Any hardcore computer hardware/DIY build people in here?

[MrCoffee]

I've decided to build my own desktop, and would appreciate any advice you could offer. This is definitely not a hardcore gaming rig, but I do enjoy the occasional 4X strategy game and would like to run Civ V at a minimum.

I'm looking at an AMD Phenom II X2 555 Black Edition. I've read about people having great luck unlocking this chip to a stable 3.6GHz quad. If I don't get lucky unlocking the extra cores, I'll still be completely happy with a dual core chip that can handle 3.8GHz on a stock fan for less than $90.

Primarily, I'm totally in the dark regarding GPU's. So, to kick off the intense interrogation, let's start with:

Which is your preference, ATI or Nvidia?

Onboard chipset (modest price increase for a mobo), or independent video card (cheap mobo, could be spendy for the card)?

Anyone know anything about ATI CrossFireX? Is the performance upgrade worth it? Can you crossfire a compatable card with an onboard GPU?

[HopeHoops]

1. Over the years, I've had far better luck with Nvidia all around and on all OS's.

I've had machines that would freeze up for no obvious reason and replacing the graphics card solved the problem. I've never had an Nvidia card BE the problem, but I have had it solve it.

As for cores, I've got a 6-core Intel i7 in my Win 7 box (3.33GHz, but apparently you can get 3.6GHz) and it just plain fucking screams. If you can spring for that, go for it. I've also got 24GB in that box. I'm not expecting to have to upgrade it for a long time.

I still have my first 486 - that was a new motherboard for a 386 machine and it had slots for both types of memory at the time (when it was REALLY fucking expensive). I remember upgrading that machine from 4MB to 8MB (to let Freddi Fish run) and the extra 4MB cost $300!!! That was actually a good deal at the time.

[EOTE]

3. You've got a 980x?

If so, you can get a lot more than 3.6Ghz out of it. I've got a "lowly" i7 920 which runs stock at 2.66Ghz. My Gaming profile has it running at 4.5Ghz and it does it without the slightest bit of issue. I've had it as far as 4.8Ghz when it finally started giving me problems. Those i7 chips overclock like mad with the right motherboard. As for RAM, I've "only" got 6 gigs in my rig and that's still more than I can imagine fully using for quite a while.

[HopeHoops]

5. I bought it in May and 3.33 was the top end at the time. I know, I know - ages ago.

As for the 24GB, fire up VS2010 with a large project and you'll need more than 6GB. I've got two 1.5TB drives in the box and six 1TB external drives hanging off of the USB ports (with hubs). They serve a number of purposes including development, backup, and storage for the other machines in the house (which includes six laptops and a few other towers). Then there are a dozen or so older external drives I plug in as needed ranging in size from 320GB to .8TB. That's just the shit that's active. I've got legacy stuff going back to the late 70's.

[EOTE]

8. 3.33Ghz is the highest stock frequency that Intel offers now, I believe.

Odd considering that some P4s, which are now several years old, had stock frequency damn near 4Ghz. But what I'm saying is that your 980X can go a hell of a lot higher than that, even if you have stock cooling, and without really effecting the lifespan of your CPU. Even when I had my i7 on cheap air cooling, I was able to get 4Ghz out of it easily, without overvolting. Now that I've got a cheap water cooling system (Corsair H50, which I LOVE), I'm able to run at 4.5 night and day without any problems (and damned near silent as well).

As for the RAM, you must be working with some absolutely massive projects. I can multitask with Badaboom encoding HD video, a 1080P video outputting to my living room, while playing Crysis with torrents and CS5 benchmarks running in the background and my RAM utilization rarely breaks 20%. I know eventually I'm going to need more than 6 gigs, but I can't imagine I will for quite a while.

[HopeHoops]

12. With 6 cores, the process meter seldom gets over 50% and only when it is REALLY cookin'

I'm sure in a year it will be obsolete, but for right now I'm more than happy with it. I still have my P90 (and that was the fastest fucker on the planet when I bought it). I don't fire it up much anymore.

[EOTE]

14. Not that you would, but that you could.

I have a hard time even maxing out my 4 cores/8 threads for the great bulk of what I do. The one area where I have found my overclock is really helpful is for games that don't support more than 2 cores or for games that can truly utilize my two GTX 285s. Crysis is one of those games. I was getting performance gains even as I was pushing my i7 past 4.5Ghz. Mild performance gains, but performance gains none-the-less. You need an awful lot of CPU power to not bottleneck two powerful GPUs.

As for being obsolete in a year, I wouldn't count on it. CPUs have really been advancing performance wise faster than most any component. An i7 CPU isn't going to be a bottleneck for most applications for a very long time. If you find your system lagging over time and want a really good way to speed things up, replace your conventional hard drive with a SSD. SSDs are so much faster than conventional hard drives that the performance boost is amazing even in very fast systems to begin with.

[HopeHoops]

15. I dont' play many games these days (well, other than board games).

As for SSDs, I'm sure they will replace mechanical drives in the near future. My 10.2" HP mini came with Linux pre-installed, 6GB of memory, and a 24GB SSD. It boots in seconds and wakes up from sleep state in less than a second. I like that. It also doesn't weigh anything. I can easily hold it in one hand while typing with the other. That's obviously not the preferred way to interact with it, but it works. Damn nice box.

The X980 really comes in handy when doing a clean build on a large project. It fucking screams.

[MrCoffee]

4. Simply based on personal preference/prejudice, I'm going with AMD

I have no objective rationale for doing so, just personally I like AMD's style.

That i7 sounds like a monster. Way more computer than I'll need.

[HopeHoops]

6. I've had excellent luck with AMD chips - and they tend to run cooler than Intel.

As a bonus, they're usually a lot cheaper for the performance as well.

[struggle4progress]

17. I built a desktop with a Athlon II X2 255 and another with a Phenom II X4 965

It's a bit hard to compare them because I built the one machine to see how well I could do on the cheap and the other to see what I could get in the way of speed for a reasonable price. So the mobos are different, and the faster machine has its OS and applications on an SSD. But the nominal cpu speeds aren't that far apart: the Athlon is 3.1ghz and the phenom 3.4ghz

My habits and expectations are conditioned somewhat by the fact that my main machine is a dual quadcore, so I open lots of windows and desktops and applications and then multitask. I think the Athlon II X2 255 is a perfectly decent processor, but the dual core seems to bottleneck some in multitasking. So I think I really prefer quadcores myself

Now, I did once consider buying a dual core in order to unlock it. But I talked myself out of it by the following argument, which may or may not be correct -- so you won't offend me if you think it's a bunch of horse-pucks: The manufacturers make these things in big batches, of uneven quality, and then bin them for sale according to how they actually perform; if they're selling some with locked corers, it might be a market strategy but it might also be that the processor just isn't the highest quality one from that batch; so, if I buy a dual core that I can unlock to quad core, I might have two good cores and two iffy cores, where if I buy a quad core, I might have a better chance of getting four good cores; and if they're locking two cores on a quad core because there was some testing problem with those cores due to a manufacturing defect, then there may be a higher than normal probability of other defects on the chip

[MrCoffee]

19. All of those are absolutely reasonable concerns

I'm going with the Phenom II x2 because maybe I'll get lucky, maybe not. Still, it's a huge improvement over what I'm running now, even just out of the box.

Plus, with the AM3 architecture, I can always upgrade to a quad or hexacore later.

[EOTE]

2. You definitely want a discrete video card.

And I think I'd need to know more information about your budget and all before I could make other solid suggestions.

The 555 is a really nice chip for the price. Here's a good motherboard to go along with it that seems to have fairly good luck unlocking the other cores:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130295&Tpk=MSI%20880GM-E41

Do you do a lot of multitasking?

I've generally been a Nvidia person as my last 3 GPUs have been Nvidia, but ATI makes a lot of good GPUs now too. The reason I'm still in Nvidia's camp is because of their CUDA architecture which allows me to do a lot of other cool things with my GPU (like encode video at about 10x the speed of my CPU alone) and support for Physx.

You mention CrossFire/CrossFireX, but I'm not sure if you should really be interested in that route unless you're looking to make a hardcore gaming rig. You'd generally need a beefy power supply as well as a compatible motherboard which will drive your costs up. Even if you were planning on making a hardcore gaming rig, it's often better to get a higher end single card than using two lower powered cards. To answer your last question, you can "crossfire" a compatible card with certain ATI onboard GPUs, but it's not "crossfire" in the traditional sense of gaining increased graphical horsepower, rather your computer will switch between the two GPUs on its own depending on what is needed. So it's really for preserving energy than anything else.

If you're looking for a good GPU for around $100, check out Slickdeals.net. Recently I saw an ATI Radeon 4870 for $100 shipped. That's about the best GPU you'll find for that price. On the Nvidia side, the GTS 250 will run almost everything out there now with good frame rates.

[MrCoffee]

7. That is the clearest explanation of the crossfire setup I've read...thank you!

Everything I've read on unlocking the 555 is that you need the right southbridge/BIOS combo. The AMD SB710 southbridge seems to be the key to scoring a quad, assuming the extra cores are good.

The main reason I'm looking at onboard video is cost. I'm trying to build this computer on the cheap (>$400), and my proposed parts list so far is right there with video on the mobo, just to get it up and running.

I won't mind spending $100 or so for a video card in six months or so if I need it. If I can get by with onboard video, that would be super.

Here's the mobo I'm looking at: Biostar A785GE

[EOTE]

11. If you're looking to run Civilization 5, you'll want to avoid integrated GPUs.

The recommended minimum GPU is a 4830 for ATI or the 9800GT for Nvidia GPUs. I know you can often get by with below recommended specs, but no onboard GPU really comes close to 9800GT performance.

That Biostar is a good motherboard, but for a little bit more, you can get a more recent, more capable chipset and higher quality components as well.

Regarding your CPU, you should know that even budget CPUs offer a ton of performance (especially if you consider overclocking). If you'd like to make a system for around $400 that can play Civ 5, here's what I'd recommend:

CPU: AMD Athlon II X2 245 $58
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103687

Motherboard: MSI 880GM-E41 $65
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130295&Tpk=MSI%20880GM-E41

GPU: ATI Radeon 4870 $100 (From Microcenter through Slickdeals.net, after rebate).

Case/Power supply: HEC 6K28BBX585 $60
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811121004

RAM: G-Skill 4 GB DDR3 set $78
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231190

That all comes out to around $360, you'd just need to add a hard drive and optical drive and you'd be good to go. Also, you should know that the 880GM-E41 does come with an on-board GPU, so you could always get a discrete one later, if that's the way you'd like to go.

On edit: According to Firaxis, Civ 5 does support integrated graphics if it's in an Intel Core i3 or above (the i3 has the GPU integrated on-die and are faster than typical on-board GPUs). But going this route would require you to get a more expensive CPU as well as motherboard. And even then, gaming performance wouldn't be anywhere near as good as if you bought a cheaper CPU and a discrete GPU.

[MrCoffee]

20. Whoa...that is the uber post!

I'm loving the 880GM-E41 spec sheet. I have to go, but I'll be back with more questions for you.

[EOTE]

21. Just let me know.

When hardware was advancing a bit faster than it is right now, I used to do a refresh of my system about every 18 months. I got the great bulk of my current rig in January of '09 and I've found that at the moment, I don't really have a need to upgrade. With the exception of Crysis, I can run pretty much every game I want to at the settings/resolution I want to everything is still very snappy with Windows 7. In a while, I might get a decent sized SSD for my primary drive, that should be more than enough speed for a while. I wish I had more motivation to upgrade though, because when I come home to find those Newegg boxes waiting for me, it feels like Christmas, but without all the unnecessary stress. So this is one of my favorite hobbies.

[flvegan]

9. MrCoffee is building a gaming rig.

I predict it will be something to rival the Atari 2600.

I dub thee Future Pongmaster D.

[MrCoffee]

10. Shut up! Combat was awesome

My tanks will eat your tanks for lunch.

[ohiosmith]

13. Dude, don't waste your time building it. I'll give you a hell of a deal on one.

[struggle4progress]

16. Double-check! Double-check! Double-check!

Look at specs on the seller's website, look at the specs on the manufacturer's website, and google some combos to see if anybody is reporting incompatibilities

For my first build, I picked a mobo that I liked, looked at several processors that would fit the socket, from that I chose a particular processor series and examined them in detail -- but failed to notice the manufacturer CHANGED SOCKETS in the middle of the series, so I ordered a cpu that wouldn't fit. Fortunately I noticed my stupidity before I opened any boxes, and I was able to return the cpu without any pain at all

On my third build, I went carefully through tons of documentation and learned that although mobo A would take cpu B and ram C, something prevented ram C from working with cpu B: no biggie, but I was glad to catch it before I bought mobo A, cpu B, and ram C together for the build

If you want to overclock on air, you'll probably need a good cooler and a case with good airflow, and you'll probably find that the stock fans are very noisy. Make sure the cooler and graphics cards will fit the case. I bought a neat case this summer for a little build that I don't need a big cooler or big graphics card in, but if I did -- they simply wouldn't fit. None of the cases I've bought have sharp edges but if you websearch, you'll find lots of tales of people slicing themselves bloody on some cases

Power connectors and memory can seem securely seated when they're not. I had some builds fail to boot, and after I thoroughly rechecked everything, it was something stupid like "the power connector needs to be pushed in a bit harder" or "the memory isn't really seated until it moves another 1/32 of an inch"

Buy only from reputable sellers. There are frauds and scams out here in WebLand.

[Rosie1223]

18. There is some awesome geekiness in this thread!

[TrogL]

22. I recently switched back to ATI

Primarily because I was having too many driver issues with Nvidia.

Never, ever, ever use the motherboard video. It won't run anything more intense than basic text.