The PC Builder's Guide

[EvilGenius]

wow, I think you've found the perfect laptop! It's 13.3, not glossy (except the screen), it looks like it cools itself well...

how's the build quality? (does the case bend at all, does the keyboard flex etc...?)

*also, can you tell me the exact model number? Lenovo doesn't make this notebook anymore - i've found several versions of it (Do they all have a discrete 3450?)

[Draco97]

I had a quick question, I was looking at processors, and I came across the AMD Phenom II x6. Is it a big improvement over the x4 Black Edition? Or one of those token "slight upgrade but charge you another $500 dollars for it?"

Thanks

[Xyvik]

I had a quick question, I was looking at processors, and I came across the AMD Phenom II x6. Is it a big improvement over the x4 Black Edition? Or one of those token "slight upgrade but charge you another $500 dollars for it?"

Thanks

Since the processor is less than $350 it would be impossible to be the latter

If you're going for pure gaming, get the Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition. But if you do a lot of other things, including video editing and whatnot, then quite literally the new X6 1090T is the best deal on the planet. You can overclock it to 4ghz very easily on just air cooling, and at that speed it beats our many of the i7s and i5s that cost more than it does.

For pure gaming, however, I still consider the 965 Black Edition to be the best bang-for-buck you can find.

[Draco97]

Lol, I guess the 500 bucks is for Intel processors :P

Ok, I figured that was the case, thanks for the help

[Aquanaut]

Okay guys, I might need some help. God I hope I don't sound like a noob.

I know some basic computer composants, but for several years I lost interests on PC gaming. But since SC2 is coming soon, I need a new PC in order to run it and feel a little bit rusted about PC building right now.

I'm not looking for a nuclear-equivalent bomb of the future, but at least I can play SC2 and Metro 2033 ( Maybe the new Fallout game and Brink ) at respectable graphics with shadows enable et cetera, without lags.

If I can toss a few bucks next months I'm talking about 1000/1200$. This included the monitor, keyboards, mouse, speakers. Is that good for a performant PC ?

I'm more interested into NVidia/GeForce series rather than ATI Radeon stuff ; I had bad experiences years ago with a Radeon graphic card, and I had enough. For a CPU, I'm thinking about ADM stuff. As for motherboard, I'm a bit lost.

By the way, which is better for games, Vista or win 7 ? Since I'm getting a new PC, I might using the recents exploitation system rather than re-using my win XP. Yeah, I'm that late with technologies.

So, care to help, or it's too vague for you what I'm talking about ?

[spychi]

ATI graphic cards are a much better choice for you
I can give you a spec of my own new build PC cause I think that for that ammount of money you can buy those components

i7-860, cooled with Noctua NH-u12p SE2
Gigabyte P55 UD5
4GB DDR3 Corsair XMS3 1600MHz
5870 HD Vapor-X
Asus Xonar DX sound card
Cooler Master HAF 932
OCZ ModXtreme 700W
Keyboard G15
Mouse Razer Krait
LCD - i dunno what would be good for ya, I have a Gateway 24" Full HD 1920x1200 LCD and it's great
Windows 7 is what you want to buy for sure

[Xyvik]

it's quite simply impossible to match the number of bad experiences I've had with nVidia, so a single lemon card from ATi is absolutely no way to make your decision.

Especially with the new Fermi cards. nVidia is betting on their physx and CUDA architecture and it's going to end up strangling them.

For 1000/1200 you can afford some pretty good stuff, definitely a 5870. If you're interested in AMD (my personal preference) you can get a good Phenom II 965 Black Edition and a good motherboard to go with it. You have some pretty good leeway with that.

[spychi]

Asus or Gigabyte moboI would add to that
and it must be the new chipset 890FX
Asus Corsshair IV looks awesome and as I saw reviews on guru3d.com it perfoms great with a superb OC potential, it's pricey - roughly ~230 $
something cheaper? well you could go back few months with the chipset for AMD and buy the GIGABYTE GA-790FXTA-UD5
there are no equals with the new chipset, well not yet, however all of AMD producers are just getting started with releasing new motherboards for new Thuban CPU's, those new CPU's from AMD bring chaos in the ranks of the best processors

if you want to go intel than the motherboard range is a bit bigger and from CPU's I would recommend you a i7-860, I have it dude and with that budget cooler Noctua NH-U12P SE2 man it stays cold on over 1GHz+ Overclock! 29C idle @3.79Ghz while stock it comes with a core clock at 2.8GHz, oh and I must add that I reached stable 4.01 GHz with that cooler and the temps were nice

bout nVidia, as Xyvik mentioned, Fermi GPU's is a big failure, it's because of the price/quality/heat and power consumption levels, not only that GTX480 and GTX470 are overpriced for what they bring but those also are not doing what they should do on the market
GTX470 should fight with the HD5850, but what happens the GTX470 is slighlty faster in few benchmarks but it's 30% more expensive and the stock coolers don't do the job, if you are familiar with some tests of those new nVidia GPU's you should know already that generate 93C+ heat, it's really too much for anything in your case and remember that the TDP is from 20% to even 50% higher, which is also not good if you want to keep your electricity bills low
same thing comes along with the GTX480
if nVidia is not planning to do a price drop - which is really not going to happen in the near future - than the results for them will be catastrophic - or at least fixing the Fermi construction by lowering the heat and TDP levels
ATI =l stability is also not true, I have no issues with the drivers and btw StarCraft 2 will be more optimized for ATI/AMD as Blizzard signed a contract with them earlier last year as far as I can recall

overall what you need is a ATI GPU, Intel/AMD CPU, Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, EVGA motherboard, Corsair or Patriot DDR3 RAM, some decent cooler like the Noctua NH-U12P, a good case - the bigger it is the better for you, Antec Twelve Hundred or Cooler Master HAF 932 or 922 - a case with room behind the motherboard placement is a must have nowadays! cable management is important if you want to have a great looking RIG and easy access to the motherboard

on a side note, you guys heard how was optimized Metro 2033? well it wasn't that is why it is GPU hungry and all of the new GPU's fail to feed it with flops :P - one of the guys working on that title admit it

[Aquanaut]

I see.

So for the moment, I should stay away from Nvidia and going with Radeon ?

If you're interested in AMD (my personal preference) you can get a good Phenom II 965 Black Edition and a good motherboard to go with it.

What motherboard can you suggest ? I'm interested with the AMD model you suggested.

[Xyvik]

The new 890FX chipset is a beautiful upgrade to the widely loved 790FX. I would recommend this board if you are on more of a budget, and if you've got 50 more bucks to spend for the best, then you can't get anything better than this board right here.

Pair one of those with a 965 and you'll handle anything you want.