Ok, So a friend is Building his own Gaming PC.

This is the Build he plans on using.

Case: Zalman Z9 Plus Black Steel/Plastic Mid ATX Case = $64.99
Motherboard: ASRock 970 Extreme3 ATX Motherboard = $84.99
CPU: 4.2Ghz Quad Core AMD FX 4170 = $129.99
RAM: Corsair Vengeance 8GB DDR3 1866Mhz = 54.99
PSU: XFX Core Edition 550W PSU = $74.99
GPU: 2GB GDDR5 EVGA Nvidia Geforce GTX 660Ti = $299.99
Storage: WD 1TB SATA 6.0Gb/s = $99.99
DVDROM: ASUS 24X DVD Burner = $19.99

Total = $829.99

What do you geeks think?

(25/08/2012 11:41 PM)Kuu Wrote:  I recommend a smaller Drive do use as a boot drive, preferably an SSD, it will give you better performance then a 1TB.

Even a small SSD (100GB) is about 300 dollars
you could fit the OS on it and a couple games

The fast loading OS is nice, but meh
I got mine for bragging rights on other people's gift money
I wouldn't say it was necessary in any way


if you are going to get the WD
I'd get the Caviar Black with the 64 MB catch... I think it's like $110
it's a nice drive (SATA III 6GB/s it might be the one you listed but I can't be sure since you didn't specify)

I have no DVD drive either depending on what you do
you can take that money and get a slightly higher end mobo if you don't need it (nevermind it's only $20)

(26/08/2012 12:23 AM)Slushba132 Wrote:  

(25/08/2012 11:41 PM)Kuu Wrote:  I recommend a smaller Drive do use as a boot drive, preferably an SSD, it will give you better performance then a 1TB.

Even a small SSD (100GB) is about 300 dollars

eh?

OCZ vertex 4  128GB - 109.99

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6820227791

i think at this point.. SSD's are a must for new builds

(26/08/2012 02:29 AM)Assassinator Wrote:  You know Bulldozer "quad core's" aren't really quad cores right?  1 Bulldozer module gets counted as 2 "cores" but it's not really 2 cores because some parts are shared.  It's like somewhere between a dual and a quad.

wow.. i didnt know about that :/

(26/08/2012 01:42 AM)S7* Wrote:  

(26/08/2012 12:23 AM)Slushba132 Wrote:  

(25/08/2012 11:41 PM)Kuu Wrote:  I recommend a smaller Drive do use as a boot drive, preferably an SSD, it will give you better performance then a 1TB.

Even a small SSD (100GB) is about 300 dollars

Yeah..... http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0085U6U9M/ ... No. Not by a long shot.

If he can afford the addition, he should do it. The speed difference is seriously worth it and it'll make all HDD-based machines seem slow.

I got an SSD when they were still pricey and only 64GB but still totally worth it IMO.

Only problem is games... and PC games take up a lot of space. So what size and what he'll be putting on it is something to consider. Or, of course, he can take Slushba's advice and don't bother.

---

As for the rest of the machine, it looks fine. Can't comment on the AMD CPU but it looks fine overall.

That drive is SATA II which runs at 3.0 GB/s not 6.0 GB/s

(26/08/2012 05:56 AM)boogschd Wrote:  

(26/08/2012 12:23 AM)Slushba132 Wrote:  

(25/08/2012 11:41 PM)Kuu Wrote:  I recommend a smaller Drive do use as a boot drive, preferably an SSD, it will give you better performance then a 1TB.

Even a small SSD (100GB) is about 300 dollars

eh?

OCZ vertex 4  128GB - 109.99

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6820227791

i think at this point.. SSD's are a must for new builds

(26/08/2012 02:29 AM)Assassinator Wrote:  You know Bulldozer "quad core's" aren't really quad cores right?  1 Bulldozer module gets counted as 2 "cores" but it's not really 2 cores because some parts are shared.  It's like somewhere between a dual and a quad.

wow.. i didnt know about that :/

That actually is a decent drive with nice read and write speeds

Sustained Sequential Read
    Up to 560 MB/s

Sustained Sequential Write
    Up to 430 MB/s



http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6820139599
This is actually the drive I have which for some reason is still super fudgeing expensive
nevermind
Max Sequential Read
    Up to 555MB/s (SATA 6Gb/s)

Max Sequential Write
    Up to 510MB/s (SATA 6Gb/s)

I think since it was other people's gift money I wanted the fastest (read and write speeds) drive on the market...
It was about $300 when I bought hence my $300 price claim

---

Also,
I still don't think it is in any way "necessary". Windows loads faster. Everything else is the same. If you can only afford one primary drive just get the 1TB Caviar Black with the 64MB cache (good amount of space and performance) and throw in an SSD later for fun/bragging rights...

My SSD doesn't have nearly enough space to hold all my games anyway. I run most of them off my Caviar Black. The games I have put on my SSD, I've noticed little to no difference.

(26/08/2012 05:02 PM)ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:  

(26/08/2012 12:49 PM)Slushba132 Wrote:  That drive is SATA II which runs at 3.0 GB/s not 6.0 GB/s

You're not going to really notice a difference under normal usage conditions.
Still, if you don't need fast load times, it doesn't really matter much.

The only suggestion I'd really make would be to use cheaper RAM and RAM speeds are basically irrelevant these days, but you probably won't save that much anyway.  I recommend a Phenom II CPU if you can still get one.

Sata II Wrote:With a native transfer rate of 3.0 Gbit/s, and taking 8b/10b encoding into account, the maximum uncoded transfer rate is 2.4 Gbit/s (300 MB/s).

If your SSD is capable of performing at this rate you actually would notice the difference during large file transfers...

whereas

Sata III Wrote:It provides peak throughput of about 600 MB/s (Megabytes per second) including the protocol overhead (10b/8b coding with 10 bits to one byte).

If I were using SATA II, my SSD would be capped at 300 MB/s on both read and write and this would result in:
A 45.94% loss in read speed
A 41% loss in write speed

6GB/s is 150% of 3.0 GB/s and since these are SSDs wee are talking these numbers actually do kind of matter, at least on higher end systems, or during sarge file transfers.


If there is cheaper ram, I'd also recommend getting it. As Zinga said, clock speed hardly affects performance. I'd keep the ram the same size though (8GB if not more).

I also recommend a phenom II as Zinga says, but I'm biased because my processor is of the phenom II family.