Building my First PC

[BaconSanwich]

So I've been looking around for places I can buy the parts, but I can't find the specified tower, power supply or graphics card. The suggested replacements were:

eVGA GeForce GTX650

Thermaltake Litepower 500W OEM Power Supply

BitFenix Shinobi Black Mid Tower Case

Will this do roughly the same job as the build above, and does anyone have any experience with these parts to see whether they're reliable/good?

 

[PP Mguire]

The 650 is actually quite a bit lower power than the 650ti, big fat nope to that TT PSU, case is fine.

 

[BaconSanwich]

So my budget's increased to about $1000, the very max being at $1200. Suggestions?

 

[PP Mguire]

ASRock B85 cheapest board,
4570 CPU
Seasonic 620w Modular PSU
eVGA 760/770
120GB SSD if you can fit it.

The problem is fitting this in Aus budget, and finding places for said parts.

 

[BaconSanwich]

Unfortunately, the only place I've been able to find parts deliverable to Australia is megabuy.com.au. If anyone's reading this and knows of any other sites, please let me know.

Also, what is an SSD for? Does it replace the hard drive? Please explain to me as if you were explaining it to a child.

 

[Yevrag35]

Unfortunately, the only place I've been able to find parts deliverable to Australia is megabuy.com.au. If anyone's reading this and knows of any other sites, please let me know.

Have you checked out this thread? http://www.techist.com/forums/f76/hardware-shopping-megathread-237877/

Also, what is an SSD for? Does it replace the hard drive? Please explain to me as if you were explaining it to a child.

Think of it like this, SSD's are, in essence, "flash" memory. Flash memory is anything from the SD memory cards that you use for Digital Cameras, to USB flash drives (thumbdrives).

Benefits of SSD's: Much faster than traditional hard drives
No moving parts, so mechanical failure is non-existent

The major downside to SSD's though is the storage capacity compared to traditional hard drives is much less for the money.

I don't know the prices in AU$, but US$ is sort of like this:
500GB Traditional Hard Drive = $60-70
500GB SSD = $370-500

Big Difference, so most people buy lower storage capacities just to store the operating system, programs, and some games. And then they buy a traditional in addition for files that aren't being accessed all the time, like music, photos, videos.

 

[BaconSanwich]

What does having a faster storage drive affect?

 

[Yevrag35]

What does having a faster storage drive affect?

If you have program, games, and your operating system on it, there's a lot of stuff.

Your OS load time is substantially reduced. Programs load faster. Game loading screens load faster. There are so many things that you actually wait for when on your computer it's ridiculous. SSD's can cut a lot of that time down.

 

[PP Mguire]

More like, faster OS drive. My thread covers SSDs.
SSD vs. HDD Performance Comparison - YouTube

The HDD is the slowest piece of technology in a computer, and essentially so is an SSD. An SSD provides no moving parts, therefor latency is nonexistent which is the reason for HDDs being so slow. IOPS in an SSD (in and out operations per second) are 10x+ that of a HDD which is where your real speed comes from. The video is only a small demonstration of how much faster an SSD is over a HDD.

 

[Mischa]

Should probably ask some of the Australians on the site. Soul is, isn't he? They may know where to pick up some stuff.

Try PM'ing S0ULphIRE.

Edit: try a O if it's not a 0 for his name. Pretty sure it's a 0 though.