Buying desktop computer

Next week i will be heading to computer shop and ordering a computer. I am not that good at computers and i need some help. So far i got offered few things:
- AMD Phenom II X4 940 Deneb 3.0GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache Socket AM2+ 125W Quad-Core'
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product...henom_quadcore-_-19-103-471-_-Product
-6K ram, though what brand ?
-geforce gts 250(cheap) or geforce gtx 295
Perhaps i should use my old dual slot video card? it still works fine or i can buy lets say 1 slot good card and add the old one for poker? (is it possible?)

So if i understand correct i have all set? motherboard, ram, video card... ?
I would appreciate if some commented/suggested something
Thanks in advance

what are you buying this for? seems like a really good computer ;0

There are alot of variables. What type of computer are you wanting to build? Gaming? Poker? All of the above? Whats you're budget? And it looks like your missing a power supply, which is depending on the type of video card your wanting to run, either 1, or crossfire (assuming ur sticking with amd processors, which are limited to ATI crossfire if your wanting to run dual video cards). you will also need a harddrive. Just make sure when seletcing the HD your getting 7,2000 RPM and no lower than 32mb cache.

Feel free to pm me if u have any questions or anything. and if you dont know how to put 1 together, I can probably assist with that too. ive helped people do it before who barely knew the difference between a mouse and a motherboard. and it was all done through VENTRILO. so lemme know.

i will mainly use it for poker, however i might get stuck with sc2 and diablo that's why i am buying a good one. I won't be building it myself i will just tell the main parts i want, they will do the rest. And i don't plan spending more than 1.5K$

A GeForce 250 would be a bit crippling with that system. Thats a budget card for an enthusiast processor. I'd go with a ATi Radeon 5770+ or better.

You said 6K ram, which doesnt make any sense. I assume you meant 6GB of ram, which is bad, as amd systems still use dual channel memory and this puts you in a tri configuration, requiring one channel of memory to operate in between cycles of the other. Just get 4GB or 8GB if you really want to.

Definitely tell them exactly what kind of power supply you want. I have a feeling these guys are probably gonna cut corners everywhere possible to maximize their profit, so if you dont mention it, they'll ignore it.

what power supply would you suggest?

Buy Intel CPU.

The bottleneck of any system nowadays is the HDD. Make sure you buy something good,
with large cache and, basically, as fast as possible.

Anything else does not make a big difference.

On December 31 2009 05:25 pluzich wrote: Buy Intel CPU. The bottleneck of any system nowadays is the HDD. Make sure you buy something good, with large cache and, basically, as fast as possible. Anything else does not make a big difference.

lol wut?

On December 31 2009 05:45 NewbSaibot wrote: Show nested quote + On December 31 2009 05:25 pluzich wrote: Buy Intel CPU. The bottleneck of any system nowadays is the HDD. Make sure you buy something good, with large cache and, basically, as fast as possible. Anything else does not make a big difference. lol wut?

OK, let me elaborate: I run on my 2-year old Dell laptop 2 SQL servers (MSSQL 2008 and Postgres),
I open the badass Visual Studio 2010 (up to 3 instances) and run CPU-heavy simulations
and in the meantime I can watch movies etc.
I do not see much of a difference when I unplug my comp from AC power. On battery it drops CPU speed
from 2.13 to 1Ghz or 700 Mhz. It has 2GB Ram, which has never ever
filled. On battery, only thing you can feel is HDD access slowdown.

If you have tasks which are heavier than this, maybe CPU speed/more ram/more cores will make a difference.

Well, he mentions playing SC2 and diablo, and I assure you video card comes first before HDD in this case. HDD is a type of bottleneck sure, but not one anybody typically cares about. What people want is a fast responsive pc in the app they are running. Gotta get a nice processor and video card (at least for games) for that. Running SQL servers and coding is not representative of anything anyone normally does on their home pc.

Besides, the best HDD in the world is only going to improve system performance by like 1% overall anyway, so getting the fastest with the most cache is really all in vain. Any typical consumer SATA harddrive will work fine, he doesnt need to go out of his way finding the most badass thing on the market.

On December 31 2009 08:13 NewbSaibot wrote: Well, he mentions playing SC2 and diablo, and I assure you video card comes first before HDD in this case. HDD is a type of bottleneck sure, but not one anybody typically cares about. What people want is a fast responsive pc in the app they are running. Gotta get a nice processor and video card (at least for games) for that. Running SQL servers and coding is not representative of anything anyone normally does on their home pc. Besides, the best HDD in the world is only going to improve system performance by like 1% overall anyway, so getting the fastest with the most cache is really all in vain. Any typical consumer SATA harddrive will work fine, he doesnt need to go out of his way finding the most badass thing on the market.

No you're wrong. HDD is a mega bottleneck in today's world for many apps such as MySQL/pqSQL due to caching the data from the HDD.

SSD will improve performance enormously over space sacrifice.

edit: Wait, but isn't a Poker playing running PT3 want it to be fast? And PS too saving the HH's? Starcraft and Diablo will run adequately on any standard gfx card unless it's the new ones.

On December 31 2009 08:13 NewbSaibot wrote: Well, he mentions playing SC2 and diablo, and I assure you video card comes first before HDD in this case. HDD is a type of bottleneck sure, but not one anybody typically cares about. What people want is a fast responsive pc in the app they are running. Gotta get a nice processor and video card (at least for games) for that. Running SQL servers and coding is not representative of anything anyone normally does on their home pc. Besides, the best HDD in the world is only going to improve system performance by like 1% overall anyway, so getting the fastest with the most cache is really all in vain. Any typical consumer SATA harddrive will work fine, he doesnt need to go out of his way finding the most badass thing on the market.

CPU is several orders of magnitude faster than RAM.
RAM is several orders of magnitude faster than HDD.

(HDD is the only mechanical part of your PC. )

Any time any application need 3-4 HDD non-sequential reads, the whole uber-fast
CPU with its mega-cash and dual-channel bus and whatever is waiting for those
3-4 pages like infinitely. In that time, the CPU can do millions of operations, which it
does not because it needs the data from HDD. It waits. You wait.

With a faster HDD you boot faster. Any application (Office, games) will start faster.

If you take a typical desktop computer for a "home user", and, say, put a 2x faster
processor the user might not notice any difference at all. If you put a 2x faster HDD
(assume you can) you will see a HUGE difference. Like everything will become almost
2x faster

Indeed it also depends on which kind of applications you use. But when not sure, take
the best HDD you can.

And yeah, SC2 and Diablo will run on like almost any VC you can buy. I would actually bet
it would run on most Onboard cards (not that I recommend onboard VC).

On December 31 2009 09:30 genjix wrote: Starcraft and Diablo will run adequately on any standard gfx card unless it's the new ones.

PT3 will run adequately on any standard harddrive. But when he realizes he just sacrifices 10-15fps, lower resolutions, and 2-3 years of future off his video card just so postgres loads faster, he'll probably be kicking himself in the ass. Especially if he doesnt have any complaints about how his poker databases respond right now.

On December 31 2009 10:11 pluzich wrote: With a faster HDD you boot faster. Any application (Office, games) will start faster.

Who cares if it starts faster only to run like crap once it has started? I dunno about you but I can wait the 30 seconds for a huge app to load if it means I'm gonna get top performance once it has loaded. The bulk of pc use is spent during the use of software, not the load times.

Like everything will become almost 2x faster

The only thing that will become faster is startup times of applications, and in particular instances things like SQL queries (PT3 sorting, importing, loading). These represent a small fraction of what most people will actually be doing with their systems and care about.

Indeed it also depends on which kind of applications you use. But when not sure, take the best HDD you can.

hell no, when i doubt, make sure your system can run its software as best as possible. The avg application on any non SSD system is only going to take like 10 seconds to load anyway.

And yeah, SC2 and Diablo will run on like almost any VC you can buy. I would actually bet it would run on most Onboard cards (not that I recommend onboard VC).

For the games he mentioned probably yes. But if he's going to drop $1500 on a rig im pretty sure he's going to try some of the higher end games too. So he loads FarCry2 up, oh whoopdie do it took 3 seconds, too bad the game runs like ass now that it is loaded. Much better than waiting the 20-30 seconds on a normal harddrive than to enjoy beautiful high resolutions, silky smooth 60fps, 16xAA/AF.... i digress.

So according to you the only applications that do I/O are SQL-based ones?

Most apps do I/O. Loading is the most I/O intensive phase usually. But accessing HDD does not end when you load the crap into RAM. You need more as you work/play, or you need to write things. If you don't believe me look at your computer's HDD access light for a minute.

AND

Most apps use very little CPU time overall, because they are waiting for something. For user input, for instance. So pimping your CPU does not change almost anything: CPU is like idle 99% of the time.

There are applications where CPU speed has direct impact. Like chess engines, where everything is in cache/RAM, CPU speed increase brings linear speed increase in calculation. Or when you are doing some scientific computations, like solving huge differential equations. This requires little I/O and a lot of in-CPU computations. But for a desktop user-the bottleneck is always the HDD.


Think this way: HDD is the only mechanical part of your computer. There is the moores law for CPU/RAM which is that they become two times faster every two years. This is exponential. HDD is mechanical, it is always the slowest part. Any time new technology comes, it makes HDDs 10% faster, not twice (Moore's law does not apply to mechanical things ).
This brings HDD further and further behind the other components of the computer.

This isn't the best place to ask. You get a lot of conflicting and bad responses from people who think they know what they're talking about but really don't. That may not be true for everyone who responds, but if you're clueless yourself it's hard to know who to listen to, because you don't know well enough yourself to know who is right, who is wrong, or know if their reasoning makes sense, is applicable or is even true. I would probably hand out advice if I knew what I was talking about myself, but I don't so I won't try, unfortunately there are others who like to just chime in with what they think they know anyway and you end up getting bad advice.

I'm not singling anyone out with this, I haven't read the replies because like I said I'm not an expert so it's not even worth me reading and criticising what anyone may have said, but I've seen a lot of these threads pop up here and on various other video game related sites and frankly a lot of the advice I've seen has been very poor, inexperienced advice that people shouldn't be handing out at all.

With all that said, I recommend a specialised forum, I personally used: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/forum-13.html when I last bought computer components a couple of months back and believe I got a great price/performance deal purely because of the many many threads that I read posted by people asking the same thing as I wanted to know. I'm sure there's a ton of these types of forums on the internet and the advice there is going to be far better than the advice you'll get on a computer build here, if you were looking for poker advice would you search for it on a Diablo forum? You'd get a whole bunch of uninformed people who think they know what they're talking about telling you your mistake was that you didn't limp minraised your AA UTG or something stupid, it's a similar principle here - this is just not the place to be asking for this sort of advice. That doesn't mean that everyone is clueless, but like I said you won't necessarily know who to listen to.

You're spending a decent amount of money, don't rush into it and get a bum deal just for the sake of haste. Seek advice from specialists and people with a lot of experience and knowhow, go read some websites like the one I linked or something similar and invest wisely.




Also, I'm kind of fed up of seeing these threads. I've made a thread like this in the past and realise how stupid of me it was to do that when I didn't get any advice I could have faith in, I think it's time people started posting things where they should be posted.

hey i just bought a new one coupel days ago they are still building it

coolermaster HAF922 case
core I7
asus pgt or something liek that motherboard
6GB DDR3 1600mhz patriot ram

WD Black Edition main hard drive
Solid state corsair 2nd hard driver to run HEM off

Sapphire HD5770 Vapor-X 1GB video for my 30 and 24 inchers

i dont play any games so its just for poker and porn

i appreciate all the discussion in this thread even if i can't be certain that anybody actually knows what they're talking about. at the very least, i can learn what variables i should consider and do my own research if i'm skeptical

looks like my next desktop will have a SSD for HEM along with top-of-the-line everything else

Im not gonna argue this point anymore, but the idea that you should sacrifice video and processor performance for harddrive performance to improve swap file access is ludicrous. Go to tomsforums pluzurich and tell them you are thinking about pitching your core i7 build for a Core2 duo that way you can get a SSD and get "2x the performance". Sure lots of programs require use of the harddrive past the initial startup phase, and writing data back and forth to the HD while a game runs does happen, but the cost reward ratio of trimming 20% of your total systems horsepower just so it can improve HD access in insane. Thats like trading a porche for a honda civic so you can get the racing tires you want. Have fun with that. Go look up ANY pc benchmark for modern games/software, and you will see all efforts are directly squarely at the processor/video card, and if there happens to be budget money leftover for a SSD then so be it. And unless your pc is going to be used purely for massive database use, or some other program which utilizes practically zero resources other than large volumes of storage space, putting all your money into the harddrive is just stupid. 99% of world applications are going to run better with a nicer processor, not a nicer harddrive.

If you take a core i7 system with a GTS 295 video card and downgrade the video card to a 250 so you can get a SSD, you will get lower frames per second, nuff said. Your in game performance WILL SUFFER. If you instead choose to use a standard mechanical harddrive, your load times will be a bit longer, BUT YOUR FPS WILL INCREASE. Whatever access the game has upon your harddrive is negligible compared to the performance loss using poorer hardware. Pretty shitty trade off if you ask me. Btw I just loaded FC2 using my normal harddrive, and it took 14 seconds to bring up a new map from scratch without anything cached. And this game uses real-time map streaming so that future levels require no loading, and it never hitches or delays... all with a slow ass 7200rpm harddrive. With a SSD it might take 3 seconds to load... who cant wait 10 seconds that they would rather lose 10fps? Which is probably the tradeoff he's looking considering what he'll have to downgrade to.

I know he's not buying a system just to play farcry2, but FC2 is one of the most if not the most demanding pc games available right now, and is a great game to benchmark your total systems performance by. Trust me, he's gonna want to play FC2 and games like it on his shiny new $1500 system, probably a lot more so than having HEM start up instantly.

On December 31 2009 17:45 NewbSaibot wrote: Im not gonna argue this point anymore, but the idea that you should sacrifice video and processor performance for harddrive performance to improve swap file access is ludicrous. Go to tomsforums pluzurich and tell them you are thinking about pitching your core i7 build for a Core2 duo that way you can get a SSD and get "2x the performance". Sure lots of programs require use of the harddrive past the initial startup phase, and writing data back and forth to the HD while a game runs does happen, but the cost reward ratio of trimming 20% of your total systems horsepower just so it can improve HD access in insane. Thats like trading a porche for a honda civic so you can get the racing tires you want. Have fun with that. Go look up ANY pc benchmark for modern games/software, and you will see all efforts are directly squarely at the processor/video card, and if there happens to be budget money leftover for a SSD then so be it. And unless your pc is going to be used purely for massive database use, or some other program which utilizes practically zero resources other than large volumes of storage space, putting all your money into the harddrive is just stupid. 99% of world applications are going to run better with a nicer processor, not a nicer harddrive. If you take a core i7 system with a GTS 295 video card and downgrade the video card to a 250 so you can get a SSD, you will get lower frames per second, nuff said. Your in game performance WILL SUFFER. If you instead choose to use a standard mechanical harddrive, your load times will be a bit longer, BUT YOUR FPS WILL INCREASE. Whatever access the game has upon your harddrive is negligible compared to the performance loss using poorer hardware. Pretty shitty trade off if you ask me. Btw I just loaded FC2 using my normal harddrive, and it took 14 seconds to bring up a new map from scratch without anything cached. And this game uses real-time map streaming so that future levels require no loading, and it never hitches or delays... all with a slow ass 7200rpm harddrive. With a SSD it might take 3 seconds to load... who cant wait 10 seconds that they would rather lose 10fps? Which is probably the tradeoff he's looking considering what he'll have to downgrade to. I know he's not buying a system just to play farcry2, but FC2 is one of the most if not the most demanding pc games available right now, and is a great game to benchmark your total systems performance by. Trust me, he's gonna want to play FC2 and games like it on his shiny new $1500 system, probably a lot more so than having HEM start up instantly.

x2 this.

Im actually building a computer right now. Its going to be pretty solid. and definitely under $1500.

Case- Antec 1200
Mobo- EVGA 780i FTW
Processor- Q9550
Video Card- x2 GTX 275's
HD- 500gb 32cache 4.2ms response time 7200 Western Digital HD (Nothing special, because its not necessary)
RAM- GSKILL DDR2 x2 2GB sticks (4gb) 1066mhz ram
Power Supply- Corsair 850 Watt

building a computer is alot easier than what alot of people think, who've never done it before.

Anyone who tries to picture as if I said instead of Nehalem get a Celeron is a moron.

This is from Tom's hardware:

"Finally, it’s worth reminding our readers that, if you’re a gamer, there’s little reason to sink your resources into an expensive processor. From the sub-$200 Core i5-750 up to the $300 Core i7-860 (and beyond—we’ve seen this phenomenon over and over), you’re going to realize the same frame rates at most resolutions unless you buy very expensive graphics card configurations."

Link: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/turbo-boost-overclocking,review-31765-11.html

THE OP SAID HE'S GONNA PLAY SC2 AND DIABLO.

He needs an average Card, average CPU, like 4GB RAM max, and something good for the HDD, like onboard SATA RAID
with 2 HDDs. This is not going to be expensive AT ALL, and, given his budget and NEEDS (remeber: SC2, no Far Cry) is
going to be the fastest.

dude i used to be a games programmer. everything is all relative.

you can have the worlds fastest processor, uber graphics card with best pixel shaders and mega amounts of RAM... but if your hard drive is the bottleneck then you'll still have big pauses.

like you write a game it could be:

compute AI (CPU)
cache results (RAM)
render characters (gfx card)
particle physics (gfx card)
load new enemy (HDD)

the FPS is the sum of all those tasks in the game. it just happens that games do more graphics rendering than everything else. BUT the price you pay for a component has increasing prices for marginal performance increase.

so sacrificing one component for a marginal increase in another is BAD. because the sacrificed component will be a bottleneck and it won't be that much benefit to the component.

Actually the FPS is not the sum of all of those components. If you load a game world and all elements of that world are fully loaded to render a scene, then that scene will render as fast as possible without ever touching the harddrive. It's not like every time you kill a player in counter strike the system accesses the HD to load another. And lets say you're playing a MMO where there are too many characters to ever load at once, when those characters are needed they will be pulled from the HD, which will take like a nanosecond. So the game loses maybe a single frame of animation for 1 second doing this process, but THEN your net FPS goes back up once all game features are back in memory for use. But if you sacrifice cpu/gpu for better HD seek time, then you will ALWAYS be losing frames per second since the system is in a constant 100% bottleneck. An HD bottleneck only accounts for a fraction of overall pc performance, everything else is directly dependent upon the cpu/gpu.

Haven't read the whole thread, so excuse me but we don't know when is sc2 or diablo3 coming so i'd just simply buy the cheapest video card atm. Buying a Computer in advance when we don't even know if the game will come out is just pure blindness. That's what i did when i didn't know when this wc3 game would be out before buying a nice video card which i still use as of today ^_^

On December 31 2009 21:59 NewbSaibot wrote: Actually the FPS is not the sum of all of those components. If you load a game world and all elements of that world are fully loaded to render a scene, then that scene will render as fast as possible without ever touching the harddrive. It's not like every time you kill a player in counter strike the system accesses the HD to load another. And lets say you're playing a MMO where there are too many characters to ever load at once, when those characters are needed they will be pulled from the HD, which will take like a nanosecond. So the game loses maybe a single frame of animation for 1 second doing this process, but THEN your net FPS goes back up once all game features are back in memory for use. But if you sacrifice cpu/gpu for better HD seek time, then you will ALWAYS be losing frames per second since the system is in a constant 100% bottleneck. An HD bottleneck only accounts for a fraction of overall pc performance, everything else is directly dependent upon the cpu/gpu.

blaa blaa blaa. i programmed games for a living. dont try to tell me how games work noob

bla bla bla I build systems for a living, dont try to tell me that downgrading your GPU for a nice SSD is going to give you better framerates in a game. Besides, you're like 20 years old, what professional game development did you do for a living that in any way relates to the way modern cpu/gpu's are used today?

There was an excellent thread on this at tl.net. The general consensus was that a socket 1156 motherboard, a core i5 processor, 4gb of ram, and an ATI 5770 is the best price/performance you can get right now and will crush sc2 pretty hard. Depending on what parts you choose and your individual needs, it could cost you between 700 and 1k$. If you're deadset on an AMD machine for whatever reason, just get the exact same thing but with an AM3 motherboard with DDR3 and a Phenom II x4 955, it will save you maybe like 50-60$ but you'll have a definite performance decrease for non-gaming. Whatever you do, don't get a socket 775 intel motherboard/cpu with ddr2. Upgrading will be really difficult for you in the future and this socket is on its way out. If you're not a super hardcore gamer who's playing crysis maxed at 2560x1600 resolution, don't get all gay with SLI/Crossfire either, it's a total waste of money. A 5770 with an i5 will max sc2 at 1900x1080 at good frames very easily.

This might not be a great time to build a new pc. The new Nvidia dx11 cards are supposed to come out in March and all video cards should experience a price drop after that. I believe the new i3 and more i5 and i7 processors are coming out shortly after that too, so the current technology will probably fall in price a little bit. I would wait until at least around march, ssds will probably also get a little cheaper by then which would definitely be good for a poker player with large hand databases and HEM/pt3.
If you really want to buy one now because yours broke or whatever, here's a sample i5 build: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/277312-31-need-advice-build

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=97450
Past page 45 or so, lots of discussion about desktops and stuff.

On December 31 2009 02:54 anon wrote: i will mainly use it for poker, however i might get stuck with sc2 and diablo that's why i am buying a good one. I won't be building it myself i will just tell the main parts i want, they will do the rest. And i don't plan spending more than 1.5K$

If your main use of the computer is anything but games (ie poker + internet for example), your HDD will be the bottleneck. If you can, get an SSD for the OS + apps + pt/hem database, and a big storage one for everything else. Get an Intel X-25M or Crucial for the SSD (the 1st generation of SSDs weren't really worth it in terms of speed or price), and I would suggest a WD for the storage, but whatever really. I'd avoid Seagate as they still have a really bad track record recently. If the SSD is too expensive for your budget (which I doubt), at least get (in decreasing order of preferrence) a Raid0 of WD velociraptors, a Raid0 of whatever disks or a Velociraptor for the OS/apps/db.

With a very good HDD, the difference for everyday desktop use is not subtle at all, it's night and day. For pure gaming, it's debatable. It probably won't affect FPS at all or just barely, but will dramatically reduce loading times.

On December 31 2009 21:59 NewbSaibot wrote: Actually the FPS is not the sum of all of those components. If you load a game world and all elements of that world are fully loaded to render a scene, then that scene will render as fast as possible without ever touching the harddrive. It's not like every time you kill a player in counter strike the system accesses the HD to load another. And lets say you're playing a MMO where there are too many characters to ever load at once, when those characters are needed they will be pulled from the HD, which will take like a nanosecond. So the game loses maybe a single frame of animation for 1 second doing this process, but THEN your net FPS goes back up once all game features are back in memory for use. But if you sacrifice cpu/gpu for better HD seek time, then you will ALWAYS be losing frames per second since the system is in a constant 100% bottleneck. An HD bottleneck only accounts for a fraction of overall pc performance, everything else is directly dependent upon the cpu/gpu.

I already gave my opinion on the benefits of faster HDD for gaming, which is off-topic imo, but lol a nanosecond for an HDD access ? Best case scenario will be around 10000 nanoseconds, and that's assuming all the data that needs to be pulled is in the same location on the disk or close enough.

yes yes I know it wont literally be a nanosecond, but the in-game swaps will be totally unnoticeable. I have been playing pc games for almost 20 years, from shit systems to average to high end, and never once have I had a game get slowed down from HD swaps during play. And the only reason I keep pushing a non-SSD build is because he will likely be wishing he had a faster video card than a faster harddrive in 1-2 years once he starts loading up some real shit besides poker databases on his system. Who drops $1500 on a box that does nothing but play poker? I've built 3 rigs from pentium 2ghz to 3ghz in the last 3 months for poker buddies that handle HEM just fine, and these are old piece of shit systems with 1GB of DDR400 ram and a 128meg video card. If OP really wants nothing more than a poker box it will cost him about $600-$700, not 1500. I'm going to assume that if he's putting this kinda cash into a system he's going to use it to its full potential.

On January 01 2010 00:48 NewbSaibot wrote: blabla, authority argument, authority argument, off-topic, authority argument, bla bla

No offence intended but that sums up your post imo I've been playing games for 20 years too and building computers for almost as long, who cares.

Again, game performance is a non-issue. He said he may play SC2 and D3 when they come out. Those are Blizzard games, they will run on about anything he buys now, that's how blizzard does it all the time. At least SC2, when D3 comes out he'll probably have changed his computer once or twice already lol. And if he wants absolute top graphical performance then, he'll be able to buy a graphic card that beats anything on the market now cheaper than the average current price of video cards.

Every current compute will handle poker and HEM "just fine". That's not the point either. I prefer fucking smooth to just fine. Again, as pluzich pointed out very well, unless he's doing really computationnaly intensive calculations, he will not feel the difference between a medium-good CPU and a top-of-the-line CPU at all. But, between a medium-good HDD and a top one ? Hell yeah, it's extremely perceptible. pluzich explained all the good reasons why that is, so I won't bother repeating them, but that certainly ought to be more convincing than just saying 'trust me'.

Forget about all those 1-2s (or even 5-10s) pauses when a program loads, or goes to fetch some data on the disk. Bye bye. It is easily the most cost effective boost of performance for non-gaming use in pretty much any computer you can build nowadays (after having enough RAM).

And again, I'm not saying he should sacrifice CPU and GPU for the HDD, I'm just saying it's the most cost effective place to put more money.

phenom II 965
gigabyte ma770t-ud?p (depend if you want ,ore slots or not...)
4gigram
samsung f3 1tb
hd 5850
a decent psu


shouldnt cost more then like 700€ and your ready to go for evrything.

Thank you all guys, but i got confused even more now. You got into some deep discussion but i need a comptuer asap since i can't play poker. Tommorow i will be heading to the shop and i need a list of parts...
What do you think of previous suggestions? Which one should i choose?

CPU: Intel Core i5 750 BX80605I5750 Processor - 2.66GHz, LGA 1156, 8MB L3 Cache, Quad-Core, Lynnfield, Retail
Mobo: Asus P7P55D LE Motherboard
RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666)
Graphics: XFX Radeon 5770
Power: Antec NEO ECO 520C 520W Continuous Power ATX12V v2.3 / EPS12V 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC
Case: Antec Nine Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower
Harddrive: 500GB SATA2 Samsung HD502HJ 7200RPM 16MB Hard Drive
Disc Drive: Lite-On IHAS124-04 Internal DVD Writer
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium

VS BeMannerPenner's
Ati Radeon HD 5850
Samsung F3 1TB
Phenom II x4 965BE, 3,400 ghz

VS Lokonious'

Mobo- EVGA 780i FTW
Processor- Q9550
Video Card- x2 GTX 275's
HD- 500gb 32cache 4.2ms response time 7200 Western Digital HD
RAM- GSKILL DDR2 x2 2GB sticks (4gb) 1066mhz ram
Power Supply- Corsair 850 Watt

VS ikc5's
ocket 1156 motherboard, a core i5 processor, 4gb of ram, and an ATI 5770

I know it is really hard to compare these lists since some of them are not full but if anyone could conclude what should i go for mainly for poker+HEM and perhaps SC2 and Diablo i would really appreciate
Thanks again you all

whenever i buy a new system i prioritize low noise first. i research decibel levels on case fans, video card fans, and what temp the video card runs at relative to the next brand. then i buy as much vidcard/powersupply/hd as i can. cpu ain't shit i just get dualcore whatever with the best instruction sets and most cache available i.e. look into server grade cpus.

whats the best for a purely poker setup and just plain everyday needs? i need a reco for the specs for that , i just need teh cheapest i could spend for it
i mean like no lag on pokerstars/ hem/ tableninja having 2 monitors and a movie running plus a download and if i had like a 2 million hand database?

Hello computer donks, I work at Kisildalur.is, a computer shop here in Iceland.
And what we would do when someone would walk in to our shop with 1500USD(200kISK) and wants to play poker and SC2/Diablo, is to tell him he doesn't need 1500USD for that, especially if he only needs the computer not the screens, mouse or keyboard etc.
What you need is 4GB CL5-9 RAM, any C2D, C2Q, I5 or core I7, 9600GT or better(we need to know what size your screen is, for your resolution), any motherboard that fits the following from a trusted manufacturer and a 7200RPM 16/32MB buffer 3.5" hard drive.
Looking at newegg.com, this should not cost more than around 8-900 dollars at all..

I can't answer all these because I'm tired, but whamm!, I have been running a C2D e6750 with some basic shit that cost me 550$ 2 years ago and I can still do that, well I have no idea about the 2Mhand database but, I play COD4 1680x1050 easily with the movie 300 in 1080p running on the other monitor on a 8800GT512MB card..

thanks taco! its not that i wanted to spend 1500USD, i wanted the cheapest and 1500 was max. I have two 20' monitors1600x1200. You see, if i go to shop and tell something like you told me they will surely screw me, but if i come with very specific order, there won't be any corners to cut

Unfortunately some computer stores are douchebags, ask anyone in Iceland where the best service is and they would tell you Kísildal.
I obviously don't have a 2 million hand hand history or anything, and I don't know if your computers are getting slow because of that or anything, but I wouldn't even consider buying a SSD for my computer right now, the technology is just really really infant like at the moment, 85% of them score 100-500% worse than the last 15%, and the one that are really made to last the decades cost thousands of dollars, and I am then talking about single cell disks. A man from spjall.vaktin.is told me he spent around 100 hours configuring his OS to work properly with his high end SSD, and he is a GEEK. And to you people using both SSD's please, in the name of god DO NOT DEFRAGMENT THEM.
And anon if you can somehow dig up a technology forum in your country and tell me where they shop I could build you a computer there, I can't find the good stores because I don't speak the language obviously.

Nowadays the hard drive is definitely a very nasty bottleneck in many many scenarios and it is great to have a fast one, for my uses I'd always sacrifice some processor $$ for good HD/SSD instead of buying cheap HD + top cpu... for video cards it obviously depends if you are playing 3d games or not

i will head to shop with this list and mind open for suggestions

Mother board: ASUS M4A79T Deluxe AM3 DDR3 AMD 790FX ATX AMD
CPU henom II X4 965BE, 3.40 GHz, DDR3-1333, AMD 790 FX.
Graphic card: 2x Nvidia GeForce GTX 275 (2slot)
RAM: 4GB DDR-2 RAM (e.g.RAM- GSKILL DDR2 x2 2GB sticks (4gb) 1066mhz ram)
HD: 7200RPM 16/32MB buffer 3.5" hard drive (e.g. Western Digital VelociRaptor WD1500HLFS 150GB 10000 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive)
Power Supply- (e.g. Corsair 850 W)

I will buy from father's friend, he owns a small computer shop, if the price will be too big i will probobly buy everything online and give them 100$ for putting everything together

Got one more good response, which probobly should influence my choice:



Well for your poker playing any of them will do, but since you might want to play SC2 and or Diablo III when they come out, you might want to get the best GPU in the system that you can afford.

Where are you buying your parts from?? If you going to buy them online, than I'd recommend Newegg.com, but if your going locally, than that can pose a problem (unless they have website to do your selections from).

Generally this is how I'd look at this situation:
* If you want similiar performance for less $, than an AMD system would be cheaper than an Intel i5 system.

Here's the break down:
Use these same parts for both systems.

GPU - $155 shipped
SAPPHIRE 100283-2L Radeon HD 5770 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814102864

HD - $55 shipped!
SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD502HJ 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

RAM - $100 shipped!! One of the fastest sets out that runs on stock voltages (1.5v)!!
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory Model F3-10666CL7D-4GBRH - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820231276

Case/PSU combo - $100 shipped! PSU has plenty fo power for any of your needs!
Antec Sonata III 500 Black 0.8mm cold rolled steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 500W Power Supply - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6811129024

DVD Burner - $39 shipped!! Comes with the software to read/burn DVD's!!
LITE-ON Black 24X DVD+R 24X DVD-R SATA Black 24X DVD Writer - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6827106334

OS - $105 shipped!!
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit 1-Pack for System Builders - OEM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6832116754

Now add these items for whatever build you go with

Intel rig:
CPU - $195 shipped!
Intel Core i5-750 Lynnfield 2.66GHz 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1156 95W Quad-Core Processor - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] -_-Product

Mobo - $105 shipped! Has plenty of ports and options!!
GIGABYTE GA-P55-UD3L LGA 1156 Intel P55 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813128406


AMD rig:
CPU - $165 shipped!
AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Deneb 3.2GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819103674

Mobo - $88 - $10 MIRc = $78!! Has plenty of options and ports for you use!!
GIGABYTE GA-MA770T-UD3P AM3 AMD 770 ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813128392

Totals for both systems:
Intel's = ~$859 shipped!!
AMD's = ~$802 - $10 MIRc = $792!!

Now you can see that the AMD system is ~$67 less for almost the same performance. Obviously you can change to different parts, but these are very good parts to start with.

CONCLUSION: I will head to shop with these two configurations and ask for the price, and ask them to suggest a third one of their own. Then i will compare the prices online and decide where to buy:
1#
Mother board: ASUS M4A79T Deluxe AM3 DDR3 AMD 790FX ATX AMD
CPU henom II X4 965BE, 3.40 GHz, DDR3-1333, AMD 790 FX.
Graphic card: 2x Nvidia GeForce GTX 275 (2slot)
RAM: 4GB DDR-2 RAM (e.g.RAM- GSKILL DDR2 x2 2GB sticks (4gb) 1066mhz ram)
HD: 7200RPM 16/32MB buffer 3.5" hard drive (e.g. Western Digital VelociRaptor WD1500HLFS 150GB 10000 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive)
Power Supply- (e.g. Corsair 850 W)

2#
MOBO: GIGABYTE GA-MA770T-UD3P AM3 AMD 770 ATX AMD Motherboard

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Deneb 3.2GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor

GPU: SAPPHIRE 100283-2L Radeon HD 5770 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card

HD :SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD502HJ 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
RAM : G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory Model F3-10666CL7D-4GBRH

CASE$SUPPLY:Antec Sonata III 500 Black 0.8mm cold rolled steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 500W Power Supply


Thank you everyone, i deeply appreciate your help.

In the first set up, definitely get a 5770 there too instead of 2xGTX275.
The rest is fine I guess.

hm, i am not sure what they mean by 2x, 2 craphic cards, or a graphic card with two slots?
5770 isn't in the list so i don't know...

yea 5770 is better, thanks again

You can actually buy 2 very low budget cards and put them in crossfire(ati) or SLi(nvidia) and they would be better or comparable to 5770 or GTX275, take this benchmark for example. 8800GT512MB SLI'd is doing very fine.
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/ga...2009-high-quality/Left4Dead,1618.html
It would suffice to play SC2 and diablo in your 1600x1200 resolution.

Getting a HD5770 is really just to prepare you for DX11, which by the time any games make real use of there will be faster cards for cheaper. Although I suppose you could also futureproof yourself to be able to buy 2 5770's when the prices drop to keep your performance on par. I have a 5770 and just bought it because I was building a new system from scratch so it made sense to go ahead and put newer tech in it, it ran most games fast enough, the price was good, and I wanted to enjoy the 2 titles I have which use DX11 right now, even though it's totally unnoticeable when I play.

Anyway you've done a good job researching potential system builds anon, honestly you will be happy with ANY of the systems you have listed.

Mobo:MB P43/ICH10 S775 ATX/GA-EP43T-UD3L GIGA-BYTE 251
CPU:CPUC2Q 2660/1333/6M S775 BX/Q9400 BX80580Q9400 S LB6B IN 587

RAM:MEMORY DIMM 2GB PC6400 DDRII/AM1 73.G21E9.000 APACER 138
RAM:MEMORY DIMM 2GB PC6400 DDRII/AM1 73.G21E9.000 APACER 138

GPU: VGA 1GB GDDR5 PCIE16 HD5770/128B R5770-PMD1G MSI 554

HD: HDD SATA 500GB 3GB/S 32MB/GREEN P. WD5000AADS WDC 166

supply:Codegen ATX-6232-A1-USB/Audio (silver/black) 120
case: CASE PSU ATX2.2 580W/SPS-XP580.(12)R XILENCE 157

Price:2111 litas /880USD~

Mobo:MB P43/ICH10 S775 ATX/GA-EP43T-UD3L GIGA-BYTE 251
CPU:CPUC2Q 2660/1333/6M S775 BX/Q9400 BX80580Q9400 S LB6B IN 587

RAM:MEMORY DIMM 2GB PC6400 DDRII/AM1 73.G21E9.000 APACER 138
RAM:MEMORY DIMM 2GB PC6400 DDRII/AM1 73.G21E9.000 APACER 138

VGA 1GB GDDR3 PCIE16 9800GT/256B SX98GT1024D3G-VP SPARKLE 312

HD: HDD SATA 500GB 3GB/S 32MB/GREEN P. WD5000AADS WDC 166

supply:Codegen ATX-6232-A1-USB/Audio (silver/black) 120
case: CASE PSU ATX2.2 580W/SPS-XP580.(12)R XILENCE 157

Price: 1869litas/ 778$~

I went with my requirements and suggestions and they offered these two set-ups, basically they said it is not worth getting 5770 because there won't be use of it right now, and offered me a GT9800 instead, which is 100$ cheaper. The guy also said that i should buy 5770 at least after 1 year or so it will be much cheaper and bug free(modified).
So which video card would you suggest?

got reply from tomshardware and they def suggested to go for 5770 also told me to change PSU and mobo... now the last answer i need to find which mobo should i go for T_T

hey guys, which of the 3 set-ups would you choose if you were in my shoes? I have like 12hours to make final decision:

1#


MOBO: MB AMD 770/SB710 SAM3 ATX/GA-MA770T-UD3P GIGA-BYTE 248
CPU: CPU ATH II X4 630 SAM3 BOX/95W 2800 ADX630WFGIBOX AMD 338
RAM:MEMORY DIMM 2GB PC8500 DDR3/APA DL.02GAH.F7M APACER 145
RAM:MEMORY DIMM 2GB PC8500 DDR3/APA DL.02GAH.F7M APACER 145

vid: VGA 1GB GDDR5 PCIE16 HD5770/128B R5770-PMD1G MSI 554

hd: HDD SATA 500GB 3GB/S 32MB/GREEN P. WD5000AADS WDC 166
case: Codegen ATX-6232-A1-USB/Audio (silver/black) 120
supply:ASE PSU ATX2.2 580W/SPS-XP580.(12)R XILENCE 157

price: 1873 litas/ 780USD.

2#


Mobo:MB P55 S1156 ATX/GA-P55-US3L GIGA-BYTE 337
CPu Intel Core i5 750/ 4 Cores/ 4 Threads/ 2.6 Ghz/ Turbo / 8 MB Cache / 45 nm/ 95 W /DDR3-800/1066/1333/ Lynnfield/ BX80605I5750 BOX 636

ram: MEMORY DIMM 2GB PC8500 DDR3/APA DL.02GAH.F7M APACER 145
ram: MEMORY DIMM 2GB PC8500 DDR3/APA DL.02GAH.F7M APACER 145

vid: VGA 1GB GDDR5 PCIE16 HD5770/128B R5770-PMD1G MSI 554

hd: HDD SATA 500GB 3GB/S 32MB/GREEN P. WD5000AADS WDC 166

case: Codegen ATX-6232-A1-USB/Audio (silver/black) 120
supply: CASE PSU ATX2.2 580W/SPS-XP580.(12)R XILENCE 157
Price: 2260/ 942usd
3#

Mobo: MB P43/ICH10 S775 ATX/GA-EP43T-UD3L GIGA-BYTE 251
cpu: CPUC2Q 2660/1333/6M S775 BX/Q9400 BX80580Q9400 S LB6B IN 587

ram: MEMORY DIMM 2GB PC6400 DDRII/AM1 73.G21E9.000 APACER 138
ram: MEMORY DIMM 2GB PC6400 DDRII/AM1 73.G21E9.000 APACER 138

vid: VGA 1GB GDDR5 PCIE16 HD5770/GV-R577D5-1GD-B GIGA-BYTE 567

hd: HDD SATA 500GB 3GB/S 32MB/GREEN P. WD5000AADS WDC 166

case: Codegen ATX-6232-A1-USB/Audio (silver/black) 120
supply: CASE PSU ATX2.2 580W/SPS-XP580.(12)R XILENCE 157
price 2124/885usd
Thanks in advance!

Oh god...Sorry for bringing this topic up but...
My video card just burnt out and now i've to buy another graphic card. But rather than buying it i'd be better of buying some new cheap cpu with the lowest video card because sc2 hasn't come out yet. What i'm looking for is some cpu which i can then replace the old devices (ie video card until sc2).
My old cpu was basically a very good one which could be overclocked easily without any risks really. The only things i needed to replace was the Hard Drive (HD in this case ? I don't know what you were talking about with HDD or SDD T_T), graphic card and ram.
But now my comp is old (10 years. Yeah right 10 fucking year and it still works perfectly fine !) so i'm looking for a decent one. Preferably cheap but easy to upgrade within 2 or 4 years. I think it's pretty clear that i don't need quad core or whatever. Max 3 for the sake of it. Cauz i'm pretty sure most games won't be running at 100% efficiency for a while, plus i'm not a video game whore.

tl;dr : Looking for new cheap cpu that can handles 2 monitor with the cheapest but decent video card available on the market. 350-500euros is my budget. Probably 500 more when sc2 comes out, or whatever i'll be needing in the future for replacing old devices. Which one would you recommend ?
Built-up or building up myself are either perfectly fine (i guess we should look for the lastest one since it's cheaper maybe ? It was so 10 years ago)

wtf, 350-500 around 800 usd?
you can buy pretty much any video card/cpu