Help From Someone With Good PC Knowledge

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Crispy

Crispy

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crispychicken49
crispychicken49
So, I may sound overconfident, but I do have a fair bit of skills when it comes to trouble shooting, virus cleanup, things of that sort. At the moment, I have a Laptop which I use to surf the internet. I'm getting a new wheel soon, and hopefully iRacing as well, so I'd like to own a desktop. Thing is, if I were to buy a desktop, an okay one would cost a big amount of money. I've heard that building your own PC can be a little cheaper. If so, then I don't want an okay PC, I want a great one!

Here's where I need your help, I would rather it be under $3000, in fact, let me make a list on what stuff I'd like out of my PC.

-Sub $3000 (USD, not including monitors)
-Graphics Card that can support triple monitors, and render stunning graphics
-Good Cooling
-Fast
-Upwards of 5 MB of RAM
-Medium Sized Hardrive
-Nice Looking Shell
-Good for playing games

Of course, if you have any suggestions for something I forgot to include. Also, I'd like it if you include a link to one or more reviews of the product in question. Thank you for your help!

List
-NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570
 
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5MB of RAM is not going to get you far! :sly:
In all seriousness, have you had a look on the like of Dell, HP and Alienware's websites?
 
You can build a monster gaming pc for under 2 grand. For triple screens though you might be closer to 3k. Here is a build a guy did on here recently
https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/showthread.php?t=228548

If you want triple screens get rid of his graphics card and get 2 gtx 3 gig 580s,
This case http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...at_Computer_Cases-_-Best_Sellers-_-11-119-160
and a 1000 watt PSU just to be safe.

You should be under your 3000k price for that and have a monster rig. I have something similar to that except I have 2 gtx 570s instead of 580s and can max out any game there is and be over 60fps all the time. One thing you want to make sure though is you get a video card that has plenty of ram for triple screens. The best ones you can get are the ones I listed, the 3 gig gtx 580s. You could play any game triple screen with those.

I'm sure there will be some people that tell you to get a single ATI card, and that would also be a good option, but 2, 3 gig 580s can only be beat by more 580s.
I would also suggest to buy some used or refurbished cards. MSI has a 3 year warrenty on all their cards,a nd it goes by serial number so you can use it even if you buy used. Both of my 570s are used and I seaved about 200$ buying them that way. Newegg has super deals on open box items. You can get 500$ cards on there for half price. You just have to keep checking for them.
 
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I don't mean to say anything bad about that suggestion, but it has a 600$CPU and a 200$ non SSD. There is no need whatsoever for a 600$ CPU and why would anyone pay 200$ for a normal hard drive. Plus it's a green drive. If your building a 3000$ PC I'm pretty sure you want speed and don't care if your hard drive is eco friendly or not. Take that 200$ and buy a decent size SSD, and take another 70$ and get a caviar black hard drive.

I just went and looked up hard drive prices. In the last 6 months they have over doubled. I got a 1TB black in june for 70$ now there 160$. I guess the flooding really did make them go way up in price. I thought people were blowing it out of proportion.

Here would be a great SSD http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227706
Here would be a great HDD http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136856
If you want a bigger HDD I would wait and buy it later. The prices are bound to drop back down, and you will be able to get a 1tb for half that price.
 
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Just remember guys, just cause he had 3k to spend doesn't mean he has to spend 3k.

Find out what exactly he will be using it for. If all it's going to do is play iRacing with 3 screens then you don't need to spend 3k. Or money could be spent elsewhere (Like 3xU2711 if he's looking for racing immersion). 'Good for playing games' isn't specific enough.
 
Thanks for all the suggestions, I really like that case as well. I was also, for the graphics card, looking at the 580's about two or so months ago. I most likely will go out and purchase those for my graphics card!

As Casio said, I don't need to spend $3,000, I'm pretty sure I could do it around 2,000 or less.

Oh and another good thing, I found a backup external HDD laying around, thinking of using it as a main HD, seeing as that would really cut prices.

What I mean by "Good for gaming" is that I want to be able to run almost any game to it's full potential, while still having at least 60 FPS at all times. I'd also like to play other games like GTR2, rFactor 2, (when it comes out) iRacing, maybe C.A.R.S and Minecraft, although I can run Minecraft on my Laptop with 40 FPS at the minimum on a bad day.

What are the advantages of running two graphics cards instead of one? What are the disadvantages? What are the advantages of liquid cooling systems, what do I need to do to upkeep a liquid cooling system?
 
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bevo
I don't mean to say anything bad about that suggestion, but it has a 600$CPU and a 200$ non SSD. There is no need whatsoever for a 600$ CPU and why would anyone pay 200$ for a normal hard drive. Plus it's a green drive. If your building a 3000$ PC I'm pretty sure you want speed and don't care if your hard drive is eco friendly or not. Take that 200$ and buy a decent size SSD, and take another 70$ and get a caviar black hard drive.

I just went and looked up hard drive prices. In the last 6 months they have over doubled. I got a 1TB black in june for 70$ now there 160$. I guess the flooding really did make them go way up in price. I thought people were blowing it out of proportion.

Here would be a great SSD http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227706
Here would be a great HDD http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136856
If you want a bigger HDD I would wait and buy it later. The prices are bound to drop back down, and you will be able to get a 1tb for half that price.
Click to expand...
STARTING POINT.

It gets a lot out of the way. The HDD is crap for frequent use, but would be great for Long Term Storage.



I honestly have doubts of the OP being able to afford any of it anyways..
 
crispychicken49
Thanks for all the suggestions, I really like that case as well. I was also, for the graphics card, looking at the 580's about two or so months ago. I most likely will go out and purchase those for my graphics card!

As Casio said, I don't need to spend $3,000, I'm pretty sure I could do it around 2,000 or less.

Oh and another good thing, I found a backup external HDD laying around, thinking of using it as a main HD, seeing as that would really cut prices.

What I mean by "Good for gaming" is that I want to be able to run almost any game to it's full potential, while still having at least 60 FPS at all times. I'd also like to play other games like GTR2, rFactor 2, (when it comes out) iRacing, maybe C.A.R.S and Minecraft, although I can run Minecraft on my Laptop with 40 FPS at the minimum on a bad day.

What are the advantages of running two graphics cards instead of one? What are the disadvantages? What are the advantages of liquid cooling systems, what do I need to do to upkeep a liquid cooling system?
Click to expand...

The one thing that will make your computer experience better then anything else you can buy is an SSD. You put windows on your SSD and a couple games that you play all the time, and you will have almost no load times at all. Everything in windows will be instant.

The advantage of 2 cards is almost twice the power and speed
disadvantage is that sometimes you might have a few hicups here and there with brand new games, but usually after the first patch things will start running perfect. With Nvidia cards you have to have at least 2 cards to run 3 screens anyway.

Unless you are planning on overclocking there is really no need for liquid cooling. Just buy a couple decent fans. You could get an H60 for you CPU if you want to be really careful with your temps, but to liquid cool everything would run you well over 500$ and there would be the chance of screwing it up and ruining everything. With the h60 it's pretty much foolproof, and if it does end up leaking corsair will refund anything that gets ruined.
 
As the OP of the 'your thoughts please' thread, I thought I'd share a few things I've learned over the past couple of months.

1. Don't forget to buy good fans, even though they aren't cheap. I didn't and as a result had scary temps of around 80C. I got a pair of Scythe Gentle Typhoons and they dropped quite a lot, which was nice. I want to add two more, and if I do that's £70 I've gone over the original budget which isn't an insignificant amount.

2. The 1.5GB MSI GTX 580 Frozr II is a great card that can run most of the traditional benchmark games at high if not maxed settings at a very playable frame rate, so I wouldn't hesitate to recommend the 3GB version.

3. Don't skimp on the PSU or the case, of course you can buy cheap alternatives but a Gold or higher rated modular PSU is what you should aim for. As for the case, you'll find the build process and subsequent messing around inside a lot easier with a good case.

4. This may cause controversy but an i5 is really all you need for games, they're not usually too CPU intensive so an i7 is kind of overkill. I bought a 2500K with the intent to OC, but for the added temperature and stress it puts on the system I just didn't see the point when it ran everything perfectly and not even near 100% load.

5. Listen to these guys, they taught me a lot and I owe a lot of my success in building my PC to them.

6. Don't get an AMD graphics card, they still haven't released functioning drivers for Rage...

7. 8GB of RAM is a good amount. Don't aim to fill every RAM slot just because you can, it'll place more stress on the system if you ever decide to OC.

8. This is my completely uninformed opinion, but I'd avoid liquid cooling if you can. I think you should exclude it from your budget, build a PC without it, then see if you need it. An i5 2500K at 3.3GHz won't need it, and I don't think you'll need to OC the graphics cards either, at least not for multi-screening games that already exist. Air cooling should be fine, but as I said, I have no experience or knowledge of it.

Like I said, I am new to building PCs so take my advice with a pinch of salt and a lot of research, but maybe I've mentioned something you haven't thought of, I don't know.

Edit: you asked about disadvantages of multi-card setups; look up 'microstuttering', it might not be an issue, but then again it might, I don't know.
 
I would wait off building as HDDs will set you back a bit since they went up by price by 100%.

500GB is around $100
1TB is around $160
2TB is around $240

The floods in Thailand are to blame.

bevo
You could get an H60 for you CPU if you want to be really careful with your temps, but to liquid cool everything would run you well over 500$
Click to expand...

Not really that unit is about 25~75% the cost of a full water cooling loop, just depends on the waterblocks, tubes, pumps, fittings and water tanks you get.

I have the H50 and it is quite good.

I get 28C idel, 39C full load in a room that is about 24C.
Today when my room is 30C my idel temp is 35C and full peaks at 50C.

Stick with air cooling then when you have more knowledge in computers and money get a full water loop.
 
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Grayfox
Not really that unit is about 25~75% the cost of a full water cooling loop, just depends on the waterblocks, tubes, pumps, fittings and water tanks you get.
.
Click to expand...

Waterblocks for dual graphic cards alone would be around 200$. Going water everywhere cost alot. That's just for the blocks for the cards, start putting in multiple radiators and a big pump and it gets close 500$ if not more. I was thinking about going full water until I started piecing it together. I might have misunderstood your post though, 25-75% is a pretty big window, If I did please forgive me. 25% might be right if you went with a single GPU but no way that you could go full water for 100$, unless you knew someone selling used very cheap.
 
I saw the NVIDIA 580 Series today, does it come with two already, or just one? They were $500. Also, how is the Radeon Graphics cards? They looked like they were going cheap.

I have an old PC I can take apart to look at to see how everything goes, that should help quite a bit during the building phase.
 
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The 500$ 580 is just one card. If your looking at 580's you should get the 3GB ones, if you don't want the 3GB ones there is almost no point in spending the extra on a 580. It only gets you around 10 more FPS, and you can get 2 570s for almost the same price and blow away any single card on the market. If you don't want to go the SLI route then you can always just overclock your 570 in about 10 minutes using MSI afterburner, and it will beat any 580 sold unless you overclock it also. I really can't see the point in spending money on a 580 unless you are going with the 3GB version.

For the price and performance a gtx 570 is really hard to beat, and a single 570 can max out almost any game made. The only one I haven't been able to do it with is witcher 2 and there isn't a card made that can do it. Even quad sli 580s probably can't run it at 60fps on ultra. Witcher 2 has something called uber sampling that just tears any GPU apart. It just about has to be the most graphics intensive game made.

Really though a single 570 would work great, and you could always get another for around 225 used 280 new if one isn't enough for you.

ATi radeon cards are good too, some claim driver problems are a little more of an issue with them, but Nvidia has some driver issues too. It's like people comparing ford to chevy. Neither one is really better then the other, but some people will argue it until they are blue in the face.

One thing the ATi cards do have though is more Vram at a lower price, so that would let you go triple screen a little easier and cheaper. With that said, I hear that Nvidia's multi screen support is a little better, but you will have to spend more to get to triple screen with it.
 
Alright, I'm now going to start making a list of items. I saw a computer with a 570 in it yesterday in the store. Wow was that amazing!

Also read some comparisons between it's ATI Radeon counterpart. I like the 570 better, so I'm adding it to my list as well.

Would going after Christmas be a good idea? I was thinking of doing this, because I know a lot of stores are ready to get rid of their stock after that.

Next up I'm going to read up on Processors. Anymore info I need to know about the i7 and i5, as well as any other processors?
 
Microcenter is a great place to build a computer there is one near you're location in Dallas. http://www.microcenter.com/

I go there all the time to get questions answered. Better than Frys too.

Here is a link to all of the things you were originally looking for.

Cases : http://www.microcenter.com/search/search_results.phtml?N=4294964318

Graphics Cards: http://www.microcenter.com/search/search_results.phtml?N=4294966938

Cooling : http://www.microcenter.com/search/search_results.phtml?N=4294966928

Hard Drives: http://www.microcenter.com/search/search_results.phtml?N=4294945772

Powersupplies: http://www.microcenter.com/search/search_results.phtml?N=4294966654

Visit this store. It's amazing.
 
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Crispy
Next up I'm going to read up on Processors. Anymore info I need to know about the i7 and i5, as well as any other processors?
Click to expand...

I have been advised that an i5 2500K is more than enough for contemporary games, the i7 is overkill unless you want to use your PC for CPU-intensive operations like video encoding and such. The 2500K is unlocked, meaning it can be overclocked with pretty much no effort, but again that's not really all that necessary for games right now, but it'll give you a bit of futureproofing I suppose. Also if you keep it at or close to stock speeds you won't need a better air cooler than the one it comes with, which is also pre-(thermal) pasted so you don't need to worry about getting any of that, either.

Edit: there have been some incompatibilities with recent AMD processors, I confess to know nothing about them but I've read on the Steam forums that people have had trouble with them. Personally I'd go for the most common hardware, the more exotic/new your hardware is, the higher the chance of some weird, unique problem that'll take a while to fix.

Also if you're thinking about getting Rage you'll want an Nvidia card, in fact it was that whole episode that made me get a (1.5GB) GTX 580. I went for it over the SLI 570 or 3GB 580 because I couldn't afford the 3GB, but if I need to I can upgrade to a 580 SLI configuration in future. If I'd bought two 570's, I'd have to swap them both. In truth, though, I hope the 580 will be good enough for another two years.
 
Just did some looking around, and I've come up with a list. I just want to have your guy's opinions. Most are used products from people with thousands of ratings in the 95%+ range. Am I playing with fire? Or is it a good decision to buy used to lower costs?

VisionTek AMD Radeon HD 6950 2 GB GDDR5 PCI Graphics Card 900352-$269.99

Intel DX58SO Extreme Series X58 ATX Triple-channel DDR3 16GB SLI or CrossFireX LGA1366 Overclocking Utility Desktop Board-$199

Intel Core i7-950 3.06 GHz 8 MB Cache Socket LGA1366 Processor-$220

NZXT Guardian Black SECC Steel Chassis ATX Mid Tower Case 921RB-RL-$69

Corsair Vengeance 8 GB ( 2 x 4 GB ) DDR3 1600 MHz (PC3 12800) 240-Pin DDR3 Memory Kit for Intel Core i3, i5, i7 and AMD Platforms SDRAM CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9-$50

Corsair HX Professional Series 750-Watt 80 Plus Certified Power Supply Compatible with Core i7 and Core i5 - CMPSU-750HX-$143

Asus 24xDVD±RW Drive DVD-RAM/±R/±RW 24x8x16x(DVD) 48x32x48x(CD) Serial ATA Internal OEM DRW-24B1ST (Black)-$19

Western Digital Caviar Black 1 TB SATA III 7200 RPM 64 MB Cache Internal Desktop Hard Drive Bulk/OEM - WD1002FAEX-$130

What are your opinions? Yay, or ney? Should I go with used, or new? If you have suggestions for something else please, do tell.

Total price is $1,090 without shipping. I already have a really good monitor, plus an HDTV to plug in. Later on I will decide on Triple Screens, or Triple Projectors. SInce the GTX 570 wasn't compatible with Triple Screens, I went with the Radeon.
 
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Go with new. Anything used has probably been returned for some sort of defect.

Also, are you sure you want to use those parts? That's pretty far behind in terms of cpu generations. Go on Newegg and check prices there.
 
Well, care if interject here?

The Z68 boards for the Sandy Bridge processor's are very cool. You can use a 20gb SSD for the cache of a standard plate drive like a 2TD hard drive. Also, the 2600k processor is a very good performer for the cost and it's class.

Triple screens? High res? How about a GTX590? It essentially has two GTX580 processors in a single card offering superior graphics to most single slot cards out there. Yes, it supports three screens.

The ram is fine, although you may find some Z68 boards using triple channel instead of dual channel ram. GSkill offers some good performance ram for the cost as well.

Other than that, everything else looks decent. Something to consider.

If you really want to get crazy, consider a couple 580's in SLI for better overclocking, or get really crazy for some Triple SLI with the 580's.
 
Thing is I've run into money issues, so the original budget isn't allowed. Took apart my dads old computer that was laying around dead so I could familiarize myself with how everything goes. Also read a guide on assembling a PC, all the way from the original parts, to the actual assembly, and silencing.

I made sure to look at the more reliable parts when looking at the used parts. Many are being sold directly from Amazon, so if something doesn't work, I can return it. Plus I'm looking at places with thousands of ratings 95% and up.
 
Gabkicks
^sometimes, prices are better at amazon. Nvidia and AMD are coming out with new gfx cards in february/march
Click to expand...

Doesn't mean you should spec out a whole entire build on the site using used parts. From my experience used PC parts are generally returned for a reason.
 
nick09
I'm sure he meant new parts from Amazon but that's just how I read his sentence.
Click to expand...
yes, I didn't say anything about used parts. I've bought new parts from amazon for $90 less than newegg or tigerdirect. I buy from wherever the best price is at the time if the site is trusted.

7970's are going for less than 580gtx 3gb and they're faster/newer/lower power consumption http://hardocp.com/article/2011/12/22/amd_radeon_hd_7970_video_card_review/4

Nvidia may be coming out with a 28nm card faster than their gtx 80 in a few weeks, according to rumors.
 
Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
by Gigabyte-$155

Intel Core i7-2600K Processor-$320

Sapphire Radeon HD 6970 2 GB DDR5 DL-DVI-I/SL-DVI-D/HDMI/Dual Mini DP PCI-Express Graphics Card 100311-2SR-$340

NZXT Guardian Black SECC Steel Chassis ATX Mid Tower Case 921RB-RL-$69

Corsair Vengeance 8 GB ( 2 x 4 GB ) DDR3 1600 MHz (PC3 12800) 240-Pin DDR3 Memory Kit for Intel Core i3, i5, i7 and AMD Platforms SDRAM CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9-$50

Corsair HX Professional Series 750-Watt 80 Plus Certified Power Supply Compatible with Core i7 and Core i5 - CMPSU-750HX-$143

Asus 24xDVD±RW Drive DVD-RAM/±R/±RW 24x8x16x(DVD) 48x32x48x(CD) Serial ATA Internal OEM DRW-24B1ST (Black)-$19

Western Digital Caviar Black 1 TB SATA III 7200 RPM 64 MB Cache Internal Desktop Hard Drive Bulk/OEM - WD1002FAEX-$130


Well, I updated my list. No used products this time, and more recent, powerful products. One thing I want to know, someone told me that when powering on the computer for the first time using a Gigabyte Motherboard that the CPU Heatsink will jitter, stop for about 10 seconds, and go full speed ahead. Is this true? That way I don't fret about the first time start up. Also, even after multiple searches online, should I go for the stock heatsink for the CPU, or something else? To be honest, I really don't plan on overclocking, but I really would like the CPU to last a long time so cooler is better.

EDIT: Main reason I'm going with Amazon is the "Free Super Savers Shipping" going on. It all amounts to $1,226 USD, which is a pretty good price for a gaming rig.
 
I'm not aware of that Gigabyte motherboard problem but you could check to see if any other reviewers say the same thing. If it's only one reviewer then you could just take it as a grain of salt. You should look st the deals for that 1TB hard drive. There is a deal for a new one for $5 less.
 
I don't think it's a problem, just the way the board is set up. I got it from Wikibooks, so that could be one thing. I'll be looking around for deals everywhere, especially on Hard Drives since they're so pricey these days.
 
No I meant the amazon page has that same 1TB WD drive for $120 plus $5.49 shipping for new. Take a look at the list.
 

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