buying a new computer

Re-read what I wrote, as you seem to have comprehension problems: DirectX 10/11? Gaming development is *console locked*. Future-proofing is for rich kids who are too fucking lazy to turn a screw-driver and snap in a card that my 5 year old cousin could do.

Lelouch24 had to squeeze to buy a ~$100 MOBO instead a ~$50 one and you recommend he should buy a GPU for +$100, instead spending another $50 in a year for the exact same result? The 6750 is mid-range card. Who the fuck cares that it won't run games at max detail in 1-2 years? I can buy a new card each year for the same price a high/enthusiast grade card would cost now and meanwhile spend the money on booze and girls.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Northern_Islands_%28GPU_family%29#Radeon_HD_6700

The consensus on SLI/Crossfire is, that it's a gimmick. It is entirely based on what cards you're talking about, and usually a single higher grade card tends to outperform two SLI/Crossfire ones. Pricing usually reflects this, however buying a higher rated, mid-range card is still cheaper than buying a pair of lower rated cards. Even if you used SLI, a 500W PSU would be sufficient. You want to know why GPU manufacturers still recommend insane wattages? Because people like you buy shit grade PSUs that can only output about 30% of what's on their sticker.

...and when people are on a budget, like Lelouch24 is, SLI/Crossfire shouldn't even figure into the question. You're just better off upgrading every 1-2 years, you'll still come out ahead in terms of dollars.

I want to clear some confusion: I'm not on THAT tight of a budget. If it's recommended that I get a mobo in the $100's then I can easily get one. The only reason I was considering a $50 mobo was because I was ignorant on the necceseties of a motherboard.


I think the i7 is good for HD video editing, which I plan to be doing alot of.


I did lots of research online about the best graphics cards. I didn't read anything that recommended the radeon 6750. I did however, hear lots of good things about the radeon 6770 in this article, as well as other places. I found one on newegg for $100 after rebate & shipping. I think I'll get it unless y'all say otherwise.

I'm still trying to decide about the motherboard. I have very little interest in crossfire, so this might be an option. or I could go with the $90 biostar TP67B+ I mentioned earlier, or I could go with the $70 Asrock h61 that flaser mentioned earlier.

For motherboard chipsets I'd recommend getting H67, P67, or Z68. H61 for some reason has less USB ports and supports less, also less RAM slots. (eimii said this, I am reiterating)

Also, if you want a good PSU manufacturer my friends and I have had really good experiences with the brand Enermax.

@eimii, The 6750 is perfectly fine, it'll last at least a year or two. If I can run all current games on high if not ultra high with 50+ FPS on my GTS250, the 6750 won't have a problem. Also, 1000w is overkill even for SLi/Crossfire. 650~700w range should be good enough.

@Flaser, not sure why you keep hounding on SATA3 if Lelouch24 already specified they were going to get a "refurbished 1.5TB 7200RPM" hard drive. As for getting an SSD in the future, I say there's really no point unless you're trying to speed up your boot time.

alright, unless y'all recommend something else, I'll get this $115 biostar P67 that microcenter sells for $90.


I'm pretty much trying to decide between these two: the Saphire Radeon 6770 for $100, and the Diamond Radeon 6750 for $80. I think the 6770 is a better deal, but I also think that I shouldn't get an expensive one if I'm just gonna upgrade in a year.



Obviously, with my budget, I'm not gonna use an SSD as my main Hard Drive right now. But isn't the SATA 6gb/s good for future upgrades? I'm also interested being able to boot from an SSD, which will require the SATA 6gb/s (right?)

for the PSU, I think I'll just get a 500w corsair, most people online seem to recommend it.

Very few people need SSD's, I doubt you are one of them.

I don't need an SSD, but I'm interested in their ability to read stuff very quickly. The SSD market should grow in the next few years, and I want to have that option available.

Why are you interested in transfer rates? Do you even do that much system I/O? I won't say it's useless, but it's pointless. Personally, even if SSD's get cheaper in the future, I'll still look at the HDD's that are half the price and twice the space. There is no future-proofing here, it's the same mentality as say, a graphics component.

Tegumi, please read back a couple of posts. He mentioned we wants to do video editing which is one of the few tasks that can massively benefit from fast transfer-rates. SSDs are so much faster than HDDs, that to get even in the same ballpark figure you need an expensive RAID setup with a dedicated controller.

I agree video editing (specially after effects) eats whatever you throw at it alive, so SSDs and Hughe amounts of DDR3 are really great for those tasks, me myself being an editor and sometimes finding that my 6gb at triple channel ddr 7-7-7-18 are not enough to calm the hunger of that program, problem is here in this country all electronics are like 200% of their actual price, so it sucks to get some nice parts like SSDs and good ddr3 mems. Congrats on the upgrade lelouch hope you enjoy it!

I asked people on tomshardware.com about my build, and they gave me a few final recommendations (they said that the biostar mobo and refurbished HD were bad)

So, here's what I'm planning to get:

an intel i7 2600k quad-core processor
a MSI P67S-C43 Motherboard (it's only got 1 PCI exp 2.0 slot, but I don't care about crossfire)
a corsair 500w PSU
8 of gb ram (DDR3-1600)
a mid-tower case (bottom-mounted PSU)
a DVD burner
and an XFX Radeon 6770 Graphics card
all the above is $610

The only thing I haven't decided on was the Hard drive. I could get a:

$80 Samsung Spinpoint F4 2TB (5400 RPM)
$80 Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB - Refurbished (7200 RPM)
$75 Hitachi Deskstar 5K3000 1.5TB (It doesn't say what the RPM is)
$120 Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB (7200 RPM)

which one should I get? I will mostly be using it to store video files; I don't know how crucial 7200rpm is

I recommend a blu ray burner... sometimes raw video is hugh.... five min clip sometime is as big as 1 gb Or a hugh exhhd

Oh yeah you don't want that 7200.11 drive, they have high failure rates. Don't bother with the 5400 RPM. Also they nicknamed the "Desktstar" the "Deathstar" for a reason. Uhh, you sure you can't find a better high capacity drive? I got a 1TB WD for about 70$ like 2 years ago. You should try looking on Newegg.

Wow a 1TB for 70$ I had the same deal 6 months ago and it works like a boss I recommend it

I swear this was only $70 two days ago, but now it's $130! (I think Amazon is out of stock, so the $130 is from other sellers).

Newegg.com doesn't sell any for less than $140. Microcenter doesn't sell any for less than $120, except for the ones I already mentioned.

here's a list of some 1 TB hard drives (7200 rpm). some say "300 mbps", some say "600 mbps", what's the difference?

edit: Bestbuy had Seagate Barracuda 1TB (7200 rpm). Is it any good? I mention it because I trust bestbuy more than those weird websites.

pccasegear.com
look for western digital caviar black?

Hard disk prices are rising like the new tide. The reason is that the flooding in Thailand took out about 20-30% of world production.

every hard drive seems to be either out-of-stock, from a weird un-trustworthy website, or incredibly expensive. However, I think I have a plan to deal with this issue:

I will buy a 32 GB SSD for the OS, and put all my software and video files on my 500gb external hard drive. later (possible until spring), when hard drives are back to normal prices, I'll buy one.

Is this a good plan, or are external hard drives unable to do this?

Using an external to game and run software from is entirely possible, load and save times may increase due to the slower read/write speeds.

Why not just turn your external into an internal? When I bought the parts for my computer, I disassembled the three 1TB external hard drives I had lying around and stuffed them in the case. I bought a new external case in case I decided to bring one of them with me to wherever. Get a case that is made to have hard drive swaps constantly. Oh, and one with a fan would be a good thing to have, too.

I use my 1.5tb external for all my gaming such, works pretty well imo. It's nice to be able to just unplug it and bring it around where I want, too. Not to mention, when my main rig is down, I can always plug it into another computer in the house and still have all my files and such.