Neophyte wanting to build a gaming PC

The Game Room
1

Hey, Dopers. I’ve asked this question on a more specialized board as well, but I figured I’d take advantage of the caliber of SDMB posters and ask here as well. I wasn’t sure whether this fit better in the General Questions forum or The Game Room, so I took a chance with this one.

First, let me repeat that I am a complete newbie. I’m not just new at building computers - I have very limited knowledge about computers in the first place. I mean, I know how to surf the Internet and play games, but I don’t really know much about a computer’s physical components and what each one does. Of course, I’m slowly learning as I’m researching building this PC, but most of you will probably find my questions and concerns profoundly stupid and/or uninformed.

A bit of background: I currently own an HP a6235x. Right off the bat, this is no gaming rig. As a matter of fact, it seems to be just about the opposite of one. To make matters worse, it looks like the CPU’s overheating and that its fan is no longer operating at full capacity, because I now have to resort to keeping the case open with a big fan blowing right into it if I want to avoid crashing all the time when I overtax its capacity by, say, surfing some website. I decided that I’d had enough; not just with this computer, but with HP and other major computer companies of that sort in general. Since I enjoy playing computer games and I’d never been satisfied with any of the HPs I’d owned over the years in that department, I started to look at gaming rigs.

Like any newbie, my Google searches were pretty random and not overly helpful at first. I quickly stumbled onto Alienware’s web site and nearly threw the towel on the whole idea of owning a gaming PC. Judging by their web site, gaming computers cost about the same as a second hand Honda Civic. While I could afford to buy one, I’d probably be going through a divorce the next day. While some might assume that this would be like killing two birds with one stone, I decided to try to have a gaming rig and preserve my marriage (letting two birds live with one, err, stone?). So, I looked around and asked here and there and came to the conclusion that my best option might be to build my own computer. So, I undertook the rather overwhelming task of learning (a tiny little bit) about the components required for a computer and of trying to put one together from various websites.

Since I’m in Montreal, Canada, my choices seem a bit limited. Although the US and Canadian dollars are nearly on par with each other now, Canadian retailers still insist on charging about 200$ more on a system (whether “pre-built” or in separate parts) than their American counterparts. Also, as far as I can tell, there’s no such thing as a good computer store in Montreal, so the Internet seems like my only option.

Anyway, here’s what I’ve put together so far. Please remember that I’m completely new at this, so be gentle with me:

CPU:
Newegg.ca - AMD Athlon II X4 630 Propus 2.8GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM3 95W Quad-Core Processor

GPU:
Newegg.ca - HIS H577FM1GD Radeon HD 5770 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card

HDD:
Newegg.ca - Western Digital Caviar Black WD6401AALS 640GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

Motherboard:
Newegg.ca - GIGABYTE GA-890GPA-UD3H AM3 AMD 890GX HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard
Memory:
Newegg.ca - G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-4GBRL

DVD/CD:
Newegg.ca - ASUS 24X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 12X DVD+R DL 24X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 12X DVD-RAM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM 2MB Cache SATA 24x DVD Writer LightScribe Support - CD / DVD Burners

PSU:
Newegg.ca - Antec NEO ECO 620C 620W Continuous Power ATX12V v2.3 / EPS12V 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Power Supply

Case:
Newegg.ca - Antec Nine Hundred Two Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

What the hell, OS:
Newegg.ca - Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit 1-Pack for System Builders - Operating Systems

Stock cooling, since I don’t think I’m going to mess around with overclocking. If I ever figure out how to overclock and decide to go that route, I can always get a better one later, I suppose.

So, a few questions/comments/concerns of mine:

  • Is this a viable gaming rig? If so, what would its limitations be?
  • Is there any way to improve this while remaining within the same budget (or even cheaper)?
  • Is this reasonably upgradeable?
    -Will the motherboard and power supply I’ve chosen support Crossfire if I choose to add a second card?

I’ll probably have more questions later.

Thank you all in advance.
Edited to add: the prices were lower last week when I put these parts together. I would probably wait until the whole thing (including taxes and shipping) dips back just below $1,000 (Canadian) again.

2

Looks like a pretty sensible choice of components for a mid-range gaming PC.

Yes, it would be capable of all recent games at a decent resolution. The Athlon X4 CPU isn’t the best for gaming, but would be adequate.

What monitor do you use? If you are running at anything less than 1920x1080 you might want to consider saving a bit of money and getting an ATI 4850 card.

Yes, AMD are pretty good at providing an upgrade path. 6 core CPUs are now available for the AM3 socket - but 6 cores don’t give a real performance boost with existing games.

Yes, 620w is enough to run two 5770 cards. The motherboard would impose a performance penalty, as it only has 16 PCI-e lanes, not 16 per slot. TBH, I don’t think crossfire is seriously worth considering, except for very high-end (triple monitor) setups. If you rule out crossfire, you might be able to save a bit of cash by getting a less powerful PSU.

3

I’m glad to read that! Thank you.

Do you know another CPU in the same price range that would be better?

I’m not at home right now, but from my memory, it’s 1680X1050, but I do intend to upgrade my monitor in the nearish future.

Thank you for the information.

I’m thinking more of Crossfire as an extra option for possible future upgrades. I suppose I’d have to take a closer look at motherboards that don’t impose such a performance penalty.

Then again, I suppose that simply getting a better GPU in the future would be just as good an upgrade as having two 5770s in Crossfire (if not better).

Thank you very much for your help.

4

Just for gaming, a Phenom II X2 555 is the same price and would perform better due to it’s higher clock speed and L3 cache. However, personally I’d rather have the Athlon X4 or possibly an Athlon II X3 440 (slightly cheaper) for general use and slightly better future-proofing (recent games have been getting better at using more cores).

The alternative, for slightly more money, is an Intel i3-530 (dual core with hyper-threading). You’d then have an upgrade path to an i7-860 if you ever needed it.

Probably best to stick with the 5770 then.

I was thinking along similar lines when I built my system about 6 months ago. I’ve gone off the idea now. When I do upgrade, hopefully not for some time, I’ll just buy a new card. Boards with extra PCI-e lanes and a more powerful CPU are extra expenses. Crossfire doesn’t work perfectly, adding a second card doesn’t double performance, I think the average increase is something like 60%.

You’re welcome.

5

I’m working on building a new machine as well. Does anyone have an opinion on the new solid-state drives? I thinking about making a 128GB SSD the boot drive with the OS and swap and temp files, and a large harddrive to hold applications and data.

6

If it fits your budget go for it. They are extremely expensive as you probably know, and knowing the INS and outs of the different controllers is a must. They are not all equal by a long shot. In terms of games, load times will be great, but really is 5 seconds less worth the $4 per gig?

7

IMO Crossfire/SLI is silly even as an upgrade strategy, especially if you’re buying at the 5770 level. By the time you look to upgrade, there’ll almost always be a single card upgrade that will give you good bang for the buck, and you don’t have the pay the price of large increases in heat and power requirements.

The only place I can see for dual video cards is for extreme top-end rigs where you’re doubling up on the fastest cards available. Which pretty obviously isn’t in the budget here.

So that said, I’ll suggest a Corsair CMPSU-400CX 400W as being a solid, efficient, quiet psu at $52. I doubt you’ll actually draw over 250w with your parts list, if that.

8

Thanks, but 400W??? I really assumed that the GPU would require more than that. Would I not be setting myself up for having to purchase a new PSU as soon as I upgraded parts of the PC? Then again, my level of knowledge in this field is very limited, so maybe I should just take your word for it.

9

Motherboard and graphics card manufacturers hugely inflate their required wattage numbers because (1) they have no clue what your total system looks like, so have to allow that you might have a 10 disk RAID setup and such, and (2) cheap power supplies don’t have very honest ratings and often can’t sustain output at or near their supposed capacity.

To actually pull 400w, you need both the most power-hungry cpu and the most power-hungry gpu you can find, along with generous draw from multiple hard drives and the like. Dual video card setups go over 400w pretty easily, but you’ll have to try pretty hard to do it with a single card setup. The only video cards on the market today that might put you close to 400w are the GTX295 and GTX480. Current top end ATI cards are pretty efficient.

If you read techreport.com reviews, they give system power consumption numbers. They measure AC current at the wall, meaning that the actual DC draw (which is what the psu rating gives) is going to be 15-20% lower, depending on the efficiency of the psu they’re using. Of course you also have to pay attention to what else they’re using in the system, but in video card reviews they tend to use a beefy cpu.

I just finished building a new machine, with an i5 750 and a HD5850 as the core components. Running it off an old Seasonic S12 430w. I haven’t measured the current yet, but I’ve seen similar builds metered out around 275w (AC) under full load (cpu and gpu benchmarks run simultaneously, far more load than any real game). Your 5770 draws less than my 5850, though iirc the AMD quad cores draw a little more than my i5.

10

All that said, if you feel more comfortable with a 500w psu, it isn’t terribly expensive peace of mind.

11

You’ve definitely given me food for thought here. I just knew I was doing the right thing by having Dopers look at this build.

I might indeed be aiming at the 500w range, but I guess I won’t need 620w after all. You’re not the first to recommend Corsair as a brand, so I’ll assume that they make good and reliable PSUs.

12

They don’t make power supplies at all. But they pay Seasonic to build them to their specs, and Seasonic does make good and reliable units.

13

I appreciate the clarification.

I have much to learn.

14

You seem to have picked a pretty solid set of parts.

The only thing I don’t know about is the CPU. I haven’t kept up to date on AMD CPUs in some time. I looked up some benchmarks and it appears to have very solid performance per dollar when using multithreaded apps (where the 4 cores can work together) but not great performance for single threaded apps. That’s a mixed bag for gaming, where most new games take advantage of multiple cores but only ones won’t. But that also means it’s less likely to be an issue, since the older games generally will require less CPU horsepower. Most of the intel equivelant entry level quad core CPUs will cost about twice as much, with better performance but not double. If you’re set on AMD and not planning to overclock (it’s usually fairly easy to take a low end CPU and run it as fast or faster than the high end equivelants), I might consider stepping up to a Phoenom 2 X4 965 Black Edition. But that’s twice the price for not nearly double the performance. CPUs are an area where I’ve skimped on before (I once got a $70 CPU which I overclocked hard enough so that it was faster than any commercially available CPU on the market, including the $1000+ ones) but if you’re not planning on overclocking, I’d probably spend a little extra on getting a CPU with faster stock clocks.

It most likely will be fine for your needs, but it has the potential to be your weak link.

I can’t speak for sure on that motherboard, but the gigabyte UD3 series for intel chips is excellent, so it’s probably good.

Hard drive is good - I have a very similar one and it’s very fast.

Ram seems fine. I know for intel chipsets you want to use memory chips in 3s because of the triple channel system, so you’ll usually get 2+2+2 for 6gb. But I assume AMD chipsets don’t have the same benefit to having 3 chips?

PSU is fine. People here are correct to say that people overestimate their power supply needs and most have more than they need. But it does leave some headroom. There’s certainly no harm in having 600 watts when you only need 300. I’m fond of corsair/seasonic units, but the higher end antec units are fine.

Radeon 5770 is a very good choice, it’ll run everything you need just fine. Crossfire is an option later on. It’s almost never a good idea to do SLI from the start (it’s not cost effective), but in a year or so when you can probably grab a used 5770 somewhere for $60, it’ll be a cheap way to have a significant graphics upgrade. They are efficient low power cards, so any 500+ quality power supply should be able to run 2 of them.

Your case is a good choice, and it’s the one I use - but the $160 price is pretty hefty. Check around your local shops to see if they have it cheaper, plus you’d save on shipping. I got a great deal on mine when it was on sale for $60 or $70 at fry’s, but it’s not uncommon to see it normally priced for $100 locally.

So yeah - the rig as noted is good. If I were spending a little more money, I’d either get the 965 Black Edition or an i7 chip, but you should be ok there. Everything else is good.

15

You seem to be doing pretty good for someone who is so new at this. Are you sure your other head isn’t helping you?

You post so rarely, I had to be sure to get that joke in.

16

That’s only true for the intel X58 boards, as the i7-9XX series have a triple channel DDR3 controller. The other intel chips such as the i3, i5 and i7-8XX series and all the AMD chips support dual-channel DDR3, so you want a matched pair of DIMMS for those. 2x2 Gb is the right choice.

(Dual and triple channel memory controllers increase memory performance by allowing memory to be read or updated in parallel, hence the matched set of DIMMs).

17

Thanks! I’ve been working on those for a bit, now.

I’m going to try to avoid doubling the price of the CPU. As I think I understand, I can always upgrade to a Phenom CPU later without having to change the motherboard.

I’ve been told they were solid. As with the case, I do have an alternative I’m watching. I’ll probably buy whichever one happens to be cheaper the day I buy the parts. The alternative is:

I apparently need to do a bit of research. As a newbie, this is a bit over my head.

Yeah, it was 50$ off when I added it to my wishlist. It’s pretty much the only reason why the price jumped to over 1,000 (once you add tax and shipping). I’m also watching these two:

18

Heh, maybe it is a little. That, and mix of my own research and the advice of kind Internet people.

19

Oh, good! You just saved me more research! Of course, I still have to find out more for my own development, but it’s no longer urgent.

20

I’ve found a deal on another site that’s overall better for me right now. Most items are slightly cheaper and the shipping is free on large(ish) orders. However, due to a slightly more limited inventory, I had to make a couple of small substitutions, so I thought I’d seek advice here. The GPU is the same, but another brand, whereas the PSU is the same brand, but slightly different:

GPU:

PSU:

Do either of these two items set off alarm bells for anyone?

Thanks again.