thinking about building my first tower pc and was curious if anybody knew a good graphics card for fps gaming, playing dvds and **** like that. been pricing out some stuff and here are some of the things that i think i'll get. if you see any glaring errors with regard to compatibility, please speak up!

ASUS M5A97 AMD 970 AM3+ Motherboard
AMD Phenom II X4 980 Black Quad Core
Seagate 1TB Serial ATA/300 Hard Drive
8gb DDR3 memory
(no graphics card yet)
(no sound card yet)


also, i picked out a 500w power supply by Thermaltake. anybody know if this would be enough power/a good brand?

i've been doing a lot of searching on the net, but all of this computer stuff is greek to me, but i'd like to learn about this kind of stuff which is why im attempting to build one rather than buy one lol

 

That power supply looks fine and I have always liked that brand. For a graphics card you can get a really good video for around 150$. I bought an Nvidia 450GTX and have had no problems what so ever with fps on video games. Also you do not really need a sound card just use the onboard sound you should be fine. Other than that you build looks alright.

 

For $10 more you could get the Intel i5-2500K processor and switch out the motherboard. Would be quite a bit more powerful system. For the video card I would try and get a GTX 560. 500W power supply will be ok but I'd go with the Corsair 600W for an extra $10 or so. No sound card needed.

 

Make sure that the memory you select is on the "approved" list for the motherboard. Sometimes you might get say 1600 but it only goes 1333 because the mobo doesn't like it.

 

I thought it would still work but be speed limited by the FSB

 

The memory can still work, but it just seems like a waste. It's like you buy a V8 car and only use 6 cylinders because you're limited by the PCM.

 

Definitely, just confirming what I thought I knew, haha.

 

Ya a GTX 560 would be good mid range gaming card, also hard drive wise go with samsung spinpoint F3 they are really solid hard drives. And as said earlier go with Corsair 600 watt psu they make best quality.

 

Id recommend a bigger power supply especially for the quad.

 

Fps demands a high performance video card. Get the best you can afford.

 

A 500w power supply is perfectly ample for your build. Many people are obsessed with buying waaay more power supply than they need. Your build is still fairly tame, a 500w Thermaltake will do the trick. However, I would go for a Seasonic over the Thermaltake any day. Seasonic is an OEM that makes some of the highest quality PSU's on the market. Thermaltake just rebrands OEM psu's and if you don't do your research, you never really know what you're getting.

Skip out on the AMD stuff, they're considerably slower than competing Intel products for the time being. However, if it comes down to Intel CPU+mobo and a lower end GPU, or an AMD CPU+mobo and a higher end GPU, go with AMD. FPS's require much more GPU power than CPU power.

A GTX 560 will be perfect for a reasonably balanced system like this. Or if you'd like to go the ATI/AMD route, the 6870 is roughly equivalent.

If you have money to spare, pick up a Corsair Force 3 60GB to at least get your OS on with several applications. Solid state HD's are the single largest leap in perceptible speed in probably decades. Trust me on this one, once you've used a computer with a solid state drive, you'll never want to use one without an SSD ever again. They are easily 100's of times faster in I/O performance and latency over conventional mechanical hard drives. Even the transfer speeds may be many many times more than mechanical hd's. If you can't afford one now, throw one in when you can and use your 1tb drive for storage and large applications.

Stick to onboard sound. Unless you're real picky about your audio, it should do just fine. The differences between onboard sound and add in cards in most applications are getting smaller and smaller by the day. A Creative x-fi card will clean up the audio if your onboard is a little noisy, or if you're wanting to drive fairly high quality headphones or speakers.

 

well i plan on buying the components bit by bit, so spending a little extra here and there wont be a huge issue for me. after reading some reviews, i think i'll go ahead and switch to the intel i5 2500k coupled with a p67 motherboard- just need to pick one of like 20 diff types/brands.

i was reading about solid state drives, but i don't know if i can justify the cost. as for graphics cards, i was looking at an 6850 but that gtx560 looks nice too. i imagine there' a point of diminishing returns, just don't know where it is. a card between 150-250 would be doable for me, may pick that part last in hopes that the prices on some of the better ones come down

 

Check microcenter for the 2500K, last week it was only $150, this week it's $180. The GTX560 outperforms the 6850 by a pretty good margin.

 

looked on frys website and the 560 is fairly similar in price to the 6850 so i'll prob go with that, but i heard the 6850 could be switched over to a 6870 fairly easily. would the 560 still be better at that point? also, i see a 560, a 560 superclocked, and a 560 ti superclocked. would you recommend going with the ti over the normal 560?

 

You know how computers slow down after you load up the hard drive? Solid state drives don't do that. They keep your computer as fast after 3 years as it was the first day you put it together (and that is FAR faster than a computer running a mechanical hd). You don't have to wait for the desktop to load and it'll boot in a few seconds. It was one of the hardest debated purchases I made for my desktop, but I have absolutely ZERO regrets. They're worth every penny. You could step down to 4 gigs of ram to fit the SSD in and it'd be more than a fair trade.

They're such a huge step forward I'm posting again to try to get you to reconsider It'd be a huge mistake to not put one in a newly built system. You can even step down to one of the cheaper SSD's (like this one http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820227550) and you'd never know the difference over a $200+ SSD, save for the size.

 

i notice that's only a 60gig drive. so you would recommend using a solid state for the OS, and then the standard hard drive for everything else?

 

Yup. I'd just use it for the OS and Steam or whatever other fairly intensive programs you have to run. All your movies, music and program images can be stuck on the 1tb. You can also back up your SSD onto your storage drive so you've got some redundancy.

 

I used to play a lot of PC games back in 09 when I was in college, and built a PC specifically for it (one that I still own). At the time, I used an EVGA 780i FTW mobo, a EVGA GTX 285 video card, 8 gigs of DDR3 RAM, and an i7 processor.

I would play Crysis on full settings, COD, whatever I could throw at it, and it'd take it like a champ. I would also overclock the CPU to around 4GHz. And instead of using a CPU heatsink with a fan, I use a watercooler, forgot what brand, but it's lasted over 3 years, still running. Helps cool temps when I overclock it.

Here it is: (yes I know it's dirty, lol)

 

Oh... and newegg.com ftw... I always buy my PC parts from them.

 

ok i think i compiled a final list, not including thing like mouse keyboard etc. lemme know what yall think


msi p67a-g43 (b3) LGA 1155 ATX motherboard
intel core i5 2500k LGA 1155 Processor
Thermaltake v3 black edition atx mid tower chassis
evga nvidia geforce gtx 560 gpu
seagate barracuda 1tb 7200rpm hdd
corsair gs600 gaming series 600watt power supply
kingston hyperx blu ddr3-1600 4x2 RAM
samsung 22x dvd-rw burner with dual layer support
trendnet 54mbps 802.11g wireless pc card

comes in at just under 900 bucks from micro center. if you have any recommendations or spot a glaring error, lemme know. looks like everything will work though. still considering the solid state drive. kind of pricey and if i dont know what im missing, i may be content with a standard hard drive. may go with the ssd instead of the hdd and then add that later