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Gaming on a Budget

Post Date: 2010-07-15
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SDinfected View Drop Down
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Posts: 12 		  Quote SDinfected Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Topic: Gaming on a Budget
    Posted: 15 Jul 2010 at 7:16pm
Hello,

I am trying to make a gaming(MMORPG) configuration for less than $1,100. I do not require a monitor because I am planning on using my 37" LCD 120hz TV via HDMI. Also, I do not need speakers. The setup I have made is slightly over my budget, any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Configuration: 422508

Thank you!
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ablahblah View Drop Down
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Posts: 2312 		  Quote ablahblah Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 15 Jul 2010 at 8:09pm
This is where AMD starts to shine, ehehe. No overclocking because of price restraints, can't get a nice cooling upgrade, and AMD just RULES at stock.

Here ya go, Config 422532

Price - $1101
Chassis Model: Special Deal Hot Seller - Cooler Master Elite 310
Exterior Finish: - Standard Factory Finish
Trim Accents: - Standard Factory Finish
Processor: AMD Phenom II X4 965 (3.4GHz) (Quad Core) (Black Edition) (8 MB Cache) AM3 Socket
Motherboard: ASUS M4A785T-M/CSM (AMD 785G Chipsets) (SATA6 and USB 2.0) (Socket AM3)
System Memory: 4GB DDR3 1600MHz Digital Storm Certified Performance Series (Highly Recommended) (Hand Tested)
Power Supply: 500W Digital Storm Certified
Expansion Bay: - No Thanks
Hard Drive Set 1: Operating System: 1x (320GB Western Digital (16MB Cache) (7200 RPM)
Set 1 Raid Options: - No Thanks
Hard Drive Set 2: Multimedia\Data: 1x (320GB Western Digital (16MB Cache) (7200 RPM)
Hard Drive Set 3: Backup\Misc.: - No Thanks
Optical Drive 1: DVD-R/RW/CD-R/RW (DVD Writer 24x / CD-Writer 48x)
Optical Drive 2: - No Thanks
Internet Access: High Speed Network Port (Supports High-Speed Cable / DSL / Network Connections)
Video Card: 1x NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 768MB (Includes PhysX Technology)
Add-on Card: - No Thanks
Sound Card: Integrated Motherboard Audio
Extreme Cooling: Standard Factory Heat-sink and Fan
H20 Tube Color:- Not Applicable, I do not have a FrostChill or Sub-Zero LCS Cooling System Selected
Chassis Airflow: Standard Factory Chassis Fans
Internal Lighting: - No Thanks
Enhancements: - No Thanks
Chassis Mods: - No Thanks
Noise Reduction: - No Thanks
Boost Processor: - No Thanks, Please do not overclock my processor
Boost Video Card: - No Thanks, Please do not overclock my video card(s)
Boost Memory: - No Thanks, Please do not overclock my memory
Boost OS: - No Thanks, Please do not tweak the services on the operating system
Windows OS: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium (64-Bit Edition)
Restore Kit: Digital Storm Specialized Recovery System (DVD Image Based)
Virus Protection: - No Thanks
Office: - No Thanks
Benchmarking: - No Thanks
Install/Test Game: FREE: Hot-selling game with a NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250 or above graphics card
Display: - No Thanks
Surge Shield: - No Thanks
Speakers: - No Thanks
Keyboard: Logitech Internet 350 USB Desktop (Multimedia Keyboard + RX300 Optical Wheel Mouse)
Mouse: - No Thanks
External Storage: - No Thanks
Exclusive T-Shirt: - No Thanks
Priority Build: - No Thanks, Ship Within 5-15 Business Days After Order Is Successfully Processed
Warranty: Life-time Expert Customer Care with 3 Year Limited Warranty
Notes - "Please set 320HDDs to RAID0."

The rig will support DX11 still using Fermi, and will have no overclocks, running at a still nice 3.2Ghz. Keyboard/mouse price is included, and you get a free game. Also, if you want, add a free T-Shirt. Final note is that I included dual 320GB Hard Drives and left a note to RAID 0 them, for performance (Note is "Please set 320HDDs to RAID0.")

Edited by ablahblah - 16 Jul 2010 at 9:08am
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Posts: 12 		  Quote SDinfected Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 15 Jul 2010 at 9:22pm
Thanks for the input! I have several questions:

1.) Is the $26 difference between the 955 and 965 CPUs worth it?
2.) I feel like upgrading to the Corsair Dominator for $25 would be a good use for that money.
3.) That power supply seems low, are you sure 500w for this setup is fine?
4.) Are two smaller HDDs better than one bigger one? (I'm not going to do Raid 0, afraid of them both failing, lol)
5.) I think I'm going to get a Radeon HD video card (either 5670 or 5770)
6.) I feel like I need more cooling, either by a better heat sink or additional chassis fans.
7.) There are free CPU, Video, and OS boosts, do you recommend any of them?
8.) For virus protection, should I get the McAfee or is there a better one out there for a decent price?

Thanks again, all input is welcome. Big%20Smile


Edited by SDinfected - 15 Jul 2010 at 9:33pm
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Posts: 2312 		  Quote ablahblah Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 15 Jul 2010 at 9:33pm
1)The 965 is clocked a bit faster than the 955. I would opt for it, since we're not doing overclocking here.
2) It'd be okay to upgrade to Corsair, but Alex has said before that it really doesn't make that significant of a difference. DS Certified RAM is still brand name though, don't assume that it's just generic stuff, heh.
3) I think it should, the GTX 460 states that it only needs 450w minimum. Opt for a 750w if you're concerned though, I'm not sure really.
4) Well, if you go RAID, you need 2 HDDs. If you're not comfortable with RAID, then sure, go with one. RAID capability is the only difference.
5) Sure you wanna go with a Radeon HD? The GTX 460 is specifically targeted for your buying area actually. And it'll support modern games.
6) Nah, stock fans are specifically designed to cool their components at stock. No need to worry, if you're running them at stock. In this case, you are. The complete purpose why I went for an AMD build is because you wouldn't need to worry about cooling upgrades or case upgrades, since they're all supposed to be able to run things at stock without modification. Stock cooling is specifically designed for stock speeds. Otherwise it wouldn't be....stock. LOL.
7) You can, but really, I wouldn't opt for it. Overclocking with Stock will produce too much heat and won't go that high, you could buy a better cooler, but the entire reason why I went AMD is because Intel's overclock with better performance. AMD isn't as good as Intel in overclocking, so I don't bother with overclocking them anyways. Therefore, you save a LOT of money on case/cooling, and can put it to hard drive and graphics. This way, you'll still have a nice, balanced build. Good graphics, good enough cooling, good processor, good motherboard, good RAM. Not excellent cooling, excellent processor, old generation graphics, tiny ram, bad motherboard.
8) Many of us here suggest ESET Smart Security, if you want to look into that.
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Posts: 12 		  Quote SDinfected Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 15 Jul 2010 at 10:31pm
Thanks again!

The only change I think I'm going to make is with the hard drive. I'd rather get the extra space for only $3 more with the 1TB Hitachi/Seagate (7200 RPM) (32MB Cache). Will the system run "better" if the the OS has one HDD and there is a separate one for data? Also, I chose this hard drive because of the 32MB cache, would two 16MB cache HDDs equal 32MB, or is that not how that works?

Sorry for all the questions, I'm still new to all of this.
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Posts: 12 		  Quote SDinfected Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 15 Jul 2010 at 10:46pm
Also, I just looked up ESET Smart Security. According to http://internet-security-suite-review.toptenreviews.com/index.html it is ranked 5th. What do you know about Kaspersky Internet Security? It's ranked #2 but the #1 (Webroot) seems a little too complicated for me.
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Posts: 2312 		  Quote ablahblah Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 15 Jul 2010 at 11:26pm
Nah, cache doesn't work like that I believe. Also, the reason why I actually recommend having a separate OS drive...lemme explain. It's your choice, but here's why. Hard drives are based on magnetic platters, which are essentially disks. Obviously, the fastest rpm region would be in the center, which reads the fastest. But as you fill up a drive, you go more and more out, and the speed reduces. Hence, people saying that a drive usually slows down after 50% capacity. Now, if your OS and data are on one single drive, when your data eventually fills the drive over 50%, both OS and data slow down. Keep it on two separate drives, and only your data drive will slow down, and your OS won't be affected.

A/V, I dunno that much about, I just know ESET's very highly rated here. Heh, wait for someone else to come along.


Edited by ablahblah - 15 Jul 2010 at 11:26pm
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Posts: 12 		  Quote SDinfected Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 15 Jul 2010 at 11:35pm
Lol, thanks for the input. Does the cache in a HDD really make that much of a difference? I know the cache in the CPU is something a gaming computer needs, should I even worry about the "speed" of my HDD?
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Posts: 2247 		  Quote Dragoonseal Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 16 Jul 2010 at 4:50am
Originally posted by ablahblah

Nah, cache doesn't work like that I believe. Also, the reason why I actually recommend having a separate OS drive...lemme explain. It's your choice, but here's why. Hard drives are based on magnetic platters, which are essentially disks. Obviously, the fastest rpm region would be in the center, which reads the fastest. But as you fill up a drive, you go more and more out, and the speed reduces. Hence, people saying that a drive usually slows down after 50% capacity. Now, if your OS and data are on one single drive, when your data eventually fills the drive over 50%, both OS and data slow down. Keep it on two separate drives, and only your data drive will slow down, and your OS won't be affected.

Ah.. other way around.

Conventional HDDs are rapidly spinning magnetic platters, the farther away from the center you move the faster they are spinning with the outer edges being the fastest. Data density is also higher on the outer edges, so you can read more info per revolution and with less spindle head moment. HDDs start by storing data on the outer edges but as they fill up they have to start storing data on the slower inner sections. Thus the more you fill up a conventional HDD the more their performance dive bombs, not only from the longer access times of the inner platter sections but also fragmentation, a HDD only has one moving spindle head for reading data and the more it has to move itself back and forth from the outer edges to the inner sections of the platter to access data the slower and slower and slower the HDD gets.

There is no magical 50% number, the more you fill a conventional HDD the slower it gets.

Originally posted by SDinfected

Lol, thanks for the input. Does the cache in a HDD really make that much of a difference? I know the cache in the CPU is something a gaming computer needs, should I even worry about the "speed" of my HDD?

Just a 5% performance difference between a 1TB 32MB cache HDD and a 1TB 64MB cache HDD. Something like a small 320GB 16MB cache HDD will be noticeably slower than either of those though, for a number of reasons, not just the smaller cache size.

But this is all conventional HDD numbers, which just do not get fast regardless, so the differences are all pretty insignificant and sad one way or another. If you want a fast OS/apps drive just get a 40GB Intel SSD. An Intel SSD has 80-100 times faster small file read/write performance and at least twice the sequential (large) file read performance of any conventional HDD available. Once you've had one you'll never go back to conventional HDDs for anything other than media storage.
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Posts: 2312 		  Quote ablahblah Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 16 Jul 2010 at 9:02am
hey hey hey this guy only has a $1.1k budget Oops

ty for the correction though, I KNEW something I wrote had to be wrong... :D

so now, you can go three ways. one, stick with the dual 320GB setup and use one as a boot drive, to isolate the OS from any slowdowns. two, go with a 750GB or a 1TB single drive. three, go $60 over budget with a SSD, and have a slightly slower processor and 250GB of storage space, always expandable though. (I'll post it if you're interested...)


Edited by ablahblah - 16 Jul 2010 at 9:12am
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Posts: 2247 		  Quote Dragoonseal Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 16 Jul 2010 at 9:11am
Originally posted by ablahblah

hey hey hey this guy only has a $1.1k budget

Ah, didn't catch that, only skimmed through the thread.

Don't worry about a SSD then if the budget is that tight. I wouldn't bother with multiple HDDs either, a slow little 320GB HDD for a OS/apps drive isn't going to help if it starts off much slower than a decent 1TB HDD even when empty.
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Posts: 2312 		  Quote ablahblah Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 16 Jul 2010 at 9:16am
staying within budget, how about we go wiff this:

Config. No. 422637

Chassis Model: Special Deal Hot Seller - Cooler Master Elite 310
Exterior Finish: - Standard Factory Finish
Trim Accents: - Standard Factory Finish
Processor: AMD Phenom II X4 965 (3.4GHz) (Quad Core) (Black Edition) (8 MB Cache) AM3 Socket
Motherboard: ASUS M4A785T-M/CSM (AMD 785G Chipsets) (SATA6 and USB 2.0) (Socket AM3)
System Memory: 4GB DDR3 1600MHz Digital Storm Certified Performance Series (Highly Recommended) (Hand Tested)
Power Supply: 500W Digital Storm Certified
Expansion Bay: - No Thanks
Hard Drive Set 1: Operating System: 1x (1TB Hitachi/Seagate (7200 RPM) (32MB Cache)
Set 1 Raid Options: - No Thanks
Hard Drive Set 2: Multimedia\Data: - No Thanks
Hard Drive Set 3: Backup\Misc.: - No Thanks
Optical Drive 1: DVD-R/RW/CD-R/RW (DVD Writer 24x / CD-Writer 48x)
Optical Drive 2: - No Thanks
Internet Access: High Speed Network Port (Supports High-Speed Cable / DSL / Network Connections)
Video Card: 1x NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 768MB (Includes PhysX Technology)
Add-on Card: - No Thanks
Sound Card: Integrated Motherboard Audio
Extreme Cooling: Standard Factory Heat-sink and Fan
H20 Tube Color:- Not Applicable, I do not have a FrostChill or Sub-Zero LCS Cooling System Selected
Chassis Airflow: Standard Factory Chassis Fans
Internal Lighting: - No Thanks
Enhancements: - No Thanks
Chassis Mods: - No Thanks
Noise Reduction: - No Thanks
Boost Processor: - No Thanks, Please do not overclock my processor
Boost Video Card: - No Thanks, Please do not overclock my video card(s)
Boost Memory: - No Thanks, Please do not overclock my memory
Boost OS: - No Thanks, Please do not tweak the services on the operating system
Windows OS: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium (64-Bit Edition)
Restore Kit: Digital Storm Specialized Recovery System (DVD Image Based)
Virus Protection: - No Thanks
Office: - No Thanks
Benchmarking: - No Thanks
Install/Test Game: FREE: Hot-selling game with a NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250 or above graphics card
Display: - No Thanks
Surge Shield: - No Thanks
Speakers: - No Thanks
Keyboard: Logitech Internet 350 USB Desktop (Multimedia Keyboard + RX300 Optical Wheel Mouse)
Mouse: - No Thanks
External Storage: - No Thanks
Exclusive T-Shirt: - No Thanks
Priority Build: - No Thanks, Ship Within 5-15 Business Days After Order Is Successfully Processed
Warranty: Life-time Expert Customer Care with 3 Year Limited Warranty

I have a personal preference toward western digital, because of all those amazon replies about failing barracuda's, but really, it doesn't seem to be that common, and that 965 is better than that 955.

Edited by ablahblah - 16 Jul 2010 at 9:18am
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Posts: 12 		  Quote SDinfected Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 16 Jul 2010 at 7:03pm
Yeah, that looks like the same build you originally posted with a change to the HDD. I think this is most likely going to be my setup. Since I'm planning on using my TV (as stated above) as the monitor, will this setup work with an HDMI cable? Will I have any problems with frame rate?

Thanks again for all the answers/suggestions guys.
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Posts: 2312 		  Quote ablahblah Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 16 Jul 2010 at 7:06pm
It'll work with a HDMI cable, yeah. Considering fps, it should work pretty well with the GTX 460.
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Posts: 12 		  Quote SDinfected Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 17 Jul 2010 at 2:44am
Nice, thanks. I guess all I need to figure out now is a security software. Since it's recommended here, I'm assuming ESET doesn't really have compatibility issues with most games? Also, anything (hardware/software) else you'd recommend as far as finishing touches?
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Posts: 24 		  Quote sona Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 17 Jul 2010 at 3:06am
just a quick question, the DSO computer configuration pricing already includes the tax??
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Posts: 12 		  Quote SDinfected Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 17 Jul 2010 at 4:08am
Nope, because tax rates vary~
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Posts: 4219 		  Quote !ender_ Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 17 Jul 2010 at 8:49am
wrong, becuase you dont pay taxes unless youre in cali (where DSO is)
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Posts: 12 		  Quote SDinfected Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 17 Jul 2010 at 4:17pm
So, I'm right because I'm in Cali? lol
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Posts: 4219 		  Quote !ender_ Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 17 Jul 2010 at 6:37pm
well i was answering sona, but that sucks =/ thats like an extra 100 at least i think
glad im on the other coast :)
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Posts: 12 		  Quote SDinfected Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 17 Jul 2010 at 10:26pm
Yeah, that's partially why my initial budget is so low, lol.
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Posts: 4219 		  Quote !ender_ Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 17 Jul 2010 at 10:37pm
i dont know if this would be considered fraud/illegal or whatever, but id look for someone in a nearby state that you know and buy through them... worth it for $100+ in savings, just wait till they get it then drive on over and pick it up
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