myrti wants to buy a real PC :o

I think this thread is a bit all over the place. In a nutshell, what the OP wants is...

• A PC that can play, at a minimum Diablo 3. Which should be easy to do.
• Enough RAM for VM's.
• Have enough processing power for D3, but be recent enough to scale with upcoming games.
• All the peripherals. (Excluding speakers)
• Try to stay under $1000.

Getting hardware powerful enough for D3 is easy, it doesn't require too much to run. Maintaining about $1000 limit with all the peripherals will be nearly impossible as a good monitor will be about $200 with mouse and keyboard taking about $50. My experience with Linux is limited (And frustrating) but gaming on that OS would a pain, I would dual boot into Windows for the experience. As such, you will need to spend about $100 on that license. In the end, you may want to increase the budget by about $100 or so. I would also consider an AMD-based system to keep costs down if you decide not to go for the FX-8000 series, but the more mid-range 6000. RAM is cheap enough with 8GB sticks going for about $70. The graphics card will suck down the most cash, I would budget, if you're wanting to avoid upgrading for a while, about $250 to $300 on this part, perhaps something from the Radeon 7800 series.

Hi,

I want to apologise to everyone for not replying earlier. I'm sorry.

When I said the hard limit would be 1000$, I was really hoping to stay well below that including the monitor.. But it seems that that is more of a challenge than I expected.

@thisisu
I like the set out, but I think the graphics card may be a bit over the top? I don't really know much of graphic cards, I just checked the price for the NVIDIA® GeForce® 260 (which is the recommended GC for D3) and it's half of the one you're suggesting.. so I'm guessing the card you're proposing must be more than twice as powerful? Is that somethign where I could "drop the cost" a bit?

@BS
I'll try to catch you tomorrow then and discuss some of this on IRC to get a better understanding. Are yours and thisisu's suggestion interchangeable or would I need to take into accoutn that you're suggesting Intel CPU and not AMD? or something similar?

@ DJBPace07
Just a few minor remarks on what I want/need:
Have enough processing power for D3, but be recent enough to scale with upcoming games. I wouldn't worry about upcoming games. The last game I played was Diablo2 and that's why I want to play D3 now. I don't keep abreast of other releases, mostly because anything more complicated than the click & point solution of Diablo is too difficult for me. :ugly: I don't really have that much time to play anyways, I need to make the time and am willing to do so for D3 as I had a blast with D2. There's no other game I can think off for which I would want to make time. So if it runs D3, I'm happy.

As such, you will need to spend about $100 on that license I bought a Win7 license when it first came out. It's been installed on my laptop ever since, but rarely used (last time it was booted was in february I think). Once I get the PC, I can simply move the install of Win7 from my laptop to my PC and won't need a new license.

I also have regular hard drives. What I was considering, was getting a smaller SSD for the OS to speed things up, but if the budget is already tight, then that can just be dropped and I'll use one of the 2 1Tb disks I have. (Those originally were internal hard drives, I just bought an icybox and turned them into external drives, becuase I don't have a PC. They're Samsung drives and I can look up the exact specification later on, they're about 2 years old now)

I was expecting the monitor to be the most expensive part to buy, really. Since I want a 24" screen. Maybe I can just sneak one from work. j/k

regards myrti

@thisisu
I like the set out, but I think the graphics card may be a bit over the top? I don't really know much of graphic cards, I just checked the price for the NVIDIA® GeForce® 260 (which is the recommended GC for D3) and it's half of the one you're suggesting.. so I'm guessing the card you're proposing must be more than twice as powerful? Is that somethign where I could "drop the cost" a bit?

Hi myrti,

Yes the graphics is a high end one. I was trying to quote you on something that would definitely run D3 and leaving you the ability to play future games while staying under the 1k cap.

I did not know you needed monitor too so I didn't factor that in. You could get a graphics card that would play D3 and a 20" LED widescreen for around 200$ total.

@Myrti:

They are somewhat interchangeable. Yes it's an Intel v. AMD thing really with costs. The PSU and Case he listed should work with an i7 intel though, the only thing that wont would be the motherboard.


I think Windows 7 Aero actually has higher graphics requirements then D3 or so it looks.


I'm always happy to help.

Hi guys,

I have been comparing the two builds and there are a couple of questions that I have with regards to it:

First with regards to BlackSpyder's build: (I can't seem to make time for a long chat at the moment, sorry ).
I checked the specifications of the I7 2600 and the inbuilt GPU would actually already be sufficient to run D3 on low settings.
Graphic cards, unfortunately, are the one sector where I have truely no knowledge whatsoever. If I wanted to look at a cheaper alternative to the Radeon you picked out what are the values I need to keep an eye on? The RAM it has I suppose and that the connection will fit into the MoBo I'm buying, anything else?
I also noticed that the PSU you chose has quite a lot less power than the one thisisu chose. Is this mostly due to the GPU? Or is this also related to the different CPU?

I looked at a couple of comparisons between the I7 2600 and the AMD FX-8120 and it seemed as if the I7 was consistingly lower in power consumption. Is that something you guys would confirm?

If I buy the following things from your suggestion (plus one addition I made myself):
CPU Intel i7 2600 Sandy Bridge Mobo
ASUS P8Z68 Motherboard (2x SATA 6gbps, USB3.0, 32 GB RAM Capacity)
RAM Corsair 16 GB (2x8GB) RAM kit DDR3 PC1333
Graphics Radeon HD6850
Hard Drives: OCZ Agility 3 AGT3-25SAT3-120G 2.5" 120GB SSD
Case: Antec ONE
PSU Corsair Enthusitest 650w i7 Compatible PSU

Do I have a complete working (tower of a) PC? Or would I need to buy additional fans or similar? Intel CPUs tend to run quite hot, no?

Unfortunately my phone has died and my budget therefore has shrunk, hence I would really like to drop the price quite a bit and I think for the way I'll use the PC the most sense would be to trim down the graphic card and maybe half the RAM? Is there a good reason (besides upgradeability later) to go with 2 x 8GB instead of 4x 4? I checked and the 4x4 option is about 20$ cheaper: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233190
Is the radeon a "low-end card" nowadays? Or is it somewhere in the midrange? Going with the 6670 you mentioned would save another 40$
I also looked at this i5: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115072 For my eyes it looks as if the capacity of the i5 2500K Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz is almost identical to the i7 2700 Sandy bridge. There's a marginal difference in the processor strength of 3.3 GHz vs 3.4 GHz. Or am I missing something? Switching those out would save another 80$.

My hard drives atm are Sata-2 (thanks to havredave for checking that out for me ), so I'm not quite sure it would make sense to drop the SSD and use the existing hard drive instead. It kind of sounds like a bottleneck to me in that case. The SSD at 120Gb is listed at 119$. I figured it would make sense to take the bigger one as it would be beneficial to have the VMs stored on that SSD too. Is that correct?
I think buying a Sata-3 drive would prolly come out to a similar price as the SSD, just with much more storage room per buck.

I did the same basic analysis for the built of thisisu and a couple of different questions arose:
the biggest issue I see here for me, personally, is the MoBo. I hadn't noticed at first, but it says UEFI Bios. As far as I know UEFI and Linux do not yet go well together, it's doable from what I've seen online, but it's tricky. (The MB BlackSpyder chose, for example, seems to work quite well with Ubuntu installs on google, SaberTooth isn't rating so well from the links I read). I take it all current MB now use (U)EFI BIOS? I saw that many come with "switches" between the new UEFI and the old Is there a comparable MoBo with a "normal" BIOS?
The next one is more of a general question: What I've read is that if you go over 4 threads the AMD is more efficient than the Intel one (since it's got 8 cores and not 4), which is nice. Unfortunately I do not know how many threads I'm running and what is "better". Can I think of one VirtualMachine as a thread? Or would that alrady be multiple threads?
Is the Radeon graphic card BlackSpyder suggested compatible with the rest of the built, does it make sense?

AMD FX-8120
ASUS Sabertooth 990FX
G.SKILL Ares Series 8GB (2 x 4GB)
Radeon HD6850
OCZ Agility 3 120GB
OCZ Fatal1ty 750W
Antec ONE

If I downgrade the graphic cards should I also downgrade the PSU? Or is "too much power" not an issue? Is the build of the tower complete like this or would I need another
This system, with the Radeon, instead of the GeForce would come to roughly 800$, which would mean that in the end I'm still above 1000$ spent, but rather close on the mark in total. The system with the Intel i7 is at 950$ atm, but with the i5, the smaller graphic card and the 4 RAM chips it's also down to 810$. The question though is, if I downscale everything am I going overkill with the remaining items?

I like the Intel built better atm, since it has a lower power consumption and I'm less worried about the MB being compatible, but as usual am open to suggestions. I will likely have to surf through wifi rather than lan. I didn't see any wifi-info in the pages I looked at. Does that mean I need to buy a seperate card for wifi?

regrads myrti

Trim the budget, No Problem.

Intel CPU's: At the level of computing power the i5 and i7 have it will probably not impact you all that much. The i5 would work just as well most likely.

Threads: technically the way its supposed to work is as a send commands to the CPU it should split them up and send every X command to each core (were X is the number of cores, so if i had 4 cores, the first and the fifth commands would go to the 1st core, the second and sixth to the 2nd core, the third and seventh to the 3rd, and the fourth and eighth to the 4th core). But thats not the way it works some times, you can set the CPU to power saving mode which shuts off cores when not needed or you can set it to where the load is balanced over all cores at all times.

RAM: Honestly you could probably make do with 8GB of RAM for a year. I run a 2x4GB kit and Legion ran a 2x4GB kit and we've yet to hit a wall where we really needed "more" (Most VM's I had open at once was 2, Backtrack5 and Mint12 Linux). So feasiably you could use a 2x4 or a single 8GB kit (I use about 3.5GB with Chrome, Win7, iTunes, KeePass, and a few other programs open at once)

Video Cards: Radeon Cards actually have a structured naming system to them, In general the higher the # the better the card. The HD6xxx series isn't the newest series out (they just released the 7xxx series around Christmas) but it's stout enough to play most games out there. For what its worth, the HD6770 in my PC has no issues with D3 and it is probably overkill. The videocard I listed will work with thisisu's build.


I'm going to try an experiment and see how many full linux VM's I can get running on my PC at once without very noticeable lag. How many would constitute good for you?

I'll post the results later.


Findings: I ran 4 VM's w/ about 1 GB of RAM each and 2 cores with no lag at all (Backtrack5, Backtrack5KDE, Windows Xp mini, Windows XP mini) Granted I was just pointing and clicking and not running any programs. but you may be able to get by with much less processor then I originally had thought.

Hi,

after wasting most of my work time today on doing a bit of research on MoBo and the performance of graphic card bench marks in D3 (in German, but the stats would be the same in English. ), I have decided to look for a cheaper MB and get the more expensive GPU. So I now come up with this combination:

1024MB Sapphire Radeon HD 6770 Aktiv PCIe 2.1 x16 (Lite Retail) € 88,67*

Gigabyte GA-Z68AP-D3 Intel Z68 So.1155 Dual Channel DDR3 ATX Retail € 77,84*

650W Corsair TX650 V2 80+ Bronze € 76,58*

Antec One Hundred Window Midi Tower ohne Netzteil schwarz € 43,19*

Intel Core i5 2500 4x 3.30GHz So.1155 BOX € 179,44*

8GB Corsair XMS3 DDR3-1600 DIMM CL9 Dual € 42,66*

See also here. Making it a total fo 508,38 Euros. Which is somewhat higher than my original idea, but this would be something I can buckle. I imagine going for a lower brand in RAM would also save some money. EDIT: Adding the SSD would be another 87 Euros)

I want to say a big thanks to you BlackSpyder, I've already learned a lot!

I'm currently trying to read myself through the benefits and deficits of LCD vs LED and what not to come up with a display to go with it. Any suggestions?

regards myrti

Looks good. You could trim the budget by changing the brand of the Power Supply and RAM, Corsair is known for quality though (which is why it has a premium price).

As for monitors heres a little primer on LCD v. LED Monitor Buying Guide

Quick highlights I find important, Response Time: 2 ms is great 5 ms is good and Resolution: 1920x1080 (aka Full HD) or better i would suggest (so you can watch your movies in all their HD wonder), make sure it supports HDMI

Samsung, Dell, Vizio, and ASUS all make good monitors. One like this one should do fine ASUS LED monitor and similar LCD's run about 10-20 euros less

Of course, you are asking a colorblind guy about colors too


It's always a pleasure to help you myrti

Heya,

after some more discussions and some back and forth I finally ordered today! Thanks everybody for helping out and particularly to the ones on IRC suffering from my constant questions.

I finally went with the built I posted in my last post, but with a less powerful corsair PSU and the SSD thisisu suggested. I also bought a Samsung 24b350h as a monitor, after seeing it at one of the local hardware stores. All in all it comes to 960$ (with the monitor) so I'm quite happy.

I'm not yet 100% sold on the monitor, I think I'll just try it out and see if I like it and if not I can always return it.

regards myrti

EDIT And now i realise I'm missing something as basic as a keyboard. >.>

I always have spare PSU, hard drives, keyboards, mice...adding optical drives to the list today . This is the product of my "learn as I go along" approach to systems .

Let us know how you like the system after putting it together.

Louis

Keyboards and mice are cheap components ($20 US, for a set) buy multiples. "Controller Rage" has been known to kill a few user input peripherals in my town, and back when you had to have massive PSU's to do much of anything the purchasing of a new one every time you purchased a new component (say, an 8600GT video card) left some of us with plenty of "arts and crafts" 3/5/12v power units to play with.

Sidenote #1)
Things that have gotten the .45ACP of Controller Rage: RCA iPod Knockoff, Saitek II illuminated keyboard, a couple of Logitech Keyboards, my friends "Don't let the wife find it" Hard Drive (she found it), TV that blacked out during a very heated local multiplayer game of MW2 on the "Rust" map(thank goodness the we now have a steel box to catch the shrapnel!), a few Xbox360, xbox, PS1/2/3, (S)NES, Sega Genesis/CD/Saturn/Dreamcast cotrollers. Yes we have been doing this since a very young age, the Genesis controller was the first to go with the BB's of Doom.

Sidenote #2) Warning PSU's are dangerous and have the ability to produce massive amounts of electricity, If you dont know what you are doing LEAVE IT ALONE

First post from the new PC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Many thanks to the IRC-squad especially Lurch, that helped me figure out what to do where and when.

D3 downloading as we speak.

regards myrti

Just a final feed back after using it for a few weeks before this thread can sink into the depths of the forums:

The PC is running great, it's staying very cool (according to speedfan) and is playing D3 very nicely at full resolution and full details. No explosions. No burning. Not even smoke.

The screen is also awesome, though i've come to realise that my point of reference, the screen of my laptop, is so bad that even a flickering screen with dead pixels and green lines would still look good in comparison. It's dull, dark and depends strongly on the viewing angle.

I got a generic keyboard with american layout at work, which made me very happy, since I'm tired of using a different layout than the keyboard actually has.

So all in all I'm very happy with it. Thanks for that!

regards myrti