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old I built a gaming PC from the ground up

Majatek
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Link to blog post: [link]

Specifications:

$80.9: Raidmax Aeolus case + $47.37: shipping
$300: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1GB Video/Graphics Card
$255: Intel Core i5 3570 Quad Core 3.4GHz 6mb cache
$219: Antec 750 watt (ATX 12V V2.3) PSU
$126: ASUS P8H77-M PRO Motherboard
$107: Western Digital Caviar Blue 3.5” 1TB SATA III HDD
$91: G.Skill Ripjaws X 16GB (2x 8GB) DDR3 RAM 1333MHz
$60: 3x BitFenix Spectre 120mm Black Tinted Transparent Fan with GREEN-LED
$44: TP-LINK300MBPS wireless PCI express card TL-WN881ND
$20: LiteOn DVD/CD read/write optical drive
$19: Antec “TriCool” 120 Case Fan with 3-speed switch (no leds)
$5: Molex to fan power 3pack

Total: $1,374.27

Initial budget set: $1,200
Overbudget by: $174.27

Picture of stuff before I received the RAM, Motherboard CPU+FAN: [link]

Modifications:
Stock Raidmax fans replaced with BitFenix fans
Back motherboard protector mesh repainted green + top/front fan mesh protectors also repainted green.

IMG:https://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mbzje35PVI1rgom59o1_1280.png


For a slightly overbudget PC it was pretty decent, not too challenging.
What should I do for my next project? A water cooled one? (I'm actually in the need of replacing my current rig - While decent, it's starting to age as it only has a 2.79GHz Quad Core i7 and an NVidia GeForce 460)

Any suggestions as to what I should have gotten? Critique? If so, I'd like to see your post.

And yes I patched the theme dll files for Windows 7 so that I can have custom themes.

old Re: I built a gaming PC from the ground up

Diego
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A 400 to 500 watt PSU would have been more than enough for this rig, and 16 GB RAM is also not that useful if you don't use professional programs for video editing or similar. It would have been better if you had bought a SSD (I have one, and it is really nice in addition with a 6GB/s sata port) or maybe a better graphics card (GTX 670?) for that money.
An i5 rather than an i7 is a good choice, because the performance increase with hyperthreading for games is really not worth it.

old Re: I built a gaming PC from the ground up

Majatek
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@user Diego: user palomino is right, I do a lot of video editing (gaming montages and random recordings that I share between friends of derp moments in games) as well as working with large (5k by 5k pixels and larger graphics for logos, posters and such).

And true a 500 watt PSU would've been enough, but this was a project for a friend (paid in part by him), so as his first computer in a long while (his current one is like a Pentium 3, and is about to kick the bucket) so I wanted to make sure that I future proofed it - Graphics cards exponentially use more power the more powerful they become.

I was considering buying an SSD for the OS only (and use a 1TB+ HDD for storage), but that would have overblown the budget more than acceptable (as would getting the GTX 670), I'll be keeping that in mind for my next PC, thanks.

I've got an i7 for my current, yet rather old PC (by about two years it is), and it certainly has no benifits, and is in fact slower than the i5 that I got for this project - It only runs at 2.79 GHz.

old Re: I built a gaming PC from the ground up

Flacko
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user J4x has written
Isn't the i7 better?

A high-end i5 (bigger cache memory, faster clock speed, fsb, support for new fancy technologies, etc) can actually be faster than a low-end i7, that is either older or designed for the laptop market.

old Re: I built a gaming PC from the ground up

Majatek
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@user Assassin moder:
I built this rig over the course of 2 and a half weeks, it actually took less than a day to build it, but waiting for the components to arrive (Raidmax case, BitFenix fans, CPU) took most of that time. Installing all the software and modifying the appearance took about 12 hours, including formatting the HDD, installing Windows, updates, driver installation and patching system files.

It's actually quite simple if you're tech savvy - All you really need to do is be able to read the language that the manual is written in, identify which cables are what that is supplied by your PSU and PC Case (the front on/off/restart/sleep switches/buttons and USB/other ports have a few cables running back into the PC, which you'll need to wire to a motherboard.
If you have a look around on forums and YouTube videos, you're bound to find a few videos on PC building basics that will help you get started.

The best advise I can give you is to replace parts in your PC currently, not just the RAM, but parts like PC fans with newer higher-end products, better graphics cards that require power, a new PSU and compare the cables of the new PSU to the PSU you have already, and try to replace every cable you see currently plugged in with the new PSU's cables. From there you can learn what plugs where, but first I highly recommend you to watch some videos of PC building basics. Good luck!

old Re: I built a gaming PC from the ground up

pupp3tStudios
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Really do like that background design.
This is definitely the PC for gaming, and other multimedia editing. Most things I do for this stuff is on a PC with only 30 gigabytes of memory. Ridiculous.
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