Building Budget PC

B

Bowser

Tribe of Judah StarCraft Series Chapter Leader
Iḿ considering the following system. Let me know if you see any issues with hardware, please.

Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-EP45C-UD3R
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz
Memory: Kingston 2GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600)
Video Card: MSI N9500GT MD512 D3
Keyboard: Saitek PZ30AUR*

Current System:
Motherboard: ECS 648FX-A2
Video Card: ATI Radeon x800 GTO

Honestly, I really just want to upgrade the basics; the mobo and processor. Everything else is secondary, although I do need to find a decent PCI video card. Just as an FYI I run a dual-boot with Linux Ubuntu and Windows XP Professional and am debating what video card I should invest in.
My main goal is to get the basics immediately, and upgrade other hardware over a period of time.
Please let me know what you think.
 
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going to need 400w psu or higher..got that in your current machine?

also the chipset in that machine is a cooker make sure you have at least a case fan in the rear and a case fan in the front to keep enough air running around in your case.
 
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I see you are going to use an ATI card in an Intel based system.

If you want to later upgrade your graphics you could crossfire another 4670 in there, but it would have to be an AMD/ATI based system. Although, the same (or opposite...whatever) could be said for if you wanted to do SLI with an nVidia card.

However, AMD processors are cheaper to buy than Intel processors are; the same can usually be said about the motherboards that use them.

If I were you I would get a mid-range AMD processor since they are cheaper than their Intel counterparts and a board for it. Especially since you are building a budget PC.

Motherboard - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128373

Processor - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103234

This is $100 savings right off the bat and with the savings you would be able to start to upgrade sooner... like to a: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127401

Another alternative is you can use the on board graphics and forgo a "real" graphics card until you can buy the one you want. With the savings from not buying an intermediate card you can buy a higher-end motherboard too. From my research I did for my computer, the 790GX (north bridge) and SB750 (south bridge) are really good chipsets. Granted - I have not looked as hard into the Intel chipsets, but I know for a fact they have a comparable system.
 
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Odale said:
If you want to later upgrade your graphics you could crossfire another 4670 in there, but it would have to be an AMD/ATI based system. Although, the same (or opposite...whatever) could be said for if you wanted to do SLI with an nVidia card.
Click to expand...

Crossfire works on most chipsets IIRC. SLI uses some proprietary extensions within the BIOS. Also Crossfire works on virtually any game compared to SLI. However the cost/performance ratio usually is bad for the same cost card above, for instance 1x4850 to 2x4670.

I have a 4670 in my current system and I have yet to run into any bottlenecks. X3, Fallout 3, CoH, TF2, L4D, UT3 all played with the settings pretty much maxed @ 1680x1050. Considering I only spent about 80 bucks at the time, I am loving the card.
 
I dont currently have any plans to use SLI or Crossfire.

I made some changes to the Processor opting to go with a higher L2 cache and a FSB to match the motherboard. I also changed the video card to an nVidia and the ram to a higher speed and is DDR3.

Hescominsoon: thanks, I overlooked the PS and will also have to buy one of those.
 
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crossifre/sli is a gimmick..you don't ge the linear performance increase for ht cost and extra power....also which nvidia card? Nvidia right now has a large failure rate with 9x and gtx series cards right now due to a bad manufacturing process. The bad cards are still being cleared out..i would advise ati if you ahve not already placed your order.
 
Hes: I'm looking at the MSI N9500GT MD512 D3.

I'm not sold on ATI or nVidia cards, either way. I just want a good card that will work on a dual-boot system. I've heard that ATI has finally released open-source drivers, but I don't know how long it will take before Linux users takes full advantage of it.

Oh, and I cannot find any reviews on the N9500. I did a search on google and it didn't yield anything useful. There's one review in Korean, I think, but .. good luck reading that lol :)
 
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Bowser said:
Hes: I'm looking at the MSI N9500GT MD512 D3.

I'm not sold on ATI or nVidia cards, either way. I just want a good card that will work on a dual-boot system. I've heard that ATI has finally released open-source drivers, but I don't know how long it will take before Linux users takes full advantage of it.

Oh, and I cannot find any reviews on the N9500. I did a search on google and it didn't yield anything useful. There's one review in Korean, I think, but .. good luck reading that lol :)
Click to expand...

AMD has released the specs for their cards iirc, which has helped them make drivers. However the binary drivers still have a performance advantage. Nvidia's binaries are still better then AMD's tho, and they actually make an effort to support a lot of the new instructions (compiz/beyrl originally needed an interpretation layer to work).
 
Ok, so I have all the parts picked out and am in the process of ordering them. The first batch should arrive by this week, and the second I'll order on the 15th of Jan.

I'm giving the name of the machine PAPERWEIGHT (ULTRA).

Anyway, here are the specs for it. I'll break down some of them. I did a lot of research and of course with your helps (it's plural because .. it makes sense) and was able to make intelligent decisions on what best hardware to go with.

Case: COOLER MASTER Centurion 5 CAC-T05-UB
Power Supply: Ultra X-Finity 600 Watt
Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3R LGA 775 Intel*
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz 6MB L2 Cache
Video Card: MSI N9600GT 512M OC GeForce 9600 GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3
Memory: OCZ Reaper HPC 4GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM 1066 (PC2 8500)**

I also bought a Logitech Keyboard, Western Digital 160 GB HD, and an LG DVD+R Drive

Picking out all of this hardware was very difficult, but also a lot of fun. My goal was to build a PC from the ground up (ok, ok, so I originally just wanted a new processor) where all the hardware was 100% compatible and would run at optimum performance. All of my choices here have crazy good reviews. Everything has been around for at least a year so it's new enough to be powerful and yet old enough to be efficient. I reserved any bias I had when picking out parts (like when I decided to go with nVidia instead of ATI, OCZ instead of Kingston, DDR2 instead of DDR3, and E8400 instead of 8500) and based my decisions fairly on reviews and reported errors. I think that has helped me tremendously in building a powerful machine that works. Best of all, <i>everything</i> I am purchasing are at ridiculous low prices (the design of the PC should look handsome, too.

*this motherboard has a reported problem of being able to boot Windows XP Professional SP1. The motherboard simply does not recognize the installation CD. I'm reading mixed reports on its compatibility with SP2. It works with SP3.
**I chose DDR2 DRAM over DDR3 based on information I read from AnandTech DDR3 vs. DDR2. According to the author, a quality DDR2 stick will perform just as well as the current DDR3 (although the DDR3 is significantly better at managing power). It basically just comes down to the price.

Thanks for all of your help. :)
 
ATi Linux drivers, but for which card series... I dunno.

Either way, I hope you enjoy your new computer!

Also, on the OCZ memory comment... I also ordered OCZ memory (2x of this model and amount) while it had a mail in rebate. When I got my system all put together and such I went to a friends house and ran a memory test on it to be sure there was nothing wrong. Memory test came back 100% perfect and so far the memory is proving to be an excellent buy.
 
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as per the ati faq
he ATI Proprietary Linux driver currently supports Radeon 8500 and later AGP or PCI Express graphics products, as well as ATI FireGL 8700 and later products.
 
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