Building or customizing a PC

Hi again,

I am thinking or planning to build a computer, forget about what i want to use it for because that can be always changable within the time, i can go for videos, photos editing, games, designs,..etc.

So let's say i am focusing more on 3-4 things to be fixed and the rest can be changed due to needs, i am open to all recommendations.

1. Processor
2. Motherboard
3. Graphic cards
4. Cooling system

The rest such as RAM, HDD, network,.....etc are not a big deal as i can change it anytime more than the above 4, yes i can change GPU and Cooling system but i plan not to if i get something good enough.

Also a power supply, i don't know much about it to use in that built PC, details about it will help for sure.

Pretty simple to research this stuff. Get on Newegg.com and look at:

1) The most expensive, best reviewed Intel i7 processor youre willing to pay for
2) A motherboard that takes that pin layout processor that has the best/most reviews in your price range
3) The most expensive / best reviewed nVidia card you are willing to pay for, check out the 600 series
4) Cooling for what? The case? The processor? the graphics card? HDDs? All of those? Some of those?
5) Power supply: I say go with Corsair at around 750 watt.

ben_r_ wrote in post #15706332
Pretty simple to research this stuff. Get on Newegg.com and look at:

1) The most expensive, best reviewed Intel i7 processor youre willing to pay for
2) A motherboard that takes that pin layout processor that has the best/most reviews in your price range
3) The most expensive / best reviewed nVidia card you are willing to pay for, check out the 600 series
4) Cooling for what? The case? The processor? the graphics card? HDDs? All of those? Some of those?
5) Power supply: I say go with Corsair at around 750 watt.

Thanks for your reply

1) I have one in mind, added to a list [on B&H]
2) I don't know about motherboards performances, so i will do more reading and research about it
3) So you recommend Nvidia over say AMD Radeon one?
4) I don't know, maybe a cooling for all of these if needed, maybe for the case or processor is most important than say for Graphics card as it may have its own fan for cooling.
5) I will keep that in mind

We can give suggestions all day long that may or may not meet your needs and budget.

You need to clearly define a budget.

You need to clearly define what the computer will be used for. Only photo editing and you don't need a video card and the PSU can remain small. Add in heavy gaming and you may want two video cards and need a large power supply.

Also do you want to mess around with overclocking? That changes your cooling needs greatly and effects motherboard/CPU choices.

silvrr wrote in post #15706420
We can give suggestions all day long that may or may not meet your needs and budget.

You need to clearly define a budget.

You need to clearly define what the computer will be used for. Only photo editing and you don't need a video card and the PSU can remain small. Add in heavy gaming and you may want two video cards and need a large power supply.

I don't want to post or define a budget because that may affect the recommendations or options choices, so i keep it unknown.

I think i want to build this computer machine mostly for PC gaming, heavy new ones with some old games, also i may add video editing there too.

I don't know what is overclock meaning??!!

Tareq wrote in post #15706393
Thanks for your reply

1) I have one in mind, added to a list [on B&H]
2) I don't know about motherboards performances, so i will do more reading and research about it
3) So you recommend Nvidia over say AMD Radeon one?
4) I don't know, maybe a cooling for all of these if needed, maybe for the case or processor is most important than say for Graphics card as it may have its own fan for cooling.
5) I will keep that in mind

Tareq wrote in post #15706437
I don't want to post or define a budget because that may affect the recommendations or options choices, so i keep it unknown.

I think i want to build this computer machine mostly for PC gaming, heavy new ones with some old games, also i may add video editing there too.

I don't know what is overclock meaning??!!

The sky really is the limit on costs of putting a computer together, especially the second you mention gaming or 3D CADing, or professional video or 3D animation work. I keep my PC fairly constantly upgraded (you can see the specs in my Gear List if you like), but if it were me, building right now, with what I consider a decent budget, I would do the following (since Im bored right now Ill piece it out for you, normally I despise doing this though as people really should go out and research every component out there and understand why it is they might pick one over the other):

1) Intel Core i7 3770K Processor LINK
2) ASRock Z77 Extreme4 Motherboard LINK
3) Corsair Vengence 16GB DDR3 1600 Memory LINK
4) Corsair TX 750 Power Supply LINK
5) Corsair H60 CPU Cooler LINK
6) Crucial M4 256GB SSD LINK
7) Western Digital Black 2TB HDD LINK
8) eVGA nVidia GTX 670 Graphics Card LINK
9) Cosair 500R Case LINK
10) Logitech G500 Mouse LINK
11) Dell U2411 or U2711 or U3011 Monitor

I think thats about the minimum I would personally consider for myself as a best bang for buck build and an all around computer. Now, by no means did I go out price hunting for you, those are just links to specific products. Where you buy them and what you pay for them is up to you, but I can tell you upfront most of those I have seen go on and off sale for considerably lower prices. Also equivalents of each can be found for less as well, such as in the case of graphics cards and cases and SSDs.

And to answer your question above, yes, I would go nVidia everyday all day without exception as they are just more widely compliant (for example in CAD software, video software, and many other things) and they have been top dogs since they bought 3DFX decades ago.

ben_r_ wrote in post #15707505
The sky really is the limit on costs of putting a computer together, especially the second you mention gaming or 3D CADing, or professional video or 3D animation work. I keep my PC fairly constantly upgraded (you can see the specs in my Gear List if you like), but if it were me, building right now, with what I consider a decent budget, I would do the following (since Im bored right now Ill piece it out for you, normally I despise doing this though as people really should go out and research every component out there and understand why it is they might pick one over the other):

1) Intel Core i7 3770K Processor LINK
2) ASRock Z77 Extreme4 Motherboard LINK
3) Corsair Vengence 16GB DDR3 1600 Memory LINK
4) Corsair TX 750 Power Supply LINK
5) Corsair H60 CPU Cooler LINK
6) Crucial M4 256GB SSD LINK
7) Western Digital Black 2TB HDD LINK
8) eVGA nVidia GTX 670 Graphics Card LINK
9) Cosair 500R Case LINK
10) Logitech G500 Mouse LINK
11) Dell U2411 or U2711 or U3011 Monitor

I think thats about the minimum I would personally consider for myself as a best bang for buck build and an all around computer. Now, by no means did I go out price hunting for you, those are just links to specific products. Where you buy them and what you pay for them is up to you, but I can tell you upfront most of those I have seen go on and off sale for considerably lower prices. Also equivalents of each can be found for less as well, such as in the case of graphics cards and cases and SSDs.

And to answer your question above, yes, I would go nVidia everyday all day without exception as they are just more widely compliant (for example in CAD software, video software, and many other things) and they have been top dogs since they bought 3DFX decades ago.

Well, if you are going to put an ultimate or best performance build with open budget or say up to $2500 or $3k, then what will you choose?

I was thinking about i7-3930K, but if you think it is not on par to what you mentioned then i will go with what you recommended, also i was thinking about Diamond AMD Radeon HD 7970 with its 3GB, but i think i don't know how to search about the computer parts and i don't know which one is good to have or which is more efficient to use.

I am still waiting for more posts, not in rush, hope within 1-2 months i am deciding.

Tareq wrote in post #15707798
Well, if you are going to put an ultimate or best performance build with open budget or say up to $2500 or $3k, then what will you choose?

I was thinking about i7-3930K, but if you think it is not on par to what you mentioned then i will go with what you recommended, also i was thinking about Diamond AMD Radeon HD 7970 with its 3GB, but i think i don't know how to search about the computer parts and i don't know which one is good to have or which is more efficient to use.

I am still waiting for more posts, not in rush, hope within 1-2 months i am deciding.

there's a limited amount of applications in which 6 core CPU (3930K) will be better than the 4 core CPU and gaming is definitely not one of them. If you plan on doing video editing you might see substantial benefits from the extra cores as well as take advantage of the CUDA cores in the GTX 670 recommended to you by ben_r_.

DiMAn0684's statement is a good point. Not much will take advantage of the six cores, but it will make the system more "future proof" if you will.

I didnt add up the costs of the components I listed above, but the next steps up I think would look like this (again, if this were my build):

1) Intel Core i7 3930K Processor LINK
2) ASRock X79 Extreme6 Motherboard LINK
3) 2 x G.Skill Trident X Series 16GB DDR3 2400 Memory (for 32GB) LINK
4) Corsair HX 750 Power Supply LINK (If single graphics card, if dual for SLI then: Corsair AX 1200 LINK)
5) Corsair H100 CPU Cooler LINK
6) Samsung 840 500GB SSD LINK
7) 2 x Western Digital Black 2TB HDD (RAID 1) LINK
8) 1 or 2 x eVGA nVidia GTX 680 Graphics Card LINK
9) Cosair 600T Case LINK
10) Logitech G9x Mouse LINK
11) Dell U2711 or U3011 Monitor LINKor LINK

Now, thats more computer than 99.99% of people need or will use, but like I said, you can throw as much money as you want at it. Of course you can mix and match most of the components Ive listed with the previously listed ones. One thing to note, if youre going to be doing serious gaming youll want a large monitor because its, well its just amazing, and if you have a larger monitor you have many more pixels to push and youll need a beefier graphics card to feed that, so the more/better the merrier there.

Don't spend 30% more to future proof a system, save the money and upgrade in 2 years. Thoughts on the specs above:
- 750W power supply is way overkill. Good brand is important, 400W is plenty unless you're a gamer. There's an online PSU calculator somewhere.
- 32GB RAM will provide a larger RAM cache, but won't really help much over 16GB.
- The stock cooler should be fine, assuming the CPU has a stock cooler. Aftermarket is required for overclocking or lower noise.
- SSD is awesome, I have one for boot (60GB is heaps for Win7-64 and heaps of apps) and one for cache/swap/scratch (120GB but it's mostly empty). For a desktop you don't really need your images on an SSD, the performance gain is minimal. I've tried various configurations and what I use is images on hard disk.
- RAID 1 has some value, but backups are 99% as good. RAID is just to keep you working if a drive fails, and to prevent data loss through drive failure. Offsite backups are essential no matter whether you have RAID or not.
- A 620 video card is all you need, unless you game or do video. The video built into the CPU is really all you need.
- The bigger the monitor, the more my neck hurts.

You tend to spend 50% more to get 10% more speed. Be wary of over specifying a machine for photography, follow all the advice above and you'll spend a fortune for little gain.

If your editing video, 16GB is a minimum, and your next biggest bottle neck will be your storage.
There is a reason a lot of video editors are running some kind of RAID. 3 streams of HD footage is all you need to saturate the abilities of a single disc.

Well, ben_r, that last post with the components is mostly what i was looking for but i wasn't thinking to go with 32GB yet, i was going to start with 16GB first, i said in my first post that RAM and hard drive are less worry to upgrade as i can change it anytime, was thinking to go with 16GB and SSD say 256GB as started, but if you think i should go direct with 32GB RAM no problem with me.

Tim, why you see that 750W power supply is overkill? I was thinking about 650W, but you say that 400W will do the job, but for how long?

I said i will use that machine built for gaming, and if gaming is involved then expect any PC Game strength for RAM/GPU load hunger, and most current game may be fine on medium performance, but better to have a high end for any future so i don't need to upgrade every 6-months or 1-year interval.

Video editing is not a first priority, but i am planning to start doing video shooting and editing once i have a powerful machine, who knows, i may get addict to video so then it is better i have a ready capable machine than cursing my time i didn't upgrade earlier.

About a monitor, i don't have new monitor, large i have but old, Apple Cinema Display 30", also Eizo ColorEdge CG222W 22", was thinking to buy a new monitor of size range 24-27", i can connect the computer to my Samsung LED TV fullHD via VGA cable or even HDMI itself, but i am not sure about the quality of the TV against computer monitors.

Tareq wrote in post #15706229
Hi again,

I am thinking or planning to build a computer, forget about what i want to use it for because that can be always changable within the time, i can go for videos, photos editing, games, designs,..etc.

So let's say i am focusing more on 3-4 things to be fixed and the rest can be changed due to needs, i am open to all recommendations.

1. Processor
2. Motherboard
3. Graphic cards
4. Cooling system

The rest such as RAM, HDD, network,.....etc are not a big deal as i can change it anytime more than the above 4, yes i can change GPU and Cooling system but i plan not to if i get something good enough.

Also a power supply, i don't know much about it to use in that built PC, details about it will help for sure.

You might look at the link in the thread https://photography-on-the.net …p?p=15710053#po​st15710053

1000arms wrote in post #15710064
You might look at the link in the thread https://photography-on-the.net …p?p=15710053#po​st15710053

Thank you very much!