My new rig, hooray

Okay, so I've decided to finally bite the bullet and buy a new computer. I'm buying parts seperately, and putting it together myself to save money.

I'll be placing the order for the parts Monday afternoon, probably, but first I'd like all of you to take a look at the specs and tell me what should change, what I need, what isn't needed, etc.

I wanted to spend $3000 or less on a really decent gaming rig, that will also do everything else (photoshop, film production, etc)

So, please take a look, and give me some feedback on what I've chosen. Keep in mind that these are Australian prices.


ASUS MS238H 23 Inch Widescreen LED Monitor: $239.00

Intel Core i7 930: $359.00

CoolerMaster HAF X Case: $299.00

Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB WD1002FAEX: $119.00

Mach Xtreme Black Diamond MXD3B20006GT (3x2GB) DDR3: $265.00

Thermaltake ToughPower XT 875W PSU: $194.00

D-Link DWA-556 Xtreme N Wireless PCI Express Adapter: $98.00

Samsung SH-B083A Blu-ray DVD Combo Drive: $129.00

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit OEM: $135.00

Gigabyte ATI Radeon HD5970 2GB: $779.00

ASUS Rampage III Extreme Motherboard: $545.00

Total: $3161.00


A few notes:

Originally, I was going to go for the Intel Core i7 960, but a friend of mine who builds computers said it is a waste of money, as the extra power it gives out is disproportionate to the added cost. I don't want to overclock, yet, but in the future I'm open to it.

I wanted 12Gb RAM, but simply cannot afford it right now. I figure more RAM is something I can easily spring for in the future. 6Gb should keep me covered for a while anyway.

Only 1Tb hard drive. Idealy, I want to go with at least 2Tb, but once again, cannot afford it. However, my computer building friend recommends two 1Tb hard drives running in tandem, so the hard drive will boot the operating system and programs faster. However, I'm worried that this will, in case of a hard drive failure, cause me to have screwed 2 hard drives instead of the one. My fiance wants to have the operating system running off a small solid state hard drive, and all applications running off the 1Tb. I'm thouroughly confused on this matter. If two 1Tb hard drives or a solid state or whatever is more efficient or better in any way, then I will spring for the extra. If not, I don't care.

And finally, the video card. I'm happy with what I've chosen, but I've been told its better to run 2 at once for best results. Fine, whatever, I'm not going to spend an extra $800. The case and motherboard can support 4 video cards, so I can always upgrade later.

I used www.pccasegear.com to find the parts.

This post has been edited by princecoo on July 11, 2010 12:50 pm

Ha, never mind, I didn't get that setup.

I instead went through another company (umart.com.au) and got equivulent parts, plus some, for half the price.

So now, it's basically the same except it has 8Gb RAM and 3Tb hard drive space. And a 5870 graphics card, I also dropped the Blu-Ray player, and saved like $100.

It ended up being about $2200 including postage/handling.

Should arrive today or tomorrow. Hooray!

Noice!

When you gona come to my place and fix my xbox connection?

That was $600 well spent

This post has been edited by Kristine65 on July 14, 2010 11:51 am

I thought it was a problem with your ISP? AND I thought they said they had fixed it?

Does anyone know how to make a NAT that is closed for Xbox Live, open up? Krissys is set to closed,so cant' play xbox online.

Mine is on medium, so I can play, but I'd love to know how to make it open.

In other news, the computer arrived! Put it together last night, after some cursing and such because it wouldn't boot, turns out the video card wasn't plugged in to the right bit.

That said, I am having Hard Drive issues, I have two 1.5Tb hard drives, and the computer is only seeing one of them. I don't know which one, but I'm reasonably certain that it's just that I havn't slaved the other one properly. Will do some tinkering tonight.

Oh, and Windows 7 is the goddamn bomb. Windows install, from disc insertion to desktop "welcome to Windows 7" screen was like 20-25 minutes.

My computer rates a 5.6 out of 7.9. I'm pretty sad about that, because the only reason for that is the hard disks are SATAII, not SATAIII. Kelly made me choose SATAII because they were cheaper.

Everything else is rated at 7.5 or 7.8, so all is sweet.

Is that in relation to ISP or modem settings? Or does that relate to the Xbox settings?

NAT setting for me are controlled by my router

Ummm... Iinet did some sort of upgrade the other night. My puter is now getting 2.5Mbs. xbox says my network is strict and that I may have problems joining games.

Isn't that what it said last time, Princey?

Yeah, I think it is.

I have no idea, with zero messing about, my setup was on medium, out of the box. I don't know why yours, out of the box, woud be strict.