Building a New Computer

[SacredCultivator]

Greetings Techies,

Well Chinese New Year is coming up for me and I thought to splurg a bit on getting myself a new PC.

So basically it'd be from scratch and the ONLY thing that'll remain from my old PC is simply the CD_Drive and Hard Drives.

And I'll probably be missing something but basically will need:

Motherboard

Case (Mid-Tower, preferably Black)

RAM (People saying 8 should be enough, my current system has 12)

CPU (Gonna go the Intel i7 route this time and put my AMD fanboy-ness behind)

CPU Fan (I think my current one is one from Scythe, and I definitely don't want one that's too large in size)

Video Card (Gonna go the Nvidia route this time instead of ATI, ALTHOUGH I'll note, I don't need anything on the super high end as I am NOT a gamer and the only game I play really is League of Legends. So only "benefit" from the Video Card would be for like Encoding purposes, since I fansub)

Power Supply (Completely forget if buying Cases comes with them)

- - -

This one is more of a ONLY if there's good deals

SSD HD (I'm fine with my current 500 GB HD, but if good deal I don't mind snagging one, although not too sure in regards to mounting to case if Cases come with a slot or you need to buy a mount for it)

Not too sure if I'm missing anything in regards to what I listed, but if so, just point it out to me and I'll do my best to answer them.

Also I guess I should add in my budget for this rig, I'm going to set it at $900 (Of course can be +/- some, but definitely don't want to spend near/over $1000 for this.

So basically this new rig will serve the purposes of watching HD videos (2160p on YouTube, my current setup just BSOD's at the sight of loading one of those), and encoding videos for fansubbing. And again, I'm not a gamer at all where I need top of line Video Card to play games, as even my Radeon HD 4890 serves me well for that, but it's become a legacy card now.

Oh and although it's not a deal breaker IF deals can be found via Micro Center, Newegg {These two are nice since I can actually do store pick-up as they are within an hours drive from where I live}, Amazon is nice too since I have a $25 gift card for it. But of course if other sources have much better deals I'm for it, but $$ please and not like pounds.

I turn to you to help me here as sadly most of my PC guru's just gave me a broad generalization of what to get but no specific links to what.

Thank you.

Edited January 29, 2014 by SacredCultivator

[robo]

I really think you should try hard to go with a SSD

[robo]

I really think you should try hard to go with a SSD

It should come with an adapter

[Purple Trail]

So basically it'd be from scratch and the ONLY thing that'll remain from my old PC is simply the CD_Drive and Hard Drives.

Are CD only drives still around? I'll assume you meant to say optical drive and it's a Blu-ray drive or at least a DVD drive.

I personally wouldn't go back to using a HDD for the OS. Having a SSD for the OS should be something standard nowadays in my opinion, especially with new computers.

[SacredCultivator]

Yes I meant Optical Drive, still stuck back in the past to calling it a CD Drive.

[pr3y]

Definitely get a SSD, if I was you I would get an i5 processor and over clock it. You'll save some money, unless you are running many multi-threaded application in which case the i7 would be beneficial due to hyper-threading and slightly bigger cache.

[SacredCultivator]

Oh I guess I shoulda mentioned, I don't plan on overclocking, despite knowing how some lower end CPU's can be overclocked to be comparable to higher end ones. So definitely I think to lean towards i7 instead of i5 and overclock.

And this is a slightly off-topic-ish question BUT, if my primary drive were to be an SSD and let's say that I encode videos, IF those videos are located on my storage drive, would there be a big difference in Encoding speed if I transferred those files onto the SSD to encode from?

[robo]

Oh I guess I shoulda mentioned, I don't plan on overclocking, despite knowing how some lower end CPU's can be overclocked to be comparable to higher end ones. So definitely I think to lean towards i7 instead of i5 and overclock.

And this is a slightly off-topic-ish question BUT, if my primary drive were to be an SSD and let's say that I encode videos, IF those videos are located on my storage drive, would there be a big difference in Encoding speed if I transferred those files onto the SSD to encode from?

[pr3y]

Agree with @robo, there would be a big increase in speed as read, transfer rate and other parameters on SSD's are far superior than hard drives

[eurobyn]

go for a ssd as operating disk (the samsung pro is very fast) read and write at 500 mb/sec

[mike.mt]

As posts mention above i would go the SSD route as well for the OS drive. We use Kingston & Samsung as they assist the system to boot in a few seconds & be more responsive when running apps. Many come with adapters & if not they are only a few bucks

As far as M/Boards go a decent Asus, AsRock or Gigabyte will do the job fine.

CPU - the best I5 or I7 you can get a deal on. As the video encoding can be performed through the CPU

http://www.intel.co.uk/content/www/uk/en/processor-comparison/compare-intel-processors.html?select=desktop

CPU Fan - Leave stock unless you have future plans to O/C.

RAM - "Slam In The Ram"-"The More The Merrier". Probably the most important factor in video encoding, assuming the balance of the other hardware is correct. Kingston, Crucial or Elixir... They are all good.

Video Card - Not as important as CPU or RAM, All 1Gig+ PCI-X DDR3's will do what you require - so the best Nvidia that suits your pocket.

A good article for the normal man on the street's video encoding requirements written by a guy from your side of the pond can be found over at TechChannel:-

http://techchannel.radioshack.com/build-computer-video-encoding-1191.html

I hope this assists & wish you all the best with your new box... :)

[davmil]

Don't forget to budget $100 for Win 7/8 OEM license assuming you're going that way. You've got enough in your budget not to BS around trying to circumvent a real license - it's not worth the hassle or effort much less any unforeseen future hassles MSFT might introduce. Occasionally NewEgg or Microcenter will bundle the OEM license with a hard disk for pretty cheap if you keep your eyes open on typical promotional holidays.

[SacredCultivator]

@mike.mt: Huge thanks for your info, shall definitely look into those. ^_^

[cruelsister]

Regarding the CPU, please at least consider the Intel Xeon. I personally am running the Xeon 1240V3 and love it. It can run very well on just about any consumer grade motherboard (check the CPU compatibility list for whatever MB brand you decide to get), and does not in any way need ECC RAM.

The price/performance of the Xeon is very good:

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Xeon+E3-1240+v3+%40+3.40GHz

It is a steal:

http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?name=XE1240V3BX

And without any doubt get a SSD boot drive.

[SacredCultivator]

Just curious, with an SSD, would I still have any real use of let's say using PerfectDisk? As I know generally you'd close to never want to defrag an SSD?

Gonna go to MicroCenter later today with a friend to purchase everything {unsure of what parts just yet, shall see when I get there}

[DKT27]

If you are using hardware acceleration for encoding your videos, I think a good graphics card is as important as a good CPU.

As for CPU, I too will recommend you i7, specifically for encoding.

As for RAM, my personal advice would be that you avoid buying Kingston ValueRAM. I have heard about Crosshair and G.Skill being better than Kingston.

[cruelsister]

Uninstall Perfect Disk. Windows 7 and 8 already has a SSD TRIM command built in so nothing more is needed.

[SacredCultivator]

Okay so bought everything and sadly can't even build it... freaking stock CPU fan won't seem to want to latch itself onto the Mobo.

So gonna just list out things I boughta nd you can disagree, but ehhh I did it anyway:

CPU: AMD FX-8350 Black Edition

Motherbaord: ASRock 970 Extreme3 R.2.0 ATX AM3

RAM: Patriot Viper 2x4GB (PC3-12800, 1600MHz)

GPU: MSI GeForce GTX760

SSD: 250GB Samsung 840Evo

PSU: Thermaltake TR2 700W ATX

And so for the CPU Fan, I might end up using my current one to replace the Stock one which I linked to in first post... As I THINK that'll at least fit and make things easier to install everything else.

Might be a dumb-ish question here, but since my friend struggled for a while to try to mount the CPU Heatsink/fan, the thermal paste is over the CPU / dried up I assume by now. When he attempts again tomorrow should I let him know to probably clean it / apply another coat of Thermal paste?

I'm so noob to building PC's.

[DLord]

should I let him know to probably clean it / apply another coat of Thermal paste?

Yes of course.

[SacredCultivator]

Another question:

My case:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129180

For the Optional Fans:

2 x 120 mm front intake fans

1 x 120 mm exhaust fan behind motherboard tray

1 x 120 mm side panel fan to cool graphics cards

I bought 2 extra 120mm fans, where would the ideal places for those 2?

I assume 1 in the front for the HD's

And probably another to cool the GPU?

[SacredCultivator]

Can ignore top post.

BUT tried Googling without much luck.. PC just isn't cooperating with my 2TB Int. Drive.

It shows up in Bios / Disk Management... Issue is, I can't seem to do anything with it.

When I try to format it, I get an error.
(Check that it's plugged in correctly (I'm sure it is))
Check that disk isn't read-only, unsure of that, but I'm pretty sure it isn't.

And if I try to create a simple volume without formatting, it's just "RAW" and I can't do much with it.

So unsure and at a stump to using this drive as my back-up/storage.

EDIT:

Okay everything this fixed... It was a stupid Sata Cable that it came with that failed. Plugged some old ones in and works.

Edited February 2, 2014 by SacredCultivator

[SacredCultivator]

Unsure if this should be a new topic or not, but in relation to my Motherboard (ASRock 970 Estreme3 R2.0), they advertise these softwares that benefits me, but not too sure if thye are actually worth installing?

Click Here. Those 3 worth installing for their benefits or they aren't what they are cracked out to be?

Edited February 9, 2014 by SacredCultivator

[pr3y]

Unsure if this should be a new topic or not, but in relation to my Motherboard (ASRock 970 Estreme3 R2.0), they advertise these softwares that benefits me, but not too sure if thye are actually worth installing?

Click Here. Those 3 worth installing for their benefits or they aren't what they are cracked out to be?

It could be that those software can utilise or unlock special features in the motherboard. Why don't you test them and see if you notice any speed increase?