First Build

ndatoxicity

Daemon Poster
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hey everyone, just signed up to your site... its great!
i could use some advice on a first build im doing... im going for a midline-ish gaming pc (crysis on med 1680 res or something like that... maybe high settings?) so any suggestions would be very helpful!

-LITE-ON CD/DVD Burner - Bulk Black SATA Model iHAS124-04

-COOLER MASTER Centurion 5 CAC-T05-WW Black/Silver Aluminum Bezel, SECC Chassis ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

-SAMSUNG Spinpoint F1 HD103UJ 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive

-ASRock A780GXH/128M AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard

-ASUS EAH4870 DK TOP/HTDI/512MD5 Radeon HD 4870 512MB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card

-OCZ ModXStream Pro OCZ500MXSP 500W ATX12V V2.2 / EPS12V SLI Certified CrossFire Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply compatible with core i7

-Patriot Viper 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model PVS24G8500ELKR2

-AMD Phenom II X4 940 Deneb 3.0GHz Socket AM2+ 125W Quad-Core Black Edition Processor Model HDZ940XCGIBOX

-XIGMATEK Dark Knight-S1283V 120mm Long Life Bearing CPU Cooler

thanks in advance for any help you can give me :)
 
Welcome to the Computer Forums! :)

All looks good to me; There are many other experts here in ATI/AMD products who will probably have suggestions for better/cheaper parts. The patriot RAM looks pretty good and tightly timed for PC2-8500.
 
Hey man, welcome to the forums!

A budget would be great, I'm guessing at or below $1000 by the items you listed?

Since you asked for suggestions, I would replace that 4870 with an EVGA GTX 260 which you can buy as a recertified card on Newegg for $170 shipped. But since you're going with AMD, I suppose ATI is a better combo. It's your build, however, so whatever gets you hot :)
 
Hey man, welcome to the forums!

A budget would be great, I'm guessing at or below $1000 by the items you listed?

Since you asked for suggestions, I would replace that 4870 with an EVGA GTX 260 which you can buy as a recertified card on Newegg for $170 shipped. But since you're going with AMD, I suppose ATI is a better combo. It's your build, however, so whatever gets you hot :)

yeah, thanks for the suggestion... i did want to stay with ATI because its an AMD build... and im kind of new to all of this, so i thought that they couldnt work together (noob opinion, i know)

and yes, im aiming for <900$ because i have to purchase an OS (im not 100% comfortable with burning an iso OS disk.... makes me unsure of whats going to happen w/ bad OS installed)
 
good suggestion, but why exactly? the chipset?

Better northbridge and south bridge, Raid 5 capable, Better Heatsinks, Gigabyte is known for keeping bios' up to date as much as possbile, True 8+1 Power Phase design which helps keep stabilty and voltages accurate, Crossfire is x8 mode that 780g asrock is crossfire x4 mode, 790gx's usually can handle higher overclocks but i could be wrong..

EDIT:
That gigabyte chipset specifically is known for being great and overclocking though, search that model on google once
 
It really depends on your application purpose; Certain items can be slacked on a bit if you feel that you're not going to be doing much other than Crysis and FPS's of the likes. I tend to stick to Nvidia because most applications are 'coded' to use Nvidia graphics cards. Crysis/UT3 for instance. But some say they get better results with ATI cards. You really just have to find the right combo for what you intend to do then upgrade the slacked items later.
 
i probably won't be doing RAID on my first build... but yeah....

also, i probably won't be tinkering too much with the overclocking because im not sure if that case is sufficient enough to handle the extra heat :\

would it help to take apart my old pc and maybe upgrade that before i dive into this?

will psu be enough to do future upgrades? im looking for something like 500-600 watts, and in the same price range but good quality
 
The PSU you picked out is pretty good. They have fairly good amperage and reliability. I like Corsair's more because they use less 12V rails and if they have more than one they each have their own transformer which helps to not have useless power. You might want to go 600W because AMD systems use a bit more power. I'm not sure what arch they have on their cores now, but I think the Phenom2 you picked out runs at 135watts >.>
 
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