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Ah yes. Yes, I know there are more dedicated forums out there for this sort of thing. But first off, I actually trust the advice of some of the people on here more than that of quite a few people around those boards; secondly I like that I can at least ask things here without being told to STFU and GTFO N00b, and thirdly,...Well, I dunno. Why not.

So anyway, I'm looking to replace my current system, as it's starting to fall behind. Yes, I'll be able to play D3 - but it won't be as pretty. Can't play Skyrim. Can't play The Witcher 2. Can just barely but not quite play Total War Shogun 2. You get the picture. My current gaming computer's an Acer Aspire 7738G (to save you the annoyance of looking: Intel core 2 Duo T6400 - 2x 2.0GHz; 4GB DDR; NVidia GeForce GT130M, 320 GB HDD)

What I'm looking at right now is about this (sorry it's in Dutch, I'm pretty sure you can make out what's what from the names and numbers ):

Grafische kaarten ATI PCIe
Software System Builder Besturingssystemen
CPUs Socket 1155
Voedingen
Solid State Disk 2,5 inch SATA
Moederborden Socket 1155
Harddisks 2,5 inch SATA
Geheugen DDR3-1066
DVD-drives Serial-ATA


Unfortunately, with the addition of a new monitor, that's just a bit north of my budget. I could, but....Is it worth it? This would be built-to-order, prices are next to the objects. I've found premade computers with similar stats and quite a bit cheaper, but always lacking in at least one aspect. I'd rather buy one with an Ivy Bridge than a Sandy Bridge at this point, obviously. I do sort of insist on an SDD as primary drive because I've seen the difference and that's just plain worth it at this point in time. I don't really care about HD space, I can alwyas buy another one...And I guess I could get a cheaper graphics card and replace it later, but I wouldn't know what the best way to go would be.... So anyway, input please ;-) Theoretically, I'd like to keep it under €1.000, excluding monitor (which isn't in there yet) and windows (which is in there).


*edit* man, that screwed up my table. Let's reformat a bit :-P

Is 500W going to be enough power for the graphics card and your other drives? Seems a bit low - I think my system requires a 700W or higher.

I personally would not be buying a PSU less than 750, going forward. Apart from that, I have a blood feud with ATI, but I realize not everybody does.

Yeah, I'm another participant in the blood feud with ATI. Never had a damn card that worked for more than six months to a year, and their catalyst software always seems to do horrible, horrible things to my computers. 'S why I switched back to nVidia cards a few years back - but I'm not really buying top of the line cards, so I can't speak to either chip-set's new HD cards.

I'm more of an AMD fan in terms of processor, and you should dig into blu/DVD burners to see if anything solid is down in price. Otherwise, not bad at all.

SeraRelm said:

I'm more of an AMD fan in terms of processor, and you should dig into blu/DVD burners to see if anything solid is down in price. Otherwise, not bad at all.

Click to expand...

AMD sounds to be de-emphasizing it's CPU division in favor of GPU, but I guess that doesn't make a difference if you're buying right this instant. But still, the quote gaffe CEO Rory Read made is pretty 1980's Bill-Gates-esque. Something about how now there's enough processing power for everyone, full stop.

And as soon as I entered that I realized, that no, my gut tells me that anyone not going intel/nvidia now is brain damaged.

I went from GTX 285s to HD 6950s. I guess they're better, but the drivers have been fucking terrible.

I'll not buy another video card that isn't Nvidia again I think.

Too late tonight for big digging, so instead I'll ask some questions to get a good start:
-What percentage of the new computer's life will be spent gaming? (as opposed to movies, word proc, Internet, etc)
-Will it ever do anything else? If so, what?
-How long do you want it to last?
-What size monitor do you prefer gaming? Will you be hooking it to your HDTV?
-Will it need to do 3D?
-How many people will be using it? How many games will be installed at once?
-How important is noise?

--Patrick

PatrThom said:

Too late tonight for big digging, so instead I'll ask some questions to get a good start:
-What percentage of the new computer's life will be spent gaming? (as opposed to movies, word proc, Internet, etc)
-Will it ever do anything else? If so, what?
-How long do you want it to last?
-What size monitor do you prefer gaming? Will you be hooking it to your HDTV?
-Will it need to do 3D?
-How many people will be using it? How many games will be installed at once?
-How important is noise?

--Patrick

Click to expand...

-> To be perfeclty honest, realistically speaking, most of the time is spent surfing the internet and watching some movies, which I obviously can do just as well from my current pc. Hardly any office work (I use another pc for work-related stuff, so jsut what you need in every day life - scanning a letter, making a resume, make the occasional powerpoint - nothing serious). I don't do any rendering/modelling or, really, anything at all stressful to a modern pc other than gaming.
-> At least 2 years with everything looking really good, and hopefully some 4 or 5 years with only relatively simple upgrades (I can stick in some more RAM or a new graphics card, but I do'nt intend to try and replace the processor).
-> Definitely no HDTV (wel, maybe over a network some day, but not as a computer monitor); my current monitor is a whopping 19" 1024*768 so that'll be replaced :-P Probably 22" or 24", and resolution-wise, anything over FullHD would be fine for me. Maybe I'll go crazy and get a 27" monitor at 2440*1600 or something but I doubt it.
-> As in, 3D with glasses? Heck no. Eww. Yack. Brrr.
-> I'm the only one using it regularly. My girlfriend or brother or what-have-you may occasionally check their mails and such with it, but for all intents and purposes, it's a one-account, one-person pc.
-> Hmm, I usually only *play* 2 or 3 games at a time. I'm not at home right now, so I can't check, but on my current pc, I think I have maybe 5 or 6 relatively new games installed, and a whole bunch from Gog.com. I tend to uninstall "big" games (over 2GB) if I don't use them for a couple of months. Let's see...Off the top of my head, Total War Shogun 2, Fallout: New Vegas and The Witcher (1) are the biggest games on my pc at the moment. Last I checked my Steam folder was about 70 GB, my Gog.com folder about 10 GB, and my "Other games" folder about 50 GB.
-> It's in my living room, so noise does play an important part. My current desktop (old P4-1.7 GHz) is literally louder than my vacuum cleaner...No. I know, a cooler case and an added processor cooler may be a bit much, but... Well, I dunno.


As for the others: I'm actually an Intel/nVidia fanboy, always have been. Don't really know why I put in an ATI card Guess I could make more sense of their numbering? I'm all in favour of replacing it with an nVidia graphics card.

Yeah, I went with an ATI graphics card and regret it. When I replace it, I'll be going with nVidia.

Other than that, your build looks pretty solid. You'll love your SSD. I've got a similar setup with one as well -- I boot Windows off of it, and run pretty much everything else off of a regular HDD -- and it's awesome. You'll just have to make sure you don't accidentally install a lot of programs to it, since everything wants to default to the C-drive

Considering my laptop's HDD is 320 GB and not actually completely full (it got to be full sometimes untill I moved all my media to an external drive), I'm now seriously thinking about simply forgetting the SATA HD and just putting in a 256 GB SDD. There'd be practically no price difference, and I could always plug in my current HD or buy one a littel while further down the road...

I won't go into all the specific reasons, but as I have said in other threads, if you can stomach the wait time, your new build will have a much longer lifespan if you can hold off until mid-2013 before you do an all-new build.

If you're dead-set on a new build before then, there are some key points to consider:
-The motherboard should most definitely be based on Z77 chipset. Your best budget board is probably the ASRock Z77 Extreme4 or the Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD3H.
-The 7850 is a solid choice, given your stated needs. If you want the NVIDIA equivalent, go with the GTX670, though that will almost double the GPU price. Whatever you choose, make sure it has at least 2GB VRAM.
-Since you have concern about size and speed both, you can pair a 64GB SSD with a larger standard drive using Intel's SmartResponse to get the best of both worlds. Pick up a Toshiba THNSNF 64GB drive for your cache drive and then either reuse your existing HDD or pick up a reputable 1TB or 2TB drive to act as your main storage.
-The Corsair 500R looks like a pretty good case for sound-sensitive cooling, even if it is a bit large.
-For the CPU, choose the i7-3770S if you will want hyper threading*, Intel Trusted Computing*, or Intel vPro*, or the i5-3570k if you do not. Both are a lot cheaper (and cooler!) than the big-name 3770k but give comparable performance (for what you want).
-I would also up the size of your PSU to 650 or so. I'm a personal fan of Seasonic, but there are a lot of good brands to be had. So long as they are certified 80 Plus Silver/Gold/or Platinum, they are probably worthwhile.

--Patrick
*If you don't know what they are, then you probably don't need them.