comp build research

[Dalan]

Building a comp for a family member, and am doing research.

He wishes to have a mid-range Gaming Machine. OS will be Win7.

I am building tower only. (no monitor, speakers, kb/mouse) Target = $700.00, and i will be ordering all components from newegg.

To any of yall comp experts that reply, thanks.

• 1. Dual Core VS. Quad Core : the quads have L3 cache, the duals do not, from reading i have done so far, it seems the L3 is not being utilized at this time. Is it worth going quad, or should i save few bucks and get a dual.
• 2. I normally build comps with low watt cpu's (65W-95W), is there an advantage to using the higher wattage cpu's?
• 3. Hard Drive SATA 3 Gb/s VS. 6 Gb/s : The reading i've done so far suggests that there is not enough of a speed increase to warrant the extra cost of building the 6 Gb/s comp. Should i spend the extra bucks now, and build for 6 Gb/s to ensure the speed increase in the future, or forget it and stick with 3 Gb/s? p.s. i am not planning on going solid state at this time
• 4. What is the best power supply company, nowadays? I am willing to spend extra to ensure that the build is done with the highest quality pwr supply.

[LinuxPup]

Not sure how much hard drive space you need, but there's an Intel X25-V solid state hard drive (Retail not OEM) on Newegg for $125.. its only 40gigs, but nothing will make a machine faster than using an SSD (especially with Win7). A nice dual core CPU (like a Core i3) is all you really need unless you're doing a lot of media encoding and time is an issue. CPUs are generally not the bottleneck... but your hard drive is... I would advise spending a bit more for a faster drive. Also get 4 gigs of RAM. I'm a big fan of ASUS motherboards too.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... &Tpk=x25-v

[weasel423]

I have to agree on the Solid State Drive. You can always get a standard drive for media storage.

I would go for the quad core if possible, although for mid-range gaming a dual core will work.

If you are going with 4Gb of RAM, be sure to get the 64-bit version of Windows 7 as you 32-bit will only use 3Gb.

Nice to see another NewEgg shopper. Been using them for years and their service rocks.

[Daral0085]

It all really depends on what sort of load you're putting on the machine. For video games, IMO a decent 2-core is enough. IMO the most important aspects are the graphics card and the quality of your RAM, assuming you have enough RAM to store the whole game in memory. I admit I haven't done much in terms of benchmarking game performance, but you'd think the game designers would be smart enough to cache what they need in memory and make disk reads/writes few and far between.

So in my non-professional opinion, I would aim for a high quality graphics card because with gaming, you expect most of the load to be rendering graphics. Other than that, I would try to balance out my expenditures about on par between CPU, RAM and disk (that is, get what quality you can for the price you can afford). Either 2 or 4 cores, 4 GB ram, maybe 500 GB or 750 GB disk seems like about the standard for mid-level rigs these days.

And yeah, SSDs are pretty cool also. They basically act like a middle tier between RAM and disk, but can persist during server reset or shutdown. So you can expect it to benefit most during startup performance, but generally SSDs have much better IOPs/sec than HDDs, so even during normal disk operations, the SSDs outperform. Really though, it all comes down to budget and cost efficiency. If you can find an SSD that's large enough to contain your expected standard load (think: OS image + game image + whatever random stuff), then that will improve your perf dramatically.

Oh yeah, and the only thing a higher wattage CPU typically gives you is a faster clock speed. For a certain architecture, the faster clock speed means more processing power. It also means more cooling required though, so possibly noisier. I think the main thing you need to balance is between CPU benchmark and allotted cost.

[Amoenotep]

match your ram. i use 4gb on a 32bit system. it reads a bit more than 3gb, and i like to know i have a little bit more than needed. that and it idles about 1gb so...

[Bargeld]

In a quick statement:
At boot, the OS will allocate some of your RAM to I/O devices like your video card and thus reduce the amount of available RAM for programs/processes. In many cases, you must subtract the amount of video RAM from your system RAM as a starting point... so 4 GB sytem and 1GB vid card = 3 GB available (but you have to remove a little bit more for the other I/O devices also.

Semi-technical, but comprehensive:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1035670

From MSDN:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library ... S.85).aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library ... S.85).aspx

[LinuxPup]

64-bit Win7 (and Vista) is better than 32-bit not only because of the ability to support more RAM, but it also comes with PatchGuard and is stricter about non-signed kernel-level drivers. I'd install the 64-bit version even if I only had 2 gigs of RAM.

Also Win7 has better support for SSDs than XP/Vista... they run faster and support the SSD TRIM command which decreases SSD performance degradation.

[Amoenotep]

vista=a big stupid piece of crap

i don't recommend vista to anyone but my hated enemies.....so hey, i bet Cely should use vista

[Kromix]

OS: 64 bit Win 7 Pro (pro has 32 bit and XP compatibility)
RAM: at least 4, Matched, 6 is very nice though. make sure to match to V-Card DDR2 / DDR3 Etc..
Video card: 1GB AMD or Nvidia, your preference. make sure to match to RAM. DDR2 / DDR3 Etc..
Power Supply: normally 500W is good, all depends on your power consumption of the CPU/Mobo/HDD/VC/ROMs/etc
CPU Cooling: make sure to get a good airflow to noise ratio fan, thermaltakes make gvery god CPU fans/Heatsink combo, high Airflow and low dbs.
HDD: Solid State is nice, but expensive for 40Gb. Win 7 will take 15GB after all the installations of needed programs and such, before games. seagates have a good background, fast, reliable, get a spinning HDD unless they are going to kick the tower around when the tower is on. if you are worried about bottle neck, look into raid0. 2 HDD raid0 is very fast. if you want backup, go with raid 0+1 4 HDDs.
CPU: Quad core of course, Intel or AMD to your preference.

built a computer for my grandma the other day with those specs for $610 dollars out of fry's parts... not including monitor

[Dalan]

Excellent advice, I thank you all.

(Win7 64 bit, 2 x 2GB DDR3 1333 Kingston, mobo will have 4 slots for future ram, video card matches with DDR3 256-bit, btw)

• 1. Going with a dual core AMD to save a few bucks. I have'nt seen anything that makes a quad a must-have, for now. Although, the mobo will be AM3 chipset, just in case he would like to upgrade to quad in the future.
• 2. Not going to get a really powerful chip, so i will be using a lower wattage cpu, in order to keep heat not a problem and not have to buy 3rd party cpu heatsink/fan.
• 3. Am leaning towards getting SSD, now. The comp will be used mostly for gaming, and not alot of space will be needed. Also, being that the HDD is the bottleneck in the build, this comp would be a great testing ground for me to learn more about SSD. (crosses fingers)
• 4. Still not sure which company to choose a pwr supply from, i will just use the company that appears to have the best reviews.

p.s. : Did some reading on SSD. There are 2 architecture's for SSD : SCL (single cell level) , and MCL (multi cell level) The SCL costs twice as much, and seems to have reviews that determine this type to last much, much longer. The MCL is definitely in my price range, but the reading i've done so far, suggests that the lifetime of this type of SSD is not very good. Still, i think i will chance it and get a 64GB MCL SSD.

[weasel423]

For the power supply, FSP is a good brand, but there are a lot of decent brands out there... just as long as you get one that is MINIMUM of 80% efficient you should be happy. Anything less is wasting a lot of electricity (and also getting hotter as that is one of the ways you lose energy). A lot of the cheaper power supplies are only 60-65% efficient

[LinuxPup]

its SLC/MLC... yeah SLC is generally used in enterprise situations... its better in every way (more durable and faster) but 2-3 times as expensive. MLC drives are generally considered good for 5-10 years... results are best if you have 15% or so free on your drive at any given time so that it can more efficiently use its wear-leveling algorithm more efficiently. If you get an Intel drive, make sure its a G2 version (generation 2)... the 1st generation doesn't support TRIM. And no matter what, make sure it supports TRIM

My Intel X25-M is about 10x faster than a Western Digital VelociRaptor at random writes, and 100x faster at random reads. At sequential reads/writes a VelociRaptor can compete however and is sometimes a bit faster. Random reads/writes is common when you're dealing with lots of smaller files (like booting Windows), sequential is more common with massive media files (like copying a movie file from one location to another).

Here's a recent benchmark of some common SSDs:

http://anandtech.com/show/3656/corsairs ... ery-good/4

And here's an informative article on SSDs, TRIM, durability, and other stuff SSD-related:

http://anandtech.com/show/2738

[Daral0085]

Yeah, I think in a lot of cases MLC makes more sense for consumers. Also, SSDs in general are still a work in progress. Just like a lot of other electronics, they are getting cheaper and better every year. There's been a lot of speculation about when they will cross the line of being a better deal than HDDs. Performance-wise, they are already better. It's only in the area of cost per byte that HDDs still outperform SSDs, significantly too. In terms of durability, my bet is that HDDs are still better, but SSDs are improving a lot every year.

So 5 years from now, I think SSDs will be a real winner. Presently, IMO it's more of a coin toss, with both SSDs and HDDs being better suited for different tasks. With that said, I think using SSDs as a sort of cache makes a lot of sense given their current capacity, cost and performance numbers.

[VagaStorm]

I would probably got for an ssd and a cheep larger drive to get speed and space. Stor evrything that dosent matter to much on the hdd, and keep progs and w7 on the ssd.

[Dalan]

Thanks, Linux, for the anandtech links. I cant believe i read thru all that, sheesh! But the reviewer, Anand Lal Shimpi, wrote the article so well, i just couldnt stop reading. BTW, i put anandtech site on me fav list.

The review was dated march of 09, so it's been a year for SSD tech to develop. Off i go in search of an affordable SSD! &)