Peotr
11-16-2011, 07:20 PM
Back in Orofino *again*, but this time we brought my dad home. Thanksgiving is next week, which means nothing will be normal, but at least I'm not trapped in a motel room.
And it's time.
It's really time.
For reelz, itz time.
It's time to BUILD A FUCKING COMPUTER, OOOOH YEAH, BITCHES! I have been looking forward to this for over a year! FUCK YEAH! Good timing, too, since the steelhead are almost finished for the year and my brother wants to steal his computer back. =|
I want to be ready for SWToR. I was invited to the beta also, but it's hard to participate on a 1.8Ghz P4 laptop with 512mb of RAM, 200MB of free hard disk space and non-DirectX video card (and also no internet connection). But now we're gonna build a new machine, and I'm posting my plan here for your review. If you've read my previous posts you know dat budget it be tight, but I think this will work.
FIRST, A FEW THOUGHTS:
1. Some guilt will go into the creation of this computer. I was working on my aunt's computer (my aunt in The Dalles, which I think I posted about earlier) and we had to go to Staples to get new ink for their printer, and while we were at Staples the shopping bug came over my aunt. They decided to buy a new camera, and they bought a new external drive because I want them to back up their data, and they bought a copy of Norton AV, and then they bought a lamp, they bought some stickers, a plastic cargo box and a gallon container of pretzels, etc., etc. I should mention here that my aunt, although not super wealthy, is pretty well off, she gets about five grand a month from three different retirement funds. She's a Home Shopping Network junkie.
The upshot was that they spent about $500.00 in Staples just trying to buy printer ink, and somehow in that frenzy of purchasing I wound up with 8GB of Kingston DDR3-1600 memory.
I admit I am a bad nephew. The memory was only $50.00 (bad justification). And I'm the one who gave them their computer (another bad justification). And even though it's Kingston it was still the cheapest, 'cause it doesn't have heat sinks (third bad justification). But I am still a bad nephew.
I never ONCE said that it was for their computer, NOT ONCE (terrible justification). And my aunt told me several times to buy something for myself, although my mom vetoed that idea (fifth bad justification).
I admit my guilt, I admit that when I fall from the slippery sidewalk of life I will surely wind up in the gutter of hell, but I DID NOT LIE, I just said, "Here's the ink, the external drive, and the RAM," and I dropped all three into the basket.
So hidden in my book bag are two mint sticks of Kingston RAM. =| I even kept the receipt.
To be honest I don't feel bad at all. I spent almost an entire day cleaning their refrigerator (sixth bad justification), and my aunt originally wanted to buy me a $600.00 iPad, which I didn't want (seventh bad justification). I feel worse about putting their cat in a Macy's shopping bag and hooking it to the ceiling, and I don't feel bad about that, either.
And it is well known that seven bad justifications are roughly equal to one normal justification, so I am morally in the clear.
2. I didn't build a computer earlier because I wanted to see Bulldozer's benchmarks and prices. When the Bulldozer NDA was lifted I spent the morning reading the nerdosphere, and I came away feeling blah. You could say I felt a little depressed. Because of my funds I had accepted the idea that going AMD for this build might give me the most bang-for-buck (I even toyed with the idea of going with one of their Llano processors) but my heart hardened after reading the reviews of their latest and newest. I like AMD, but I'm a Windows gamer, a realist, and I'm poor, it seems best to float down the river of popular wisdom.
Also, I have $180.00 credit at a friend's computer store. He's retail, and his prices for video cards are way too high, but his prices for motherboards are reasonable. But they only sell Intel motherboards. Not Intel chipsets - they only sell Intel branded motherboards.
So here's my workup.
PARTS I AM SALVAGING:
Antec Nine Hundred case (w/ all Scythe fans, old but good)
Antec 550w TruePower (a little small, but with up-to-date connectors, and I'm not running SLI anyway)
2x SATA3 DVD burners (Asus and LiteOn)
500GB Western Digital 7200RPM drive (it'll do, and I have oodles of 160GB drives if I want to try RAID or a seperate virtual memory drive, etc.)
Xigmatek (Dark Knight?) CPU cooler (it'll do, and I can't overclock, and I scavenged the 1155 brackets from my friend)
Samsung 21.5" monitor (I will never buy Hanns*G again)
Windows Vista 64 Enterprise (it sucks, but it's legal)
PARTS WHICH I STOLE WHICH WILL SURELY CONDEMN ME TO HELL:
8GB Kingston DDR3-1600
PARTS I AM BUYING FROM MY FRIEND'S STORE:
Intel LGA 1155 Z68 Motherboard (BOXDZ68BC (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813121533), the link is to NewEgg)
This leaves me with about $380.00 of my own money for processor and video card. And I think I've decided to do this:
Radeon HD 6950 (Gigabyte GV-R695OC (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125385)) ~$250.00
Intel i3-2120 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115077) (dual core, 3.3Ghz) ~$130.00
I'm going as big as possible on the video card, and as near as I can tell this is it. I was considering trying to pair a GTX 570 with a socket 1155 Pentium G840, but it's a little outside of my budget and I don't think it will give me better framerates.
And I think that covers it. If I had to I was willing to go all the way down to a socket 775, but I don't think I'll have to. My brother is buying me SWToR, so thats good.
All comments are welcome. Since I can't throw away money on the latest hardware I'm not really up-to-date on the latest hardware shiznit, but I think this is as good as I can get for the money that I have.
-- Peotr
P.S. Forget it, Lons, I'm not buying a GTX 560 Ti.
And it's time.
It's really time.
For reelz, itz time.
It's time to BUILD A FUCKING COMPUTER, OOOOH YEAH, BITCHES! I have been looking forward to this for over a year! FUCK YEAH! Good timing, too, since the steelhead are almost finished for the year and my brother wants to steal his computer back. =|
I want to be ready for SWToR. I was invited to the beta also, but it's hard to participate on a 1.8Ghz P4 laptop with 512mb of RAM, 200MB of free hard disk space and non-DirectX video card (and also no internet connection). But now we're gonna build a new machine, and I'm posting my plan here for your review. If you've read my previous posts you know dat budget it be tight, but I think this will work.
FIRST, A FEW THOUGHTS:
1. Some guilt will go into the creation of this computer. I was working on my aunt's computer (my aunt in The Dalles, which I think I posted about earlier) and we had to go to Staples to get new ink for their printer, and while we were at Staples the shopping bug came over my aunt. They decided to buy a new camera, and they bought a new external drive because I want them to back up their data, and they bought a copy of Norton AV, and then they bought a lamp, they bought some stickers, a plastic cargo box and a gallon container of pretzels, etc., etc. I should mention here that my aunt, although not super wealthy, is pretty well off, she gets about five grand a month from three different retirement funds. She's a Home Shopping Network junkie.
The upshot was that they spent about $500.00 in Staples just trying to buy printer ink, and somehow in that frenzy of purchasing I wound up with 8GB of Kingston DDR3-1600 memory.
I admit I am a bad nephew. The memory was only $50.00 (bad justification). And I'm the one who gave them their computer (another bad justification). And even though it's Kingston it was still the cheapest, 'cause it doesn't have heat sinks (third bad justification). But I am still a bad nephew.
I never ONCE said that it was for their computer, NOT ONCE (terrible justification). And my aunt told me several times to buy something for myself, although my mom vetoed that idea (fifth bad justification).
I admit my guilt, I admit that when I fall from the slippery sidewalk of life I will surely wind up in the gutter of hell, but I DID NOT LIE, I just said, "Here's the ink, the external drive, and the RAM," and I dropped all three into the basket.
So hidden in my book bag are two mint sticks of Kingston RAM. =| I even kept the receipt.
To be honest I don't feel bad at all. I spent almost an entire day cleaning their refrigerator (sixth bad justification), and my aunt originally wanted to buy me a $600.00 iPad, which I didn't want (seventh bad justification). I feel worse about putting their cat in a Macy's shopping bag and hooking it to the ceiling, and I don't feel bad about that, either.
And it is well known that seven bad justifications are roughly equal to one normal justification, so I am morally in the clear.
2. I didn't build a computer earlier because I wanted to see Bulldozer's benchmarks and prices. When the Bulldozer NDA was lifted I spent the morning reading the nerdosphere, and I came away feeling blah. You could say I felt a little depressed. Because of my funds I had accepted the idea that going AMD for this build might give me the most bang-for-buck (I even toyed with the idea of going with one of their Llano processors) but my heart hardened after reading the reviews of their latest and newest. I like AMD, but I'm a Windows gamer, a realist, and I'm poor, it seems best to float down the river of popular wisdom.
Also, I have $180.00 credit at a friend's computer store. He's retail, and his prices for video cards are way too high, but his prices for motherboards are reasonable. But they only sell Intel motherboards. Not Intel chipsets - they only sell Intel branded motherboards.
So here's my workup.
PARTS I AM SALVAGING:
Antec Nine Hundred case (w/ all Scythe fans, old but good)
Antec 550w TruePower (a little small, but with up-to-date connectors, and I'm not running SLI anyway)
2x SATA3 DVD burners (Asus and LiteOn)
500GB Western Digital 7200RPM drive (it'll do, and I have oodles of 160GB drives if I want to try RAID or a seperate virtual memory drive, etc.)
Xigmatek (Dark Knight?) CPU cooler (it'll do, and I can't overclock, and I scavenged the 1155 brackets from my friend)
Samsung 21.5" monitor (I will never buy Hanns*G again)
Windows Vista 64 Enterprise (it sucks, but it's legal)
PARTS WHICH I STOLE WHICH WILL SURELY CONDEMN ME TO HELL:
8GB Kingston DDR3-1600
PARTS I AM BUYING FROM MY FRIEND'S STORE:
Intel LGA 1155 Z68 Motherboard (BOXDZ68BC (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813121533), the link is to NewEgg)
This leaves me with about $380.00 of my own money for processor and video card. And I think I've decided to do this:
Radeon HD 6950 (Gigabyte GV-R695OC (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125385)) ~$250.00
Intel i3-2120 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115077) (dual core, 3.3Ghz) ~$130.00
I'm going as big as possible on the video card, and as near as I can tell this is it. I was considering trying to pair a GTX 570 with a socket 1155 Pentium G840, but it's a little outside of my budget and I don't think it will give me better framerates.
And I think that covers it. If I had to I was willing to go all the way down to a socket 775, but I don't think I'll have to. My brother is buying me SWToR, so thats good.
All comments are welcome. Since I can't throw away money on the latest hardware I'm not really up-to-date on the latest hardware shiznit, but I think this is as good as I can get for the money that I have.
-- Peotr
P.S. Forget it, Lons, I'm not buying a GTX 560 Ti.