Desktop Computers

Looking to build a computer for my sister for christmas. She doesn't play games or anything, just needs a basic functioning computer that's fast for day to day tasks (college student) Last time I even looked this stuff up was about two years ago when I built my last one, so I went through looking at newegg stuff and reviews and came up with this, thoughts? Edit. ugh, newegg used to look differently, let me put product names. The budget was $800 which included a monitor and a mouse (not linked) I came in at $760 total (about $550 for the build itself) not counting Windows which i'll throw in for christmas. I opted for windows seven instead of eight. Thoughts?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16827106289
LITE-ON DVD Burner - Bulk 24X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 12X DVD+R DL 24X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM Black SATA Model iHAS124-04 - OEM

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811129042
Antec Three Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148697
Seagate Barracuda ST31000524AS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130534
EVGA 01G-P3-N988-TR GeForce 9800 GT HDMI 1GB 256-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817139028
CORSAIR Builder Series CX600 600W ATX12V v2.3 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Suppl

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231314
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-8GBRL

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128498
GIGABYTE GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115077

Intel Core i3-2120 Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz LGA 1155 65W Dual-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 2000 BX80623I32120

brekk_sl said:

Drop the 9800GT, get her an i3 Ivybridge.

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Power, performance, and IGP are all better with IB, but it sounds like she won't need it or notice, and with rebates his CPU/mobo is $215. It will be another $20 or $40 for i3 IB, depending on the IGP. You could save maybe $25-$50 by going AMD APU/mobo and again she probably wouldn't notice and is worth it if it means SSD. AMD APU + SSD is better than Intel CPU and HDD for general usage.

Drop the 9800gt as she won't need a discrete GPU (can always add later) for web/office/media. You don't need 600 watts either, but with the code and rebate the price is fine. I'd also a look at swapping the HDD for a SSD if she can get by with 120-240GB storage.

But... college student and an $800 budget? I would consider a laptop.

Jovec_sl said:

college student and an $800 budget? I would consider a laptop.

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My thought exactly. Get an ultrabook.This onehas a $100 rebate.

Thanks for input, i'll keep it as is minus the video card then. I know the power supply is alittle on the high side, but for the price it really doesn't matter. I won't be saving much if anything. As far as the laptop, she wants to learn to build her own computer and shes all artsy and stuff and wants to paint the case etc. So i'm going to teach her.

any suggestions for a mini-tower chassis? I'm considering theCorsair 300r. it's mini-tower, but the drive cages have a gap for full length cards. I'm always getting new video cards through work to test, and typically need a full tower to suppport the lengths. I've never seen a mini-tower with these super long cards in mind before. I had to get a Cosmos tower for my 7970, takes up more space than my mini fridge.

Mini tower or mid tower? The link is a mid-tower case. All mid towers should have plenty of room for any video card that you get. A mini tower could be a completely different issue, those things are tiny.

A mid tower case is going to fit a full ATX motherboard no problem, a lot of mini tower cases are going to need a micro-ATX/mini-ITX motherboard and could have issues with the size of expansion cards.

the i7 920 is still a solid CPU, and very overclockable if you haven't done that yet. You could easily take that processor up to 3.4-3.5 ghz on stock cooling, and with a $20-$30 aftermarket cooler, push it to 4ghz for a really nice performance boost. A basic cooler like thishttp://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835103065could push you to a stable 4ghz.

I'd probably go with a RAM upgrade too. RAM is cheap, go up to 12gb. Anything over 8 is a little bit of overkill for gaming, but you aren't quite to 8 yet so the next easy step up would be to go to 12GB.

Beyond that, a video card upgrade would give you a performance boost too. Definitely more expensive than the above two options, but going up to the 7000-series AMD cards or 600 series NVidia cards would be a good jump. You're probably looking at having to spend $200+ to see significant performance gain with a new video card.

As far as using the old ram + new, it should be fine as long as it is all the same voltage. Also with the new ram being ddr3 1600, if your old Ram is slower 1333 or something, it'll ALL run at 1333. I'd make sure the old ram is 1600 as well before re-using it with the newer ram. 12GB of 1600 will see better performance in general than 18GB of 1333.

Intrinsic_sl said:

Catleap OCs are available again from 120hz.net in case anyone was looking. $719 for regular and $819 for pixel perfect I think.

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They're kinda pushing it with those prices. Hope it's because someone is about to release 120hz PCB's and will ruin their deal. In reality it's probably because even at 800$, it's kinda worth it.

Just built me a new rig and it's freaking awesome, even got the case custom painted! Now i'm in the need for a decent priced chair, mine is 8+ years old and it's finally going to shit, anyone have some reccomendations?


If anyone is interested I can post pics of my new desk setup/rig.

That's pretty badass, but far from reasonable.