Windows 7: should I build my own gaming rig or buy one pre built?

But I think I'll stick with the fan that came with the rig that i'm going to buy as i'm not going to overclock it or any of that advanced stuff that could burn the hell out of the cpu.

There are no i9s as far as Im aware.
Unless Im mistaken, these were renamed to the i7-990X.
The next HexaCore will be the SandyBridge Extreme, scheduled at the end of the year.
In either case, the Intel Hexacores are not Budget CPUs by any means. Your looking at around $1,000USD, and thats just for the CPU.

If you really have need for that many cores, AMD would be a better choice for a Hexacore, to fit into a budget.

However, you must also keep 2 things in mind.
1) Current Quad Core SB CPUs can still outperform it, even though they are 2 cores short, and are about the same price.
2) That many cores will not really help much with gaming currently.
Hexacores really only have a benefit with apps that are specifically designed to use that many threads, or you do alot of heavy multi-tasking.
And even at that, the SB Quads can still hold thier own, and even outperform them.

Unless things change, ATM a Quad core Intel SB is your best bet for most everything, including gaming.
But, it may also be worth seeing what AMD does with Bulldozer. Bulldozer very well may change all of this.

That's basically it. Intel was going to name the 980/990 an i9 but instead kept it i7

Gulftown - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia And yeah, they're the $1000 dollar chips.

[QUOTE=Coke Robot;1467482]RAID IS NOT A BACKUP, NOT A BACKUP, NOT A BACKUP. It doesn't replace a BACKUP.

It provides fault tolerance (except for RAID0). It gives you the ability to suffer a hard drive failure and keep the machine running. It should NEVER be confused with a backup. For example, if you have a RAID1 mirror and you select a folder and shift delete it, it's gone from both drives instantly. Where's the backup????


RAID 0 is the only version that offers no redundancy. RAID0 is a stripe. 2 drives act as one. A little gets written to the first disk and a little gets written to the second disk. If either fails, you lose absolutely everything. So, you actually have a greater risk of failure with RAID0 as you have 2 drives which could potentially fail.

Gamers believe it offers great performance because it increases benchmark scores. But for game play and such, this doesn't help your gaming performance. If you were doing video editing and huge file copies all day long, this is where a RAID0 stripe could really help you out.

If you truly want performance as a gamer, get an SSD drive. They too offer high sequential read speeds like RAID, but offer extremely low random access times and this is where the biggest bang for the buck is. Or get a drive like a Western Digital Velociraptor with higher spindle speeds (10,000RPM), but I would NOT ever suggest a RAID0 configuration to any gamer.

What's the deal with over-buying the PSU?? I see so many people recommend much larger than required PSU's, which can be a large chunk of the budget, and they need just a tad more than half of what they recommend.

500watts is more than enough for his setup.
My machine at full load only pulls 380watts, and I got a bunch of stuff in my machine.

Also, the parts the OP chose above are pretty decent, almost mirrors my dads machine that he uses to game with (he just has a Phenom II Quad with 4GB DDR3 and an ASUS board).
you just can't put all the fancy graphic settings to max @ 1920x1080 on the newer games like Witcher 2, FEAR 3, Crysis 2.

It's an epidemic. It's not like you couldn't buy another one down the road if you really did expand. But having a properly sized PSU is a key to keeping the machine stable end energy efficient.

I just have a 650W Corasair running my machine.

And thats with everything OCd, and even a Superclocked GTX570.
Its more than enough power, and even has room to spare still.


Anything larger, IMHO, only makes sense if you are running multiple GPUs.
Or, if its a offbrand, cheap PSU then you may need a 1000W one to match a quality 500W. But thats not a route I would suggest taking.

I would agree that a 500-650W Quality PSU is more than enough power for most systems, and certainly for any single GPU system.

It's a CYA thing.....Suppose I and mouse started a video card company...Ivan's resolution internal picture ocular frame forces....the iRIPOFF....now as the owner manager, and only reliable employee, I know that the iRIPOFF's 6000 tiny monkey artists needs 250 Watts of power max...so on most normal systems a good quality 500 watt power supply will do the job....So with a big red crayon I write "use a good quality 500 watt power supply" on the box....sucker/customer buys a iRIPOFF reads the use a good quality BLAH BLAH BLAH 500 watt....so he goes out and buys a FIRESTARTER 500 that on a good day couldn't pull 300 watts.......burns down house

Going with a higher wattage PSU is just my personal advice for a starter gaming system since if there's a chance to upgrade parts later down the road, namely the graphics cards, having a higher wattage PSU will safely let you do that without concerns of having not enough. NVIDIA cards are a bee sting with power requirements!

I just realized that most Phenom quad cores with high operating frequencies are generally already overclocked from the factory. Overclocking probably wouldn't worth a lot effort.