Gaming pc build-inexperienced

so i have never built a PC before.... does this sound good?

CPU/MOBO combo

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.397509

-MSI 870A-G54 AM3 AMD 870 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard

-AMD Phenom II X2 555 Black Edition Callisto 3.2GHz Socket AM3 80W Dual-Core Desktop Processor - C3 Revision Model HDZ555WFGMBOX

$$$180

videocard/ RAM combo

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.416616

-OCZ Gold 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Low Voltage Desktop Memory Model OCZ3G1600LV6GK

-XFX HD-585X-ZNFV Radeon HD 5850 1GB 256-bit DDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card w/ Eyefinity

$$$454

Hard drive/ power supply combo

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.413514

-OCZ StealthXStream OCZ700SXS 700W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready Active PFC Power Supply

-

If you're going to get that expensive of a video card, I'd get a quad core of some sort. So many games are now somewhat limited by dual cores. Your 5850 will be held back. Plus that video card RAM combo is more in line for an Intel i7 based system, since they use triple channel memory configurations (3 or 6 sticks).
Also, the Phenom II x2 dual cores are way too expensive, and offer barely any improvement a normal Athlon II dual core. Also what games do you want to play, or do you just want to play anything out there as well as future titles decently?

AMD Athlon II x4 Propus 2.6 Ghz Quad Core - $96- Like I stated above, it's better to have the Athlon II x4 dual core over the Phenom II x2 dual core by a long shot.
MSI 785GM-E51 Mobo - $80- I have one of these in my secondary desktop. It's an excellent mobo, with built in Radeon 4200 so it can function without a graphics card if need be as well as very good integrated 24 bit/192 KHz capable sound. It's also got a VERY quick boot sequence. Only con for the board is somewhat limited expansion capabilities though most likely you'll only need a video card and maybe a Wifi card which it would handle perfectly.
G.Skill 2 x 2 GB DDR3-1333 - $105- I have this in another desktop. Very good price, and they have heat spreaders on them. Good for heat management, and make 'em last longer
Asus Nvidia Geforce GTX465 w/ 1 GB GDDR5 - $280- This card is a bit cheaper than the Radeon 5850, but about the same performance and also has PhysX support which many games do have as a nice bonus (assuming it can handle graphics + PhysX at the same time, which it should).

So for about the same amount you specified for those combos, I got you the same performance with a bit less (but better configured) RAM, and best of all a quad core CPU instead of a dual core and all together for about $60 cheaper. Get a case, hard drive, DVD drive, and power supply unit complete the build. Your PSU-HDD combo is pretty good, though the amount of power might be overkill for my said configuration, but being made by OCZ, it'll be of good quality. This might be better though:

BFG 550 Watt ATX Modular PSU - $70- What's important with this is it's modular. That means you don't have to have all the unnecessary cables that will just get in the way in a case. BFG is a good brand too.

Next any decent 1 TB HDD (they are usually in the $80 range) and case with good cooling and fans will do. Cases get complicated when it comes to fans, LED lighting, etc. A good case will typically be at least $60 or so. Cooler Master brand cases are very good for airflow, and are straight forward. You might want to forgo Newegg on this one simply because you can't get hands on with it. If you have a Fry's Electronics or Microcenter in your area, go there to browse cases and perhaps check Newegg to see if they have the same case you might want at a cheaper price. Last you'll need an operating system. Almost anyone would recommend Windows 7 64.

All-in-all it looks like this build should be right at or under $900 before taxes/shipping, which is pretty good for a just about top of the line gaming machine. Depending on what exactly you might want to play or want to do we could possibly go even cheaper and still have an excellent system for that purpose or game, etc.

hey thanks for the input

i think im going with a quad core then, but does the decrease in speed from 3.2 to 2.6 affect gaming?

wouldnt the integrated videocard in the mobo boggle down the system?

i think im going with 6gigs or higher in RAM

also i dont want an nvidia card i heard they are more expensive and dont offer better quality than ATI

im trying to play games in high settings for next year

again im new at this so thank you for your input : )

how about this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.398185

You're going to want dual channel RAM, no AMD motherboards support triple channel DDR3.

If you buy triple channel RAM, an AMD motherboard will only run it in single channel mode.

hey thanks for the input

i think im going with a quad core then, but does the decrease in speed from 3.2 to 2.6 affect gaming?

wouldnt the integrated videocard in the mobo boggle down the system?

i think im going with 6gigs or higher in RAM

im trying to play games in high settings for next year

again im new at this so thank you for your input : )

rrric

You're going to want dual channel RAM, no AMD motherboards support triple channel DDR3.

If you buy triple channel RAM, an AMD motherboard will only run it in single channel mode.

scottahuch

so i should by a pair of sticks? instead of 3???

yea im going for win7 64bit

i think im going for the AMD Phenom II X4 940 3.0GHz Socket AM2+ 125W Quad-Core Processor Mode

with this vid card XFX HD-585X-ZNFC Radeon HD 5850 1GB 256-bit DDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card w/ Eyefinity

Pay the extra money for the 5850, the GTX 465 is not equivalent in performance comparisons...

If you're going to get that expensive of a video card, I'd get a quad core of some sort. So many games are now somewhat limited by dual cores. Your 5850 will be held back. Plus that video card RAM combo is more in line for an Intel i7 based system, since they use triple channel memory configurations (3 or 6 sticks).
Also, the Phenom II x2 dual cores are way too expensive, and offer barely any improvement a normal Athlon II dual core. Also what games do you want to play, or do you just want to play anything out there as well as future titles decently?

AMD Athlon II x4 Propus 2.6 Ghz Quad Core - $96- Like I stated above, it's better to have the Athlon II x4 dual core over the Phenom II x2 dual core by a long shot.
MSI 785GM-E51 Mobo - $80- I have one of these in my secondary desktop. It's an excellent mobo, with built in Radeon 4200 so it can function without a graphics card if need be as well as very good integrated 24 bit/192 KHz capable sound. It's also got a VERY quick boot sequence. Only con for the board is somewhat limited expansion capabilities though most likely you'll only need a video card and maybe a Wifi card which it would handle perfectly.
G.Skill 2 x 2 GB DDR3-1333 - $105- I have this in another desktop. Very good price, and they have heat spreaders on them. Good for heat management, and make 'em last longer
Asus Nvidia Geforce GTX465 w/ 1 GB GDDR5 - $280- This card is a bit cheaper than the Radeon 5850, but about the same performance and also has PhysX support which many games do have as a nice bonus (assuming it can handle graphics + PhysX at the same time, which it should).

So for about the same amount you specified for those combos, I got you the same performance with a bit less (but better configured) RAM, and best of all a quad core CPU instead of a dual core and all together for about $60 cheaper. Get a case, hard drive, DVD drive, and power supply unit complete the build. Your PSU-HDD combo is pretty good, though the amount of power might be overkill for my said configuration, but being made by OCZ, it'll be of good quality. This might be better though:

BFG 550 Watt ATX Modular PSU - $70- What's important with this is it's modular. That means you don't have to have all the unnecessary cables that will just get in the way in a case. BFG is a good brand too.

Next any decent 1 TB HDD (they are usually in the $80 range) and case with good cooling and fans will do. Cases get complicated when it comes to fans, LED lighting, etc. A good case will typically be at least $60 or so. Cooler Master brand cases are very good for airflow, and are straight forward. You might want to forgo Newegg on this one simply because you can't get hands on with it. If you have a Fry's Electronics or Microcenter in your area, go there to browse cases and perhaps check Newegg to see if they have the same case you might want at a cheaper price. Last you'll need an operating system. Almost anyone would recommend Windows 7 64.

All-in-all it looks like this build should be right at or under $900 before taxes/shipping, which is pretty good for a just about top of the line gaming machine. Depending on what exactly you might want to play or want to do we could possibly go even cheaper and still have an excellent system for that purpose or game, etc.

mouthforbathory

lol did you just suggest to him a gtx 465? LOLOLOLOLOLOL seriously that card is overpriced junk.. better of getting a 275 and sparing him 100 bucks of wasted money.. oh while your at it cut it back further to say an hd 5830 and use the extra cash to knock that baby up to a phenom II x3 or x4 and wallop your propus while your there.

seriously the 465 is a disgrace of a gpu... bloody nvidia screws everything up.

[QUOTE="mouthforbathory"]

If you're going to get that expensive of a video card, I'd get a quad core of some sort. So many games are now somewhat limited by dual cores. Your 5850 will be held back. Plus that video card RAM combo is more in line for an Intel i7 based system, since they use triple channel memory configurations (3 or 6 sticks).
Also, the Phenom II x2 dual cores are way too expensive, and offer barely any improvement a normal Athlon II dual core. Also what games do you want to play, or do you just want to play anything out there as well as future titles decently?

AMD Athlon II x4 Propus 2.6 Ghz Quad Core - $96- Like I stated above, it's better to have the Athlon II x4 dual core over the Phenom II x2 dual core by a long shot.
MSI 785GM-E51 Mobo - $80- I have one of these in my secondary desktop. It's an excellent mobo, with built in Radeon 4200 so it can function without a graphics card if need be as well as very good integrated 24 bit/192 KHz capable sound. It's also got a VERY quick boot sequence. Only con for the board is somewhat limited expansion capabilities though most likely you'll only need a video card and maybe a Wifi card which it would handle perfectly.
G.Skill 2 x 2 GB DDR3-1333 - $105- I have this in another desktop. Very good price, and they have heat spreaders on them. Good for heat management, and make 'em last longer
Asus Nvidia Geforce GTX465 w/ 1 GB GDDR5 - $280- This card is a bit cheaper than the Radeon 5850, but about the same performance and also has PhysX support which many games do have as a nice bonus (assuming it can handle graphics + PhysX at the same time, which it should).

So for about the same amount you specified for those combos, I got you the same performance with a bit less (but better configured) RAM, and best of all a quad core CPU instead of a dual core and all together for about $60 cheaper. Get a case, hard drive, DVD drive, and power supply unit complete the build. Your PSU-HDD combo is pretty good, though the amount of power might be overkill for my said configuration, but being made by OCZ, it'll be of good quality. This might be better though:

BFG 550 Watt ATX Modular PSU - $70- What's important with this is it's modular. That means you don't have to have all the unnecessary cables that will just get in the way in a case. BFG is a good brand too.

Next any decent 1 TB HDD (they are usually in the $80 range) and case with good cooling and fans will do. Cases get complicated when it comes to fans, LED lighting, etc. A good case will typically be at least $60 or so. Cooler Master brand cases are very good for airflow, and are straight forward. You might want to forgo Newegg on this one simply because you can't get hands on with it. If you have a Fry's Electronics or Microcenter in your area, go there to browse cases and perhaps check Newegg to see if they have the same case you might want at a cheaper price. Last you'll need an operating system. Almost anyone would recommend Windows 7 64.

All-in-all it looks like this build should be right at or under $900 before taxes/shipping, which is pretty good for a just about top of the line gaming machine. Depending on what exactly you might want to play or want to do we could possibly go even cheaper and still have an excellent system for that purpose or game, etc.

aura_enchanted

lol did you just suggest to him a gtx 465? LOLOLOLOLOLOL seriously that card is overpriced junk.. better of getting a 275 and sparing him 100 bucks of wasted money.. oh while your at it cut it back further to say an hd 5830 and use the extra cash to knock that baby up to a phenom II x3 or x4 and wallop your propus while your there.

seriously the 465 is a disgrace of a gpu... bloody nvidia screws everything up.

+1 And that PSU isn't the best either -_-

Is that mobo compatible with a Phenom II 955?

Everything looks good except for the CPU. Go with a Quad - Core since most games are using dual and you will just end up uprgading it in a couple of years. If you can afford it get six core cpu like an i7 or amd six core. Also get a 600 or 700 watt power supply instead of the 550 because you will need more if you want to upgrade later on. You will also need to make sure the cpu is compatible with that motherboard so if that is an AM2 cpu the motherboard will need to support socket AM2.

The benchmarks (actual review benchmarks) suggest the 465 as being pretty close to the 5850 in performance, and it's a bit cheaper. Only real con I can see for it is higher heat and power needs. As for the PSU, its good enough, as it'll be unlikely that he even needs more than 500W. Power requirements are usually overblown and out of proportion. Also chances are that driver performance will get better, and the gap will close. It'll get him a fair amount of flexibility (DX11, not too high of a res, PhysX support) at a decent price. I'd almost encourage that he scales back even further to 57xx cards, to save even more.

Oh and Athlon II x4 vs Phenom II x4 @ Tom's Hardware- The L3 cache doesn't give much benefit, at least with most programs. It means he'll be fine, and he can OC it too if he wants to for more performance, if he finds it necessary.

The benchmarks (actual review benchmarks) suggest the 465 as being pretty close to the 5850 in performance, and it's a bit cheaper. Only real con I can see for it is higher heat and power needs. As for the PSU, its good enough, as it'll be unlikely that he even needs more than 500W. Power requirements are usually overblown and out of proportion. Also chances are that driver performance will get better, and the gap will close. It'll get him a fair amount of flexibility (DX11, not too high of a res, PhysX support) at a decent price. I'd almost encourage that he scales back even further to 57xx cards, to save even more.

Oh and Athlon II x4 vs Phenom II x4 @ Tom's Hardware- The L3 cache doesn't give much benefit, at least with most programs. It means he'll be fine, and he can OC it too if he wants to for more performance, if he finds it necessary.

mouthforbathory

which review for the 465 did you read? preformance wise its equal to a gtx 275 if not one with a factory OC. which is rather inferior to a 5850.. yes it has high frames but its lowest thresholds are dismal. it can dip to as low as 16fps in some games next to the 4890 or 5830's 20+ under the same conditions. the 465 is a joke plain and simple.

and yes the athalon II x4's arent bad but they oc poorly.. very poorly and in a manner of speaking it is more cost effective to go phenom II x4 over athalon II x4 as if and when quad cores go mianstream they will probably get picked off relatively quickly.

AMD quad cores are already kind of picked off. It's the price that keeps them competitive. Compared to i7s and i5s they are rather piss poor. And I still think he'll be fine with the GTX 465.

AMD quad cores are already kind of picked off. It's the price that keeps them competitive. Compared to i7s and i5s they are rather piss poor. And I still think he'll be fine with the GTX 465.

mouthforbathory

then why tell him to spend money un necissarily gtx 275/gtx 275 co-op edition and put this one to bed..

how does this sound? it would play all the latest games at high huh?

cpu- AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Deneb 3.2GHz Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor Model HDZ955FBGMBOX

mobo:

MSI 870A-G54 AM3 AMD 870 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard

video card: GIGABYTE GV-R585OC-1GD Radeon HD 5850 (Cypress Pro) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video ...

RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-4GBRL

PSU: Antec EarthWatts EA650 650W Continuous Power ATX12V Ver.2.2 / EPS12V version 2.91 SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified ...

any problems?????

how does this sound? it would play all the latest games at high huh?

cpu- AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Deneb 3.2GHz Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor Model HDZ955FBGMBOX

mobo:

MSI 870A-G54 AM3 AMD 870 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard

video card: GIGABYTE GV-R585OC-1GD Radeon HD 5850 (Cypress Pro) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video ...

RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-4GBRL

PSU: Antec EarthWatts EA650 650W Continuous Power ATX12V Ver.2.2 / EPS12V version 2.91 SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified ...

any problems?????

rrric