Seeking advice on computer system build

[DaveV]

My son wants to build his own desktop PC. He'll use it mainly for gaming (shooters, RPGs, and MMOs are his preferred genres). Since we have a Micro Center store less than ten miles from home, I priced out a system there that's a little over his $500 budget. Any suggestions would be welcome; I know just enough to be dangerous.

Code:

Core i5 3570K 3.4 GHz LGA 1155 Processor ....................................... $169.99
Asus P8H61-M LE/CSM R2.0 LGA 1155 H61(B3) mATX Intel Motherboard ............... $ 72.99
Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7,200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive .......... $ 99.99
Corsair XMS3 Series 4GB DDR3-1333 (PC3-10666) CL9 Desktop Memory Module .........$ 18.99
Corsair XMS3 Series 4GB DDR3-1333 (PC3-10666) CL9 Desktop Memory Module ........ $ 18.99
Gigabyte GV-R775OC-1GI AMD Radeon HD 7750 1024MB GDDR5 PCIe 3.0 x16 Video Card . $114.99
Linkworld Electronic LC323 ATX Mid Tower Computer Case ......................... $ 19.99
Inland Silver Series ILS-500-2 500 Watt ATX Power Supply ....................... $ 27.99
                                                                                 -------
Total                                                                            $543.92

[Yazilliclick]

My very limited current knowledge of hardware out there says that looks pretty good.

[pocketbeetle]

Hi Dave

Put my rig together last month, so my knowledge is reasonably up to date. What you're suggesting there isn't light-years away from what I've got, although understandably my budget was a little higher than your son's.

The main criticism/question I'd ask is whether you need that hard drive. 3 problems:

• Technical: It has a SATA 6 gb/s transfer rate but the motherboard you're suggesting only supports up to 3 gb/s.
  In truth not a big deal, mainstream opinion is that you only notice the difference between 6 and 3 gb/s with SSDs, but wanted to make sure you'd seen that.
  
• Personal: 2TB is huge, does he need it?
  To give you an idea, I've got around 1.75TB space between a SSD and secondary hard drive, and despite having my entire music collection (~50 gb), multiple movies/videos/games etc I'm barely pushing 400gb.
  I'm sure I'll fill it up eventually ( ) but unless your son is planning to set up a Bittorrent movie sharing hub/rival to Piratebay, does he really need it?
  
• Economics: No problem with the make, Seagate Barracudas have always worked well for me, but you're budgeting $100, ie 1/5 of a gaming computer on the hard drive?
  For comparison this is the one I have, no complaints so far. (Ask if you want me to expand on 5900 vs 7200 rpm)

The RAM you've chosen is fine, ram is cheap in general, Corsair 8 Gb will work nicely.
I like the graphics card you've picked, someone's done their homework there. Nice balance between price and power.

CPU: you've got the same one as me there, i5 3570, I considered the i7 overpriced.
Again personal experience here: mine's mainly a gaming computer and although I did overclock it a bit, in the time I've had it I've barely stretched the cpu at all. I think you can easily go down to the lower end of this range (i5 3350) or even the i3 series, freeing up some budget space. I think you know the following, but to state the obvious, gaming computers are mainly about the graphics card, most performance bottlenecks happen there and in the RAM. You've got an upper-mid range CPU in a budget gaming rig. To expand on this point: you could save some budget here, upgrade to a HD 7770 graphics card and potentially get better results.

Motherboard: you've gone cheap here, and it might bite you. I can't quite decide whether you're on the money perfectly and picking a board that has just enough functionality, or whether you're skimping too much.
http://usa.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_S.../#overview

• For starters its a H61 chipset, which is... kinda old now. For comparison, here's a post from a guy who has a similar MO to you: looking for a computer for his son. You can clearly see the posters trying to steer him away from the H61 and that was 8 months ago. Ask yourself (or son!) whether the budget can stretch for something better like a P67 or Z68/77.
  
• Secondly, it's got limited expansion slots.
  I hope you're not expecting to put lots of wireless, TV tuner or network cards etc in there? If so, check carefully.
  
• Either way, so long as you both understand that this is not the type of board that 3-4 years down the line you buy components for and add to, any upgrades you want to do will probably involve throwing out the mboard and buying a new one.
  Technical article for your perusal here and a random thrown out alternative for a Z77 chipset which is only another $25 here. (Not recommending it, just offering alternatives.)

Case & power supply unit.
Basic stuff, nothing much to say here except personal opinions:

• That is an exceptionally cheap and nasty PSU.
  You play the roulette with bargain PSUs, sometimes they're great, sometimes they die 2 days out of warranty. Named brands do tend to be more reliable; Corsair, Antec and OCZ are all well regarded, Coolermaster less so.
  
• Form factor micro ATX.
  Just checking you realise that you've gone for an ATX (full size) case with a micro ATX motherboard (smaller size).
  Nothing wrong with it, smaller mboards are just more squeezed in and can be more susceptible to heating problems. (In the past I've owned two desktops with mATX boards and cases, both had heating problems, I steer away from them nowadays).
  In mentioning heating problems: case also has a top mounted PSU. Again, not a huge deal.

Random questions/points:

• No mention of an operating system.
  Assume you realise you need Windows 7 (64 bit) to use that RAM? Don't forget you can buy OEM versions cheaper.
  
• Check prices online.
  A 2 second google on the graphics card has amazon at $15 cheaper here
  Also recommend checking up components on Newegg. Seems to be a very highly recommended site that is sadly off limit to Europeans, or I would have used it myself.
  
• What games is he expecting to run?

Overall to clarify: consider my opinion that of a techy layman. I don't sell or build computers for a living, so if someone who does comes along to offer a different point of view, there's a good chance they know better.

tl;dr
Maybe overbudgeting on the hard drive and CPU, maybe underbudgeting on the motherboard, like the rest.

[antisocialmunky]

Get a 1TB drive and do a SSD. SSDs like multi-core systems give you huge tick up in responsiveness which is nice. Also try to get a 400/500 watt Gold Certified PSU with all the fancy features so it fries without frying all your expensive bits.

Newegg is nice for things you probably wouldn't return (cooling units, PSU's, ram, etc) but for more expensive items I end up going to microcenter because I can return it immediately if it is defective which is nice for things like gfx and cpu.

[NobleHelium]

The difference between a 1 TB and 2 TB hard drive is like 20 bucks, so he's not going to be able to afford an SSD from that.

And yeah, that PSU is highly suspect...

[antisocialmunky]

Is it? It seems to be more like 50/60 for good ones that aren't power saver series.

Also doesn't MC run a $50 off/free mobo deal with new CPU?

[DaveV]

Thanks for the replies, especially to pocketbeetle for his long and informative post.

I guess I've had really good luck with no-name power supplies so far, but it seems like a reasonably cheap insurance policy to buy a decent one. That's why I came here for advice; left to my own devices, I probably would have gone for something like this case *and* power supply for $29.99. I thought I was already spending extra by getting a power supply from a company I'd heard of before.

Anyway, I'm taking the advice of scaling way back on the processor and hard disk, and stepping up the graphics, motherboard, and power supply. I'm not sure how I missed the rebate on this card when I was looking the first time. As pocketbeetle advised, I'm including the OS in the price list, since it's just a $500 paperweight otherwise. I've read about a $50 discount on motherboard+processor in the comments at microcenter.com, but haven't found anyplace where it's spelled out. I'm hoping they still offer it, since we're way over budget now.

Version 2.0:

Code:

Core i3 3220 3.30GHz LGA 1155 Boxed Processor .................................. $ 99.99
Asus P8H61-M P8Z77-V LX Socket 1155 Z77 ATX Intel Motherboard .................. $119.99 - $10.00 rebate
Toshiba 320GB 5,400 RPM 2.5" SATA 3Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive  .......... $ 47.99
Corsair XMS3 Series 4GB DDR3-1333 (PC3-10666) CL9 Desktop Memory Module .........$ 18.99
Corsair XMS3 Series 4GB DDR3-1333 (PC3-10666) CL9 Desktop Memory Module ........ $ 18.99
HIS H777F1G2M iCooler Radeon HD 7770 1024MB GDDR5 PCIe 3.0 x16 Video Card ...... $139.99 - $30.00 rebate
Linkworld Electronic LC323 ATX Mid Tower Computer Case ......................... $ 19.99
Corsair Builder Series CX430 430 Watt ATX 12V Power Supply ..................... $ 49.99
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-bit OEM (PC) ............................$109.99
                                                                                 -------
Total                                                                            $625.91 - $40.00 rebate

[NobleHelium]

That's a 2.5 inch hard drive...you might need a bracket to secure it properly inside your case. It's designed for laptops. I would get a 7200 RPM drive personally.

Antec's PSUs are probably more affordable than Corsair's for the same wattage, IIRC.

[sunrise089]

Coming in late, I think your CPU, MB, memory, GPU, and case are fine. For your OS I'd make sure you don't have any access to any sort of discount...$110 seems high when Win8 is out now...can your son get some sort of educational offer through his school?

For the power supply, I'd be completely fine with the $28 model you initially picked, and pretty fine with that $30 case+PS combo

My one firm piece of advice would be to not use a 5,400 RPM HD in a desktop build. That slooooow HD will severely bottleneck your performance. I agree this build is a bit under the threshold of SSD+conventional HD, but in that case you need to maximize your IO performance as much as possible. I'd get a cheap name brand 1TB 7,200 drive, OR I'd think about whether ONLY an SSD might work - if the PC is only for gaming and internet/office tasks, and not media content, a 128gb SSD might be workable.

[kjn]

I'm reminded of Jobs' quip that "we don't know how to build a $500 computer that doesn't suck". Nowadays you can easily get a good processor and graphics card, but the rest?

That's a 2.5" drive you're listing there. Might be the only way to get both a regular hard drive and an SSD into the box, but it also might not. It means you probably need a bracket to mount the drive, and you will pay more bucks for less capacity and speed. 320 GB for the drive is also a bit skimpy IMO - sure you can do it, but if he wants to keep movies on the computer, some modern games, et c, then you find yourself using maybe 250 GB rather soon. 500GB is IMO better to have some room.

With power supplies my impression is that a quality power supply means you can go down in the rated wattage, since they can get much closer to their "rated" wattage without choking. The i3 will need circa 60W at full load, and the 7770 circa 100. Add a generous 100 for the rest, and the PSU should be built to handle 300W, say at 80% capacity, so a 350-400W quality PSU should be enough.