New Computer Specs. Good or Bad?

[A Ghost Hack]

I am planning on buying a new computer and never really constructed one myself and I was hoping someone could tell me if a computer with these components/specs would be a good computer for the price. And if I could get any help or advice in making it better for lower costs, or any input at all would be a great help! This is for gaming almost exclusively (as I have a macbook pro for school and related things).

http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/saved/1DLM0V

Thanks for all of your help!

[RikuoAmero]

Could you post the specs here please? When I clicked the link, a message popped up, saying they were out of stock of the hard-drives and all the options reset to default.

I can help you out immensely. I will admit that I haven't actually built my own system, but I have researched it extensively: money is what's stopping me. I have to save up.

What kind of games are you planning on playing? The latest and greatest, all at highest settings? What's your budget?

[A Ghost Hack]

If you just close that window out it brings you right to the specs of the computer. It should be priced at $1169. I don't know why the window pops up x.x But yeah everything is how it should be after you close the window.

[ZeroPenguins]

Specs are fine, the halloween special offer for upgrade of 1333Mhz of ram to 1600Mhz of RAM, you should take up on that offer. Because your 3.4Ghz computer will cause the RAM to bottle neck, but it's minimal, since it's not far off from 3.33Ghz. Also bang in a Blu-ray DVD combo, so it be future proof xD.

[auraspanta]

Specs are fine but not best.......

[RikuoAmero]

I'd suggest changing the graphics card to the Geforce GTX 560, (fourth option in that list) it's $6 cheaper, the graphics clock can go as high as 950 MHz (compared to the Radeon HD 6870 you selected, which is 900 MHz) and its memory clock is faster too (560 is 2200MHz compared to the 6870's 1050MHz). Not only that, but you get PhysX. Take a look at what you'd be getting in PhysX enabled Batman Arkham City

http://www.geforce.com/News/articles/exclusive-physx-in-batman-arkham-city-a-first-look

Just keep in mind though that Nvidia says to have full 1080p, highest settings and PhysX enabled in Arkham City, you need a GTX 570 minimum, so if you do change to the GTX 560, you'll have to lower some of the settings. Although who knows, perhaps with processor and RAM options you've got there, you may be able to get away with highest settings.

(As an aside, I just noticed that they're selling a 3GB GTX 580...for $1445! That would be a complete ripoff)

I notice that you didn't select any of the freebies. Just select Deus Ex and Arkham City, two of the best games released this year...then the game that comes free with whatever brand of graphics card you get.

One thing that confuses me though, on the page you get the option to select three Geforce GTX 590s...which is impossible, given that a single GTX 590 is really just two underclocked GTX 580's sandwiched together running in SLI. Having two 590's gives you the maximum that SLI allows, Quad-SLI. I've never heard of a 6x-SLI, and I'm pretty sure there are no drivers for it in any case.

Hard drive wise...for your first hard drive, if I were you, I'd switch to the one that has the second yellow NEW sticker next to it. Its a 120GB Solid State drive, which will boost read/write speeds for your OS and applications. As a bonus, its $10 cheaper than what you've already selected. If you want capacity, then look into secondary traditional hard drives or external hard drives. If you already have external drives lying around, then great! You'd be set!

As for Blu-ray capability...be careful there. I got a shocker when I got my PC Blu-ray drive...I thought that was all I needed to play Blu-ray movies, but turns out you have to BUY the software too. With DVDs, you can just use VLC or Media Player Classic, but Blu-rays require a paid for program. If you don't want to go to that expense, you may want to look into either downloading 1080p movies or ripping your Blu-rays (which again requires you to pay for the anti-Blu-ray-security program AnyDVD). If you decide to rip, you can get a 30-day trial of AnyDVD, which should be plenty of time to rip your Blu-ray collection (if you have one that is).

As for getting a sound card...you haven't one selected. Onboard audio should be fine for your needs. If you decide to go for a sound card later on though, then I'll swear by the last option, the Creative Labs SB X-FI Titanium Fatal1ty Champion Series PCI Express Sound Card. I've got one, and it's done me a world of good.

[Leviathan87]

a 570 gtx would be best. it'll last 4 to 5 years

[† Mute point]

If you just close that window out it brings you right to the specs of the computer. It should be priced at $1169. I don't know why the window pops up x.x But yeah everything is how it should be after you close the window.

If I had to guess, I'd say the window pops up because they don't have that hard drive in stock at this time.

[vcxz]

...Hard drive wise...for your first hard drive, if I were you, I'd switch to the one that has the second yellow NEW sticker next to it. Its a 120GB Solid State drive, which will boost read/write speeds for your OS and applications. As a bonus, its $10 cheaper than what you've already selected. If you want capacity, then look into secondary traditional hard drives or external hard drives. If you already have external drives lying around, then great! You'd be set!....

Definitely consider SSD for your OS and applications. Having whatever OS you plan to install starting up in just seconds is great

Price wise I think it's good too, have fun building!!!

[A Ghost Hack]

I'd suggest changing the graphics card to the Geforce GTX 560, (fourth option in that list) it's $6 cheaper, the graphics clock can go as high as 950 MHz (compared to the Radeon HD 6870 you selected, which is 900 MHz) and its memory clock is faster too (560 is 2200MHz compared to the 6870's 1050MHz). Not only that, but you get PhysX. Take a look at what you'd be getting in PhysX enabled Batman Arkham City

http://www.geforce.com/News/articles/exclusive-physx-in-batman-arkham-city-a-first-look

Just keep in mind though that Nvidia says to have full 1080p, highest settings and PhysX enabled in Arkham City, you need a GTX 570 minimum, so if you do change to the GTX 560, you'll have to lower some of the settings. Although who knows, perhaps with processor and RAM options you've got there, you may be able to get away with highest settings.

(As an aside, I just noticed that they're selling a 3GB GTX 580...for $1445! That would be a complete ripoff)

I notice that you didn't select any of the freebies. Just select Deus Ex and Arkham City, two of the best games released this year...then the game that comes free with whatever brand of graphics card you get.

One thing that confuses me though, on the page you get the option to select three Geforce GTX 590s...which is impossible, given that a single GTX 590 is really just two underclocked GTX 580's sandwiched together running in SLI. Having two 590's gives you the maximum that SLI allows, Quad-SLI. I've never heard of a 6x-SLI, and I'm pretty sure there are no drivers for it in any case.

Hard drive wise...for your first hard drive, if I were you, I'd switch to the one that has the second yellow NEW sticker next to it. Its a 120GB Solid State drive, which will boost read/write speeds for your OS and applications. As a bonus, its $10 cheaper than what you've already selected. If you want capacity, then look into secondary traditional hard drives or external hard drives. If you already have external drives lying around, then great! You'd be set!

As for Blu-ray capability...be careful there. I got a shocker when I got my PC Blu-ray drive...I thought that was all I needed to play Blu-ray movies, but turns out you have to BUY the software too. With DVDs, you can just use VLC or Media Player Classic, but Blu-rays require a paid for program. If you don't want to go to that expense, you may want to look into either downloading 1080p movies or ripping your Blu-rays (which again requires you to pay for the anti-Blu-ray-security program AnyDVD). If you decide to rip, you can get a 30-day trial of AnyDVD, which should be plenty of time to rip your Blu-ray collection (if you have one that is).

As for getting a sound card...you haven't one selected. Onboard audio should be fine for your needs. If you decide to go for a sound card later on though, then I'll swear by the last option, the Creative Labs SB X-FI Titanium Fatal1ty Champion Series PCI Express Sound Card. I've got one, and it's done me a world of good.

Sorry for late post been really busy with school.

Anyway Thank you sooo much for the help. I like your suggestions on graphics and ssd. I do have an external drive and capacity isn't that much of a problem. I am just putting a handful of games on the drive. However I heard that you can't defragment a SSD. And was wondering if you could possibly run the risk of the drive slowing over time and not being able to do anything to help speed or clean it up? I may look at sound cards but I am curious, would I need a good sound card to have decent audio in game? Because a lot of my gameplay I am looking to upload to Youtube/stream. And as for blu ray I don't plan on getting it now knowing those draw backs.

Thanks for everyone else's input as well. I really appreciate it because this a large sum of money I am going to sink into this and want to make sure I can get the best I can with what I am paying for. So thanks again guys

EDIT: I also noticed that with selecting the new graphics card (GTX 560) the frame rate, or projected frame rate, drops a bit on all ends. Is the physX going to make that much of a visual difference? Sorry I am not all that experienced with graphics cards x.x

[RikuoAmero]

Sorry for late post been really busy with school.

Anyway Thank you sooo much for the help. I like your suggestions on graphics and ssd. I do have an external drive and capacity isn't that much of a problem. I am just putting a handful of games on the drive. However I heard that you can't defragment a SSD. And was wondering if you could possibly run the risk of the drive slowing over time and not being able to do anything to help speed or clean it up? I may look at sound cards but I am curious, would I need a good sound card to have decent audio in game? Because a lot of my gameplay I am looking to upload to Youtube/stream. And as for blu ray I don't plan on getting it now knowing those draw backs.

Thanks for everyone else's input as well. I really appreciate it because this a large sum of money I am going to sink into this and want to make sure I can get the best I can with what I am paying for. So thanks again guys

EDIT: I also noticed that with selecting the new graphics card (GTX 560) the frame rate, or projected frame rate, drops a bit on all ends. Is the physX going to make that much of a visual difference? Sorry I am not all that experienced with graphics cards x.x

It's not that you can't defragment, it's that you don't need to. I'm no engineer, but I do know that much about SSDs, the problem of defragmenting just doesn't come into play. As for slowing down...*shrugs* sorry there, don't know about that I'm afraid. If it is true, then you'll have to decide if the tradeoff (faster read/write speeds but shorter lifespan) is worth it.

As for sound cards...they're not needed. The reason I got my Creative sound card is because of a neat feature it has: it outputs ALL audio as a Dolby Digital 5.1 signal (not the same thing as virtual surround). I needed that because the headset I use, Tritton AXPro, is compatible with Dolby only and not DTS...so if I pop in a DTS audio track Blu-ray disc or watch a DTS track MKV (which is becoming the standard for Blu-rays these days), without my sound card, I wouldn't be able to get 5.1. In your case though...you won't need one. Youtube only does 2 channel audio.

About the projected frame rate...I actually didn't notice that on the site. I went out and checked out a few FPS tests on Modern Warfare 2. One guy with specs similar to yours got about 60 FPS with the Radeon 6870, while another guy with a slower processor (3.0 GHz compared to your 3.4) with the Geforce GTX 560 got around 90. So I wouldn't worry about what the site says, its always better to check other sources.

As for PhysX, I'm pretty sure I left a link in my original response, showing it in Batman Arkham City. However, that is just one game (two if counting Asylum). Most games prefer to use a physics engine that both ATI and Nvidia cards can use (such as Havok), but none of them compare to the quality of PhysX.

[→Speed←]

Hi there! Depending on what SSD you have you actually should NOT defragment it! There is a feature called Trim and another which I forget the name to that automatically defrag! My SSD's(I use two of them.. one for windows and one for programs then I use my normal hard drive's for anime and storage purposes) have Trim. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227725

TRIM Support

The OCZ Agility 3 offers native TRIM support featured in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Designed to maintain the performance of SSD at an optimal level over the lifetime of the drive, TRIM functions by actively deleting invalid data from the SSD’s memory cells to ensure that write operations perform at full speed. Since a memory block must be erased before it can be re-programmed, TRIM improves performance by pro-actively erasing pages containing invalid data, allowing the SSD to write new data without first having to perform a time-consuming erase command.

[A Ghost Hack]

Thank you all for your help in my decision making. I will be switching graphics card to the GTX560 and also getting the SSD. I am not sure I will get the one with TRIM support just because of the price difference and capacity difference. Maybe if my budget was a bit higher I would. Thanks again for everyone who helped me making these decisions and for all of your input. It was all much appreciated

[→Speed←]

dunno if you bought your PC or parts yet but you might want to know that they have made NVIDIA and ATI graphic cards that can be used at the same time(for example you can use one ATI card and 2 NVIDIA cards at the same time or 1 of each) Another thing you probably know about already but just in case you dont is the power supply.. If you plan on Overclocking ANY part even if just a single part.. you will need slightly more power for it for one GTX560 you would need a minimum of 650 Watt powersupply(some powersupply's also have better cable routing which means less loose cables in your case"Modular")

[Dae314]

You didn't buy that yet right? Please say no =/. That power supply does not sound like it's going to support your computer. I'm not looking at 800W, I'm looking at that brand name I've never heard of, at the lack of professional reviews of that power supply, at the fact that it's the cheapest power supply on that list, and the fact that I can't find any information technical information about that one.

Of course, I could be just searching badly and that power supply is fine, or maybe you'll be one of the lucky people to get one that doesn't fry your computer, but why risk it? That power supply doesn't even have an 80+ certification in its name. If you don't know anything about that power supply why are you going to use it to power your >$1000 rig?

I suggest you go with the power supply that's 1 below it. The CoolerMaster Silent Pro Gold 80 Plus power supply. That one is by a known and trusted manufacturer, and it's a well known and trusted line. It's got several professional reviews that I can easily find, and technical information about it is available easily from the CoolerMaster website. I trust that power supply much more than I do that one you have.

You could also probably drop that factory overclock and overclock it yourself. If you need to save some money, you can also drop to the i5-2500K since it performs similarly to the i7-2600K. I'm not sure why that site doesn't offer you more cooler selections. The Sandy Bridge CPUs run fairly cool, so a decent air cooler is more than enough to get a moderate overclock on them. I think they're just ripping you off with the liquid cooling, but it's all they have so oh well . Some things about your motherboard: you don't want to do multi-graphics on that since the split is 16x/4x, and it only has support for crossfire. Your graphics card choice is fine, although I bet the 560Ti (1GB) would work better for you like others have said. Also, why are you RAIDing HDDs? If you really want a speed increase you get an SSD and an HDD. RAID speeds your IO speed up a little, but it also doubles your risk of failure (since if 1 drive fails your whole computer goes poop). I would recommend you the Crucial M4 as a good budget SSD, but that site doesn't offer it (this is why you build your own lol).

That's it for now. Main thing is the power supply. I'd sink a bit more cash into it just to ensure that you've got a good power supply. A bad power supply could mean a fried system at worst remember that . Most of the time it'll just poop out on you faster .

[ZeroPenguins]

You didn't buy that yet right? Please say no =/. That power supply does not sound like it's going to support your computer. I'm not looking at 800W, I'm looking at that brand name I've never heard of, at the lack of professional reviews of that power supply, at the fact that it's the cheapest power supply on that list, and the fact that I can't find any information technical information about that one.

Of course, I could be just searching badly and that power supply is fine, or maybe you'll be one of the lucky people to get one that doesn't fry your computer, but why risk it? That power supply doesn't even have an 80+ certification in its name. If you don't know anything about that power supply why are you going to use it to power your >$1000 rig?

I suggest you go with the power supply that's 1 below it. The CoolerMaster Silent Pro Gold 80 Plus power supply. That one is by a known and trusted manufacturer, and it's a well known and trusted line. It's got several professional reviews that I can easily find, and technical information about it is available easily from the CoolerMaster website. I trust that power supply much more than I do that one you have.

You could also probably drop that factory overclock and overclock it yourself. If you need to save some money, you can also drop to the i5-2500K since it performs similarly to the i7-2600K. I'm not sure why that site doesn't offer you more cooler selections. The Sandy Bridge CPUs run fairly cool, so a decent air cooler is more than enough to get a moderate overclock on them. I think they're just ripping you off with the liquid cooling, but it's all they have so oh well . Some things about your motherboard: you don't want to do multi-graphics on that since the split is 16x/4x, and it only has support for crossfire. Your graphics card choice is fine, although I bet the 560Ti (1GB) would work better for you like others have said. Also, why are you RAIDing HDDs? If you really want a speed increase you get an SSD and an HDD. RAID speeds your IO speed up a little, but it also doubles your risk of failure (since if 1 drive fails your whole computer goes poop). I would recommend you the Crucial M4 as a good budget SSD, but that site doesn't offer it (this is why you build your own lol).

That's it for now. Main thing is the power supply. I'd sink a bit more cash into it just to ensure that you've got a good power supply. A bad power supply could mean a fried system at worst remember that . Most of the time it'll just poop out on you faster .

Well good point about PSU, but I don't think an expensive PSU would do much different. Meh my build I'm using a crap ass PSU and it runs fines.

[Dae314]

Well good point about PSU, but I don't think an expensive PSU would do much different. Meh my build I'm using a crap ass PSU and it runs fines.

It's not just an "expensive PSU". That is one of the factors of it though . It's a PSU that's made by a well known brand. I looked up specs and reviews on that PSU and it performs well. I don't just advocate more expensive, I advocate better quality!

I know of a lot of people who just bought the cheapest PSU available but were fine (in fact, many are fine for as long as they use their build), however I also know of a lot of people whose machine failed on them in 1-2 years because their PSU became unstable or died. Most of these people were using some nameless PSU. There are a lot of cases of "quality" PSUs crapping out on people, but usually the warranty handles it and they get a new one. Buying quality doesn't ensure that your unit will work 100% for 6 years, it just means you've maximized your chances of having that scenario. I haven't actually had to deal with a case of catastrophic PSU failure which took out the entire system, but I know it's possible. Usually people find that their $1500 machine is worth an extra $20-$100 for a good PSU . Plus, if they get a good PSU that they can trust at the 6 year mark (all PSUs degrade slowly and become less reliable as they get older like just about everything else in the world ^^, they won't need to get a new one for a new build .

In the efficiency sector, a high efficiency PSU can also save you money on electricity bills if your parents aren't the ones paying that for you . The PSU I recommended has an 80+ Gold certification which means it's supposed to run at 90% efficiency or higher at most normal voltage levels.