building a new pc

jascase901 · 2009-12-08 02:34:58

I have a 1300 dollar budget to build a gaming computer. Now the last time I bought a computer was 9 years ago, and that was a premade one. So needless to say I have no Idea of what to put in my new compy. Software wise I want it to flawlessly run both linux and windows 7. Here comes my question. What hardware, with extra detail on the graphics card, can do this best at my price range? ps I am doing research on my own, I just want to get some expert advice, because 1300 smackers is steep for me.

intension · 2009-12-08 02:55:54

Are you looking to run Arch Linux? Because Arch will run on pretty much anything, including your grandmother's eMachine as long as it is i686.
As far as building a gaming machine, I would head over to newegg and just browse through parts. You will get the hang of it pretty fast, and once you order it, everything is just plug-and-go for the most part.
ps, just a word of advice on the video card: for 1300 bucks, you can easily go sli. Id buy 2 graphics cards that are just a step below "the shit" and run them in sli mode (together).

jdkdonk · 2009-12-08 04:06:14

Easiest way to start doing this: go to a hardware review site and look at their testing systems:
tomshardware.com
anandtech.com
etc.

or look at ArsTechnicas system guides:
http://arstechnica.com/hardware/guides/ … dition.ars
http://arstechnica.com/hardware/news/20 … -guide.ars

or similar sites:
http://www.sharkyextreme.com/guides/MVGSBG/index.php

Last edited by jdkdonk (2009-12-08 04:07:35)

anonymous_user · 2009-12-08 05:22:52

My only advice would be to go with NVIDIA for the graphics card.

shock · 2009-12-08 05:54:21

I agree with NVIDIA graphics card. But i'm unsure about current released cards supported by arch. Anyway,try it.

MattSmith · 2009-12-08 07:03:08

Hmmm nvidia is great cards for full 3D support in linux. However, It sounds like you'll be gaming in Windoze. ATI seams like a better bargain buy with their newest 5000 series cards. Not to mention they have better power consumption (less). I had 2900xt's from ati in crossfire about a year and a half ago and didn't have any problems using linux and even getting 3d acceleration going. I'm no fan boy, I have an 8600 GT. Right now a card from any manufacturer is likely to work well. If you were gaming in JUST linux I would say nvidia but you're not so I would recommend ATI as they seam to be better bang for the buck.

MattSmith · 2009-12-08 12:38:40

Okay so I was bored and decided to build you the computer I would use. Everything is linux compatible and you should have no issues in switching between OS's on top of that this thing is FAST!

Dvd burner - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a … 6827136177 *has bad reviews because windoze 7 doesn't have drivers by default... I figured you would know how to install them

Case - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a … 6811119196 *a good computer needs a good case for air flow and to look sexy plus this one has free shipping

Storage - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a … 6822145287 * I can't believe how cheap storage is getting!

OS's go here - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a … 6820227393 *Get two of these and put the in RAID 0 and try to keep your mouth shut when you're loading anything from games to OS's ... these will be plenty of room for windoze and linux and will cut done dual boot time.

Processor - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a … 6819103674 *I chose this because it had free shipping and was a better bang for the buck than the i5 alternative. Plus it used the new AM3 while i5 use some in between socket that isn't likely to have any new processors come out. That means you have some scalability with AM3.

Mobo - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a … 6813136067 *I have always loved DFI for the support, warranties, stability and overclocking options (btw it's rumored that processor will hit 4 ghz on stock voltage which means no warranty will be broken). This board and processor will allow for 16x 16x if you decide to crossfire (which now works fully in linux) - the i5 wont (only x8 x8).

Video card - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a … 6814131184 *best bang for the buck.... over 2 taraFLOPS holly shi*

Power supply - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a … 6817171037 *insanely efficient as far as power supplies go which means cheaper electric bill. Massive 50 Amps on 1 12v rail means more stability if overclocking.

Memory - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a … 6820231259 * I know it say intel this and that but it will for fine with AMD and your mobo supports it natively so you shouldn't need to tweek it. Great for overclocking I hear as well.

Heatsink - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a … 6835207004 * A rule of thumb I have learned from build gaming machines is to throw out the stock heatsink and get a new one. This one came highly recommended in overclocking forums for AM3 and it's cheap!

Thermal Grease - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a … 6835100009 * I used this back when I was into sqeezing every bit of performance out of my machine. It dropped my CPU idle temps by 5C this means more stable cpu and longer life... worth 5 bucks IMO.

I think that everything! I had fun ogling over new technology! This machine comes in at 1341 dollars with 45$ of rebates ... so just under your limit. Oh shipping is only 8 bucks because I was able to find most stuff with free shipping . This baby will be insanely fast (over 2 TFLOPS ). Plus you have scalability here... you can by another 5850 down the road and up it 4 TFLOPS, and when better processors come out you wont have to buy an new board because AM3 will be around for a while.

Anyway happy shopping!

pyther · 2009-12-08 15:11:25

Do not buy HITACHI and as other said go with nvidia!

Mr.Elendig · 2009-12-08 15:34:39

MattSmith wrote:

shipping and was a better bang for the buck than the i5 alternative. Plus it used the new AM3 while i5 use some in between socket that isn't likely to have any new processors come out. That means you have some scalability with AM3.

And where does that claim come from?

anonymous_user · 2009-12-08 16:07:26

He's probably referring to the fact that Gulftown (6-core) would only be for socket 1366 and not 1156.

Last edited by anonymous_user (2009-12-08 16:08:16)

.:B:. · 2009-12-08 16:30:13

Intel does tend to swap sockets fairly quickly...

MattSmith · 2009-12-08 22:06:36

@pyther - If you spend an extra 5 dollars you can get a WD, but I have had Hitachi drives before and have had no problem. In fact my hard drive now in my laptop is Hitachi and I set up an old linux box ages ago with a 10 year old Hitachi drive I found in surplus, it was the only drive that worked even out of the WD and Seagate's... plus it matches my free shipping theme .

@ Mr.Elendig - What the others have said. plus right now there are two different sockets already LGA 1156 for the i5 LGA 1366 for the i7. This means are buyer is forced between choosing between a more bargain oriented chip the the future or performance. He said he had his last desktop for 9 years, in that time Intel has introduced 3 (i think) sockets types. AMD has introduced 2 (I believe) and AMD is good at producing older sockets for users who can't afford a switch. Our user will likely be able to drop in an upgrade without have to buy new hardware otherwise 7 years down the road. I doubt this will be the case with Intel.My friend told me, and i think he's correct (correct me if I'm wrong), AMD socks like AM2 AM2+ and AM3 are backward compatible, while not offer all of the features of the later, the new chips will still work with older boards. I'm using Intel ATM so I can't test.

hunterthomson · 2009-12-09 03:41:00

Don't Buy a ATI Graphics Card!!!!!!!

ATI Has The Worst Support Ever !!!

---------------

I would buy a ASUS Motherboard that is supported by CoreBOOT, formally known as LinuxBOOT.
All BIOS's Suck hard. The coding in BIOS's is so bad it makes Micro$oft code look like Linus Torvalds wrote it.

CoreBOOT is so amazing. You can do So, so much. Just to give you a taste.... With CoreBOOT you can have a BIOS level BusyBox Shell with scripting capability!!! You can have the Linux Kernel that is in your BIOS mount your /root directory directly !!!!

But, I don't really see any good Gaming boards... So, maybe for your next home server.

- Supported Boards
http://www.coreboot.org/Supported_Motherboards

- Good Video about it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X72LgcMpM9k

Last edited by hunterthomson (2009-12-09 05:44:27)

jascase901 · 2009-12-09 03:50:20

thanks so much. This is alot more help than I was expecting. I am going to go with something along the lines of what MattSmith suggested. My other research lends me to believe that ati would be the best bet for me for three reasons. One is price. Compared to a comparably priced nvidia card, ati seems to rape face. Two i read ati is releasing some source, and in time it may work better for linux. Three I am gonna install a windows partion for games anyways, so id pretty much be happy with even the vesa driver.

hunterthomson · 2009-12-09 03:53:25

Don't buy ATI !!!!!

Archlinux doesn't support ATI graphics cards.

I have one. Read the ATI thread ! You will want to kill yourself if you buy an ATI graphics card ! It si going to be like 2-3 Years before the OpenSource ATI drivers are worth using. People are using them now not because they are good but only because they are STUCK with ATI and the OpenSorce Driver sucks a little less if you don't need 3D support AT ALL.

http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=57084

Windows ATI drivers SUCK TOO !

Last edited by hunterthomson (2009-12-09 04:10:25)

MattSmith · 2009-12-09 04:51:20

@hunterthomson: Most of the people here are using older cards 3XXX and bellow. The 4XXX and 5XXX series shipped with much better linux driver performance. I had 2 2900xt's in crossfire back in the day and those work fine with 3d acceleration... and those weren't even supposed to have linux support until people complained enough to change AMD's mind. Further more looking through Phoronix it seams that the 5XXX performs quite well in linux. Albeit maybe not to there full potential, but jascase901 isn't looking for insane performance for 3d gaming on the linux end. Even if jascase901 only get's 50% of the card performance in linux that will be 4 times as fast as my 8600GT can do.

links to prove that ATI works for 3D:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=a … ling&num=1
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=a … iper&num=1

these are even the lower end cards out preforming the top end 4XXX series on fresh drivers... Nvidia hasn't done that to my knowledge on any system to date.

what do you mean Arch doesn't support ati? Arch is a free linux distribution built around the philosophy that if you don't like it our way then you can do it on ur own. It's not hard to compile video drivers (there's tons of wiki's to do so), also the package is in the AUR... furthermore Arch repo's still have the free versions of the driver as well..

"Windows ATI drivers SUCK TOO !" -- Do you have facts?

jascase901 should go with the card that suits his/her needs (and wallet) the best right now that is ATI ... then again this is of course my opinion, and in the end it's up to jascase901.

hunterthomson · 2009-12-09 05:09:01

Maybe, get a motherboard that has on-board Intel grapics for Linux and then use the cheap ATI card in Windows.

- Archlinux ATI catalyst support dropped

http://www.archlinux.org/news/439/

Don't take MY word for it! Go, ask the guys on the ATI thread if they are ever going to buy an ATI card agin.
----------

The OpenSource ATI drver support is GREATLY EXAGGERATED. NO ONE is buying ATI to use the OpenDriver. Guys are using it because the Catalyst sucks so much it is worth giving up 3D. They are Alfa Quality at best. AMD pays '2' guys at Novel to code it.

----------

Nope, they drop support because none of the Arch Dev's wanted to deal with the piece of crap and have it slow the development of Arch to the crawl of Ubuntu.

Last edited by hunterthomson (2009-12-09 05:52:15)

skottish · 2009-12-09 05:14:01

hunterthomson wrote:

- Archlinux ATI catalyst support dropped
http://www.archlinux.org/news/439/

Don't take MY word for it! Go, ask the guys on the ATI thread if they are ever going to buy an ATI card agin.
----------
The OpenSource ATI drver support is GREATLY EXAGGERATED. They are Alfa Quality at best. AMD pays '2' guys at Novel to code it.

You made your point. Please don't bump this thread any more saying the same thing.

For clarity, Arch dropped support for Catalyst because of its license.

pyther · 2009-12-09 19:47:47

@MattSmith well as with anything there is the possibility that you might get lucky and not have any lemons. Generally though Hitachi drives fail more frequently than Seagate or WD. Maxtor is considered awful, however some people got lucky and didn't have a single problem with Maxtor drives.

Maybe Hitachi has gotten better, but I would suggest going with a drive that has a 5 year warranty. Even though it might cost $10 more than a drive with 3 year warranty IMO it worth the extra cash. I had a WD digital raptor fail after 4 years of use and they replaced it for free (just had to pay the shipping to send the drive to them). Here is an example of a drive with a 5 yr warranty: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a … 6822136320 (500GB) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a … 6822136284 (1TB)

I've been seeing a trend lately where drives have just been crapping out after the 3-4 year mark. So it would be well worth the "investment" for 2 extra years of warranty.

Last edited by pyther (2009-12-09 19:49:15)

MattSmith · 2009-12-10 00:34:29

@Pyther good point, I woul suggest one with free shipping though Also Seagate owns maxtor. If i'm no mistaken a maxtor drive IS a seagate drive with a different name on it. Google maxtor and the website that pops up is "Maxtor is Seagate"

.:B:. · 2009-12-10 02:53:54

Hunterthompson: knock it off with the flaming.

pyther · 2009-12-10 12:46:08

MattSmith wrote:

@Pyther good point, I woul suggest one with free shipping though Also Seagate owns maxtor. If i'm no mistaken a maxtor drive IS a seagate drive with a different name on it. Google maxtor and the website that pops up is "Maxtor is Seagate"

Free shipping is always nice, but shipping is usually not that much. Newegg usually drastically cuts shipping price after about the $18 mark.

Just for the information seagate brought out maxtor in 2005 (http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/new … 18,00.html). So this was after Maxtor got a bad name for itself.

Arch Linux

#1 2009-12-08 02:34:58

building a new pc

#2 2009-12-08 02:55:54

Re: building a new pc

#3 2009-12-08 04:06:14

Re: building a new pc

#4 2009-12-08 05:22:52

Re: building a new pc

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Re: building a new pc

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