Is this a good gaming PC? Never built one before...

I'm getting my drivers license soon, then getting a job, so I'll probably going to build a PC sometime this year. All my friends have pretty good PCs and I'm stuck with a mediocre system with a 6600 :roll: I plan on playing COD4, and maybe Crysis.

Case: Antec 900 - $119.99

PSU: OCZ GameXStream 600W - $109.99 (My friend keeps getting on my back about this saying that I don't need 600W but for 109.99 why not?)

Motherboard: ASUS P5N-E nForce 650i -$119.99

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 2.66GHz - $189.99 (Plan on OC'ing it to atleast 3GHz and I know nothing about OC'ing so if you know any other part that would be better please say so)

CPU Fan: Zalman 9500A - $48.99 (I heard a lot about this fan and it had good reviews on newegg :P)

RAM: Corsair XMS2 2G - $74.00 (Is there something here I should know about because 74 bucks for this memory sounds too good to be true)

GPU - EVGA 8800GT 512MB 60MHz Coreclock - $239.99

Hard Drive - Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 320GB - $84.99

Disk Drive - Samsung DVD and CD Drive and Burner - $27.99

OK eveything added up to about $1015.92 and I'm gonna be doing the mail-in rebates so it will be roughly 80 dollars cheaper. Oh and if you have any suggestions feel free to say so. Thanks in advance.

How soon are you building this machine? If it's not in the next week or so, don't even bother planning this just yet. There are a few things wrong with the build however:

1: That power supply is...well, I've seen and heard more than one bad thing about it. I personally wouldn't use it to power one of my own rigs. If you want excessive power, the PC Power & Cooling Silencer 610w is a good bet for a little more. If you want to listen to me and your friend, you don't need that much power, and can just go with a cheaper unit like the Corsair VX450w.

2: That motherboard is outdated, outclassed, and just not a good board at this point in time. If you want SLI, you don't want an old 650i board, and if you want to overclock, you probably don't want the P5N-E or any other 650i chipset board. Don't bother with SLI, just pick up a decent P35 board. The DFI Blood Iron P35 T2RL looks to be a good choice right now, I highly recommend it.

3: E6750? I'd shoot for the Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 instead. The price is a bit elevated at the moment, but it should stabilize below $200 within a few months. Even while it is inflated though, it's an amazing processor for the price. It's clocked at 3.0GHz, and most cihps will hit 4.0GHz stable with a minimum of fuss. Or you could consider a quad-core chip like the Intel Xeon X3210, or one of the new Yorkfield chips when they come out in a few months.

4: CNPS9500? Not that great a heatsink anymore. It's louder than most of its top-tier competitors, it uses a proprietary fan that's not going to be easy to change, and doesn't cool all that well compared to some other coolers on the market. Pick up a Tuniq Tower 120 instead.

5: You think $74 for 2x1GB of Corsair XMS2 is a great deal? Not so much. Try 2x1GB of Crucial Ballistix RAM for $69, $39 after mail-in-rebate. Now that's a deal, and you're guaranteed to get Micron D9 chips, and don't have to muck about with the chip lottery Corsair has going on.

6: That's a good card for the price now, but graphics cards change faster than any other component in computing. Even this time next month that card might not be the one to get, and a few months down the road, nobody knows what might be best. Hold off on selecting this until it's crunch time. Keep a fairly loose budget of between $150-$300 for it, that's usually the sweet spot for performance and price.

7: Make sure that DVD RW drive is a SATA connection, not IDE.

How soon are you building this machine? If it's not in the next week or so, don't even bother planning this just yet. There are a few things wrong with the build however:

1: That power supply is...well, I've seen and heard more than one bad thing about it. I personally wouldn't use it to power one of my own rigs. If you want excessive power, the PC Power & Cooling Silencer 610w is a good bet for a little more. If you want to listen to me and your friend, you don't need that much power, and can just go with a cheaper unit like the Corsair VX450w.

2: That motherboard is outdated, outclassed, and just not a good board at this point in time. If you want SLI, you don't want an old 650i board, and if you want to overclock, you probably don't want the P5N-E or any other 650i chipset board. Don't bother with SLI, just pick up a decent P35 board. The DFI Blood Iron P35 T2RL looks to be a good choice right now, I highly recommend it.

3: E6750? I'd shoot for the Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 instead. The price is a bit elevated at the moment, but it should stabilize below $200 within a few months. Even while it is inflated though, it's an amazing processor for the price. It's clocked at 3.0GHz, and most cihps will hit 4.0GHz stable with a minimum of fuss. Or you could consider a quad-core chip like the Intel Xeon X3210, or one of the new Yorkfield chips when they come out in a few months.

4: CNPS9500? Not that great a heatsink anymore. It's louder than most of its top-tier competitors, it uses a proprietary fan that's not going to be easy to change, and doesn't cool all that well compared to some other coolers on the market. Pick up a Tuniq Tower 120 instead.

5: You think $74 for 2x1GB of Corsair XMS2 is a great deal? Not so much. Try 2x1GB of Crucial Ballistix RAM for $69, $39 after mail-in-rebate. Now that's a deal, and you're guaranteed to get Micron D9 chips, and don't have to muck about with the chip lottery Corsair has going on.

6: That's a good card for the price now, but graphics cards change faster than any other component in computing. Even this time next month that card might not be the one to get, and a few months down the road, nobody knows what might be best. Hold off on selecting this until it's crunch time. Keep a fairly loose budget of between $150-$300 for it, that's usually the sweet spot for performance and price.

7: Make sure that DVD RW drive is a SATA connection, not IDE.

RayvinAzn

wow rayvin thanks for making me feel like a total dummy lol jk anyways what about the EVGA nForce 680i is this a good board for OCing and SLI?

2 recommendations:

Get a P35 motherboard instead of 650i

Get a corsair psu instead of an OCZ (corsair 550 or 520 would be good for your pc)

2 recommendations:

Get a P35 motherboard instead of 650i

Get a corsair psu instead of an OCZ (corsair 550 or 520 would be good for your pc)

Mr_NoName111

How soon are you building this machine? If it's not in the next week or so, don't even bother planning this just yet. There are a few things wrong with the build however:

1: That power supply is...well, I've seen and heard more than one bad thing about it. I personally wouldn't use it to power one of my own rigs. If you want excessive power, the PC Power & Cooling Silencer 610w is a good bet for a little more. If you want to listen to me and your friend, you don't need that much power, and can just go with a cheaper unit like the Corsair VX450w.

2: That motherboard is outdated, outclassed, and just not a good board at this point in time. If you want SLI, you don't want an old 650i board, and if you want to overclock, you probably don't want the P5N-E or any other 650i chipset board. Don't bother with SLI, just pick up a decent P35 board. The DFI Blood Iron P35 T2RL looks to be a good choice right now, I highly recommend it.

3: E6750? I'd shoot for the Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 instead. The price is a bit elevated at the moment, but it should stabilize below $200 within a few months. Even while it is inflated though, it's an amazing processor for the price. It's clocked at 3.0GHz, and most cihps will hit 4.0GHz stable with a minimum of fuss. Or you could consider a quad-core chip like the Intel Xeon X3210, or one of the new Yorkfield chips when they come out in a few months.

4: CNPS9500? Not that great a heatsink anymore. It's louder than most of its top-tier competitors, it uses a proprietary fan that's not going to be easy to change, and doesn't cool all that well compared to some other coolers on the market. Pick up a Tuniq Tower 120 instead.

5: You think $74 for 2x1GB of Corsair XMS2 is a great deal? Not so much. Try 2x1GB of Crucial Ballistix RAM for $69, $39 after mail-in-rebate. Now that's a deal, and you're guaranteed to get Micron D9 chips, and don't have to muck about with the chip lottery Corsair has going on.

6: That's a good card for the price now, but graphics cards change faster than any other component in computing. Even this time next month that card might not be the one to get, and a few months down the road, nobody knows what might be best. Hold off on selecting this until it's crunch time. Keep a fairly loose budget of between $150-$300 for it, that's usually the sweet spot for performance and price.

7: Make sure that DVD RW drive is a SATA connection, not IDE.

RayvinAzn

I am going to have to disagree with your second point there. It is outdated but is still a good board at least I should say chipset. If you pay attention to the benchmarks on OCing on this board they are pretty exceptional. But the reason I say good chipset is because it is. I hate the asus version of this board has it has no cooler in the North Bridge and I will be replacing it soon because it blue screens on me all the time. I have tested all my other parts in a P35 board and have not gotten a blue screen. So I will be tossing this Asus board out here soon.

[QUOTE="Ajtriple2"]I have the OCZ GameXStream 600w and it is the best psu I have ever had in my life. It is extremely quiet, and the blue led is noticable but not too bright, it mearely complements a good case. It is even extremely quiet at full load (which the box says is 700w of output).SEANMCAD

I am somewhat hijacking the orginal question with my own question. I reciently learned that a larger power supply actually uses less power becuase it can get the job done faster which also seems to suggest to me a larger power supply also means faster performance in general. Is this true?

My 400watt sounds is about as loud as a diswasher and when its running I pretty much dont need to run the heat in the apartment during winter by the way.

That makes no sense. Where'd you learn that?

Power supplies all have comfortable ranges of operation. For most of them this is between 20-80% load, where they have the least ripple, highest efficiency, etc. Larger power supplies powering weaker rigs actually perform worse than smaller ones, since the standard power draw of the system is often below the "comfortable" operating range of the power supply, or at the very least below the ideal power curve. You want your system's idle power draw to be within the comfort zone of the power supply, yet still have a bit of extra headroom on the upper end of things to stay within that comfort zone.

Get a corsair VX550 watt.Dont bother with their HX series which is ridiculously priced and have multiple rails instead of one which i dont like.If you really need modular cabling than go with a corsair HX520 but it's $40 more than the VX550.:?

Get an E8400.Fantastic CPU.And for the GPU get the 512MB 8800 GTS.

And as rayin pointed out very well that keep an eye open for the market of GPU's till the last day of you purchasing it.

Get a corsair VX550 watt.Dont bother with their HX series which is ridiculously priced and have multiple rails instead of one which i dont like.If you really need modular cabling than go with a corsair HX520 but it's $40 more than the VX550.:?

Thinker_145

The VX550w is a Channelwell built unit. Far from terrible, but not on par with the Seasonic-built VX450w and HX series. And they dont' have true multiple rails (indeed, almost no power supplies on the market do), just OCP that prevents any single rail from being overloaded. The HX520w has a single 40a +12v rail with current limiters. There's nothing wrong with a multiple-rail design, that's a myth PC Power & Cooling started to help them cover up from a flop they had on one of their higher-end units.

[QUOTE="Thinker_145"]

Get a corsair VX550 watt.Dont bother with their HX series which is ridiculously priced and have multiple rails instead of one which i dont like.If you really need modular cabling than go with a corsair HX520 but it's $40 more than the VX550.:?

RayvinAzn

The VX550w is a Channelwell built unit. Far from terrible, but not on par with the Seasonic-built VX450w and HX series. And they dont' have true multiple rails (indeed, almost no power supplies on the market do), just OCP that prevents any single rail from being overloaded. The HX520w has a single 40a +12v rail with current limiters. There's nothing wrong with a multiple-rail design, that's a myth PC Power & Cooling started to help them cover up from a flop they had on one of their higher-end units.

I dont understand why companies decieve their customers.You would think that the VX550 is all that is VX450 and more.Just like how a 512MB GTS is better than a 640MB GTS.

The VX550w is certainly capable of putting out more power than the VX450w, so in that sense it is a better unit. It's just not quite as well-built, and from what I've seen doesn't handle cross-loading as well. Not that most users will ever push them that hard of course. The VX550w is a good power supply, don't get me wrong - but between the HX520w (which you can find for around $110, Newegg is doing some more price gouging on that unit because it's so popular) and the VX550w, it's no contest in my opinion.RayvinAzn