Building a Computer

[Dylan]

Howdy good people in this non-existent community!

I have a question for you all, coming to you partly hypothetically, and somewhat not .. but first, back-story!

Basically, for a while now I've wanted to build my own computer; the customization and money saving-ness is very ideal in my mind. I know enough about hardware to choose out the parts that will satisfy my needs and be compatible and such, however, I have never been *that* into hardware.

This is to say, without loads of research I would not necessarily be optimizing my build. So in my time of need I come to you with three questions.

1) Let us assume I am budgeting this computer for $1200; I do not need you to actually shop around for product links with deals and such, but what sort of parts would you use.
2) Is there any websites you use for parts frequently that provide suburb deals or whatever.
3) Assuming you were to build a computer, no budget at all, what would your specs be?

Although my computer isn't used for one thing specific, I game on it, make videos, edit those, edit pictures, code, etc.

Thank you for any input.

[jacek]

1) Let us assume I am budgeting this computer for $1200; I do not need you to actually shop around for product links with deals and such, but what sort of parts would you use.

Well I just upgraded my PC with an i7 950 and 8GB 2000MHz RAM and that is pretty good, considering all I do is play Minecraft on it .

2) Is there any websites you use for parts frequently that provide suburb deals or whatever.

I usually use ebuyer.com they are not the cheapest but I just always go there for some reason. I think amazon would be the best bet for cost, but you have to know what you want as browsing is very hard and the specs they list are often wrong or incomplete.

3) Assuming you were to build a computer, no budget at all, what would your specs be?

Go to ebuyer.com, sort by price - highest first

I don't think you need to be into hardware that much really, as long as you know enough to buy bits that fit together, one thing I would say though is to avoid the urge to save money with a crappy motherboard. It can seem like it has very little effect, but I have made this mistake before with a £20 one and it's really worth spending a bit more on that.

[unemployment]

I don't think you need to be into hardware that much really, as long as you know enough to buy bits that fit together, one thing I would say though is to avoid the urge to save money with a crappy motherboard. It can seem like it has very little effect, but I have made this mistake before with a £20 one and it's really worth spending a bit more on that.

I have built my own in the past. As previously stated, don't go cheap on a motherboard as it will limit any future upgrades you may want to add.

[EcazS]

I'm actually going to say this, if you find a motherboard that fits your needs for now and it's rather cheap, buy it. As long as it's from a "known" company. So don't buy one from, "FakeMotherboards.com"

[jacek]

I guess it depends what you want to do, my £20 motherboard worked fine, but it gave very little control over things like clock speeds and voltages (there was no voltage control actually) My £137 new one that I got yesterday lets you change pretty much every clock and voltage you can think of. Which is pretty lucky since it detected the wrong settings for the RAM I have. I would say if you are looking to save money, things like the DVD drive are a good place, mine was £17 (unbranded), it works fine, is a bit slow, but I use it about 4 times a year.

You need to think ahead a bit as well, if you want to do a lot of gaming you will probably want to look for a board that supports 2 PCI-E cards at x16 for when SLI becomes the standard set up. Saying that, my GTX 260 can still handle any game I try to play so it might be a while.

[Dylan]

Hmm, okay!

Thanks for everything guys. I will start to compile a list of parts that I'd like, and post back here for thoughts and comments

Quick inquiry; for RAM; Is DDR3-1600 (200Mhz) a much better step up from DDR3-1333 for the money. I realize when choosing RAM it depends on what you are doing as well, so let's assume either:

1)Running like 1,000 Million Internet Things + IM clients + Text Editor
2)Running a large game, something like WoW with a screen recorder
3)Running Sony Vegas, Adobe Photoshop while rendering a video
4)Uploading large amounts (i.e. lots of videos to YouTube)

Also, I have heard that in order to reduce your computer lag, particularly when screen recording, the processor plays a big part too. I never fully understood the processor; so is that true too? Would it be worth getting some Intel i7 6 core extreme processor; or would a better suited choice be the regular i7 quad core ?

I will do more research into all this myself, but your guy's input is very nice.

[EcazS]

DDR3-1600 is 1600MHz not 200MHz

[Dylan]

DDR3-1600 is 1600MHz not 200MHz

I was speaking in reference to the memory clock with 200MHz;

[jacek]

DDR3-1600 is 1600MHz not 200MHz

I thought that too, but then http://www.ebuyer.com/product/247678

Memory Speed 2000 MHz ( PC3-16000 )

Quick inquiry; for RAM; Is DDR3-1600 (200Mhz) a much better step up from DDR3-1333 for the money.

I would say that depends on the other stuff you are buying, if you get a slower CPU the bottleneck will end up there so you may as well go for slower RAM. You should also look at the timings for the RAM as that makes a pretty big difference too.

Also, I have heard that in order to reduce your computer lag, particularly when screen recording, the processor plays a big part too. I never fully understood the processor; so is that true too?

It sounds true, screen recording generally requires on the fly video encoding. Video encoding is somethign that the CPU is used heavily in. Saying that, I was able to screen record Minecraft perfectly well with my old Q6600 and 770MHz RAM so there is no need for a mental CPU.

With my current set up, i7 950 8GB 2002MHz RAM, the bottleneck is actually the HDD read speed. Which makes it a little odd to use actually so a decent 60GB SSD just for the OS and a few small programs that you use a lot would be a good investment.

[EcazS]

DDR3-1600 is 1600MHz not 200MHz

I thought that too, but then http://www.ebuyer.com/product/247678

Memory Speed 2000 MHz ( PC3-16000 )

But that's 2000MHz not 200MHz

[jacek]

200 must have been a typo, far too low !

[Dylan]

DDR3-1600 is 1600MHz not 200MHz

I thought that too, but then http://www.ebuyer.com/product/247678

Memory Speed 2000 MHz ( PC3-16000 )

But that's 2000MHz not 200MHz

The memory clock is 200MHz, thank you for reading my previous message:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDR3_SDRAM
http://hallicino.hubpages.com/hub/DDR1_ ... e_RAM_Maze

DDR3-1600. Memory Clock: 200 MHz. Bus Clock: 800 MHz. Data Transfers/Sec.: 1,600,000,000. Module Name: PC3-12800.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/hig ... 758-2.html

While DDR3 memory is still based on a base clock speed of up to 200 MHz...

Perhaps I have been misinformed by these links, however in simply googling "DDR3 Memory Clock", they are 3 of the first 4 results.

[jacek]

Memory Speed != Memory Clock.

Memory Speed = Memory Clock * Memory Multiplier

[EcazS]

Don't worry to much about the clock, really.

[Dylan]

I was only specifying as it was the other number on the currently listing I was looking on; was not positive if it was subject to varying or not, although it looks pretty standard.

[Dylan]

Memory Speed != Memory Clock.

Memory Speed = Memory Clock * Memory Multiplier

But I never said memory speed

[Dylan]

Hello all once more!

I have been doing lots of research and talking to many people since I posted this, and I have come to a tentative build for my computer, let me know what you guys think!

Motherboard: ASUS P8Z68-V PRO LGA 1155 Intel Z68 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard with UEFI BIOS
CPU: Intel Core i7-2600K Sandy Bridge 3.4GHz (3.8GHz Turbo Boost) 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor BX80623I72600K
Memory: G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-8GBRL
Harddrive: Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
Video Card: EVGA SuperClocked 012-P3-1572-AR GeForce GTX 570 (Fermi) 1280MB 320-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card
Heat Sink: COOLER MASTER Hyper 212 Plus RR-B10-212P-G1 "Heatpipe Direct Contact" Long Life Sleeve 120mm CPU Cooler Compatible Intel Core i5 & Intel Core i7
PSU: CORSAIR Professional Series Gold AX750 (CMPSU-750AX) 750W ATX12V v2.31 / EPS12V v2.92 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply
OPTICAL DRIVE: ASUS 24X DVD Burner - Bulk 24X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 12X DVD+R DL 24X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM Black SATA Model DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS - OEM
Case: COOLER MASTER Storm Scout SGC-2000-KKN1-GP Black Steel / Plastic ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

[jacek]

let me know what you guys think!

I thought that was a spam post at first

[EcazS]

Seems pretty good. I don't know if the GTX570 is one of those insanely long cards so make sure it actually fits in your case
'Cause my cards are 12 inches long/depth each

[jacek]

'Cause my cards are 12 inches long/depth each

Haha, mine is that big I had to buy a new case because I just assume it would not be huge !

[EcazS]

Haha, mine is that big I had to buy a new case because I just assume it would not be huge !

Lol, me too. I had to order a new case with the cards