New PC build

loser2old4board

Hi

I’m hoping to do a new build
over the next couple of months.
I have lot of experience with electronic assemblies
and some little PC assembly experience.
I just wouldn’t know enough of what’s compatible with what.
So, hopefully that’s where you guys can help.

I’m hoping to buy everything from Komplett if possible..

PC use: Music playback, music and audio recording (Cubase etc)
Video editing. Dig camera, MS Office, Internet, DVDs etc
(No gaming.)
{Regular swap of operating system using spare hard drives.
(Educational reasons: Win 200 Server or current equivalent etc) }.

Budget: €800 ish.
Not sure whether to buy a monitor now or later.
Are brand new video cards backward compatible
with ancient monitors? Not sure whether to get Win 7
now or later. Can I reuse Win XP for a while
or was that licensed tied to just one PC?

Specs in my head so far:
Case: Full Tower ATX: Plenty of room for extra drives
and future expansion. Ease of access for regular drive swaps.
As silent as possible. (Audio recording)

PSU: How high do I need to go? 450…500W?
Which brand are the best?

Motherboard / Processor: Want to go Intel…so Socket 775,
Intel Core 2 processor.
All the bells and whistles for future expansion.

Memory: DDR2 : is 4GB enough or do I need 8?

Hard Drives: Sata or Sata2 ? At least two.
For redundancy and experimenting with different OS.
Would two 500GB be enough or go for two 1TB??

Sound Card: 7.1 from Creative Labs if possible?

Graphics card : not sure. Both VGA and DVI. What do I need?


DVD Drive: not sure. Do I need one or two?
(For ease of legal copying of audio CD files)

Sorry about the long post.
Thanks in advance.

uberpixie

loser2old4board wrote: »

PC use: Music playback, music and audio recording (Cubase etc)
Video editing. Dig camera, MS Office, Internet, DVDs etc
(No gaming.)

Check with the software you will be using and see if they support Nvida CUDA or ATI's Stream processing: this allows you to offload tasks and use a graphics card to do the work. In some situations graphics cards are much faster for processing certain tasks than a regular CPU. Make sure on the cost as some plug ins to allow you to use a graphics card this way can cost...

loser2old4board wrote: »

{Regular swap of operating system using spare hard drives.
(Educational reasons: Win 200 Server or current equivalent etc) }.

Use Vmware and the power of virtualisation. Vmware Server is free (last I checked) if you register with them. This will allow you to emulate a full OS running in a window within a window. Infact you can run several Os all at the same time and network them....

You can use something quick and dirty like Virtualbox to play around with this.

http://www.vmware.com/
http://www.virtualbox.org/

loser2old4board wrote: »

Budget: €800 ish.
Not sure whether to buy a monitor now or later.
Are brand new video cards backward compatible
with ancient monitors? Not sure whether to get Win 7
now or later. Can I reuse Win XP for a while
or was that licensed tied to just one PC?

Monitor is not a problem once it has a VGA connection, all cards will still support VGA.
The XP licence depends: is it an oem one tied to a pc, more details please.
Check the software you want to use actually support windows Vista/7

loser2old4board wrote: »

Specs in my head so far:
Case: Full Tower ATX: Plenty of room for extra drives
and future expansion. Ease of access for regular drive swaps.
As silent as possible. (Audio recording)

Antec P183 and replace all the stock fans that come with it as they are shoite.
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=478131.

Comes comes with a lot of sound reduction cladding built into the side panels and once you fit good quiet fans you really reduce the noise. It is as good as it will get really bar an extreme watercooling (will all the vibration reduction steps taken) setup which is well over your budget

loser2old4board wrote: »

PSU: How high do I need to go? 450…500W?
Which brand are the best?

Corsair/Seasonic. a 650W is overkill but you can use it in the next build. A 450-500W is more than enough.

loser2old4board wrote: »

Motherboard / Processor: Want to go Intel…so Socket 775,
Intel Core 2 processor.
All the bells and whistles for future expansion.

Socket 775 is dead, you will be looking at the icore5 or 7 if you wish to stick with Intel. AMD are doing some very good stuff atm and are cheap.

An Icore7 might be worth it in your case as if the software you are using supports HT Hyper Threading.

loser2old4board wrote: »

Memory: DDR2 : is 4GB enough or do I need 8?

4 is fine and a good base minimum. I you are going icore5/7 will will need DDR3 but this has come a lot down in price.

loser2old4board wrote: »

Hard Drives: Sata or Sata2 ? At least two.
For redundancy and experimenting with different OS.
Would two 500GB be enough or go for two 1TB??

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=496258
Samsuns spinpoint F3 1TB The only harddrives you will need. €74 a pop and fast.

loser2old4board wrote: »

Sound Card: 7.1 from Creative Labs if possible?

There are better cards more suited to music production than the creative ones, Asus released a nice batch of sound cards a while back that were better for this. What do you wish to use the card for: have musical instruments hooked up to it etc....? For basic playback the creative stuff is good, much better than onboard, they had extreme driver issues under vista due to creative being very lazy about supporting older cards, not sure what the story is with windows 7, will find out soon when I change over.

loser2old4board wrote: »

Graphics card : not sure. Both VGA and DVI. What do I need?

Something cheap, if you are using CUDA or Stream plugins, something a little faster. All cards will support VGA and DVI and I would look for something that would have HDMI as well if you ever want to hook your pc up to your telly.

loser2old4board wrote: »

DVD Drive: not sure. Do I need one or two?
(For ease of legal copying of audio CD files.

You only need x1.

leninbenjamin

€800 isn't much really if you have to add in a monitor, OS & Audio Interface. I can't see yourself being able to transfer the XP licence to the new PC even if it isn't an OEM licence.

I'd say a AMD Phenom II x4 build is the best bet. I know you want Intel, but the i5 and the i7 would be over budget. 775 is still a possibility, but it's outdated tech and AMD seem much better value still.

Sound proofed cases are also expensive, something like the Antec 183 is well over €100, which is a bit more than you'd like to spend on a case for this budget. Tbh, i think it might be better to get a cheap tower and just get a queit fans &/or fan controller if noise is an issue when recording.

Antec Three Hundred, ATX, ohne Netzteil 46,24 €
AMD Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition Box, Sockel AM2+ 131,84 €
Xigmatek HDT-S1283, Sockel 939/AM2,775 23,39 €
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1000GB, SATA II (HD103SJ) 74,31 €
ASUS M4A78, Sockel AM2+, ATX 59,00 €
4GB-Kit DDR2 Corsair Value CL 5, PC6400/800 77,49 €
Club3D HD4650 512MB passive Heatpipe, ATI Radeon HD4650, PCI-Express 44,59 €
Corsair VX550W 550 Watt 67,66 €
LG GH22NS50 bare schwarz 24,65 €

Total €549,17

not sure then about a fan controller, but they can be gotten fairly cheap. eg: this for a tennor

noodletop

leninbenjamin wrote: »

€800 isn't much really if you have to add in a monitor, OS & Audio Interface. I can't see yourself being able to transfer the XP licence to the new PC even if it isn't an OEM licence.

I'd say a AMD Phenom II x4 build is the best bet. I know you want Intel, but the i5 and the i7 would be over budget. 775 is still a possibility, but it's outdated tech and AMD seem much better value still.

Sound proofed cases are also expensive, something like the Antec 183 is well over €100, which is a bit more than you'd like to spend on a case for this budget. Tbh, i think it might be better to get a cheap tower and just get a queit fans &/or fan controller if noise is an issue when recording.

Antec Three Hundred, ATX, ohne Netzteil 46,24 €
AMD Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition Box, Sockel AM2+ 131,84 €
Xigmatek HDT-S1283, Sockel 939/AM2,775 23,39 €
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1000GB, SATA II (HD103SJ) 74,31 €
ASUS M4A78, Sockel AM2+, ATX 59,00 €
4GB-Kit DDR2 Corsair Value CL 5, PC6400/800 77,49 €
Club3D HD4650 512MB passive Heatpipe, ATI Radeon HD4650, PCI-Express 44,59 €
Corsair VX550W 550 Watt 67,66 €
LG GH22NS50 bare schwarz 24,65 €

Total €549,17

not sure then about a fan controller, but they can be gotten fairly cheap. eg: this for a tennor

only one thing to ad here if you decide to go for amd why not go for the phenom x4 965 black edition it works out about 30 euro more but is the best of the amd chips and should still be within budget for you, also depending on mo/bo there are bios updates to let am3 chips run on am2+ boards so you dont have to spend any extra getting a board.

currently im running the x4 965 on the crosshair 2 mo/bo after a quick bios update and couldnt be happier with it

leninbenjamin

noodletop wrote: »

there are bios updates to let am3 chips run on am2+ boards so you dont have to spend any extra getting a board.

It had occurred to me (the 965 BE does seem a great one for the money at the mo), but for the simple fact I'm not sure if the OP has access to another CPU to update the bios on them and it seems hit or miss as to whether they will run straight out of the box. I'm not to up on the AM2+ platform so maybe someone can confirm/refute this for the OP.

Solitaire

There isn't even that much of a point outside of ultrabudget builds as the price premium of AM3 or DDR3 is peanuts in the €550-€750 bracket. Just grab a cheap, decent AM3 mobo and 2*2GB (cheap) DDR3-1333...

And there's no real point in LGA775 anymore; AM3 has eclipsed it and in turn Intel's new platforms eclipses that. I do wonder if an i5 build could be scraped together if XP was reused for now and the new monitor was kept... conservative (read: cheap). i7 is probably out of reach though...

leninbenjamin

Solitaire wrote: »

There isn't even that much of a point outside of ultrabudget builds as the price premium of AM3 or DDR3 is peanuts in the €550-€750 bracket. Just grab a cheap, decent AM3 mobo and 2*2GB (cheap) DDR3-1333...

Difference of around €30, and my build doesn't even include the sound card. At this budget I'd recommend putting as much into the sound card as possible. AM3, DDR3 and a 965 adds another €50 at least, which would be better spent elsewhere imo.

loser2old4board

Ok, first off, Thanks everybody for the replies.

Maybe I was being a bit ambitious with a budget of €800.
So leave budget aside for the H/W basics, and I'll list priorities
from what everybody has said so far.
I would like to concentrate on a good hardware build for now
and can add a monitor and OS etc later when budget allows.

Try using Komplett if possible.

Case: Antec Three Hundred, ATX, Which one?
or is the Antec P183 worthwhile for a solid quieter case, ?
Is it necessary and easy to replace fans?
Where do I get quieter ones?

PSU: Corsair VX550W 550 Watt. Is this still OK?

Motherboard: Want to try for Intel Core i7/Core i5.
So, which board?

Processor: Intel Core™ i5 Quad Processor i5-750.
Would this be good enough?
What comes in the box? Cooling fan, thermal paste or not?

Memory: 4GB DDR3.
What manufacturer compatible with this set up?

Or should I go for this and make all our lives simple?
Komplett Upgrade Kit Intel I5 P55 ATX

Hard Disk: Samsung SpinPoint F3 1000GB, SATA II

Graphics Card: Sapphire Radeon HD 4650 1GB DDR2
Is this overkill? Can’t see the other mentioned listed on Komplett.


DVD: LG DVD±RW burner, GH22NP20, 22x. Still OK I presume?

Sorry if I’ve wasted anybody’s time
and Thanks again in advance.

AlmightyCushion

If you're not gaming and never plan to do it then the 4650 is overkill. Get a 4350 if you can.

Anti

If your throwing in a i5 then you dont need a medium range ati/nvidia card for hardware exceleration. A simple gt240 for 40 bucks will do ya easilly.

lmimmfn

as was said already, if the video editing software you are going to use is Cuda enabled and you will be converting video youre much better off with a decent nvidia card like a 260 which converts video 3-4 times faster than my i7@4.05Ghz, otherwise yeah, go for the cheapest non intel integrated crap like the suggested cards above.

ScrubsfanChris

If you are serious about video editing, than I would suggest an i5/i7 ar at least a fast core 2 Quad.

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

If you're not gaming and never plan to do it then the 4650 is overkill. Get a 4350 if you can.

Agree, save some money here and spend it on a nice wireless keyboard

uberpixie

loser2old4board wrote: »

Case: Antec Three Hundred, ATX, Which one?
or is the Antec P183 worthwhile for a solid quieter case,
Is it necessary and easy to replace fans?
Where do I get quieter ones?

The Antec 300 is essentially a cut down antec p183, bit lacks some cable management features and the thick side panels that help reduce noise.
The 300 is a very solid budget case with great airflow.

Review of the p183
http://www.silentpcreview.com/antec-p183

The P183 in layout is very similar to the 300 but does have the better side panels for noise reduction. I have an Antec p180 which was the first of the series and very similar internally to the P183.

My experience is this: great case and very quiet, once you get rid of the default fans. This is entirely subjective, but I hated the default fans. They didn't push a lot of air on low speeds and made a terrible racket at medium speed. (you may get this case and find them fine though.)

I ripped all of them out bar the fan in the bottom chamber feeding air to the PSU as that on slow is silent, everything else replaced with scythe flex 1200RPM fans after a lot of playing around with lots of different brands of fan.

Komplett stock a few half dacent fans have a look at this:
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=503440

Scythe Slipstream 1200 RPMs 120mm fans @ €6 a pop.

according to silent pc review:
"The Medium speed Slip Stream is probably the most sensible choice among the five. It spins reasonably fast at full speed and undervolts well, becoming effectively inaudible at 5V. It also has a very low starting voltage of only 2.4V. What impressed us most was how smooth and consistent the fan sounded, no matter what speed it was running at. At high speeds, a typical sleeve bearing fan drones and whines, and at low speeds it ticks or chatters. We listened very carefully for increasing and decreasing bearing/motor noise as the speed was adjusted, and the difference was minimal. As for [COLOR=green ! important][COLOR=green ! important]performance[/COLOR][/COLOR], well, it was simply the best. Of all the fans we've tested at approximately 18-19 dBA, none could match the 24 CFM the Slip Stream M pushed, not even our reference Nexus fan."
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article832-page3.html

Removing the fans is easy, nothing complicated. just bare in mind the airflow direction of the fan (marked on the fan itself with little arrows) when installing new ones.

Another pitfall for noise in that case will be the graphics card. You will be getting a low power card anyhow so go with something passive: one that does not have a fan.

eg: http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=434120
Radeon 4350 with passive heat sink.

loser2old4board wrote: »

PSU: Corsair VX550W 550 Watt. Is this still OK?

A corsair 550W is more than enough especially if you will not be using a very powerful gfx card. Bear in mind this unit does not have modular cables. A modular power supply allow you to add power rails as needed and prevents a huge cable mess of unneeded cables inside your PC.

Look at this instead:http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=327671
Corsair 520W with modular cables @ €90

loser2old4board

Thanks again to everbody who replied.
A few follow on questions that maybe weren't addressed due to my change of plan.

Motherboard: Want to try for Intel Core i7/Core i5.
So, which board?

Processor: Intel Core™ i5 Quad Processor i5-750.
Would this be good enough?
What comes in the box? Cooling fan, thermal paste or not?

Memory: 4GB DDR3.
What manufacturer is compatible with this set up?
Or which one?

Or should I go for this and make all our lives simple?
Komplett Upgrade Kit Intel I5 P55 ATX

Graphics card: No gaming, but hoping to do video editing
I hope to use something like Video Studio Pro x2
which I bought last year but couldn't use on ancient current PC.
I don't know anything about it but hope to learn to use it.
So I don't know what " Cuda enabled " means or how I would find out.
Based on that which graphics card?
Imimmfn says : "a decent nvidia card like a 260 "
Could you please send a link or a bit more info? Thanks.

Sound card:
Was thinking about : 7.1 from Creative Labs
but Uberpixie says Asus have a good range as well.
Any other opinions and a link to a Komplett
one if you think it’s good.
Hope to use something like Cubase S/W or it’s present day equivalent.
Might be connecting instruments such as guitar
at some stage but will be mixing microphone audio
with music tracks.

This board is great resource for some body like myself
who is just guessing about parts/components.
Thanks again for your help and patience.

Anti

The i5 upgrade kit is fine, apart from the psu. Those AXP branded ones are complete muck. They are the new Forton Source !

zappb

Hey a lot of the items recommened here have been just recommened in the Toms hardware component christmas guide

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/buy-gift-radeon-5850-i5,2487.html

Effluo

zappb wrote: »

Hey a lot of the items recommened here have been just recommened in the Toms hardware component christmas guide

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/buy-gift-radeon-5850-i5,2487.html

You should all be very ashamed of yourselves!

Anti

Well would you look at that, my motherboard has been reccomended by them... Time to change it i guess

loser2old4board

Hi

I'm finally getting back to this and need someone to check out the list for me.
Fair enough if you don't agree with everything, but is there any glaring
mistakes. i.e Is everything compatible with everything else ??

Do I need a fan controller?


Thanks for your help.

• 478131 Antec P183 Advanced Midi Tower Black Fans: 1x 120mm Top, 1x 120mm Rear, 2x USB 2.0, 1x eSATA, Audio
• 492608 Corsair Dominator DHX+ DDR3 1600MHz 4GB Kit w/2x 2GB XMS3 modules, CL8-8-8-24, for Core i5 and i7, 1.65V
• 339898 Corsair VX 550W PSU ATX 12V V2.2, 80 Plus, Standard, 1x 6pin, 1x 6+2-pin PCIe, 6x SATA, 120mm Fan
• 335481 Creative SB X-FI Xtreme Gamer
• 492762 Intel Core™ i5 Quad Processor i5-750 2,66GHz, Socket LGA1156, 8MB, Boxed m/fläkt
• 491786 MSI P55-GD65, P55, Socket-1156, DDR3 4 DDRIII, ATX, 2xPCI-Ex(2.0)x16, GbLan(Winki), OC Genie, DrMOS, Super pip
• 496258 Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA2 32MB 7200RPM
• 442781 Sapphire Radeon HD 4650 1GB DDR2 PCI-Express 2.0, "Ultimate Edition", DVI-I, HDMI, HDCP, Lite-Retail
• 503440 Scythe Slip Stream 120mm Case Fan 1200rpm
• 488177 Sony NEC Optiarc DVD±RW burner AD-7240S DVDRW 24x, DL, RAM, SATA, Bulk, Black

http://www.komplett.ie/k/shoplist.aspx?mode=receive&si=755991&su=6eacd671-88ff-4474-99ec-92742cbf5efe.

Solitaire

Looks good to me. I don't trust Sony optical drives after the "long" service I got from various Sony optical devices over the years, but everything else looks fine. Although if you actually need a sound card for some strange reason you should really be looking for Asus Xonars as the X-Fis are more gaming- and feature-oriented; only the super-expensive variants are really good for raw sound quality and those are so pricey even a Xonar would end up cheaper! :eek:

BeansBeans

Solitaire wrote: »

Looks good to me. I don't trust Sony optical drives after the "long" service I got from various Sony optical devices over the years, but everything else looks fine. Although if you actually need a sound card for some strange reason you should really be looking for Asus Xonars as the X-Fis are more gaming- and feature-oriented; only the super-expensive variants are really good for raw sound quality and those are so pricey even a Xonar would end up cheaper! :eek:

Definitely agree with this. The Xonar D1 is a supposed to be a brilliant card, considering the quality its a bargain at €60. Contrary to previous posts im actually contemplating one myself im becoming obsessive about sound in my old age.

But then the onboard sound is perfect for the majority of people unless your really fussy or an audiophile

Venom

BeansBeans wrote: »

Definitely agree with this. The Xonar D1 is a supposed to be a brilliant card, considering the quality its a bargain at €60. Contrary to previous posts im actually contemplating one myself im becoming obsessive about sound in my old age.

But then the onboard sound is perfect for the majority of people unless your really fussy or an audiophile

The reason is that onboard sound has gotten pretty damm sweet with alot of mobo having THX/HD audio

For heavy music types tho a Xonar is much better that a creative card and you wont have to deal with creative's craptastic drivers and support.

loser2old4board

Ok, Thanks to everyone who replied.
Going by what you say I might give the sound card
a skip and try using the on board.

Do I need a fan controller?

Solitaire

Probably not. You'd have to have a ton of fans (too many for the mobo to handle) and any fans provided by Antec usually have 2-4 speed settings via dedicated switches anyway.