Suggestions for my new PC build?

[kevin2041]

Hmm... i never knew it could be THAT serious. I've had my PSU for about a year and a half with overclocking and voltage increases and w/e could possible affect it. Nothing bad has ever happened to mine. =\

Even before, I was using like 5 year old PSU that came with the cases. That's like a 10 USD PSU.

I believe you guys, but PERSONALLY, I've never had a problem.

 

[mcovalt]

Dead psu means dead mobo, dead drives, dead computer. If your psu dies (even worse, fries) it takes everything with it. Like a dagger to the heart man, a dagger to the heart. My recommendations for a cheap PSU is a Thermaltake or an FSP.

 

[veg1992]

ya beginners luck, if you try to push it again, theres a 99% chance its gonna blow on ya

the only good Cheap PSU's I think are: Fortron (FSP Group) and Rosewill and Xclios

 

[kevin2041]

Nevermind, turns out it was switched awhile ago. Sorry about that.

 

[Sora]

Understand that crappy PSU's work all the time for a while....but also understand that many of them DON'T and die; and when they do they can take out a whole entire rig by sending too much power to the components hooked up to it all at once frying certain components. If you want to live life on the edge with a very low line PSU then go ahead however I would not give your friend a crappy PSU that could die and cost him up to 500 bucks. Ask around online i'm sure people will tell you that they wish they wouldn't have used the crappy source that came with their case.

if you want a REAL budget psu...probably Rosewill are the absolute lowest I could recommend. Understand that the more watts that are ran through a crappy PSU...the better change it has of blowing up becuase it runs hotter, and is playing with more watts than those components are probably capable of. You said you had a raidmax that ran 17 amps; that is not much at all. No good graphics card and cpu can be run by that...you would need at least 25 at the bare minimum for a cheap 21xx CPU and HD3850 card. A $20 PSU that has 25 amps...lets see how the reviews are on one of those.

Customer Reviews Of Sunbeam PSU-BKS580-US ATX 580W Power Supply 100V - 120V/200 - 240V cUl, CE, CB, FCC - Retail

not very good huh, would you really like to place $500 worth of equipment on rating like that?

 

[kevin2041]

Thanks for the advice, but what is a 21xx CPU? and by "good" gfx you mean like an 8600+ nVidia?

and which brand would be the lowest budget PSU maker that COULD run a good machine? Rosewill?

and is RAIDMAX a piece-of-sh*t brand?

 

[Sora]

a 21xx cpu are the budget Intel dual-core CPU's that i and many others will suggest putting into a cheapie build. And when i say "good" I mean a card such as an HD3850 which are quite cheap and can be fit easily enough into a 500-600 build. An e2180 which is 88 bucks and an HD3850 which is 170 bucks along with a PSU such as an Abit Ip35-E will at stock seem like a pretty good gaming PC for the money...and then when you take into the consideration of overclocking potential the build has you will be looking at one sick rig that will play most new games at medium-high for 600 bucks. To use this type of set-up though your looking at a $44 buck Rosewill RP500

 

[veg1992]

Thanks for the advice, but what is a 21xx CPU? and by "good" gfx you mean like an 8600+ nVidia?

and which brand would be the lowest budget PSU maker that COULD run a good machine? Rosewill?

and is RAIDMAX a piece-of-sh*t brand?

I wouldn't say 8600gt is a good GPU, I'd say a Geforce 7800+ is

 

[Sora]

here is what I would buy from what you told me.

Newegg.com - COOLER MASTER Elite 330 RC-330-KKN1-GP Black SECC ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail
Newegg.com - SAMSUNG Black 20X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 12X DVD+R DL 20X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 12X DVD-RAM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM 2MB Cache IDE 20X DVD±R DVD Burner - OEM
Newegg.com - Intel Pentium E2200 Allendale 2.2GHz 1MB L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor - Retail
Newegg.com - GECUBE GC-HD3850PG3-D3R Radeon HD 3850 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card - Retail
Newegg.com - WINTEC AMPX 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Retail
Newegg.com - Western Digital Caviar SE WD1600AAJS 160GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM
Newegg.com - Rosewill RP500-2 ATX12V v2.01 500W Power Supply 115/230 V CSA, UL, TUV, FCC - Retail
Newegg.com - ABIT IP35-E LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail

Total is around $550 before shipping. Your friend will be seeing that CPU overclock to 3+ on stock cooling making it faster than stock $180 chips (add a $20 AF7 heatsink and you may be seeing speeds such as 3.5+ easily) and that HD3850 overclocking to close to what an HD3870 clocks at.

 

[kevin2041]

You can clock a 2.2 Allendale that high? Is that with increasing voltages, or without?