1st attempt at building a tower. Hardware recommendations please.

hume's doona · 2011-05-04 10:19:19

I'm looking at embarking on building my first tower, I'll try to keep this short, but complete.

What I want/need

AMD multicore [for budget reasons] looking at benefits of over 3 cores, and if it is worth the extra cost
AM3 socket motherboard, so I can upgrade the cpu later
3+ screens

What I use computers for:

Image editing
Short video editing
Audio editing/sound production
Virtual machines [I tend to build, tweak, then delete, it kills the distro-hopping instinct]
coding/compiling
+average user stuff [browser etc]

I'm in australia, but judging by ebay, prices are similar to USA, NFI about how much a pound is worth, so can't comment on UK prices.

Cheers

zenlord · 2011-05-04 11:39:41

Normally I would recommend everyone that is building a new pc to have the OS and the applications on a SSD. When you're into video editing, you'll need large capacities at high speeds, so you'll need to have a RAID-setup (or ridiculously expensive SSD-disks of 512GiB and more). Besides that RAID-setup, you could always go for a small (40GB) SSD to install arch and its applications on. VM-guests can be installed on the RAID-disk.

Audio editing and photo editing is no problem for a recent desktop system - just make sure you have at least 4GB of memory.

'Sound production' sounds like you'll be needing a realtime kernel, so you might want to look at a better-than-built-in soundcard to get those latencies really low without hogging the CPU (although I don't know if this is still a possibility nowadays).

'upgrading the CPU': yeah, I've said that oft' times before, but *never* did that. You just wear down the pc until it breaks and then replace it entirely (unless only 1 component dies before the pc's time's up)

The PSU: often overlooked, but very important to the overall stability. Don't look at raw wattage, but look for a PSU with gold/silver/bronze rating for efficiency at a wattage that is ~20% above what all your components together will use if they're maxed out.

Building the tower itself is remarkably easy. Follow the color codes on the components - it's like lego

hume's doona · 2011-05-04 11:43:58

thanks zenlord, that's a big help.

Now that you mention it, I can see myself never upgrading the CPU, but eternally planning to

cheers

fukawi2 · 2011-05-04 13:06:48

hume's doona wrote:

Image editing
Short video editing
Audio editing/sound production
Virtual machines [I tend to build, tweak, then delete, it kills the distro-hopping instinct]
coding/compiling
+average user stuff [browser etc]

I use my computer pretty much exactly the same way, and recently built my current PC:
- Intel Core i5 650 @ 3.20GHz
- 8gb RAM
- Gigabyte P55A-UD4P mobo
- 64gb SSD (Arch O/S)
- 1tb RAID-1 spinning disk (/home etc)
- GeForce 9400 GT
I'm most happy with the setup -- if anything I would upgrade the RAM even more, but other than that it's most satisfactory for the tasks you've listed. One thing to consider with the mobo is if is has a firewire port/header for capturing video (depends on your camera too of course).
I don't know where in Aust you are, but in Melbourne I built this for around $1200 (IIRC) from MSY and Scorptec. Scorptec have 1tb HDD's for $69 atm.

sudokill · 2011-05-04 18:11:16

For your uses, I don't think anything over 4GB RAM will be needed, I've never come close to filling my 4GB and I run VM's like you, just 1 at a time to play with them, video editing etc 4GB is fine. Don't know if it's in your price range but sandybridge i5 is best for the money they are faster than AMD and hit 5ghz easily on air, but fast stock too.
Quad core is still the best at the moment, 6 and 8 cores show no improvement at all in benchmarks/real world use and I doubt they will for some time. No point getting 3 cores because they are oddly obsolete and normally have low cache and slow clock speeds.
SSD is still the best upgrade you can buy for a PC for responsiveness, and they're nice and silent, etc etc everythings a plus with SSD.
I have no idea on your budget, but when I built my PC in 2009 the main CPU (i5 750) RAM (4GB DDR3 G.Skill) and motherboard (Asus P7P55D EVO) only cost £350. At the end of the day it's completely up to you, you have to go with what you like.
All I know is that for price/performance ratio, Intel CPU's are the best. the i5 750 beats the AMD 1055 6 core in everything. if I was to build a new PC now I'd go with i5 Sandybridge and cut down on the price in other areas if your budget is tight.

Last edited by sudokill (2011-05-04 18:14:07)

fukawi2 · 2011-05-04 23:34:26

sudokill wrote:

For your uses, I don't think anything over 4GB RAM will be needed, I've never come close to filling my 4GB and I run VM's like you, just 1 at a time to play with them, video editing etc 4GB is fine.

Each to their own, but RAM is the biggest improvement you can make IMHO. I built my work desktop recently and thought 4gb would be enough, but I'm constantly running out and I'm only doing the same stuff as listed, except video/audio editing. (To be fair, I do have a Win7 VM running all the time which uses a fair chunk of the 4gb )

hume's doona · 2011-05-05 01:04:18

fukawi2 wrote:

sudokill wrote:
For your uses, I don't think anything over 4GB RAM will be needed, I've never come close to filling my 4GB and I run VM's like you, just 1 at a time to play with them, video editing etc 4GB is fine.
Each to their own, but RAM is the biggest improvement you can make IMHO. I built my work desktop recently and thought 4gb would be enough, but I'm constantly running out and I'm only doing the same stuff as listed, except video/audio editing. (To be fair, I do have a Win7 VM running all the time which uses a fair chunk of the 4gb )

Thanks, I can start with 4 and play it by ear. I run pretty light VM's for the most part, slackware, gentoo, BSD's etc, windows is for tax returns once a year

BurntSushi · 2011-05-05 02:00:38

I also recently built a new computer. I think you've had good recommendations so far, but I'd like to comment on your desire to have 3+ screens.

Your best (or only) bet is to go with an AMD card with Eyefinity support. You'll need to get a DisplayPort adapter for the third screen though. I've done this myself and it works brilliantly. I went with an HD 5570 (I don't game and I use Xmonad, so I didn't need anything powerful).

Just be careful with the DisplayPort adapter. (Read the link.) This is superior to alternatives because you can configure your setup with xrandr---you won't need Xinerama. Therefore, you get graphics acceleration. (For example, I was able to run Unity with all the cool effects off of an Ubuntu 11.04 live CD.)

Last edited by BurntSushi (2011-05-05 02:01:41)

hume's doona · 2011-05-05 02:05:58

BurntSushi wrote:

I also recently built a new computer. I think you've had good recommendations so far, but I'd like to comment on your desire to have 3+ screens.
Your best (or only) bet is to go with an AMD card with Eyefinity support. You'll need to get a DisplayPort adapter for the third screen though. I've done this myself and it works brilliantly. I went with an HD 5570 (I don't game and I use Xmonad, so I didn't need anything powerful).
Just be careful with the DisplayPort adapter. (Read the link.) This is superior to alternatives because you can configure your setup with xrandr---you won't need Xinerama. Therefore, you get graphics acceleration. (For example, I was able to run Unity with all the cool effects off of an Ubuntu 11.04 live CD.)

Thanks, will have a good read over the link later. I skimmed it, and checked out the pics [I think I let out a litle bit off wee, epic!]

Cheers

Scars · 2011-05-05 02:13:59

I'd grab these monsters and budget buy the rest.

AMD Phenom II x6 $199.99-
http://www.amazon.com/AMD-Phenom-Six-Co … 989&sr=1-1

Gigabyte AM3 Socket MB w/ USB3.0 + 2 Pci-e slots $129.99
http://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-Socket-U … gy_e_img_b

Arch Linux

#1 2011-05-04 10:19:19

1st attempt at building a tower. Hardware recommendations please.

#2 2011-05-04 11:39:41

Re: 1st attempt at building a tower. Hardware recommendations please.

#3 2011-05-04 11:43:58

Re: 1st attempt at building a tower. Hardware recommendations please.

#4 2011-05-04 13:06:48

Re: 1st attempt at building a tower. Hardware recommendations please.

#5 2011-05-04 18:11:16

Re: 1st attempt at building a tower. Hardware recommendations please.

#6 2011-05-04 23:34:26

Re: 1st attempt at building a tower. Hardware recommendations please.

#7 2011-05-05 01:04:18

Re: 1st attempt at building a tower. Hardware recommendations please.

#8 2011-05-05 02:00:38

Re: 1st attempt at building a tower. Hardware recommendations please.

#9 2011-05-05 02:05:58

Re: 1st attempt at building a tower. Hardware recommendations please.

#10 2011-05-05 02:13:59

Re: 1st attempt at building a tower. Hardware recommendations please.

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