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Building A Computer
I'm building a gaming computer and I've decided to crowd-source it for advice. My budget is $1500. I'm slowly buying it one item at a time. I've already purchased the Antec 902, the TP-750 and the Asus P7P55D-E Pro My goals are longevity and quality. I know the gpu may seem over the top, but I like to play PC games and I've opted for a poorer cpu in favour of it because I don't do enough CPU intensive tasks to warrant an i7. (Originally, I was thinking of an i7-920 and a Radeon HD 5770)
The Current Build
The Current Build
Comments
One of the major things that I would like feedback on is the RAM. How much does CAS latency matter? What is an ideal amount? Will 8gb greatly affect performance or should I go for less in favour of something else?
From what I've come to understand, Its not that big of a deal and if you have to choose you're better getting more slower RAM than less faster RAM. I don't know if you really need 8 gigs, since 4gb seems to be more of the standard, but hell, you'd probably be ok with 2gb. I think what I would do if I were you is just get 2 2gb sticks and then spend the money saved on a better graphics card. RAM is pretty cheap so if you find out in a while you need more, you can always buy some more, but I doubt you'd have to.
I have three computers: desktop(core 2 duo), laptop (i5), and HTPC(i3). All of them have 4G of RAM, and they are all effectively equally fast when doing any sort of normal stuff. I never notice any RAM shortage whatsoever, even when running many apps that are supposedly memory hogs. Even my old core solo laptop is fine for everyday computing with Ubuntu and 2GB of RAM.
The only bottleneck I have is GPU during 3D games. I have an 8800GT, which is pretty awesome. I can play relatively recent games and crank the graphics all the way to the maximum and get awesome frame rates. The problem is that newer games are starting to lag me. I can still get decent frame rates in modern games, but I can't turn everything up to the max settings like I can on some older ones. I'll probably buy a new card once there is a game I want to play that I can't get a good frame rate on.
Also I should note that I have solid state in my old and new laptops, and yes it is much faster than a magnetic disk. It's faster to boot and faster to launch programs. It's also faster to save games and load new levels. However, it makes little to no performance difference after an application has launched. It is also very expensive to get one that is of any considerable size. If you go solid state in a desktop you'll probably just put the OS on the SSD and put all your files on a magnetic disc anyway. It's nice, but not necessary. Only do it if you are loaded. Though, I highly recommend SSD for laptops if you can afford it. That is because laptops move around, and even get dropped, and that can be an expensive and troublesome drop with a magnetic disc, even with an accelerometer-based protection system.
Remember, never store important data on a laptop hard drive. Even if it's SSD, assume it will crash at any moment. Laptop drives are way more unreliable than desktop ones. Only store the OS and applications, and temporary things on there. Store everything else you care about in the cloud, on USB sticks, etc.
If somehow you can really justify that the difference in speed between your CPU and the one that is $90 more is significant and will actually make a very big and noticeable difference in your computing experience, then pay the $90. $90 is a lot less than what you would pay for a computer that melted.
I'm contacting a friend of mine who's into this stuff to see what kind of gains can be realistically expected.
Now that I think of it, if you have a shit ton of money, you can get the fastest CPU available AND water cooling and go above and beyond what is possible. The thing is, a few months after that a faster CPU will be released and it will feel pretty stupid.
I'm looking for something with a small footprint, touch screen, and wi-fi that I can mount on a wall in my kitchen. I thought about the iPad (smallest one, don't need storage) but I just can't convince myself to buy another Apple product.
EDIT: Weird. In the product write up they mention Bluray but no where can you select it as an option when you customize.
What I'm getting back about OCing: The Pentium he mentioned is 2.4GHz stock and the +1.6 was done with the stock cooler while the Phenom 920 has a stock clock of 2.8 so it get's a 0.6 increase. In short, it's all over the place, so do your homework. Considering that was with the stock cooler, you could later get a decent air cooler (Water cooling seems to be something of a hobby unto itself.) and bump those numbers up.
Much like learning Ubuntu, it's more a learning process and the pride of creating something that you'll get out of this than financial gain, but if you're looking for something to keep you occupied and learn about this kind of stuff, just make sure you read up on it and it should work out fine.
Here's my CPU fan next to a stock cooler, I got one after the old one started rattling. It was the cheapest one Ebuyer had (£17) and now my CPU runs at 35 degrees idle (I'll get a max reading when I run Civ4 later.). I could probably over-clock it quite a bit but haven't really gotten round to it.
This was also replacing a Pentium D cooler, not the quietest stock Intel cooler, even without the rattling.
You really think that looks good? Ok, dude. I mean, my computer has all sorts of crazy colored parts like a blue motherboard, but I didn't pick it because it was blue. That's just the color the parts I wanted happened to be. Regardless, my case is closed, you never see any of those parts, and even if you could see them, nobody looks or cares. That fan you showed there isn't exactly going to win any case mod competitions. If you want to get into case modding, you should check out the BYOPC room at PAX to see what a good looking computer actually looks like.
You should be more worried about making sure your case has positive pressure, so that dust and heat are pushed out. You should also take the money you spent on the stupid cooler and put it towards a better PSU, if you don't have one already. The most likely things to break in your computer are your hard drives (they will definitely crash) and your PSU. The PSU can take the whole computer down with it, so make sure you get a quality one. Also, make sure you can tell a quality one from one that just appears to be quality. High wattage is not usually necessary, or a sign of the PSU being good. It's just a waste of electricity unless you have a fuckton of drives. 500W is more than enough for almost every computer if you get a good PSU.
http://download.intel.com/design/intarch/core2duo/316676.pdf
You guys are just like the people who are complaining that a program uses too much RAM. Are you running out of RAM? Are you swapping? If not, then it makes no difference whether a program uses 2MB or 100MB of RAM. If you couldn't see the RAM usage in your task manager, you wouldn't even know the difference. Likewise, if you didn't look at the CPU thermometer, you wouldn't know the difference.
You're spending time and money to make numbers go up and down with no actual effect.
Go and find the specified operating temperatures for your CPU. Install the stock cooler, properly. Do no overclock or anything. Set an alarm to go off if the CPU goes above the spec temperature. Then play a 3D game with the AC off. Tell me if the alarm goes off.