New Build

[N3TM]

Location:Latvia (Europe)

Link: http://de.pcpartpicker.com/list/NZXqqk

 Peripherals: Not included in the budget, but can be debated.

OS: No need.

Website: http://www.2u.lv/

My plan is to build a PC from scratch. (Except using the OS(Win7), monitor, periperals from an old computer) The budget is around $500 (MAX). The computer would be meant for high home/work performance (also non-gaming). I've already finished the basis for the PC parts (stuck on a bump from an 22 day old discussion) , only thing now are suggestions or corrections. (The price and the retailers are blank because of the use of a single website to buy these parts from).

 This PC also would not be meant for games, but more of a high performance home computer. Suggestions are always welcome, regarding the fact that some of the parts are mostly new and it's the first time planning this.

UPDATE: The list that is currently shown lacks a cooler, so a Hyper 212 Evo could be an option (available from a different retailer), also the whole PC being upraded, since the last thing I got told was, the primary list of most noticable upgrades to make are as shown: #1 CPU Cooler, #2 Case, #3 16GB RAM #4 A better PSU #5 a better CPU.

[Energycore]

5 minutes ago, N3TM said:

 

Hi! A couple suggestions here.

 

Since this build is for work / browsing, snappiness is key. Take a 2x4GB kit for greater bandwidth. Otherwise the build is fine, you won't need 16GB of RAM unless you're a tab fiend and like to leave 200 tabs open.

 

The aftermarket cooler might be a good idea to make the computer more silent. In that case I'd also pick out a better power supply since the CX430's fan is pretty noisy as PSU fans go. Also might want to get a motherboard with 4 RAM slots so if 8GB ends up not being enough in the future, you can just buy another 2x4GB kit.

[N3TM]

1 hour ago, Energycore said:

In that case I'd also pick out a better power supply since the CX430's fan is pretty noisy as PSU fans go.

http://de.pcpartpicker.com/list/wPHdCy

 

Alright, well I've pretty much gotten everything up ready now. I won't necessarily be needing 16GB so a good 8GB was the choice here. PSU has had an upgrade, I think. Also, the SSD storage is bigger since it's the only one to hold any space, and the rest is well, you can check that out and tell how's it now.

 

Whaddaya think?

[Energycore]

12 minutes ago, N3TM said:

http://de.pcpartpicker.com/list/wPHdCy

 

Alright, well I've pretty much gotten everything up ready now. I won't necessarily be needing 16GB so a good 8GB was the choice here. PSU has had an upgrade, I think. Also, the SSD storage is bigger since it's the only one to hold any space, and the rest is well, you can check that out and tell how's it now.

 

Whaddaya think?

Yeah, PSU is a big upgrade. The CPU cooler is going to be quiet no matter what, the i3 dissipates very little heat. You could probably cool it without the fan running (although running it at min doesn't hurt).

 

For the SSD, see what prices you find for the SanDisk Ultra II, the Samsung 850 EVO and the PNY CS2211

[N3TM]

Just now, Energycore said:

Yeah, PSU is a big upgrade. The CPU cooler is going to be quiet no matter what, the i3 dissipates very little heat. You could probably cool it without the fan running (although running it at min doesn't hurt).

 

For the SSD, see what prices you find for the SanDisk Ultra II, the Samsung 850 EVO and the PNY CS2211

Regarding the SSDs, yeah, the prices aren't too steep from eachother but there is something to consider..

 

Sandisk Plus: 111.98€

Sandisk Ultra II: 139.68€

Samsung 850 Evo: 145.05€

PNY CS2211: N/A

(These are 500GB variants)

 

Best choice?

[Energycore]

1 minute ago, N3TM said:

Regarding the SSDs, yeah, the prices aren't too steep from eachother but there is something to consider..

 

Sandisk Plus: 111.98€

Sandisk Ultra II: 139.68€

Samsung 850 Evo: 145.05€

PNY CS2211: N/A

 

Best choice?

Damn. The 850 EVO is the best choice, of course it's also the most expensive. If you want to spend less, look for:

 

Adata SP550

OCZ Trion 150

Crucial BX200

Mushkin Reactor

PNY CS1311

[N3TM]

Just now, Energycore said:

Damn. The 850 EVO is the best choice, of course it's also the most expensive. If you want to spend less, look for:

 

Adata SP550

OCZ Trion 150

Crucial BX200

Mushkin Reactor

PNY CS1311

3 of them were available:

 

Adata SP550: 123.55€

OCZ Trion 150: 114.8 8€

Crucial BX200: 107.99€

 

 

 

 

[N3TM]

Just now, Energycore said:

Damn. The 850 EVO is the best choice, of course it's also the most expensive. If you want to spend less, look for:

 

Adata SP550

OCZ Trion 150

Crucial BX200

Mushkin Reactor

PNY CS1311

3 of them were available:

 

Adata SP550: 123.55€

OCZ Trion 150: 114.88€

Crucial BX200: 107.99€

 

How about now?

[Energycore]

1 minute ago, N3TM said:

3 of them were available:

 

Adata SP550: 123.55€

OCZ Trion 150: 114.88€

Crucial BX200: 107.99€

Get the BX200

 

To elaborate: It's better than the Trion 150 and SP550 and it also happens to be the cheapest

[N3TM]

Just now, Energycore said:

Get the BX200

Wait, isn't that a TLC SSD? They usually don't last that long and become slower in a shorter period. (Or so I heard)

 

I suppose I'm searching for the best price/performance instead of as cheap as possible so I guess I can be able to spend a bit more. So it's the Samsung one, right?

[Energycore]

1 minute ago, N3TM said:

Wait, isn't that a TLC SSD? They usually don't last that long and become slower in a shorter period.

 

I suppose I'm searching for the best price/performance instead of as cheap as possible so I guess I can be able to spend a bit more. So it's the Samsung one, right?

Pretty much, if you can spend the 150, get the 850 EVO, it's as good as it gets for consumer SSDs these days.

 

It's still a TLC drive though Samsung's TLC Flash is quite superior to other manufacturers' though.

[N3TM]

Just now, Energycore said:

Pretty much, if you can spend the 150, get the 850 EVO, it's as good as it gets for consumer SSDs these days.

 

It's still a TLC drive though Samsung's TLC Flash is quite superior to other manufacturers' though.

Also, the SeaSonic S12 II as a 520W is plenty enough, right? Since it appeared as it's lower wattage version was more expensive..

[Energycore]

1 minute ago, N3TM said:

Also, the SeaSonic S12 II as a 520W is plenty enough, right? Since it appeared as the lower wattage version was more expensive..

Dude your computer would be fine on 200W

 

The S12II is a very good unit that'll do the job even if you throw a flagship graphics card into the system.

[N3TM]

Just now, Energycore said:

Dude your computer would be fine on 200W

 

The S12II is a very good unit that'll do the job even if you throw a flagship graphics card into the system.

Oh, it's just that people usually recommend going with a 100-300W more powerful PSU than the minimum to decrease reaching the deadpoint or any slowdowns.. Anyways, about the case (FD Core 2300). Are there any good case fans for the price? If it's needed I can fill 4 empty slots. (Without the included fans)

[Energycore]

3 minutes ago, N3TM said:

Oh, it's just that people usually recommend going with a 100-300W more powerful PSU than the minimum to decrease reaching the deadpoint or any slowdowns.. Anyways, about the case (FD Core 2300). Are there any good case fans for the price? If it's needed I can fill 4 empty slots. (Without the included fans)

You won't need too many case fans but I'd get a single SilentWings2 or TrueQuiet

 

http://de.pcpartpicker.com/product/nwGkcf/be-quiet-case-fan-bl062

http://de.pcpartpicker.com/product/zzQypg/antec-case-fan-truequiet120

[N3TM]

Just now, Energycore said:

You won't need too many case fans but I'd get a single SilentWings2 or TrueQuiet

 

http://de.pcpartpicker.com/product/nwGkcf/be-quiet-case-fan-bl062

http://de.pcpartpicker.com/product/zzQypg/antec-case-fan-truequiet120

We got SilentWings here. I'd probably leave that matter for later, but as I can see, the case fans are used for preventing your PC from turning into a volcano?

[Energycore]

1 minute ago, N3TM said:

We got SilentWings here. I'd probably leave that matter for later, but as I can see, the case fans are used for preventing your PC from turning into a volcano?

No, they're not likely to matter since the case has one fan of its own.

 

But they're a good upgrade to said fan.

[N3TM]

5 hours ago, Energycore said:

No, they're not likely to matter since the case has one fan of its own.

 

But they're a good upgrade to said fan.

http://de.pcpartpicker.com/list/2PRQ7h

Seems like I went up with unnecessary upgrades like a 2400mhz ram on a 2133mhz motherboard, also the motherboard was cheaper (H110M-R/C/SI = C/CM). So all in all it's 474€, with the SSD being the most expensive. Only thing to know is, what makes a PC faster - a good SSD, or good RAM?

[Energycore]

11 minutes ago, N3TM said:

http://de.pcpartpicker.com/list/2PRQ7h

Seems like I went up with unnecessary upgrades like a 2400mhz ram on a 2133mhz motherboard, also the motherboard was cheaper (H110M-R/C/SI = C/CM). So all in all it's 474€, with the SSD being the most expensive. Only thing to know is, what makes a PC faster - a good SSD, or good RAM?

The SSD will contribute more to speed and snappiness. Otherwise the build looks good. Should be able of office work for 4 years (not guaranteed, just an estimate).

[N3TM]

9 hours ago, Energycore said:

The SSD will contribute more to speed and snappiness. Otherwise the build looks good. Should be able of office work for 4 years (not guaranteed, just an estimate).

Oh, and for the PC case, since the planned model right now is the FD Core 2300, there could be room for improvement, hence it's possible to spend a little more if needed. The main purposes for the case is to be a quiet type, the 2300 does perform quiet but I was thinking if there could be something of a higher price/performancd range. A Define R5 could be an option.. or so I think.

 

(P.S. If by any chance you use userbenchmark to figure the parts out, I've been on a rather long discussion and realized some truth of it. You can give it a read if you're interested.)

 

From the discussion from pcpartpicker.com

 

"userbenchmark.com is a site that annoys me to no end. It does have useful information on it, and I do use it, but it misleads at least 99.9% of people who visit it. I don't believe that that is an exaggeration. I really like the distribution curves for the CPUs and GPUs, SSD bench figures, GPU bench figures, and other such information that is provided (Even some of that information is bad, and you must read between the lines, thinking about cooling, overclocking, and market niche. If you don't do that, pretty much all of the information is bad, or at least unreliable.), but most things (Really just about everything else.) like "effective speed" (Ignore "effective speed" more than anything else.) and "value" (Prices aren't reality, and your locale makes things worse.) are pure, undiluted, 100% rubbish. If you know the components inside and out, and no how to precisely filter incorrect statistical information, then this site can be useful, but you need to be extremely careful. There are so many clearly bad examples on that site where a worse CPU by model number has a considerable advantage over a better CPU by model number (And performance for that matter is supposed to be better with the higher model number, and not something like energy efficiency.). CPUs are the worst on that site (All the categories are worrisome. Storage is the least evil, but not great since it assumes a SSD plus a HDD.), but there is no hardware on there that I would look at the "effective speed" or "value" rankings of and assume in any way accurate. The bench weighting messes with everything. I recommend avoiding it entirely, unless you can easily comprehend everything I'm stating, and already know what I mean. Again, I do personally refer to the site, but for someone who doesn't know that Hyper-Threading is Intel's form of SMT that debuted on the Pentium 4 HT off of the top of their head, that site is worse than useless, but misleading in the extreme. If you dig through some of my old comments, you'll find citations and specific examples backing these claims. I'm just warning you. Be very careful, and consult someone like myself (Or someone else if you distrust my judgment.) who is unbiased and understands the inner-workings of things and has experience with exceptional circumstantial differences before drawing any conclusions based on that site alone."

[Energycore]

7 hours ago, N3TM said:

 

Yeah, I've been looking at sequential reads and random reads mostly to base my asessment of an SSD's performance. Honestly, I still believe benchmarks from professional reviewers are more reliable than those from the masses, but there are so many SSDs out there that it's hard to find benchmarks for all of them. The distribution curve on a given SSD is also useful information on whether an SSD ages badly, if the distribution is all over the place (or, should I say, more all over the place than average).

 

P.S. for the case, if you're all about silence, I recommend this one.

 

http://de.pcpartpicker.com/product/FgtWGX/be-quiet-case-bg007

[N3TM]

3 hours ago, Energycore said:

Yeah, I've been looking at sequential reads and random reads mostly to base my asessment of an SSD's performance. Honestly, I still believe benchmarks from professional reviewers are more reliable than those from the masses, but there are so many SSDs out there that it's hard to find benchmarks for all of them. The distribution curve on a given SSD is also useful information on whether an SSD ages badly, if the distribution is all over the place (or, should I say, more all over the place than average).

 

P.S. for the case, if you're all about silence, I recommend this one.

 

http://de.pcpartpicker.com/product/FgtWGX/be-quiet-case-bg007

That possibly could be an issue since I didn't actually check before how much the case costs here (90+ Euros), so it could probably go down a bit on price if there are any other options.

[Energycore]

1 minute ago, N3TM said:

That possibly could be an issue since I didn't actually check before how much the case costs here (90+ Euros), so it could probably go down a bit on price..

Honestly the Core 2300 will do just fine. You could even go down to Core 1300

http://de.pcpartpicker.com/product/PZx9TW/fractal-design-case-fdcacore1300bl