76 replies to this topic

[Osski]

Thanks in advance... I've built a computer myself before, but I didn't like the quirkiness associated with it; it's not something I enjoyed doing and so my purchase will be via cyberpowerpc.com, which I've dealt with before and have been satisfied.

Basically I'd like to know if this build is worth the $714 (before $30 in mail-in rebates) price tag, and if it will have some decent staying power as a gaming system in the years to come. Also, if there are any obvious tweaks that could be made cheaply that'd be worth it, I'd love to know about those options. The motherboard in particular I know is one thing worth bucking up a little more for, but I've got not clue as to how to shop for a motherboard.

I've posted the URL which will allow you to see the options for building and also the list of hardware itself.

Again thanks for any advice you can give!


http://www.cyberpowe...om/saved/1ED7RW





Case: Cooler Master Elite 431 Mid-Tower Gaming Case w/ Side-Panel Window
CPU: Intel® Core™ i5-3470 3.20 GHz 6MB Intel Smart Cache LGA1155
Cooling Fan: Asetek 510LC Liquid Cooling System 120MM Radiator & Fan (Enhanced Cooling Performance + Extreme Silent at 20dBA) (Single Standard 120MM Fan)
Motherboard: * [CrossFireX] GIGABYTE GA-Z77-D3H Intel Z77 Chipset DDR3 ATX Mainboard w/ IRST, Lucid Virtu MVP, Ultra Durable4 Classic, 7.1 HD Audio, GbLAN, 2x Gen3 PCIe x16, 3x PCIe x1 & 2 PCI (Extreme OC Certified)
Freebies: GIGABYTE GC-WB300D Exclusive Bluetooth 4.0/WiFi PCIe Expansion Card
Memory: 8GB (2GBx4) DDR3/1600MHz Dual Channel Memory
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GT 620 2GB 16X PCIe Video Card
Power Supply Upgrade: 350 Watts - Antec Basiq BP350 Power Supply
Hard Drive: 1TB SATA-III 6.0Gb/s 32MB Cache 7200RPM HDD (Single Drive)
Optical Drive: 24X Double Layer Dual Format DVD+-R/+-RW + CD-R/RW Drive
Sound: HIGH DEFINITION ON-BOARD 7.1 AUDIO
Network: Onboard Gigabit LAN Network
Keyboard: AZZA Multimedia USB Gaming Keyboard
Mouse: AZZA Optical 1600dpi Gaming Mouse with Weight Adjustable Cartridge
Internal USB Port: Built-in USB 2.0 Ports
Operating System: Microsoft® Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit Edition)
Service: STANDARD WARRANTY: 3-YEAR LIMITED WARRANTY PLUS LIFE-TIME TECHNICAL SUPPORT

Edited by Osski, 12 August 2012 - 09:55 AM.

[Osski]

And what about the "Intel smart response technology" drives I see here... worth the 57 bucks for the cheapest? They say:

"your system response will outperform HDD-only systems by up to 60%!"

Edited by Osski, 12 August 2012 - 09:51 AM.

[Aznpersuasion89]

that gt 620 is WAY worse then a 7770. how much are they charging you for that? and your only getting a 350watt psu? for that price you could build a very good computer your self.

Edited by Aznpersuasion89, 12 August 2012 - 09:56 AM.

[Vulpesveritas]

Not worth it at your budget. You'll also want a more powerful GPU , at least a radeon hd 6670, or the Nvidia equivalent, a GT 640.

[Greyrook]

Aznpersuasion89, on 12 August 2012 - 09:55 AM, said:

that gt 620 is WAY worse then a 7770. how much are they charging you for that? and your only getting a 350watt psu? for that price you could build a very good computer your self.

Agreed, they are totally shafting you on that PSU, you always want to pay a little extra for an 80+ certified PSU, because if the power supply malfunctions, it could irreparably damage your entire system. For $714 you should be able to get yourself a very respectable system if you part it out yourself.

[Aznpersuasion89]

Vulpesveritas, on 12 August 2012 - 09:57 AM, said:

Not worth it at your budget. You'll also want a more powerful GPU , at least a radeon hd 6670, or the Nvidia equivalent, a GT 640.

how much does a gt 640 run for? even those are vastly less powerful then a 7770.

[VinzKlortho]

I would put my priority on the GPU, especially considering how MWO (beta) has been performing for me. It loads up fine off my HDD versus an SSD like those mentioned with Intel smart response, but a GTX 620 is likely to actually be below the minumum requirements for MWO despite being part of the "600" generation. The 2gb of VRAM won't make a dent in your framerate.

If it were my system to price out, I might order it as is and wait to see what NVIDIA puts out in the 660Ti or 650 over the next couple weeks. Early benchmarks look great. If you're in a time crunch and can't spend much more, then adding a 560ti (1GB; the 2GB model isn't worth it IMO.) is a good choice. I've had the card before going to a 680, and it's still going to be alive and well performance-wise for a while if you're gaming on a single monitor and don't need every graphical feature turned up to full. I wouldn't want to go lower than the 550Ti if I had to.

All your other parts look fine, and the motherboard should be just fine along with your CPU. Let me know if you have more questions. Hope your purchase goes smoothly.

[Greyrook]

I know you say you didn't like building the computer yourself, but the only decent thing going for the rig you showed us is the CPU and I guess the motherboard. The graphics card alone is going limit you severely. I use a factory overclocked GTX560 Ti and can play pretty much any current gen game on very high settings with no framerate problems. But, this generation's AMD cards seem to be really popular, so don't avoid looking at those.

As a closed-water-loop user myself, I can say "don't bother" with these water-cooling-for-wimps systems. I derped myself into buying one, and I in retrospect I wish I had just gone for a Noctua NHD14 which would have been less expensive and just as effective. However, if you are personally set on it, they are not very hard to install despite the whole radiator thing.

Use this website to find what you want, it's perfect for people who know their budget http://www.tomshardw...eview,3107.html

Edited by Greyrook, 12 August 2012 - 10:23 AM.

[VinzKlortho]

Greyrook, on 12 August 2012 - 09:59 AM, said:

Agreed, they are totally shafting you on that PSU, you always want to pay a little extra for an 80+ certified PSU, because if the power supply malfunctions, it could irreparably damage your entire system. For $714 you should be able to get yourself a very respectable system if you part it out yourself.

I priced out the components a bit on Newegg, and even without the GPU (the 620 isn't even available), the price is really comparable, so it's not a matter of being over-charged for components or labor, but perhaps you can price out a better system yourself as Greyrook notes. I'm not sure when you last tried to build your own, but it does involve risk in spite of it getting a bit more user-friendly these days. Your call, but don't give up on building it yourself if you can find a good deal. AMD has some really respectable cards for good prices to consider.

[iceboss]

For office, it is overpowered... for gaming it is a joke. If you have limited budged, choose i3 2120 as graphics card is needed more than another 2 CPU cores. Take some better graphics such as Radeon 7770 or 6870 for a good price instead. Dfinitely take a better PSU - 400W Seasonic will be OK but from the poor choise they have there take Corsair CX430, and case might be better as well - eg. cooler master centurion or corsair carbide.

[Aznpersuasion89]

when i had the 7770 beta played great, cheap, requires little power so no need to buy a huge PSU (mine is 450w) unless you plan on serious overclocking on the CPU (which i doubt you are) dont waste your time. i was considering it since my ambient temps are high, but not worth it really.

[sumdumfu]

do you really need a mouse and kb? and a windows install? for less than that i built an i5-2500k/radeon hd 6950 system last christmas. honestly you are getting shafted on the grafix card and PSU. i would be insulted if someone tried to sell me that 'gamer' system for that price.

edit: after doing a little googling, that GPU probably won't even run MWO at any acceptable level. it benchmarked something like ten times slower than my card.

Edited by sumdumfu, 12 August 2012 - 11:27 AM.

[Osski]

I figured I'd get a bunch of people saying "just build it yourself"...but I guess I'm wanting to have my cake and eat it too (ie, a good computer that is also cheap that I also didn't build). My problem with building last time was loose ends that I don't like to have when I buy something this expensive: I never got the case thermometer working correctly, I never could figure out where and how to plug in the front headphone/mic jacks, stuff like that. Not to mention that I had wires hanging all over the place. It's like my yard; I just don't take pride in it hehe. I just don't like the feeling that I'm not living up to the potential of making it more than the sum of its parts, so to speak, and that's only because of my lack of acumen with hardware, but it is what it is.

The water-cooled system currently comes free with a special they are having so I figured it was worth the try; I thought they were generally better than fans but my knowledge is obviously limited!

About the GPU: I currently have an HD 6570 in this computer. It was a late upgrade to this computer, so the graphics card is better than the rest of it and I still have my old card handy for swapping out. Is the 6570 still comparable to what is out there today? Better even than the GT620? It'd be a savings of a couple of hundred dollars that I could put to other things on the new rig like power supply if I could get the new computer with no GPU and swap this one out to it.

Also while I'm at it: if I seem to be getting a not-so-great deal on a "joke" gaming computer here, can anyone suggest other online customization sites, or all they all pretty much a scam?

Edited by Osski, 12 August 2012 - 11:41 AM.

[Osski]

The mouse and keyboard are included and can't be removed. I do need Windows 7 as I'm on XP still.

[Osski]

Ok after doing some figuring, the GPU was an obvious faux pas on my part.

After upgrading the power supply to a 430w 80+ and the graphics up to an HD 7770, how am I looking at $831?

Thanks all for the very helpful responses yet again; I think I'm near where I need to be in terms of confidence levels for my purchase!

Edited by Osski, 12 August 2012 - 12:56 PM.

[Greyrook]

That's probably as good as you can get without assembling yourself. That card will give you a lot more power but also room to upgrade or Crossfire if you feel so inclined later.

[Vulpesveritas]

Osski, on 12 August 2012 - 12:20 PM, said:

Ok after doing some figuring, the GPU was an obvious faux pas on my part.

After upgrading the power supply to a 430w 80+ and the graphics up to the graphics up to an HD 7770, how am I looking at $831?

Thanks all for the very helpful responses yet again; I think I'm near where I need to be in terms of confidence levels for my purchase!

Just as a heads up, you can build a gaming equivalent PC with a AMD quad core for ~$625, Intel quad ~$725. (As per my "builds of the week" thread).

other than that, it sounds substantially better.

[Osski]

Great, I've saved this configuration and will sleep on it!

You mentioned Crossfire...that means sticking 2 gpu's in the thing, correct? How complicated is that? Is it a matter of just plugging the new one in and making sure it has updated drivers?

[Osski]

Vulpesveritas, on 12 August 2012 - 12:58 PM, said:

Just as a heads up, you can build a gaming equivalent PC with a AMD quad core for ~$625, Intel quad ~$725. (As per my "builds of the week" thread).

other than that, it sounds substantially better.

Thanks.. really it is worth it to me to fork over an extra two hundred bucks or so to make sure that everything is done correctly and since I've dealt with them before I have faith in this company as far as the construction and service goes.

By the way, great builds of the weak thread and thanks for it! Very helpful!

Edited by Osski, 12 August 2012 - 01:13 PM.

[SakuranoSenshi]

Osski, on 12 August 2012 - 12:58 PM, said:

You mentioned Crossfire...that means sticking 2 gpu's in the thing, correct? How complicated is that? Is it a matter of just plugging the new one in and making sure it has updated drivers?

Pretty much, minus the updated drivers, too. Your current drivers (at the time of your upgrade) will support Crossfire and work fine (if they are working for the existing card). That said, obviously you should check regularly for updated drivers but generally not be too keen to upgrade to 'beta' drivers unless the notes mention a fix for an issue you have.

As for the general thread, I'd say that price was reasonable for what you're getting. They are a business and they have to eat just like the rest of us but the earlier build was bad - overpriced and overpowered for general use and underpowered for gaming. The latest setup looks like it would be sound purchase for you. Don't sweat the PSU too much despite a lot of 'enthusiasts' insisting you need massive wattages, you really don't; the one you have selected will be fine, I am sure.

Incidentally, the '80' thing is its efficiency (and 80+ is still not great, there are 90% or better ones but still...) it has nothing to do with how likely it is to blow up or anything, nor does it actually mean the voltages will be stable, the current draws nice and high, etc. In general, PSUs are much better quality across the board, now, simply because resellers can't sell the rubbish ones anymore with increased consumer awareness and also because increased and changed power needs have meant that newer models are required (built to better standards).