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mr.hackcrag
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Unread postby mr.hackcrag » 11 May 2013, 05:30

GreatEmerald wrote:That said, the OC version does have some interesting auxiliary technical specs, such as dual-link DVI (which you need if you have a monitor that has a higher resolution than 1920x1080).
Does "dual-link DVI support" mean that it will work with a monitor with higher resolution 1920x1080 and do I need to buy a HDMI cable?

How do these two compare, they are a little cheaper?

http://www.microcenter.com/product/3878 ... Video_Card

http://www.microcenter.com/product/3969 ... Video_Card

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Unread postby Pol » 11 May 2013, 07:17

Kalah wrote:Here's a new HD I might wanna buy. It's less than $100, and I think it should work with XP.
It does work with WinXP, as a secondary why not. Though I have better experience with the exSamsung original models.
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Unread postby Pol » 11 May 2013, 07:58

Both are fine, I would prefer the EarthWatt. If that would be Cx430 I would have reservations, some versions were having noticeably higher failure rate after three yrs.
mr.hackcrag wrote:Does this pass Pol's seal of approval?
http://www.microcenter.com/product/4078 ... wer_Supply
NO.

For graphic cards.
Take 650Ti if you want performance over 7770HD. Like this one. (Nice performance, iffy cooler, 2x DVI, low price. ) Or 7770HD over 650. See here. Or this with VGA connector. HIS is doing excellent cards and very silent.

2xDVI means that card is having two DVI ports. Whereas dual link means (in respect to the selected cards) that you can get resolution 2048 × 1536, to pump so much pixels card is using two DVI links - of course, via one connector.

Myself I'm using two monitors, one via DVI dual link and one via classic VGA. For ATI it's good to pay attention on Eyfinity future, where you can serve two monitors from one display port, with help of HUB and MST cable.
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Unread postby GreatEmerald » 11 May 2013, 09:44

mr.hackcrag wrote:How do these two compare, they are a little cheaper?
They compare favourably, most notably the iCooler which is HD 7770 for the same price as the GTX 650, and the HD 7770 is notably faster. It also has dual-link DVI, standard HDMI and a mini DisplayPort, which is pretty good, though what you need depends on what monitor you have (and/or will have in the future).
Pol wrote:Myself I'm using two monitors, one via DVI dual link and one via classic VGA.
Eww! VGA connectors should be abolished. They were already ancient a few years ago, and today there is no excuse for creating any hardware that supports it. Heck, even DVI is being deprecated now. DisplayPort is what should be used. It's smaller, easier to handle, extensible and allows for higher resolutions. Though not all monitors can use it at the moment.

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Unread postby mr.hackcrag » 11 May 2013, 20:17

Thanks guys. This is the monitor I plan to get, so I hope the video card will be a good match:

http://www.microcenter.com/product/3847 ... ED_Monitor



If I buy the I5 3570K processor, I get $40 off the following motherboard for a total price of 235$ (mobo & processor)

http://www.microcenter.com/product/4017 ... otherboard

If I buy the I5 3570 (without K in the #) I don't get $40 discount, and the total price of mobo & processor is $260. I am considering this mobo.

http://www.microcenter.com/product/4017 ... otherboard

Which would be the better choice to make?

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Unread postby GreatEmerald » 11 May 2013, 22:03

Wow, that's a fancy monitor there. But I suppose it's a good investment, at that, as you don't need to upgrade them as often, and having one with all the features makes it worthwhile to keep it that long. I have a pretty basic monitor, and I'm quite regretting that, as it's impossible to change the height and angle, it already (after a few years) has a few bad pixels, the left hand side is noticeably brighter than the right, and there is noticeable light bleeding from the bottom... So I will definitely pay more attention to monitors next time around.

And yeap, it should be a good match. That monitor supports both HDMI and DisplayPort (which are the only sane choices for connecting the graphics card to the monitor, given that it has built-in speakers). Though you should keep in mind that if you buy the graphics card with Mini DisplayPort, if you want to connect it to the monitor, you will need a Mini DisplayPort to DisplayPort adapter (it may or may not be included with the card and/or the monitor, but it's good to have in mind regardless). Alternatively, you can connect them using HDMI, but there's a catch again - for such high resolutions, you need a "High Speed" HDMI cable, regular ones won't cut it. For more information on both, see this nice article: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2030669/ ... reme-.html

As for the processors and motherboards... Will you connect any PCI cards? In that case, go with Z77A-G41, since only it has PCI connectors. On the other hand, since PCI is being phased out, having extra PCIe slots of Z77A-G45 is useful. The fact that the latter has two PCIe 3.0 slots is an added bonus if you ever want to set up CrossFire (which can be a fair way of upgrading without throwing away existing hardware, although by the time you need to upgrade that way, compatible graphics cards get harder to find than new ones...) The G45 also has its SATA ports tilted in an unconventional manner - you might want to check your chassis layout to see which position you prefer.

And the two processors differ in that the K variant has better graphics (which is utterly useless for you, as you'll have a dedicated graphics card anyway), and the non-K version has VT-d, which can be quite useful later on due to its virtualisation potential (virtual machines with accelerated graphics and such).
Last edited by GreatEmerald on 12 May 2013, 05:52, edited 1 time in total.

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Unread postby mr.hackcrag » 12 May 2013, 02:03

GreatEmerald wrote: Though you should keep in mind that if you buy the graphics card with Mini DisplayPort, if you want to connect it to the monitor, you will need a Mini DisplayPort to DisplayPort adapter (it may or may not be included with the card and/or the monitor, but it's good to have in mind regardless). Alternatively, you can connect them using HDMI, but there's a catch again - for such high resolutions, you need a "High Speed" HDMI cable, regular ones won't cut it. ).
I have a High Speed HDMI Type A cable plated with 24K gold. 8| Does that mean I should avoid anything that says "mini" and even after reading that article, I'm not sure if I should use HDMI cables or Display Ports... :|

I'm not really sure if I understood the rest of what you wrote, but sounds like getting the processor without the "K" would be better despite being more expensive...

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Unread postby GreatEmerald » 12 May 2013, 05:51

If you have a good HDMI cable, then you will have no problems if you use an HDMI connection between the graphics card and the monitor.

And, again, the main difference between the motherboards is the PCI connections. It depends on whether you need them or not.

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Unread postby mr.hackcrag » 12 May 2013, 22:58

Okay, I've chosen all the parts I'm going to get and will buy soon, but I was wondering if I should choose Windows 8 or Windows 7. They both cost about $100.

Also what are your views on using a TV with HDMI instead of a computer monitor?

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Unread postby GreatEmerald » 13 May 2013, 05:34

Windows 8 is essentially Windows 7 with the annoying "ModernUI" and the blocky theme that looks like from Win98 times. I'd say stick with 7.

Do you have a DVB port in the same place where your PC is? But even then, I don't think it's a particularly good idea. TVs are made to be put far away from the viewer, so they have a lot smaller resolutions (my TV is 1360x768, which is basically laptop resolution). If you want TV capabilities in the same place as your PC, you could just buy a TV card. I have one in my HTPC (though I'm not sure what the procedure of getting them to work on windows is, as my HTPC is Linux-based; you'll probably need Media Center or such).

Oh, and there are monitors with TV capabilities - so they are not meant to be far away. But I'm still not much of a fan for things like that, since if the TV capability is in the monitor, and not the PC, then you are very restricted by the capabilities of the monitor. You can't do PVR, for instance.

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Unread postby mr.hackcrag » 13 May 2013, 18:19

All the parts will cost $640 + $100 for Windows & $75 building fee :(. Monitor will cost $400.

Grand total after tax = $1300 8| .

Does that sound like a reasonable price?

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Unread postby GreatEmerald » 13 May 2013, 19:24

Yeap, that sounds completely reasonable. As a matter of fact, you ended up building pretty much this:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/bui ... ,3437.html

Though personally I wouldn't pay a building fee (building things yourself is fun) and the Windows fee (Linux yay!), but hey :D

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Unread postby mr.hackcrag » 13 May 2013, 23:09

Thanks for all the help. I'll buy everything after tomorrow.
GreatEmerald wrote:Though personally I wouldn't pay a building fee
I'll probably set myself on fire.


Here's everything I chose:

http://www.microcenter.com/product/3885 ... _Processor

http://www.microcenter.com/product/4017 ... otherboard

http://www.microcenter.com/product/3878 ... Video_Card

http://www.microcenter.com/product/4068 ... 3200U-1I72

http://www.microcenter.com/product/3611 ... wer_Supply

http://www.microcenter.com/product/3820 ... y_Modules)

http://www.microcenter.com/product/4075 ... Bare_Drive

http://www.microcenter.com/product/4067 ... ctic_White

Case is expensive, but I wanted a white one and they say it's "Scandinavian design" 8| Must be pretty good since the only Scandinavian I know of around here seems pretty cool. B-)

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Unread postby Pol » 14 May 2013, 09:33

Seems good. ;)
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Unread postby mr.hackcrag » 16 May 2013, 02:44

I bought everything today but there was a problem. The power supply I wanted was out of stock. The salesman recommended I buy this, but I'm not sure how good it is.

http://www.microcenter.com/product/3999 ... wer_Supply

or this

http://www.microcenter.com/product/4060 ... wer_Supply

I forgot which one I bought :tired:

He also recommended I get more ram so I ended up with this:

http://www.microcenter.com/product/3821 ... y_Modules)

Everything else is the same. I avoided the $140 building fee, but until I find someone to help me build it, there's a bunch of boxes piled up in my room. :disagree:

I think one thing I forgot to buy was a sound card. I remember Emerald told me earlier I would need one if I want to record or create music by playing my Yamaha keyboard. I kind of forgot the details...

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Unread postby GreatEmerald » 16 May 2013, 20:00

Yeap, your PSU and RAM are good. I suppose 8 GiB of RAM does fir the build better, although you can always upgrade to more anyway.

About the keyboard, you can just get one of these: http://www.amazon.com/SANOXY-Cable-Conv ... B0017H4EBG


Oh, and a bit off the current topic, but I want Pol's opinion on one thing. What measures would you suggest taking in order to have a sufficiently quiet and efficient home web server? As a server, it would have to be always-on, so obviously noise would be an issue. I suppose the first thing would be to get a case that has good ventilation. I don't have or need a rackmount, of course. At the same time, I absolutely don't care about I/O ports or CD drive bays (although HDD bays are needed). Don't really care about the size, either - the better airflow, the better. Any opinions on that?

Also, what about processor cooling? What's your view on the different air and water cooling systems?

This is currently all highly hypothetical, as I won't have a good (fibre) internet connection for quite some while, anyway. But I still like thinking about things like that :) Not having to rely on outside hosts for my website would be awesome. Also the ability to freely update the infrastructure, like PHP, SQL etc. versions. And learning about the whole technology in the process. Gentoo Linux is practically made for things like that.

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Unread postby mr.hackcrag » 29 May 2013, 04:05

Can you guys recommend any websites or tutorials on how to assemble a PC? I've never done this before and I am nervous to somehow mess up any of the computer parts I bought, but it looks like this is my only free option of building my computer. :(

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Unread postby GreatEmerald » 29 May 2013, 11:56

Actually, your motherboard manual should include a guide like that. And the manuals for the rest of the components should also give information specific to installing those components in particular. That also should include all the applicable safety warnings.

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Unread postby Pol » 29 May 2013, 13:19

"We made it!"
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PC Specs: A10-7850K, FM2A88X+K, 16GB-1600, SSD-MLC-G3, 1TB-HDD-G3, MAYA44, SP10 500W Be Quiet

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Unread postby mr.hackcrag » 02 Jun 2013, 19:57

It figures that as soon as I buy a cpu, a new version is released soon after. :(

http://www.microcenter.com/single_produ ... sku=583302


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