Out of Pod Experience

I've decided to build my first rig. I'm looking for suggestions, pointers, things to watch out for, things to make sure to do? I'm not so much asking what to get, but more looking to find out if there's anything I should know. I've read up on some websites, some helpful, some not so much, and I think I have a pretty good idea, but I figured my fine fellow Eve players would have that extra savy that will be a big help.

I disagree on the case part, buy a good decent case, it is one of the biggest things when it comes to cooling. Good airflow starts with the case. You don't need a $100+ case or anything just a well designed one (30-40 for normal use, up to 70 for "gaming" case is what I limit myself at), I also recommend one from a good company so you don't have to deal with sharp edges. Sounds stupid but after building several computers and cutting myself on several cheap cases, some of which can get pretty deep that extra $10 for a well built case with good tolerances (fiting drives correctly, edges, etc) is well worth it. That and I can tell you first hand getting blood off a motherboard and gpu is NOT FUN because you bought cheap, especially when it is a lot of blood from a deep cut (which is why my computer is called Saya, from Blood+).

Beyond that there are a lot of small little tricks, but if you live in the US go on Tomshardware website to their build section and post what you plan on building there. The default website most people use is newegg which has EXCELLENT customer service, as in the best I have ever had. In general you wind up with a lot of people looking over your build and usually posting what they think be best for what you want out of it and combo deals you can do to save money, which can add up quick. I use to do this in my free time and would sometimes wind up saving people $200+ on a $700 computer tower they were building sometimes. Just remember to follow the format they have on their website for posting, one of which includes if you plan on overclocking or not which is important as their community is quite big on that and it's implied that you are to unless otherwise noted.

Oh one last bit, for computer cooling, proper air flow/direction is key. And you don't need the worlds most powerful fans to get the job done, just need to move adequate air where you need it which usually doesn't take much and anything more than that will still give you some benefits but not enough to make a difference other than bragging rights and probably more noise. Just keep in mind heat rises, and in most setups you want air intake in the front, exhaust in the back.

Excellent! Thank you guys for tons of great information. Love the Doom case, but I think that one's a little beyond my skills at this point Maybe one day I'll design an Eve case.

At the moment Intel is your best choice for CPU, im fond of the 2500k myself as it offers scalability and it's well priced for the power at the moment.

If you are on a budget that's fine, but the one thing you should always splurge on is the PSU, get a good one, do lots of research and try to get a silver rated one at 80-90% efficiency at a minimum, a bad psu can really ruin your day and make sure you aim for consuming around 60-70% of what that psu puts out in watts. The less work the psu is doing relative to consumption the quieter it is.

Whatever method of cooling you decide for your CPU also go with a good TIM (Thermal Interface Material), Arctic silver and other products are far superior to anything that comes loaded on a cooler.

Ram is extremely cheap right now so don't be afraid of going for 16 gigs of it, if you go quad core Intel absolutely ignore any claims of functional speed beyond 1333 mhz, anything above that is overclocked and runs at voltages not supported by the chipset. Intel has specifically stated that ram should not exceed 1.45 volts or something along those lines and most ram slated to run faster such as 1600 runs at 1.65.

Dumb OP

Just google then you have no question but are just saying

"I'm too lazy to google "tips for biulding a PC"" or something to the like...

Also only idiots (fanboiz) buy AMD

Right now only a total ****** would buy an AMD cpu lol

Intel has hyperthreading

4CORE cpu shows 8 LOGIC threads
Can boost performance in some cases... however... it is the same as an i5, no worse.

Amd's FX cpus took the "core" and cut it up.

They said... well we can share X Y Z... and stuck 1 full core + 1/2 of another core into a "modual" and called it a 2 core thing...

Well they have 1 and 1/2 cores

What this did was make FX cpus use TONS of power (vs intel) make tons more heat... the second you overclock them LUL the CPU can draw 450 watts alone rofl

Also the IPC (instructions per clock) went DOWN...

a top of the line FX cpu is about = to an old 1100T...

Just with more heat... and LOWER ipc...

I'll explain IPC a little better

3GHZ or
3000mhz

3000 "clocks"

So say intel can run 2 instructions per clock that gives them
6000 IPC

So think of like doing 1 + 1 + 1 intel can do that 6000 times a second...

Now say AMD at the same 3ghz has 1 IPC

This means they can only do 3000 1 + 1's...

Translates into less work getting done...

Think of going 75mph in a stright line of 75mph doing curves... who gets further? Stright line of course but they were going the SAME speed...

Same for intel vs amd at say 3ghz... intels 3ghz will beat AMD's 3.

Back in the Pentium 4 days a 1.5 ghz AMD would beat a 3.0 intel... Now it is flip flopped.



But ya not asking for ideas or anything means you can google EVERYTHING you want to know... how much more should one person type? If you really wanted to know it all I'd need like 20 forum posts.

Again everybody is missing the most important innovation for computers of the last decade.
Get an SSD Drive!
128GB is the sweetspot and the prices are coming down constantly.

Forget about add-on soundcards.
Windows 7 has killed those thoroughly. But make sure you make the SSD your system drive on installing. Google it and read up on guides. Though Win7-install does most of the important stuff on it´s own.