Advice on this computer build before I spend money

[Stormz]

So I've been looking into building a decent gaming PC for a while now because the one I have now is crap and prebuilt is always a rip off. So since I'm a newbie to all this I would like to show you a build and see if anyone thinks that it's good. If not please state why, this is a build got off a computer site so I want to make sure that the people here who have experiece with this stuff can give me some insight.

So here we go.

Motherboard

Asus P7P55 Deluxe Motherboard

CPU

Intel Core i5 750

RAM

Corsair XMS3 4GB Dual Channel DDR3 RAM

Video Card

Diamond Radeon HD 5850 1GB

Sound Card

Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer

Hard Drive

Western Digital Caviar Black 750 GB

DVD Burner

LG GH22NS50R DVDRW Drive

Case

Cooler Master HAF 922M ATX Mid Tower Case

Power Supply

Cooler Master GX Series 650W

Total in Canadian Dollars: 1396.86

 

[himemiya1650]

Sounds good, but since were talking CAD you could probably get a 1tb hard drive off of tigerdirect for $70.00. Sound card doesn't matter too much most of the time since 7.1 dolby digital seems to be the standard on mobo's these days. I have a Sapphire 5850 and its doing well. The build you're thinking of willbe able to tank BC2 and SC2

 

[Stormz]

Sounds good, but since were talking CAD you could probably get a 1tb hard drive off of tigerdirect for $70.00. Sound card doesn't matter too much most of the time since 7.1 dolby digital seems to be the standard on mobo's these days. I have a Sapphire 5850 and its doing well. The build you're thinking of willbe able to tank BC2 and SC2

Oh that sounds good. Could you give me any suggestions on what hard drive would be best? A lot of this stuff is still gibberish to me haha.

 

[Digitaldreamer7]

don't buy a sound card, put that money into a better quality PSU or a better video card. Or.. a good set of speakers. on board sound is great these days.

I'd go with a XFX or EVGA video card. They are great quality and I have had to use warranty, quick and responsive.

 

[ThorUK]

You may want to buy a SSD (Solid State hard Drive) - you can buy a 64 gig one (I wouldn't buy a 30-32 GB one since Windows might well consume as much space with all the future service packs and whatnot) for under 80 pounds sterling over here. Just install windows and maybe unitlity software (anti-virus, freeram that kinda thing) on there - it should result in much faster boot and software start times (not to mention the reduced chances of a SSD failing).

Buy a separate normal 3.5" HD for your media and games (I wouldn't bother getting anything over 500 GB personally, only media I have is music and that's fairly compact).

You may also want to invest in another couple gigabytes of RAM (assuming you have 4 slots on your motherboard, I'd have 2x 2048 and 2x 1024 DDR3 sticks).

Processor looks good though I'd probably cheap out and get the 650 but it depends on 'local' prices. Dunno about the video card, as I'm only familiar with the 5xxx-9xxx nivia series. I guess if it's not too expensive, has a decent amount of shaders and has 1 gigabyte of DDR3 VRAM it's probably good.

 

[Stormz]

Get a different brand of video card. Diamond is.... not preferred. For the 5850 I recommend XFX, as it comes with a double-life time warranty.

You won't need a sound card unless you crave "perfect sound".

I'd recommend the Cooler Master 690ii Advanced over the Haf922. Weighs less, and has more dust-filters. But that is up to you.

Get a better PSU brand. Corsair or SeaSonic above-all else. And you could get by with a 550W PSU

That is all I can think of right now

Okay so I have a few links to see if these are what you're talking about.

For the PSU I got this : http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139006&cm_re=corsair_power_supply-_-17-139-006-_-Product

And for the video card I got this: http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=6500369&CatId=3669

 

[CalCD]

CPU: good
PSU :decent
Case:good
Ram: perfectly adequate
GPU: good

If your mobo has 2 pci express slots, however, you may want to go for 460s in sli - they work very very well together and are cheaper than higher end cards like the 5970 or 480.

 

[Kialee]

If your mobo has 2 pci express slots, however, you may want to go for 460s in sli - they work very very well together and are cheaper than higher end cards like the 5970 or 480.

This is what my advice was going to be, actually.

 

[KEM10]

You might want to look up standard issues with the Caviar Black. I had the green model 1TB and it died after one day, and I am not the only one this is happening to. WD did something to their new advanced format of the Caviars to make them iffy. Or maybe it was just the greens and you have nothing to worry about.

 

[octafish]

Cosair PSU is what I would have recommended.
How many pixels are you pushing? If it is a 1080 monitor the 5850 should be fine, for a larger monitor you will see some benefits from a 5870.
Don't forget to get the 64bit version of your OS to make the most of your RAM.
The thing with SLI and Crossfire that people reccomend is that it lowers your minimum FPS, I say single cards are the way to go.
I'm of the opinion that, unless you are an Audiophile and are going to spend a tonne of money on speakers, you don't need a Sound Card.

Will you overclock?
There is a newer i5 760 with a bump in the multiplier to 21. For whatever reason OCs with an odd multiplier are more stable. Overclocking is something I do, but it still seems like voudou sometimes.

 

[Regna]

I might Get an HD-Dvd Disc Drive it works great...some games might be coming in that, or a Blu-Ray disc Drive since Blu-Ray won the format war...

 

[Stormz]

Okay so I have a few links to see if these are what you're talking about.

For the PSU I got this : http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139006&cm_re=corsair_power_supply-_-17-139-006-_-Product

And for the video card I got this: http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=6500369&CatId=3669

The video card is good, but for the PSU you could drop some wattage. You won't need 750w with that Cpu/Gpu

Okay well I've also found this one which is 650W, most of them are either way higher or lower.

CORSAIR HX Series CMPSU-650HX 650W ATX12V v2.2 / EPS12V 2.91 SLI Ready 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply

You might want to look up standard issues with the Caviar Black. I had the green model 1TB and it died after one day, and I am not the only one this is happening to. WD did something to their new advanced format of the Caviars to make them iffy. Or maybe it was just the greens and you have nothing to worry about.

Hm I don't see anything about the one I have up there, I'll keep an eye out for that though.

 

[Stormz]

Okay well I've also found this one which is 650W, most of them are either way higher or lower.

CORSAIR HX Series CMPSU-650HX 650W ATX12V v2.2 / EPS12V 2.91 SLI Ready 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply

Get that one then.
Great brand and has room incase you ever want to upgrade.

Hm I don't see anything about the one I have up there, I'll keep an eye out for that though.

The WD black line is great.
I prefer the Samsung Spinpoint F3 line, myself.

That one is only a bit more expensive but it has 1 tb so I think I might get that one instead actually.

Okay so here's what I have now.

Motherboard

Asus P7P55 Deluxe Motherboard

CPU

Intel Core i5 750

RAM

Corsair XMS3 4GB Dual Channel DDR3 RAM

Video Card

XFX HD585XZABC Radeon HD 5850 Black Edition Video Card - 1GB GDDR5, PCI Express 2.0, CrossFireX, DirectX 11, HDMI, Dual DVI

DVD Burner

LG GH22NS50R DVDRW Drive

Case

COOLER MASTER RC-692-KKN2 CM690 II Advanced Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

PSU

CORSAIR HX Series CMPSU-650HX 650W ATX12V v2.2 / EPS12V 2.91 SLI Ready 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply

Hard Drive

Samsung HD103SJ Spinpoint F3 Hard Drive - 1TB, 7200RPM, 32MB, SATA-3G

This might be a stupid question. Would these parts be hard to find in normal computer stores? I can't buy online.

 

[Johnnyallstar]

I agree about Diamond not being the best video card company, I prefer gigabyte, XFX, or even a good Sapphire.

One thing I will say is that all a core i5 processor is,is a core i7 that has hyperthreading disabled, which means there will be a *very* noticeable difference between the performance between the two, about 24%, and HT cannot be enabled as it is both hardware and software based. It may not mean that much, but the i5 isn't going to really stomp a quad core performance-wise, but it will use less energy. Though, now I see that they did drop the price on the i5 a bit, which makes it more appealing.

IN NO WAY AM I SAYING THIS IS WHAT YOU SHOULD DO, but if it were me, right now, I would spring for the i7, because I'm a big CPU guy, and then I'd buy a HD 5770, because they're a fantastic budget performance card. One would satisfy my gaming needs, for at least a paycheck or two, and then (PSU allowing) would crossfire with a second and I'd have plenty of oomph to spare. Radeon made them to be a good quality card, DX11 compatible, at a budget price, around $150-170, so buying a second doesn't hurt that much, but adds a ton of pretties.

Also, this is just my personal preference, but I like a full tower, not mid. That little bit of elbow room sometimes makes a huge difference. I've been building computers since the early 90s, on all sizes of towers, but I'm never going to buy anything but the full size if I can help it.

All said and done, though, it's a good looking rig.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

So I've been looking into building a decent gaming PC for a while now because the one I have now is crap and prebuilt is always a rip off. So since I'm a newbie to all this I would like to show you a build and see if anyone thinks that it's good. If not please state why, this is a build got off a computer site so I want to make sure that the people here who have experiece with this stuff can give me some insight.

So here we go.

Motherboard

Asus P7P55 Deluxe Motherboard

CPU

Intel Core i5 750

RAM

Corsair XMS3 4GB Dual Channel DDR3 RAM

Video Card

Diamond Radeon HD 5850 1GB

Sound Card

Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer

Hard Drive

Western Digital Caviar Black 750 GB

DVD Burner

LG GH22NS50R DVDRW Drive

Case

Cooler Master HAF 922M ATX Mid Tower Case

Power Supply

Cooler Master GX Series 650W

Total in Canadian Dollars: 1396.86

this sounds really solid, i just built my first custom pc and its a bit lower than yours in a few categories (like the video card) and everything i have thrown at it so far has worked great once i got it to work, so im sure you'll be able to fly through any game with this

good luck building it ;]

 

[Hashime]

Pretty good, but check tigerdirect and newegg for deals before you buy, I got my q9550 for $100 off because of such a deal.

 

[Johnnyallstar]

This might be a stupid question. Would these parts be hard to find in normal computer stores? I can't buy online.

Not a stupid question, but some of those things will be harder than others. HDDs are usually found pretty easy, the GPU might give you grief, or might be easy, pending on what the store decides to stock, same with the MOBO because of it's specificity. The CPU shouldn't be THAT hard because it's a common intel.

Would be a million times easier online though :\

EDIT: Would also help a ton if the store could special order for you. If they can, you win!