First time builder - spec check please ...

[CW.]

Looking for help please guys.

I use my home PC for some gaming, but also for the usual home family stuff (mail, browsing, photos etc.). My current cheap machine is at end of life - so I want to build my own for once.

The following maxes out my current budget, but I want to make sure there is plenty of expansion ability later as money will become available (I plan on more HDD, better/another graphics card, more memory, dual monitors etc. etc.)

It also needs to be a stylish case - not a 'gamer' case .

Does the following make sense? (Does it even fit together ) Am I missing anything?

Lian-Li Armorsuit PC-P50 case
Gigabyte GA890-GPA-UD3H
Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition
HIS iCooler V ATI Radeon HD 5850
Corsair 750W HX Modular
2x2Gb Corsair Memory
Western Digitial 500GB SATAII 7200RPM Caviar Blue
LG W2353V-PF - 23" Monitor

I'll also throw on an optical drive, and an all in one card reader. Will use Win 7 64 bit and Office 2007.

[David M]

Welcome to the forum!

You chose a gamer case, but it's a very clean, professional looking case. Nice choice. Lian Li's are the best. Lian Li also has some very nice looking quiet cases if those interest you. You will not need a lot of fans to keep your rig cool.

Go with an Asus board. They are the most reliable boards.

Instead of the 750 HX, a Corsair 650 HX would work fine with the graphics card that you chose.

HIS is an excellent brand for your graphics card.

For gaming, I would get a WD Black instead of the Blue. They have a five year warranty versus a three year warranty. They have lower read/write times. Plus they have more cache...get one with 64 MB of cache. Will a 500 GB drive be enough after you have all those games, music, pictures and other media loaded?

The lowest capacity I found for a 64 Mb Black is a 1 TB drive.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-533-_-Product

More specifically, which memory do you have in mind? The Corsair brand is good.

I saw that the monitor you chose is out of stock, at least at Newegg. Some monitors have card readers built into the side bezel. Dell does this with many of their monitors. I find this pretty convenient.

[CW.]

Really really useful feedback - many thanks for that.

I chose the 750 over the 650 (chose = guessed really) to give the PSU more chance of still being viable if (when) I double up the graphics cards.

Feedback on the drive is very useful, especially the warranty length (which I treat as a general indication of reliability). My thoughts were to add more disk later, but given what you said it makes more sense to go for the 'black' now instead. I assume they are 7200 rpm as well - I can check that.

The monitor I was least sure of. I can see me upgrading the whole monitor area in due time - when I get my house remodelled and my study built! Then I can go for a multi monitor display setup without attracting too much sarcasm from my nearest and dearest Not seen the card reader idea - I'll look into that, it certainly sounds neat.

I'll certainly check out the ASUS motherboards as well. Is there anything that's of comparable spec (i.e. just as future proofed for expansions) that you can think of?

Sorry for lack of detail on the memory - it is Corsair XMS3 TwinX 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz.

Once again - many thanks for the useful info.

[David M]

You're welcome.

A 750 watt PSU will not necessarily power two cards. You can look up on the card manufacturers website which PSU's are certified for powering which two cards in SLI or Crossfire.

The WD Black 64mb are 7200 RPM drives are within a few percentage points of being as fast as the higher RPM Raptor drives, which on a per GB basis, are much more expensive. Raptor drives are obsolete in my opinion.

About going multi-monitor, you definitely want to go AMD because their Eyefinity system is far superior to what AMD has to offer right now. Much of the gaming software has been written for or is being written for Eyefinity. If a game is not designed for a multi-monitor setup then it is difficult, expensive or impossible to have a multi-monitor gaming setup. There are three-monitor adapters/converters for putting the same game on three monitors but you don't want to have to go there when Eyefinity is better and cheaper. With Eyefinity, you can drive three monitors with one card. This is not so with Nvidia where you need two cards to drive three monitors.

I don't know enough about AMD based boards to feel qualified to give any recommendations. I switched over to Intel a few years ago.

It's really hard to future proof a computer. What you can do though is to make it upgradable to faster components like a faster CPU or graphics card. You are doing the right thing by considering having a more powerful power supply than necessary to drive one card, only provided you think you may be upgrading to a second card in the future. The better thing to do if you want more graphics power is to sell your existing card and buy a single more powerful card. With Nvidia you would need a second card to run three monitors.

Single cards are more cost effective and have fewer potential problems. Plus you don't have to pay for a higher wattage PSU to power two cards. A high quality 750 watt PSU can power any single graphics card out there including a 5970. I would not trust a 650 to power a 5970 if you ever want to upgrade to one of those beasts. In fact, with multi-monitors playing games, you may want to consider a 5970. I don't know if a $650+ graphics card is in your budget.

The memory you select will depend on which board you select. Under specifications, it will say if you need DDR2 or 3, dual channel or triple channel and the different speeds that are compatible with the motherboard. The 1333 you chose is good because it will not require overclocking to get to that speed. Four Gigs is fine for most computer use and is the least amount you want these days.

[CW.]

Once again many thanks

A little more research for me to do then, but it feels like I'm closing in.

[David M]

Cool, give us your shopping list before purchasing just to make sure everything will work together.

[CW.]

Final shopping list follows - but first some comments.

It feels a little ungrateful, but after digging round on the web a lot more today I would prefer to stick to the Gigabyte motherboard. It is a little cheaper than the ASUS alternative I found, and whilst ASUS definitely seems to be well recommended as a manufacturer by all, Gigabyte isn't that far behind. I accept I may be taking a risk, but overall it seems to be a small one.

Checked the card spec (thanks for mentioning that), they say 600W for dual cards so this 750W PSU should be ok if I get a second. If I ever get a 5970 (sadly too pricey right now) it wants 650W, so as you say I should still be fine for that - depending what else I throw in. I think you're right in that the 5970 would be the way to go - though I'll remember to check first if it is going to fit into the case or not .

At the moment I have no plans to overclock anything - I can't see that anything I will be doing will need it. The step up from my current machine will be enough to blow me away for at least a year or so anyway I reckon. However, it's nice to know the facility is there as and when I think I need it.

So - I end up with (and trying to put links in this time):

Lian-Li Armorsuit PC-P50 ( Buy Lian-Li Armorsuit PC-P50 Mid Tower Case*PC-P50 from CCL - Online Retailer of the Year 2008, 2007 & 2006 for laptops, desktops and computer hardware )
Gigabyte GA890-GPA-UD3H (Gigabyte GA-890GPA-UD3H 890GX Socket AM3 HDMI DVI VGA.. | Ebuyer.com )
Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition ( AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Socket AM3 3.2 GHz.. | Ebuyer.com )
Corsair 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1333MHz ( Corsair 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1333MHz Memory Kit Unbuffered.. | Ebuyer.com ) I doubt I need to get the thermal version ( Corsair 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1333MHz/PC3-10666 XMS3 DHX.. | Ebuyer.com )
HIS iCooler V ATI Radeon HD 5850 ( HIS HD 5850 iCooler 1GB GDDR5 Dual DVI HDMI Display.. | Ebuyer.com )
Western Digital Caviar Black ( Western Digital 1TB Hard Drive SATAIII 7200rpm 64MB.. | Ebuyer.com )
Corsair 750W HX Modular ( Corsair 750W HX Modular PSU | Ebuyer.com ) - got to love 100,000 hours MTBF
Samsung Lavendar P2350 23" Monitor ( Samsung Lavendar P2350 23" LCD Monitor 16:9 Full.. | Ebuyer.com )
Sony Optiarc AD-7241S - DVD±RW ( Sony Optiarc DDU1678A-0B 18x DVD-ROM IDE Optical Drive.. | Ebuyer.com ) - Blu-Ray will come later
Card reader ( All in 1 Internal Card Reader Plus One USB2.0 Port.. | Ebuyer.com ) - will check in a minute if I need a bay converter

Mouse / Keyboard I will sort out later ... I at least trust myself to be able to connect those

Probably a little more pricey than I originally intended, but it's my 50th birthday present to myself so I reckon I deserve it by now

Final comment - of all the forums I've used for all sorts of things I think this has to be the best informed and most helpful, not just this thread but all the others I've read here too. Kudos to you all !

[glc]

Before you finalize on Gigabyte, please read this thread:

http://www.pcmech.com/forum/processo...nd-rating.html

Gigabyte is good quality, but not so good on customer service.

I would not get the DHX ram.

[CW.]

Thank you glc. - once again useful info.

You're not making things easy - I'll have to sleep on it

[David M]

I just turned 50 in June. Maybe I need to do the same? Enjoy.