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New build - Bewildered


Bewildered

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I got $500-600 to spend. I don't care AMD or Intel

 

I'm reusing the case, 700 watt psu, and 1.5TB SATA 6gb/s drive.

 

Buying memory, cpu, mobo, video, sound. I never overclock, so not planning on spending the money upgrading the stock cpu fan.

 

I tossed this stuff together last night.

 

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16813157280

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16814131473

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16820231568

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16819113285

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16829132013

 

 

Thoughts?

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I don't really see the point of an add-on soundcard these days, they sound fine to me and my headset is USB anyways. If you're gonna be using digital speakers it won't make any difference at all. Give me a little time and I'll pick an Intel build for you for comparison.

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Alright got bored:

 

Intel Core i5-3350P

The P desiginates that it doesn't have the onboard video, you won't be using it and it saves around 10W of heat/power and saves a couple of bucks. 4 3.1Ghz cores + 4 hyper-thread and a fairly modest TurboBoost. For most applications these days this will beat out the AMD Vishera CPU you chose as it's cores are faster per clock. For heavily threaded applications the Vishera will win like POV-Ray, CPU based video encoding/transcoding and large file compressions/decompressions, but these aren't typically too applicable for most users and if you're looking at gaming the i5 will win in just about every category. I will also say stock Intel coolers are excellent and AMD's have been a much poorer showing in the past.

 

ASUS P8B75-M/CSM

This is a B75 based board so you don't get RAID or CrossFire/SLI support, if those are issues. It's MicroATX(mATX) instead of ATX but it'll mount fine in an ATX case, just not a whole lot of point in having those extra expansion slots these days that you get with a full sized ATX board for most users. It's also an Asus board instead of their OEM offshoot Asrock which gives you Asus's 3 year warranty and support, along with build quality.

 

GeForce GTX 660 2GB

I went with this as it's a bit faster in most benchmarks than the 7850, sits in the same price range, and AMD has been in the news lately for stuttering problems.

 

CORSAIR 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3

Just this as it's a bit cheaper, it's Corsair, and if you aren't overclocking then I wouldn't be too worried about having heatspreaders.

 

So that's about $533 vs $527(without the sound card), fairly closely matched prices.

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Dual booting isn't hard but you'll have to use MBR instead of GPT as XP doesn't support GPT. If you're dual booting to run some old application I'd suggest getting Windows 7 Pro/Ultimate and installing XP Virtual mode. It's free and offers excellent integration with the Windows 7 Desktop, but no hardware 3D acceleration.

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I have a steam game that I had finally purchased (FO3) and was about half-way through when my machine kicked the bucket. I'm reading reports that some ppl have got it to run on Win7, but I see many posts with ppl not being able to run it on 7, and Bethesda confirming issues.

 

Anyway, I want to finish that game :)

 

Then I have a copy of Win7 I ordered just before my machine died ... so that I could play the new XCom, since it doesn't run on XP.

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FO3? As in Fallout 3?

 

I've played through it 3 times now under Windows 7 Pro/64 and Fallout: New Vegas a couple of times as well, both with all the DLC and addons. No compatibility mode set for either, I run with UAC disabled so no setting it to run as Administrator either.

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Microcenter.com has best prices on CPUs

And if you find a part that you are interested in for less than its in Microcenter (not online) they give you a discount, also they have a lot of stuff with rebates. I bought almost everything in Microcenter in September, later I compared the prices this black Friday and they are almost the same.

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My only changes would be to go with a Z77 mobo, only $10.00 more. http://www.newegg.co...N82E16813130653

 

And the CPU, no reason not to go with 3570k.

 

Save $50 extra by bundling CPU/mobo @ Microcenter....in store only, so if you don't have one, get a buddy to buy and ship to you...that's what I did :) The standalone prices on CPU and mobo are way cheaper too...

 

http://www.microcenter.com/product/401769/Z77A-G41_LGA_1155_mATX_Intel_Motherboard

 

http://www.microcenter.com/product/388577/Core_i5_3570K_34GHz_LGA_1155_Processor

 

$220.87 for mobo and CPU bundled at Microcenter, pretty hard to beat that. They don't advertise that $50 off deal, but if you put it in the cart and have a store selected to pick it up, you'll see the discount, mobo went down to $34.99.

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Pics, my god ... you set your sights too high man. lol ... I'll snap a few when I'm done :)

 

Went together super easy. Was suprised about the way the fan connected -- just pushes in and turns. Hard to tell if its really secure or not. First stock fan I've used in probably 15 years -- so I guess my expectations were in need of shocking :D

 

Any ideas on an app to use to look at core and mobo temperatures? The one I usually install ... HWMonitor ... tried to install spyware this morning, and AVG nuked it.

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You should put the heatsink on before installing the motherboard, and you shouldn't have turned the pins. With the motherboard not mounted you line up the pins between the heatsink and motherboard then push down, you should visibly see the black plastic spreader push out forcing the two white tabs to expand. To remove it, you turn the tabs(either by hand or they have a slot for a flat head screw driver) and pull straight up to remove it. Put on right it's quite sturdy.

 

For temps, if your got the Asus board you can use Asus Probe, it's on their site. You can also use something like SpeedFan or Core Temp

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Well crap, no luck on FO3 working ... though I do see a ton of reports of failures, and Bethesda confirmed major issues that they will not fix.

Win7/64/Ultimate, UAC disabled, tried in XP and Vista compatability modes, tried setting affinity down to just 1 CPU (though this doesn't seem to stick between runs like compatability mode does), tried windowed and unwindowed. It wants to lock up when the vault opens -- though I skinned out of there after about 20 reloads. Now it locks up every time I load into the Megaton house. Morrowind overhaul 3.0 runs like a champ.

 

Maybe I'll see about dual booting XP. The world just won't be right if I don't finish this game. Should have bought it years ago, shame on me.

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