Woo, Go me. My budget is in the $500-700 range. I've got a current parts list that a friend of my put together, but I'm looking to get second opinions.
SAMSUNG Spinpoint F4EG HD155UI 1.5TB 5400 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive $59.99
LG CD/DVD Burner Black SATA Model GH22NS70 OEM - OEM $19.99
APEX TX-381-C Black Steel Micro ATX Tower Computer Case $24.99
ASUS M4N68T-M V2 AM3 NVIDIA Geforce 7025/nForce 630a Micro ATX AMD Motherboard $50.99
HIS H687FN1GD Radeon HD 6870 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card $169.99
LOGISYS Computer PS575XBK 575W ATX12V SLI Ready Power Supply $28.99
x2 PNY Optima 4GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory Model MD4096SD3-13$49.98 (24.99 each)
AMD Phenom II X6 1055T Thuban 2.8GHz Socket AM3 125W Six-Core Desktop Processor HDT55TFBGRBOX $149.99
Subtotal: $494.92
Grand Total(Shipping+Tax included): $672.73
I can provide my own monitor and keyboard and mouse and my own PCI wireless desktop card. (DWA-525 Wireless N 150 Desktop PCI Adapter). If you see any incompatibilities with this build or can suggest a better build that doesn't break my budget or is even cheaper, let me know. I'm not planning to overclock the CPU but I hear it can be overclocked up to 4.0ghz which is amazing. The main goal of this PC is to be able to play a heavily modded minecraft (using optifine of course) with a hd texture pack, far render distance, and also recording it and editing it without any framerate lag. I'm not sure what OS I should put in but obviously it would have to be 64 bit I think. So, let me know what you think, and if you have any recommendations tell me.
Edit: Replaced the PSU for this: CORSAIR Builder Series CX500 V2 500W ATX12V v2.3 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Power Supply bringing my grand total up to $708.67 also, I have to make sure my mobo and cpu are compatible without flashing bios. Does anyone know anything about this?
Edit2: Replaced the cpu with AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Deneb 3.2GHz Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor HDZ955FBGMBOX bringing my grand total up to $669.12 just waiting word on the mobo
Edit3: Decided just to wait for a month until the Bulldozer's come out and build a computer around it. Yay me.

If you're going to be building a new computer based off of an AMD processor I'd suggest waiting until the Bulldozer series comes out in the next month or two.

What's the point? They're going to come out with a new model after that anyway.

^Because we live in the now. The same logic can be use with Intel. Why buy a sandy bridge when Ivy is coming out in a next year?

@OP- Man you are getting killed on the shipping. Here is some RAM that is faster and for about the same price.

Ram1
Ram2

Edit: I just notice you are in Canada, guess that is why shipping is more.

Because its release date is Oct. 12 and computers are planned purchases. And even if he doesn't get the Bulldozer, it will probably drive the cost of the CPU he does get down.

Understandable. I just don't understand why some people perpetually wait for the next generation of CPU/GPU/whatever and never build their computer.

I am not familiar with AMD chips so well, but if the Bulldozer is a major update, I can see why the price would be driven down.

I generally buy a bit older hardware, cheaper and usually still plenty of power. Buying a GPU from 2008 in 2009 was a good idea (GeForce 9800GT), it runs every game on good or even high settings.

For the CPU, I think best is to go for less cores and more power. Changing the six-core for a quadcore was a good idea, a year or two ago I'd even have advised a dualcore.
When I assembled my computer (in 2009) I went for a quadcore though. It seemed much faster, and it sure is if all programs could and would work parrallel - but they just don't. Only if you are using image editing applications a lot you might benefit from more cores.

If you want fast boot times of the OS and applications, a solid state drive might be a good idea too, but you probably concidered that already.

That's an alarming amount of shipping and tax. Since you're in Canada, I suggest checking prices at NCIX too before you buy.

I would go with a 7200rpm hard drive if that's going to be your only storage device; hard drives are cheap these days. If you're bringing over a 7200rpm drive from your current machine to use as a boot/system drive, the hdd you listed will be fine as a mass storage drive.

That 6870 seems a little out of place. Depending on your monitor's resolution, you may be better off saving $20 and dropping to a 6850, or even further to a 5770/6770 (they're the same chip).

8GB of ram is nice if you can swing it, but 4GB (as a 2x2GB kit) should be enough for your intended purpose and a small to moderate amount of background tasks. I didn't have many problems playing TF2 on max settings with 200+ tabs open in 3 browsers when I was running 4GB.

I second (third?) waiting a few weeks until Bulldozer comes out. Even if it turns out to be outside your price range, it should drive down prices on the Phenom IIs you're looking at. Awesomeguy, Bulldozer is a major architectural change, on the same order as Intel dropping Netburst in favor of Core.

Keep in mind, vcordie, that overclocks are not at all guaranteed. I have an X4-955BE, and mine isn't prime95-stable at 3.6GHz, let alone 4GHz. On a semi-related note, Harok, faster RAM doesn't matter much here, because the memory controller in these CPUs usually won't run DDR3-1600 at 1600MHz.

An SSD for a boot drive would be nice, but I don't think you can squeeze it in without breaking your budget.

I can't really offer much to this conversation with regard to a second opinion, but keep us posted on how it works out.


When I get the money I want to build my own computer as well.

same with me. I have only a broken laptop to use as of now.

I built my own pc as well, about a year ago. Did go for the cheaper hardware; didn't have much of a budget, and I don't game that much.

Went for a AMD Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition. Those are almost always unlockable to quadcore. 2 Cores are disabled by default. You can re-enable them in most modern BIOSes or with specific software. My overclock was stable at 3.8GHz. (Although I didn't unlock it simultaniously.) If you want a little more speed, the 560, or even the 565 is a good choice. It will cost you about $100, a lot less than a quadcore. Even when it is not unlockable, it still is a great CPU.

I also bought a SSD. Really liked the OCZ Agility III, which has SATA 6.0GB/s. Read and write speed are about 500MB/s. 60GB will cost you about $100. That's big enough for your OS and main programs.

Since I'm not much of a gamer, I bought myself a second-hand 4850. Runs latest games perfectly. Skyrim runs at the Very Good setting here. Cost me about $40.

Motherboard is an Asus, default thingey. $90.

That's $330 without the case and power supply. (That would be about $70 together.)

This is a necropost. Completely unnecessary.

My bad, didn't see this thread was that old. I'm sorry.

ciacho0000
830 Posts
11 Vigeo 3:1 - 18.35.0
325.638 days ago

neometis
3 Posts
12 Cresco 11:4 - 10.1.88
0.055 days ago

325 days is a very long time.

Maybe they didn't realise there was a <number> days ago.

Hey! Stop hazing! It's not like the noobie knew!

Edit: Srry.. I got ninja'd...

Yeah, I'm sorry. I did not see there was this 'x days ago' thing. My apologies.

No worries. It's a learning experience.

Sorry if that sounded rude, I was just pointing it out >.>

I don't understand the hatred towards necroposting anyway.

If a thread has been dead for that long, it is likely no longer relevant.

*shrugs*

People still build computers.

Necroposting is only bad if someone replies something like "lol, yeah" to a year-old post. Then it's pointless. Otherwise it's not a big deal. If he wanted to talk about building computers and started a thread about it, the other side would have likely chastised him for creating a duplicate thread. Which also wouldn't have mattered deeply.

And don't even get me started on double posting!

Curse those double posters...

*Gasp!*
Banned from the forums!






























*looks around*
Crap...did they notice I'm not an admin?

*runs away*



Edit:



I just realized...it *should* be pretty easy to check and see if the new post is a double post and auto-merge them. (Granted, you only want to do that for recent posts, pinging a thread after a few days definitely should stay as a new post.) Now I'm wondering why I've never seen a forum do that...