Questions on a new (sort of) build

[paulmohr]

I just found the Linus youtube channels this week and have been binge watching for the better part of the week. I am very impressed with the information and the way it is given. I love this companies approach, enthusiasm and humor. Ok, enough sucking up I will ask my questions lol.

 

I am getting ready to "rebuild" my system. It will be a new build, but I am using used parts I currently have available to me. Basically I am combining and upgrading using parts from a few different machines I have laying around. Let me answer the questions in the sticky post first

 

Budget and location: I live in the United States, Adrian Michigan to be exact. The budget is pretty much Zero, I am not planning on spending any extra money. I am building this from existing systems and parts I have accumulated over the years. Actually that is a lie, I did order a new motherboard, cheap case and cpu cooler. However they are already on their way here so basically I am counting them as parts I have already. So on the up side I am not asking anyone to research and suggest parts for me to order within a certain budget. The answers to my questions will be relatively easy and boil down to "sure, go for it", "probably won't make a difference either way" and "that is retarded, why would you even think of doing that?"

 

I will add I am NOT a professional IT person or computer builder. It is just a hobby that I like tinkering with. However I am 48 years old and have been tinkering with computers since the Apple days. My first actual computer was an Amiga. I did work at a computer store in the early 90's building systems though. But that was back when a 386DX was something special lol.

 

Aim: The goal of this project is to simply upgrade my current machine and maximize the junk I have on hand. What will the computer be used for? Well a number of things actually. Not really into gaming to be honest. I am addicted to Second Life, but it isn't really that demanding and is actually limited to which hardware it can use best. My current system actually runs it really well. For what little gaming I do my PS3 works perfectly fine. I am currently addicted to the Mass Effect series.

 

I do however do content creation in Second Life, so I work with Blender making 3D objects, Gimp for texturing and I do screen capture and video editing as well. Nothing really intensive though. I tend to stick to 720P videos for youtube. I use Microsoft Movie maker to edit and BB flashback for capturing (looking for something better though, if its free). It is not uncommon for me to have the SL viewer, Blender, Gimp, several FireFox windows and capture software all open at the same time. I don't use Blender for animations, video or rendering textures either. I pretty much just use it to create 3D objects then I texture them in SL using Gimp. The hardest work my computer probably does is converting video files after I edit them.

 

I also use my computer for a media server storing movies and music files. I either stream them to my Sony Receiver, copy them to USB and play them with my bluray player or directly from my PC to a 50 inch 1080P tv I used as  a third monitor.

 

Which brings us to How many monitors do I use: The answer is 3. Two 22 inch lcd Dell 1080p computer monitors and a panasonic 50 inch LED tv. No surround monitor usage of any kind. I just have one main monitor, and an extra so I can work if I have something full screen (like Second Life). And the TV is used for watching longer videos.

 

why am I upgrading: Mainly because I was pitching a fit about my tiny crappy case with horrible cable management. I got a good deal on it a while back and it was already built and was better than what I currently had. I have sort of been upgrading piece by piece as I can afford parts. But the case is barely large enough for the parts and is a huge pain in the butt to work on. And the air flow is horrible because of the way all the cables are mashed on top of the motherboard.

 

I got some new ram and was playing around overclocking it and had to re set my CMOS. Come to find out to do it I had to rip half the machine apart and remove my video card to get to the jumpers!! I was throwing a fit and was told I could order a new case if I kept it around 100 ish US dollars. So I ordered a larger cheap case for 40 bucks, a better motherboard and a new cpu cooler.

 

Ok, so after boring you with 20 minutes of back story and drivel I will actually list the parts and ask the questions I am dying to know the answers too.

 

The case: A cheap Rosewill Blackbone mid tower that I paid 39 bucks for. I know its probably junk and from what I can tell Linus hates them, but believe me it is much better than the crappy thing I currently have lol.

 

The motherboard: An Asus MSA97 Plus with an amd 970 chip set and no on board graphics.

 

CPU: AMD FX 4130 3.8 gig. It is currently over clocked to 4.2 gig, we will see what I can get with the new motherboard and cpu cooler. It doesn't run hot now though so I doubt the cooler will matter much.

 

Video: EVGA 750 ti SC with a larger cooler and two cooling fans. Normally the SC version only has one cooling fan but I guess this was some special part that only Best Buy carries. It isn't even listed on EVGA's website as a part number.

 

Operating system is windows 10 64 bit (do they even have a 32 bit win/10?) with a generic keyboard and a wireless logitech trackball. Yes I like track balls, I am weird deal with it. Oh, and I have a 750 watt after market power supply.

 

My questions are about the hard drives and RAM. Currently I am running 16 gigs of PNY 1866 memory (two 8 gig sticks), running at 1768. For some reason I just couldn't get it to 1866 on my system. And for hard drives I have an intel SSD 530 series 250 gig drive for my primary drive and a Toshiba CT01aca100 1TB mechanical drive I use to store video, music and pictures.

 

I also have a 40 gig intel x-25m drive, and 4 gigs of ballastix memory (two 2 gig sticks at 1333 mhz).

 

My questions are, is there any advantage to running 3 hard drives over 2. Like say my 40 gig ssd for the OS, my 250gig ssd for programs and the 1TB mechanical drive for storage. And would it be better to run just the 16 gigs of matched memory, or add the 4 gigs of extra ram for a total of 20 gigs. I understand all the ram would run at the slower 1333 speed. Would the extra 4 gigs of ram "make up for" the slightly slower speed, or is it just a horrible idea to mix memory from the get go. I will be honest and admit I will probably never use the 16 gigs of ram let alone 20 gigs. But on the other hand, I have it, so why not? Or maybe a better idea would be to keep the extra ram in case the 16 gig set goes belly up on me and I have spare ram?

 

Oh I have one other question that I am sure is really noobish, but I have to ask. In all the builds I see on the youtube channel none of them ever have an optical drive. Why is this, and how do you load software without a cd/dvd drive? I will be installing two optical drives in mine, a dvd and blu ray drive. Not really sure why, I guess because I have them.

 

 

Thank you in advance to anyone that had the time to actually read all this and answer my questions.

 

Paul

[Dan Q]

Hi Paul,

 

Firstly there wont be any disadvantage to running you 3 harddrives over 2. That being said i expect one of your ssd's is probably faster than the other so put your os and main programs on the faster one. 

 

Secondly, the ram. Linus did a video on NCIX that explained mix and matching ram with different speeds etc. Ill link it as he would do a better job of explaining it than i could.

 

Also welcome to the forums !  

 

 

[paulmohr]

Thank you for responding Dan. Yes, I am going to guess that since my 250g ssd is newer that it is probably faster than my older 40g. And both are probably slow compared to other choices that are out there. However would it be wrong to assume that speed is sort or relative when talking about ssds and ram? Meaning that is there really a perceived difference between FAST and FASTER. Is it something one would actually notice, or only something you could measure on some benchmarking test.

 

I have noticed over the decades since computers have become mainstream that some things make a difference, others, not so much. Like over clocking, I can honestly say there have not been many times when I have over clocked and actually noticed a huge improvement in performance. Where as when I switched to ssd drives and upgraded to a better video card it made a huge improvement. Then again I have also fallen into that trap where I thought I was upgrading, but actually ended up getting less performance for more money lol. Buying video cards can be scary if you are not careful.