Building a New PC

[Mojo]

So it's Christmas time and I'm going to build a newer PC using some of the parts from my old PC to cut down on the cost. Nothing terribly crucial will be recycled with the exception my PSU, although I'm pretty happy with it anyways. I'll need a motherboard, video card, CPU, and RAM. It's been a few years since I've been in the market. What's available changes quickly so I'm very much out of the times. I'm looking for some opinions on what's out there at the moment, what you've had experience with, and what you like. All opinions and suggestions are welcome. Just in case anyone is wondering, my PSU is a Seasonic S12-500. Thanks for any input you can provide.

[levish]

main purposes? (be specific)

[altwight]

2gig corsair ram (80-100$) 100$ mobo supporting your C2D e6000+ CPU and ram. Geforce 8 series.

[Mojo]

I got it figured out pretty well now. For anyone who is wondering~

GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L
3.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo E6850
eVGA 512-P3-N801-A1 GeForce 8800GT
Crucial Ballistix 2 GB (2x 1 GB) 1066 DDR2 (PC2 8500)

I plan on adding another 2 gigs of ram if I upgrade to XP, but that is all. Thanks anyways.

[Shuemue]

I got it figured out pretty well now. For anyone who is wondering~

GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L
3.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo E6850
eVGA 512-P3-N801-A1 GeForce 8800GT
Crucial Ballistix 2 GB (2x 1 GB) 1066 DDR2 (PC2 8500)

I plan on adding another 2 gigs of ram if I upgrade to XP, but that is all. Thanks anyways.

Congratulations, you've picked my favourite motherboard manufacturer. It'll serve you well.

Also, you meant Vista, right?

[Mojo]

Yeah, sorry tired as hell.

[Don Katsu]

How many watts is your PSU? and does it have a 4 pin PCI Express connection? If so.. you should be good to go.

[SephYuyX]

I concur, Gigabyte is a good brand.
Also, if youre looking at upgrading to Vista, I really wouldnt. If you want something that can handle more ram, I would read up on the 'how tos' to make Server 2003 perform like a normal desktop.

[levish]

How many watts is your PSU? and does it have a 4 pin PCI Express connection? If so.. you should be good to go.

pci-e connecters come in 6pin and 8 pin flavors, some psu's have both

[Mojo]

AC Input                       100-240V ~7A 50/60 Hz 
DC Output              +3.3V   +5V  +12V1  +12V2  -12V  +5VSB 
Maximum Output Current   30A   30A  17A      16A  0.8A   2.0A 
Maximum Combined        180W  180W  396W    396W  9.6W    10W 
500W

It's equipped with two PCIe 6 pin connectors.

Also, as for Vista, I don't plan on upgrading anytime soon. If they can work the annoying bugs and whatnot that people are complaining about and Vista offers a real performance advantage, I'll make the shift. It's recommended that you have 4GB of RAM when running Vista, which would be the only situation I'd ever buy more than 2GB.

Thanks for input. I was almost worried I might have to buy a new PSU.

[levish]

16a/17a on the 12v "rail" is what most people are concerned with unless they are running lots of accessories and hard drives.

16/17a on the 12v line is pretty decent and you should be fine what matters most is the quality of the unit and it's components (capacitors, sinks, chokes etc) and how well it does at putting out it's rated wattage. Seasonic's non Zeus line is actually great

Most people go nuts getting 600/700/800/1000w PSU's when only time you'd need a 1000w psu is if you are heavily overclocking a quad core CPU with triple SLI

500w psu @ 80-85% efficiency comes in right around 400-425ish watts, with the components you listed I'd be surprised if you ever go over 350w while actually gaming leaving you with a nice bit of "safety room".

[Amele]

I just always make a point of getting a power supply rated by operational wattage rather than peak wattage. (this resolves the guessing game of operational efficiency).

personally I'm using somewhere in the area of 450+ but I have an SLI set up in currently. (7900GTX) and I'm heavily overclocked. I got a true-rating 600W because I knew I would be doing similar to this and I couldn't find a 500W that wasn't peak rated to 500.(peak 500 wouldn't give me enough juice.)

generally given the cost differences between PS, jumping 100W over what you think you'll need is low cost assuming you have enough airflow.

[levish]

there is no real guessing game if the efficiency of them is stated (which most have those numbers available). As a general rule though: Multiple Rails = 80-85% efficiency and single rails 70-80% efficiency.

Only thing is multiple rail psu's you can end up cabling/connecting things wrong and stressing just one 17a or 16a rail (in the OP's situation) instead of distributing the load and blowing the psu.

Only thing in my previous post that was particularly important was that the Silverstone 500W psu should be fine for the upgrades they are planning, it would be marginal if he was to add a 2nd graphics card though since they can possibly run in excess of 100w by themselves.

[Amele]

yeah. I was directing my comment less at this particular person and more at anyone else interested in building a pc: his 500W is good for his setup, but for other people who aren't sure, the cost of oversizing your PSU is relatively small compared to the risks you avoid by intentionally not lowballing it.

the one thing he won't really be able to do is significant overclocking - but it doesn't sound like he wants to do that much anyway so it doesn't really matter.

[Mojo]

Well I ordered all of the parts today. The cost of the motherboard increase by $12 due to the holidays. Newegg ran out of the video card I was looking to get. I had to buy the N802 model instead(650 mhz clock speed over 600 mhz). Basically ended up paying about $40 more than I wanted >_>

The PSU is 80 PLUS certified and unless setting the RAM bus speed to 1066 with these componentsis considered overclocking, I won't be doing any.

Only thing is multiple rail psu's you can end up cabling/connecting things wrong and stressing just one 17a or 16a rail (in the OP's situation) instead of distributing the load and blowing the psu.

Ok this concerns me. I'm fairly confident in my own abilities, but how would I do it wrong and how do I do it right? lol

[Amele]

Well I ordered all of the parts today. The cost of the motherboard increase by $12 due to the holidays. Newegg ran out of the video card I was looking to get. I had to buy the N802 model instead(650 mhz clock speed over 600 mhz). Basically ended up paying about $40 more than I wanted >_>

The PSU is 80 PLUS certified and unless setting the RAM bus speed to 1066 with these componentsis considered overclocking, I won't be doing any.

Only thing is multiple rail psu's you can end up cabling/connecting things wrong and stressing just one 17a or 16a rail (in the OP's situation) instead of distributing the load and blowing the psu.

Ok this concerns me. I'm fairly confident in my own abilities, but how would I do it wrong and how do I do it right? lol

you'll have two sets of plugs coming from the 12V rails ; just don't plug everything into one of them and nothing into the other one.