Comp build critic

[Seiji Okita]

So im building a new CP, i want to try to keep it under $700, but i want it to hold its own now and have potential for future upgrades (looking at you phenom 2 x6 >:})

ASUS DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS Black SATA 24X DVD Burner - Bulk - OEM

Western Digital Caviar Blue WD2500AAJS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

AMD Athlon II X4 620 Propus 2.6GHz Socket AM3 95W Quad-Core Processor - OEM

MSI 870-G45 AM3 AMD 770 ATX AMD Mobo

OCZ ModXStream Pro OCZ600MXSP 600W ATX12V V2.2 / EPS12V SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Modular Active PFC ...

COOLER MASTER Hyper 212 Plus RR-B10-212P-G1 "Heatpipe Direct Contact" Long Life Sleeve 120mm CPU Cooler

CORSAIR XMS3 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)

ASUS ENGTX460 DirectCU TOP/2DI/768MD5 GeForce GTX 460 (Fermi) 768MB 192-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI

Rosewill Smart One ATX Mid Tower Computer Case, Black interior, comes with three Fans-

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

total= $647

[Jefe]

Well, w/ that mobo I don't see much potential, no USB3.0, no SATA 6. You're also better off getting a Deneb 955 BE. Honestly if you don't have the cash just wait a bit for lower prices.

[Seiji Okita]

Well, w/ that mobo I don't see much potential, no USB3.0, no SATA 6. You're also better off getting a Deneb 955 BE. Honestly if you don't have the cash just wait a bit for lower prices.

Hmmm... even with overclocking the athlon 2 you feel the phenom 2 x4 is that much better? Also do the benifits of USB3 and SATA6 overshadow the listed boards features considering the price point? ^^y

I do plan to overclock and i want to upgrade to phenom x6 later, so i figured this cpu was a good hold over considering i OC it.

[CoronA1979]

USB3/SATA6 really isn't very much of a big deal right now. Most boards are just trying to get it out there to be ahead of the game but IMO it will be a while before you see every device on the market taking full advantage. There are some major issues w/ the marvel controller for SATA6 right now also, so..

[Olo401]

Hmmm... even with overclocking the athlon 2 you feel the phenom 2 x4 is that much better?

The difference is in the core design. The Athlon IIs are based on the Phenom II design so they're basically identical, however the Athlon IIs have no L3 cache memory which slows down processing a LOT. Plus you can get Phenom IIs in the unlocked Black Edition which makes them easier to overclock, and some of the newer models come with turbo mode.

If you really plan to get a PIIx6 later, I'd recommend picking up a PIIx2 or x3 now and try to unlock cores. That way you're not sacrificing too much gaming performance for not too much money.

[Djghost454]

The WD Blue drives are also annoyingly slow. If performance is any problem for you there is your biggest bottleneck there. There really is no good performance HDD anymore except for SSD's but a WD Black, Samsung F1, or Seagate 7200.12 would be a bit better.

[Olo401]

There really is no good performance HDD anymore except for SSD's but a WD Black, Samsung F1, or Seagate 7200.12 would be a bit better.

Oh cmon now.. the new SATA-600 Raptors are very good and very fast, and will be a much better value per gig than any SSD on the market for a while to come.

[Isiolia]

Oh cmon now.. the new SATA-600 Raptors are very good and very fast, and will be a much better value per gig than any SSD on the market for a while to come.

Still, for what most people tend to buy SSDs for (boot drive/etc), SSDs tend to outperform - solid state simply has an advantage over physically moving a read head across a platter. To a point, very high performance traditional HDDs are even more of a niche product now. Completely agree that they offer better cost/GB, but arguably, you're not buying either for that.

The WD Blue drives are also annoyingly slow.

Could be worse, could be a Green. Blue might not be "performance", but they don't have the performance-crippling features either.

Though I'd agree, the few extra bucks for one of the other series you listed would be better.

[Callisto]

Kind of a random question since it's somewhat on topic, what outside of application launching speed and startup speed does having an SSD actually affect? I was under the impression it had no affect on actual gaming performance, is that incorrect?

[Crowort]

It does effect some games a bit. I believe it has a pretty nice effect on zoning in wow at least. I decided not to get an SSD right now myself, as they are still to pricey.

[Isiolia]

Would depend some on how the game is written, but generally speaking they don't have as large an impact on games.

The biggest advantage of an SSD, performance-wise, is access speed. It's the reason they're such a performance boost for things like boot times and application launches, because the OS tends to access so many little files when doing those operations. In theory, however, anything that needs to jump around and hit a bunch of files would benefit greatly from an SSD.

'course, SSDs also tend to be relatively fast in terms of actual transfer rates as well. They just don't blow away performance drives - though the better ones do tend to still outperform them. While it's a review of a particular drive, you can see the benchmark performance of many next to the Raptor drive mentioned.

Games tend to do a lot more loading of bigger data files into RAM than they do jumping all over the HDD to load DLLs or write a log file entry or whatever. So the general speed of an SSD may help, but the difference from a performance HDD isn't likely to be big. Actual gameplay likely won't change much with either - more load screen reduction/etc.

[sruon]

FFXIV is so largely unoptimized and has more files than a pedoporn network (146,000 to compare with 4,000 files most games do have) that the SSD actually has a nice boost effect on it.

Most other games they have very little impact however.

[Deadgye]

What sruon said basically; anything that loads a bunch of files constantly will benefit (MMOs), but stuff like FPS won't really change.