New computer build

[wednesday allfather]

Hi community. I'm looking for some input on building or buying a computer. I'm leaning toward a build for price, but let's put the cart before the horse. I HAVE to put Windows on it, at least one release bootable. The others I can vbox. Ubuntu will be the main OS I use. I don't do anything that requires a lot of beef, but I do want to build the most powerful computer I can. I occasionally will get on a gaming kick, but short of that it is general surfing, text editing, java, video etc. Here is the rest of the story.

I am looking to stay in a $500 US budget. I already have plenty of video cards, cases (ATX, mid ATX, but prefer the bigger case), PSUs from 850W to 1050, 8 Gb of DDR2 (I'll drop that in favor of DDR3), lots of sata HDDs (but would prefer SSD for the OSes). My old mobo died from the build I had about 5 or 6 years ago. Served me quite well, but now I need a new one. I'm willing to buy a new box if the price makes sense or use the stuff I have now or any combination of the two. I'm looking for 6 or more memory sockets, I am not brand loyal to AMD or Intel, and I am looking for a great deal. I tend not to overclock anything. I'm not really for or against it, but aside from curiousity it never really was a big deal for me. Oh, and I would like to RAID from 2-4 SATA drives, depending on what I have laying around.

Links in response to this or PMs are very much welcome. Interesting builds, cooling methods, and whatnot would be appreciated, but are not a requirement. I'm looking for ideas and help finding deals.

Thank you kindly.

[mips]

So essentially what you require is a MB, CPU, RAM, SSD & maybe a new chassis for <$500?

What are the current GPUs you have?

[IWantFroyo]

A good graphics card is probably the highest priority, if you're going to be running Ubuntu a lot.
If you're looking for a new one I hear Nvidia is having a huge sale (http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-Superclocked-Mini-HDMI-Lifetime-012-P3-1572-AR/dp/B004EYSMGW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1347237903&sr=8-1&keywords=GeForce+GTX+570) on its 570 and 580 GeForce line.

[wednesday allfather]

I have several "good enough" video cards. I'll probably stick a PCIe 1Gb DDR3 from the old box. I have AGP and PCIe cards for video. Prefer PCIe because I have better cards.

[wednesday allfather]

So essentially what you require is a MB, CPU, RAM, SSD & maybe a new chassis for <$500?

What are the current GPUs you have?

Chassis if it comes with a DIY kit, I suppose. I am looking at 4 empties right now. But essentially, yes, that is what I need.

Hehe, I always forget how far behind I get with GPUs, since I don't do much with them. EVGA GeForce GTX 570 Superclocked 1280 MB GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 2DVI/Mini-HDMI SLI Ready Limited Lifetime Warranty Graphics Card, 012-P3-1572-AR. What a monster! I have a hefty stack of video cards, but I am not against getting a new one. I am not sure I want half of my budget to go to a card, tho. I would prefer RAM, small-ish SSD, and decent processor to eat up the $500. There is a little wiggle room in the budget.

Thanks for the fast responses. :)

[Statia]

My system is based on an Asus V6-P8H61ELX barebones, the supplier added 4GB DDR3 RAM, an i3-2120 (3.3GHz), an Asus DRW-24B5ST DVD burner and a Seagate Barracuda 500GB and a card reader. It comes in a stylish black case, but it might be too small for four HDD (it might take three HDD in the 3.5"bay and there is one 5.25"bay free, leave out the DVD and it will fit). It retailed for €389, which is about $500, but in my experience for most electronic and computer stuff the exchange rate is 1:1, i.e. if it costs 300 Euros in Europe, it costs 300 dollars in the US.
(The Google Nexus 7 16GB for instance retails here for €249 vs $249 in the US)

I added:
another 4GB RAM (€23)
Asus Geforce ENGT430 1GB (€54)
SSD Corsair Force GT 60GB (€79)

Total €545, so you probably should be able to source that for $545 or less, since I bought the system in June.

It is a nice system, it looks and performs great. I use it for about the same uses you describe.

[mips]

Hehe, I always forget how far behind I get with GPUs, since I don't do much with them. EVGA GeForce GTX 570 Superclocked 1280 MB GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 2DVI/Mini-HDMI SLI Ready Limited Lifetime Warranty Graphics Card, 012-P3-1572-AR. What a monster! I have a hefty stack of video cards, but I am not against getting a new one. I am not sure I want half of my budget to go to a card, tho. I would prefer RAM, small-ish SSD, and decent processor to eat up the $500. There is a little wiggle room in the budget.


That GPU is plenty enough!!! I wish I had one of those :biggrin:

Ok now that we have got that out of the way which shops (microcentre, tiger direct etc etc) do you have close to you in case there are some local instore specials (http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=12209796&postcount=51) we can keep an eye out for.

Do you have an aversion to ASRock motherboards? I'm a Gigabyte/Asus person myself but I really like what I'm seeing in the new Asrock Z77 motherboards and the prices are good.

What size SSD would you prefer, 30, 60 or 120GB (or biiger)?

If you can answer the above three questions then we can start looking at some components for you.

[wednesday allfather]

That GPU is plenty enough!!! I wish I had one of those :biggrin:

Ok now that we have got that out of the way which shops (microcentre, tiger direct etc etc) do you have close to you in case there are some local instore specials (http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=12209796&postcount=51) we can keep an eye out for.

Do you have an aversion to ASRock motherboards? I'm a Gigabyte/Asus person myself but I really like what I'm seeing in the new Asrock Z77 motherboards and the prices are good.

If you can answer the above two questions then we can start looking at some components for you.

If it wasn't clear, that card was recommended. I have a stack of working older video cards, but nothing close to that powerful. I have a 1Gb Zotac (some off brand that I wound up with) and a 512 XFX that will probably end up in the build. Where I live, I pretty much have to rely on big box stores. Best Buy is sadly the best choice to buy components as far as brick and motar places go. I really don't care for that place, so it is all online for me. I don't have an aversion to anything. Note the AMD CPU. I've generally had good luck with ASUS and Gigabyte as well. I put together what I needed from Amazon (couldn't sleep) so I can post that for reference and/or ridicule. :)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0064VP70W/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&smid=A23NVCSO4PYH3S

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004W2JKZI/ref=ox_sc_act_title_2?ie=UTF8&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0056G10WK/ref=ox_sc_act_title_3?ie=UTF8&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005UBNKZG/ref=ox_sc_act_title_4?ie=UTF8&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004MYFOE2/ref=ox_sc_act_title_5?ie=UTF8&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004QBUL1C/ref=ox_sc_act_title_6?ie=UTF8&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER x2 = 4x4gb sticks = 16GB

[mips]

Motherboard $135
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157293 includes free 8GB ram.

Ram additional 8GB $42
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231546

CPU 15-3570k $230
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116504

Total for the above is $407

You need to decide whether you want 8 or 16GB of ram as it makes a $42 difference in price we can allocate towards a SSD & chssis.
Using a i7-3770k CPU would push the cost beyond your budget, it's $100 more than the i5.

[Statia]

You need to decide whether you want 8 or 16GB of ram as it makes a $42 difference in price we can allocate towards a SSD & chssis.



occasionally will get on a gaming kick, but short of that it is general surfing, text editing, java, video etc

8GB is already more than you will ever need for the described use (I push on 4GB only when I have VirtualBox running which I gave 2GB for Windows XP).

[wednesday allfather]

Motherboard $135
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157293 includes free 8GB ram.

Ram additional 8GB $42
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231546

CPU 15-3570k $230
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116504

Total for the above is $407

You need to decide whether you want 8 or 16GB of ram as it makes a $42 difference in price we can allocate towards a SSD & chssis.
Using a i7-3770k CPU would push the cost beyond your budget, it's $100 more than the i5.

I'm certainly going for 16 Gb RAM. My build has a water cooling system, which I have never had before. I would like to give that a try.

AMD vs. Intel? Are the i5s and i7s so much better than the AM3+ to justify a huge price difference? So far I am leaning toward the AMD line. I've had great luck with both brands. My Phenom was great and my servers all have 2 Xeons, which are pretty amazing as well.


8GB is already more than you will ever need for the described use (I push on 4GB only when I have VirtualBox running which I gave 2GB for Windows XP).

Need and want are two different things. Did you ever buy a car with exactly as much horsepower as you generally need? 42 bucks for double RAM is worth it IMO. This is a fun build. If 8Gb sticks were affordable, there would be 4 of those instead. :)

[mips]

AMD vs. Intel? Are the i5s and i7s so much better than the AM3+ to justify a huge price difference? So far I am leaning toward the AMD line. I've had great luck with both brands. My Phenom was great and my servers all have 2 Xeons, which are pretty amazing as well.

Unless you are a hardcore gamer or have certain specific requirements I would say no. I would however pick the FX-8150 that is clocked higher and costs $30 more.

Now wrt to the motherboard I'm gonna plant a little seed in your head as this is something I'm definitely planning on my next build.
Get a motherboard that supports hardware virtualisation (AMD-Vi" or earlier known as IOMMU).

Why do I say this? Do you like dual booting just to play a game in Windows or would you prefer not to reboot? If you installed Xen hypervisor (VM) then you can run both windows and linux on top of the hypervisor and AMD-V will allow Windows direct access to the GPU as you would have on a normal windows install. Granted you can only give one OS direct access to the GPU but you said you have plenty of GPUs lying around so you can install another GPU with much lower specs for linux as you don't really require much gpu power in linux, something like old 6600-8600GT will be plenty for linux. Picking a motherboard with the correct specs could be a bit limiting and if you are keen on this route shout as I will get you some links (I recently looked at Intel boards to do this.)
http://wiki.xen.org/wiki/VTd_HowTo Srcoll down to 'AMD desktop chipsets with IOMMU support'

Something else to keep in mind is AMD will be releasing their new Piledriver CPUs in Q4 2012 which are supposed to have improvements over the existing bulldozer line. So if you wan't to wait a bit you could get something better.

Either way AMD will be a good build option ;)

[Statia]

Need and want are two different things. Did you ever buy a car with exactly as much horsepower as you generally need? 42 bucks for double RAM is worth it IMO. This is a fun build. If 8Gb sticks were affordable, there would be 4 of those instead. :)

That's why I went with 8 instead of 4, though 4 would have been sufficient. I could have stuck in 16, but I found it not worth it. Of course each makes his own decisions, but your original question was about a tight budget, in that case I wouldn't stuff money in amounts of RAM I would never fill.

[Statia]

Oh, and for the car metaphor: at over $9 per gallon, no, you don't buy a lot more horsepower than you need :p

[wednesday allfather]

Oh, and for the car metaphor: at over $9 per gallon, no, you don't buy a lot more horsepower than you need :p

Yikes! Perhaps you would like one of my scooters. :)

I'd imagine at that price, cars in general would be hard to sell. Heck, gas powered anythings.

[wednesday allfather]

Unless you are a hardcore gamer or have certain specific requirements I would say no. I would however pick the FX-8150 that is clocked higher and costs $30 more.

Now wrt to the motherboard I'm gonna plant a little seed in your head as this is something I'm definitely planning on my next build.
Get a motherboard that supports hardware virtualisation (AMD-Vi" or earlier known as IOMMU).

Why do I say this? Do you like dual booting just to play a game in Windows or would you prefer not to reboot? If you installed Xen hypervisor (VM) then you can run both windows and linux on top of the hypervisor and AMD-V will allow Windows direct access to the GPU as you would have on a normal windows install. Granted you can only give one OS direct access to the GPU but you said you have plenty of GPUs lying around so you can install another GPU with much lower specs for linux as you don't really require much gpu power in linux, something like old 6600-8600GT will be plenty for linux. Picking a motherboard with the correct specs could be a bit limiting and if you are keen on this route shout as I will get you some links (I recently looked at Intel boards to do this.)
http://wiki.xen.org/wiki/VTd_HowTo Srcoll down to 'AMD desktop chipsets with IOMMU support'

Something else to keep in mind is AMD will be releasing their new Piledriver CPUs in Q4 2012 which are supposed to have improvements over the existing bulldozer line. So if you wan't to wait a bit you could get something better.

Either way AMD will be a good build option ;)

This looks pretty cool. I can probably wait until November. My interest is piqued by the Steamroller line, though. I can't wait that long, but that might be worth the upgrade or worth selling the Piledriver box and starting a new build. My wife would be happy to see 2 more cases out of my office.

Either way, I feel like AMD is the way to go for me.

[Statia]

Yikes! Perhaps you would like one of my scooters. :)

I'd imagine at that price, cars in general would be hard to sell. Heck, gas powered anythings.

Welcome to socialist Europe... :icon_frown:

[Statia]

Welcome to socialist Europe... :icon_frown:

But at least we all have health insurance :-)

[andrew.46]

Something else to keep in mind is AMD will be releasing their new Piledriver CPUs in Q4 2012 which are supposed to have improvements over the existing bulldozer line.

I have a Bulldozer 8150, I will have to resist buying the new 8350. $230 AUS here but there is always the pain of prising the old cpu off :(. And the knowledge that the performance difference will not be all that noticeable...

[andrew.46]

Done:



andrew@skamandros~$ uname -p
AMD FX(tm)-8350 Eight-Core Processor


:)

[mips]

Done:



andrew@skamandros~$ uname -p
AMD FX(tm)-8350 Eight-Core Processor


:)

I hate you :tongue:

[dannyboy79]

i'd be interested in some links for a motherboard with that hardware based virturalization you spoke of. I currently am specing a new build as well.

Been using a 1.8ghz C2D and only 2GB of DDRII ram (maxed out) for the last 7 years. Looking at the 6 core Phenom II from AMD. Already have a GPU and case. I have to check whether my Xion PSU has an 8 plug ATX power plug, I think it's only 4. So I may need a new PSU as well.

So I need a CPU, MB, RAM (going to start with 8GB but want expandability)and maybe a PSU.

[mips]

i'd be interested in some links for a motherboard with that hardware based virturalization you spoke of.

Somewhere (not sure if it was here) I posted some links wrt hardware virturalization but from what I recall most of it was for Intel based boards and ASRock Z77 boards comes to mind.

I'll try and look for the links but if you don't here from me drop me a PM to remind me as I might have forgotten (getting old).

[andrew.46]

I hate you :tongue:

Hehehehe :). Already having a motherboard with an AM3+ socket made it all too tempting, particularly when the 8350 costs a little more than $200 only, compares pretty favorably with intel offerings!

[dannyboy79]

Hehehehe :). Already having a motherboard with an AM3+ socket made it all too tempting, particularly when the 8350 costs a little more than $200 only, compares pretty favorably with intel offerings!

someone else was saying that the new bulldozer chips aren't as good as the previous phenom II chips. that a phenom II X6 has 6 true cores where the new FX series don't have true 6 or 8 cores. is this true?

[andrew.46]

A good start would be the 10 pages starting here:


AMD FX-8350 "Vishera" Linux
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_fx8350_visherabdver2&num=1

but I have to admit I try to stay away from most of the fanatical blogs comparing cpus, my current cpu will do me fine for the next year or 2 and I will be productive with it :)

[Bandit]

Hi community. I...........

Thank you kindly.

Its really hard to help without giving bland answers. Reason being is we dont know the type of video cards you have and what other version of hardware you have now.

Most new motherboards will be supporting SATA3, USB3, PCI-X3 as well as DDR3-1600. So, chances are older RAM or a video card older then 5ish years may not work. I know I just gave away quite a few good condition AGP video card because all new systems I have are on PCI-X, also speaking of PCI. I even had to get a new sound card for my gaming rig because my older Sound Blaster sound card was standard PCI and most (not all yet) newer boards are going all PCI-eXpress.

Honestly if you looking to stay on a low budget, go to your local electronics store and get a eMachine or HP or something. You can get a reasonable system for about 499USD. Building your own is seldom cheaper, but building your own can give you a higher quality system at times.

Not going to go hunt up parts and prices for you, there are a hundred different ways to make a hamburger under a buck. All are correct, yet all are better then the other.. So best bet is for you to choose what you want.

Cheers,
Joe