seeing about 3.5 gigs, if at that?

his system would be almost identical to mine, which would read 3.5 gigs. is that extra 510 megs of memory or so really that big of a deal? vista still isn't really THAT good unless he's going for a really high-end system that'd be able to really take advantage of dx10 graphics and the like. for what he wants, xp will hold him out until w7 comes out.

Um, maybe I'm wrong, but I thought that you'd only need a total of 4 simultaneous threads from all processes to make use of all cores on a quad-core at the same time. I'd be surprised if many current-gen PC games had fewer than four threads, let alone the OS and any background processes you may be running.

Quad-core is overkill if you just want to surf the web and make Word documents, but for gaming and remixing, quad-core is nice.

the issue is that xp or vista usually won't automatically utilize the last two cores unless the first two are getting really thrashed. and since many applications (including flstudio, regardless of what crap gol says about it) aren't really written to be able to multi-thread yet, you'll still be getting stuck in the bottleneck that is each individual processor: 2.4ghz on an (individual) 266mhz bus. with a dual core, each core gets a much larger bus as well as being able to have a much higher clock rating. will it be able to run a fully multithreading application as fast as a quad? no. but each core being 3ghz on a 666mhz bus means that each core is communicating with the computer about 2.5 times faster than one from the q6600.

[zircon]

Quick aside... FL Studio might not multithread properly (yet) but the next update will have multithreaded FX support - more importantly apps like Reaper are excellent at multithreading, pretty much utilizing each core perfectly. Believe me I'm pretty tired of FL's plugin handling engine at this point.

[prophetik music]

so am i - my computer maxes at 50% the whole time that i use it =) better, though, that it's maxing at 3ghz rather than 2.4ghz.

[Dhsu]

The 9800GTX's gimmick isn't even specific to that GPU. Everything nVidia makes from the GeForce 8 line up does onboard PhysX. The problem is that there just aren't that many games that support PhysX in the first place.

Interesting. I actually have a copy of GRAW sitting around...could I actually re-install my old 8500GT and use that to supplement my 4850 as a PPU, or would mixing ATI and nVidia drivers create some dark energy vortex in the time-space continuum?

(Actually that would be pretty awesome.)

[zircon]

so am i - my computer maxes at 50% the whole time that i use it =) better, though, that it's maxing at 3ghz rather than 2.4ghz.

That's pretty silly - don't you use VST instruments? Those ARE multithreaded properly. My cores usually look something like this... 60%, 20%, 30%, 25%. Unbalanced, but not THAT unbalanced, even in my big projects. So, you shouldn't be maxing at 50% (eg. only one core in use.) Convert more of your VST effects to sends so you don't have to instantiate 'em multiple times, and don't forget to Smart Disable!

[prophetik music]

That's pretty silly - don't you use VST instruments? Those ARE multithreaded properly. My cores usually look something like this... 60%, 20%, 30%, 25%. Unbalanced, but not THAT unbalanced, even in my big projects. So, you shouldn't be maxing at 50% (eg. only one core in use.) Convert more of your VST effects to sends so you don't have to instantiate 'em multiple times, and don't forget to Smart Disable!

i've never been able to get multithreading to work on my pc, regardless of how many times i've installed and set things up properly. dunno what's up. even during rendering, i'll rarely get more than 5% on a different core.

dhsu, i'm fairly certain that using ATI and Nvidia cards on the same system will create a technological monster that'll download all of the internet's porn and malware onto your system in like three seconds. i'd advise against it.

actually, it won't work because they're based on two different architectures completely, similar to how amd and intel use different architectures.

[EdgeCrusher]

I got my computer now, a dell xps 420 with a 19' widescreen LCD monitor, for 998 bucks. All it needs is a new video card (ATI Raedon HD 2400 in it right now) and probably put 1 more gig of ram to make it 4 gigs. Other than that, badass computer for 1000 bucks.

[Dhsu]

dhsu, i'm fairly certain that using ATI and Nvidia cards on the same system will create a technological monster that'll download all of the internet's porn and malware onto your system in like three seconds. i'd advise against it.

actually, it won't work because they're based on two different architectures completely, similar to how amd and intel use different architectures.

Yeah, I was hoping there'd be some drivers to make Windows recognize the card as just a standalone co-processor instead of an actual video card. Though I just realized my mobo has only one PCI-e slot, so even if it were possible I wouldn't be able to take advantage of it.