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Advice on build


Shingy

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Hey people I'm building a desktop for my brother. He plans on using it mainly for HD movies, internet browsing, and some light gaming. He already has a mouse and keyboard. He wants it to be fast but not too expensive. Here are the parts I've chosen so far:

 

Intel Core i5 2400 Sandy Bridge 3.10GHz

GIGABYTE GA-Z68M-D2H LGA 1155 Intel Z68

CORSAIR XMS3 4GB (2 X 2GB) DDR3-1600 Dual Channel Kit CMX4GX3M2A1600C9

OCZ Vertex Plus OCZSSD2-1VTXPL60G 2.5" 60GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive

EVGA GeForce GTX550 Ti FPB 1GB GDDR5 PCI-E

LG CH12LS28 Blu-ray Combo 12x Super Multi Blue LightScribe with 3D Play back

CoolerMaster Elite 334 Mid Tower w/ 420W PSU

 

That's it. He said he doesn't need internal storage because he has 3 1TB external hard drives. How does it look?

 

EDIT: By the way he plans on using his 42" plasma as the monitor.

Edited by Shingy

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60 Gig is a little lite for the sole internal storage, I would say go 120 gig at least. Can you define light gaming? I mean if we are talking Facebook style games then the onbaord video would be enough.

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I'd say get a regular HDD instead and use the money on a slightly bigger PSU. I know that neither CPU nor the GPU uses huge amounts of power, but it would be safer to go at least for a 500w. The idea of using the external drive would, at least for me, get annoying in the end. But that's just my 2 cent

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The thing is the SSD I chose is around the same price as 500GB hard drives around here. And seeing as he is mainly using this comp for media and has 3TB of external storage I figured he wouldn't be needing any more.

 

Light gaming as in a casual game of CoD or other shooters every now and then or something like that.

 

I think all he would install on the SSD is Windows, Firefox, Office, Nero, VLC player, AVS video converter, and the odd why-not kind of freeware. Doesn't that total to around 25gb? Maybe a game or two on the SSD and the rest on the external would be fine wouldn't it?

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I would also go with 8g of ram rather then 4g..

I use my computer for 'hardcore gaming' and I have 4GB and I haven't really come across any problems. What is the benefit of more RAM?

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You should be aware that the SSD you chose is absolute crap. I bought three of them when they went on sale and all of them were DOA. When I RMAed them, they were slow and useless.

 

Go to best buy and pick up a seagate hard drive 1tb for 70 bucks, then go an agility three. Here is the link for the hard drive that you should order, NOW, and here is the one for the agility 3 link.. Then what you do is you use the SRT technology with your SSD to cache your hard drive. Since I don't have time to explain, just google it.

 

Next, try to find a cheap GTX 460 for the same price as your 550ti. It will have better performance and you can always pick up a second one down the road for SLI.

 

Ram: The reason you want 8 gb if nothing else is because you can. On newegg they have sales on 8gb of ram almost daily and it is just to easy to get to pass up.

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You should be aware that the SSD you chose is absolute crap. I bought three of them when they went on sale and all of them were DOA. When I RMAed them, they were slow and useless.

 

Go to best buy and pick up a seagate hard drive 1tb for 70 bucks, then go an agility three. Here is the link for the hard drive that you should order, NOW, and here is the one for the agility 3 link.. Then what you do is you use the SRT technology with your SSD to cache your hard drive. Since I don't have time to explain, just google it.

 

Next, try to find a cheap GTX 460 for the same price as your 550ti. It will have better performance and you can always pick up a second one down the road for SLI.

 

Ram: The reason you want 8 gb if nothing else is because you can. On newegg they have sales on 8gb of ram almost daily and it is just to easy to get to pass up.

Thanks for the reply.

 

Unfortunately I live in New Zealand so product availability for computer parts is ridiculously bad. The 550 Ti that I am buying is NZ$229 and the cheapest 460 on pricespy.co.nz is $294. He also doesn't need much more power than there is in the 550 so I still think the 550 is the best choice. The same is for the RAM. I will be paying about x1.5 at least if I want 8GB of RAM when I'm sure 4GB is plenty.

 

The SSD though, it was one of the cheapest I could find and I've never owned one myself so I don't know much about them. He just does not need that amount of storage. I'm sure a standalone SSD is enough storage with his 3 TB. And what do you mean by slow and useless? Was their speed comparable to a normal HDD?

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Thanks for the reply.

 

Unfortunately I live in New Zealand so product availability for computer parts is ridiculously bad. The 550 Ti that I am buying is NZ$229 and the cheapest 460 on pricespy.co.nz is $294. He also doesn't need much more power than there is in the 550 so I still think the 550 is the best choice. The same is for the RAM. I will be paying about x1.5 at least if I want 8GB of RAM when I'm sure 4GB is plenty.

 

The SSD though, it was one of the cheapest I could find and I've never owned one myself so I don't know much about them. He just does not need that amount of storage. I'm sure a standalone SSD is enough storage with his 3 TB. And what do you mean by slow and useless? Was their speed comparable to a normal HDD?

 

You should still use the SRT technology to cache the hard drive.

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You should still use the SRT technology to cache the hard drive.

I had a look at the SRT technology. Apparently it has faster performance than a HDD by itself but its performance is inconsistent and the performance of a standalone SSD is much more consistent. I was looking at this. And I just looked at NewEgg for reviews about the Vertex Plus. I am definitely not getting that now. There is a 40GB Intel 320 series for around the same price at the store I am buying from. What do you think of that? Reliability of a drive is important for this build.

Edited by Shingy

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Why do you have a 2400 a locked cpu with a z68 board? you may as well go for a H67 board and save heaps on the mobo unless you bump it to a 2500k. True you can use SRT with the Z68 but your not using the board to it full CPU potential.

Also if he is using it for internet browsing and work ect at least get hime to pick up a second monitor 19" or so for around $99 tops. If it is the same aspect ratio and pixle count as the tv which is likely 1920x1080 then your average 19" monitor would be fine to just swap displays frequently. Trying to use a plasma to surf the net is silly especially with the far higher electricity bill. However for movies and games it's perfect.

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