Building a PC

[billybob0433]

So i am getting all the parts for a new pc and was wondering if anyone has any improvements they would make.

motherboard - gigabyte GA-MA790GP-UD4H 790GX AM3 ATX
processor- amd phenom II x4 quad core black edition boxed
Ram- Corsair Memory XMS3 6GB DDR3-1600 (PC-12800) CL8 memory kit (three 2GB Memory modules)
Hards drives- Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB 10,000RPM SATA 3.0gb/s and Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB IntelliPower SATA 3.0gb/s
cd drive - Pineer Electronics DVR-2910 Black DVD/CD Writer (x2)
Sound card- Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer
Video Card- AMD (ATI RadeonTM Graphics Division) Radeon HD 4870 1024MB GDDR5 PCIe 2.0
power supply- Thermaltake USA inc Tr2 RX-850 850w Silent gaming ATX power supply
network card- bigfoot Networks inc Killer M1 Gaming
Keyboard- Saitek Industries, Ltd. Eclipse II Keyboard - USB
Mouse- Logitech VX Revolution- Cordless laser mouse
monitor- Gateway FHX2300 bmid 23" Widescreen LCD
Operating System- Vista Home Basic with SP1
Case- Antec twelve hundred ATX gaming case

If anyone knows of anything that would be a great upgrade at a reasonable price or anything that is pretty much useless on here let me know. first computer i am building so i hoping it all works good and lasts for awhile! thanks

 

[stihl260]

Hi
Pretty good m8
Is there a reason why you chose 2 dvd rewriters.
Unles you intend to duplicate on the fly, which i dont reccomend anyway.
I would ditch one of the drives for a top spec CDRW .
DVD drives actually write cds slower than a CDRW.
I have tried and burnt out many DVDRW drives, pioneer,HP,Sony etc and in the end i now use LG for both DVD and CD drives.
Good choice of mouse!
Keyboard is a personal choice, depending upon your use, gaming, media or office work etc.
Without looking up the pec of the case, you may wish to add some xtra cooling, to red rid of the heat you are gonna generate in that case.
Its something alot of first time builders overlook and end up paying a high price.
Me i have 14 fans in total (overkill for thea verage PC) and no it does not sound like concord taking off.
If you choose the right fans.
I also have an LCD monitor panel with temp sensors, giving me info and audible warnings if things are being pushed a little too hard !
Anyway hoped my input has helped.

 

[daveleebond]

14 fans, now thats just daft!

do you pay the leccy bill ????

 

[wilson1980]

that Antec twelve hundred ATX gaming case i have and its one off the best cases i have had.that would cool your pc down.u have options to switch off fans or make them faster.the controls are built on the case.i just keep some off them on cause if all fans are on at full speed and i think theres something like 8 fans u hear them but nothing to worry about..

as for vista id get windows 7 when it comes out plus i have an antec true power 850 watts psu which i cant fault aswell..but i paid 120 for that.u would mayb want somethig like that to run every ok..your psu might b fine i think but have a wee read

http://www.antec.com/Believe_it/Events/us/Continuous_Power/

 

[little_pob]

The spec sheet for that board says that it takes DDR2 not DDR3. For DDR3 you want the GA-MA790XT-UD4H (Newegg item # N82E16813128378).

If you do swap it out for the DDR3 board you don't want that RAM kit anyway, as it's aimed at the triple-channeled Intel LGA1366 chipsets. You want a dual-channel kit like the TW3X4G1600C9DHX or TW3X4G1800C8DF.

10,000 RPM drives are notoriously noisy. If you want it just for the speed have a read into RAID0 and/or SSD too (there is some heavy reading to do with regards to SSD and MLC vs SLC).

I've had a little read up of those 'gamer' NIC cards before - reviews and results are mixed.

 

[srgberian]

If you dont mind me asking what is the totel price?

 

[little_pob]

If you dont mind me asking what is the totel price?

As the OP puts their location as the US; at a guess US$2200-2700 before rebates.

As it includes a 23" monitor and popular gaming keyboard and mouse, the UK price for the same (or equivalent) parts would probably be around £1500-1700, although I've not actually priced it up at ebuyer/scan/overclockers etc.

 

[stihl260]

14 fans, now thats just daft!

do you pay the leccy bill ????

It does sound like overkill until i break them down in detail:
X3 fans on the HDD cooler.
X1 CPU fan
X1 Graphics Card Fan
X1 Custom made extraction exhaust enclosure opposite the graphics card fan
X4 custom made acrylic LED Power supply fans ( 2 inflow & 2 outflow)
X2 Inflow Fans
X2 Outflow fans

All internal cableing is Aerodynamic.
Custom made ( modified case), all fans are speed tuned to produce near perfect airflow.
I even smoke tested it to get the optimal aiflow.
I just aplied a simple principle of Equal Push & Pull airflow to case modding!

 

[madnlooney]

that Antec twelve hundred ATX gaming case i have and its one off the best cases i have had.that would cool your pc down.u have options to switch off fans or make them faster.the controls are built on the case.i just keep some off them on cause if all fans are on at full speed and i think theres something like 8 fans u hear them but nothing to worry about..

i have the one down from that and that too is great. would recommend the case, nice and cool too. not noisy at all really for stock fans

 

[Kryton]

Video Card- AMD (ATI RadeonTM Graphics Division) Radeon HD 4870

thats the card i have on my new system, the sapphire model.

the card is so fast.
it play's crysis and crysis warhead with all settings on high and in 1920x1200 no problem.
nice looking system, mines quad core but only 4gb of ram.

you will need a 64 bit OS though.
as XP/VISTA 32 bit is limitied to 4GB, so you wont get your 6GB.

64 bit OS has no such limitation.

 

[billybob0433]

thank you guys great input! haha fixed the mother board dealy so now its the
Moterboard- GA-MA790XT-UD4P

and im going to switch the cd drive to something else.. not sure what exactly i will check out the lg though

so would it be a better idea to get (2x) dual channle Ram kits?

so far the price is ab out 2900 but that is with a few other extra things i am needing. but i gotta find some cheap pretty nice 5.1 speaker systems

 

[wilson1980]

i have the one down from that and that too is great. would recommend the case, nice and cool too. not noisy at all really for stock fans

lol as soon as u said u had the one down from that i checked again..i have Antec Nine Hundred Two Gaming Case..thats the better one to the one above cause im sure ours is just perfect size. the 1200 is bigger and more in your face

 

[billybob0433]

I think i am going to change the hard drives to.
Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB IntelliPower SATA 3.0gb/s
and
Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 7,200RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive

they both had good reveiws on Newegg.

(also changed the power supply to the antec 850w.)

 

[little_pob]

LG do a blu-ray drive... However, you may want to wait until it is confirmed that the Windows version of iTunes 9 has a built in blu-ray player (it's very much just a rumour at the moment) as the supplied PowerDVD HD Suite 7.3 has no support from Cyberlink and to say it's needed is an understatement.

2x twin DIMM kits would be the better idea. Whilst you would be able to use a single 3 DIMM kit, you wouldn't be able to use them in dual channel mode.

 

[billybob0433]

lol as soon as u said u had the one down from that i checked again..i have Antec Nine Hundred Two Gaming Case..thats the better one to the one above cause im sure ours is just perfect size. the 1200 is bigger and more in your face

dont you think there would be more space for the parts to stay cool besides its going to be out of the way i think well hope so... so i dont really mind the extra size unless it could be bad for the parts lol

 

[billybob0433]

2x twin DIMM kits would be the better idea. Whilst you would be able to use a single 3 DIMM kit, you wouldn't be able to use them in dual channel mode.

would this be a good dual kit to run? (2x)
Corsair Memory XMS3 4GB DDR3-1600 (PC-12800) CL9 Memory Kit (Two 2GB Memory Modules)

and now i just trying to figure out which XP can run 64-bit

I have heard Vista has problems with codecs if they are not signed properly as well as running x32 bit programs sometimes.. :-/

 

[little_pob]

would this be a good dual kit to run? (2x)
Corsair Memory XMS3 4GB DDR3-1600 (PC-12800) CL9 Memory Kit (Two 2GB Memory Modules)

I've checked the Memory Support List (MSL) on the Gigabyte website and that RAM isn't listed. There are some mixed results on that board, with some having to overclock their CPU to get the memory bus that high, but definately needs some tweaking to get setup at 1600MHz: _http://forum.corsair.com/forums/showthread.php?t=76793

Even looking at the MSL at the tested 1600MHz and 1800MHz DIMMs suggests they default to 1333MHz anyway.

Quickly checking a review of the Phenom II X4 suggests that this may be a limit of the memory controller on the CPU rather than the just the motherboard:

...the DDR3 memory controller is somewhat limited to just 1,333MHz with four DIMMs or 1,600MHz with just two...

and now i just trying to figure out which XP can run 64-bit

I have heard Vista has problems with codecs if they are not signed properly as well as running x32 bit programs sometimes.. :-/

I've recently gone to Win7, but for what it's worth K-lite v5 worked just fine on Vista and comes in a 64bit flavour.

The only programs that I had issue with trying to install were games released when Win98 was the OS du jour (Monkey Island Bounty Pack and Deus Ex for those interested). In fact I never had a problem with running 32bit programs on 64bit Vista provided that came out on XP.

 

[billybob0433]

I've checked the Memory Support List (MSL) on the Gigabyte website and that RAM isn't listed. There are some mixed results on that board, with some having to overclock their CPU to get the memory bus that high, but definately needs some tweaking to get setup at 1600MHz: _http://forum.corsair.com/forums/showthread.php?t=76793

Even looking at the MSL at the tested 1600MHz and 1800MHz DIMMs suggests they default to 1333MHz anyway.

Quickly checking a review of the Phenom II X4 suggests that this may be a limit of the memory controller on the CPU rather than the just the motherboard:

so what would you recommend i do to get around the problem with the cpu/motherboard only allowing 1333MHz? sorry about all the questions i am just kinda getting into all the specs of computers and all that and not quite sure exactly what is going on.. :-/

 

[little_pob]

Honestly? For the money it looks like you're spending I'd forget the AMD route and go for an Intel i7 920 (preferably with D0 stepping) and the Asus P6T Deluxe V2 motherboard, but it costs close to $600 (£400) just for those parts.

 

[billybob0433]

okay cool well thank you for all your help i should be going and picking all this up in next couple days i will let you know how it works!

And again thank you sp much for all your help!