Tell me why my $1.5K design sucks. - Hardware & Software

My needs: Some gaming, involving TF2 and future games. I want to run eyefinity, triple monitors at 1366x768 each. The main thing I went for is balance, but I'm expecting a bottleneck in the CPU. I'm going for a fast build because I want it to last a while without needing an upgrade. This probably isn't actually going to be built, but I'd like some feedback so I know what to do in future designs. Mobo: Gigabyte GA-H55-UD3H Intel i3/i5/i7 Socket 1156 / Intel® H55 Chipset, 4 x DIMM Max. 16 GB, DDR3 2200 Dual Channel, Quad-GPU CrossFireX™, Gigabit LAN, 6x SATA 2.0, ATX Form Factor. [url]http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=138_711_897&products_id=13385[/url] CPU: i5 750 [url]http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=187_346_931&products_id=12404[/url] RAM: Corsair Dominator 1600MHz. [url]http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=186_218&products_id=13894[/url] Case: CM Scout [url]http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=25_31_504&products_id=11207[/url] HDD: 2 x Samsung Spinpoint 500GB, in RAID 0. [url]http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=210_344&products_id=11863[/url] Optical Drive: BenQ [url]http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=658_667&products_id=13065[/url] PSU: OCZ ModXStream, 700 Watt [url]http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=15_535&products_id=12402[/url] GPU: 2 x HD 5770 in Crossfire [url]http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=193_962&products_id=13121[/url]

why are you running one harddrive in raid 0

Get some cheaper RAM, that PSU is also very expensive. The Samsung Spinpoint F3 drives are supposedly the fastest HDs right now, you can get them cheaper than the one you chose on the same site: [url]http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=13562[/url] You also didn't say which GPU you were going to get. [editline]01:31PM[/editline] [QUOTE=thisispain;23326013]why are you running one harddrive in raid 0[/QUOTE] He's going to get two of them?

The problem is that things are fucking over priced, look at the psu [url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139010&Tpk=Corsair%20HX-750[/url]

Yeah that's a lot of money for a PSU, you probably won't even need a 750W PSU. You'd be safe getting a 650W.

[QUOTE=rampageturke;23326837]The problem is that things are fucking over priced, look at the psu [URL]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139010&Tpk=Corsair%20HX-750[/URL][/QUOTE] Its $198 Australian. Conversion + Fee for living here.

Damn, sorry, I'm getting two 5770's in crossfire. [url]http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=193_962&products_id=13121[/url] So you're saying the PSU is overpriced? I'd probably be able to roll with this ([url]http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=15_354&products_id=6063[/url]), but I'd rather get the one I have now. The cheapest RAM I can get at 1600MHz would be this ([url]http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=186_538_913&products_id=14253[/url]). I don't know much about RAM and I can't find benchmarks for the RAM I want to get, so I'm not sure where to go.

[QUOTE=GraaahAngreh;23327589]Damn, sorry, I'm getting two 5770's in crossfire. [url]http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=193_962&products_id=13121[/url] So you're saying the PSU is overpriced? I'd probably be able to roll with this ([url]http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=15_354&products_id=6063[/url]), but I'd rather get the one I have now. The cheapest RAM I can get at 1600MHz would be this ([url]http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=186_538_913&products_id=14253[/url]). I don't know much about RAM and I can't find benchmarks for the RAM I want to get, so I'm not sure where to go.[/QUOTE] Get like a 5850 instead.

Just go the HX-750. Its modular and has a little more leeway when it comes time to upgrade your graphics card/s.

[QUOTE=NecroTitan;23327626]Get like a 5850 instead.[/QUOTE] Dude, Eyefinity. Three monitors. I don't want to get a HDMI cable, nor do I want to shell out almost twice as much to get two of them. Even then, I'm pretty sure that I could max out a pretty reasonable percentage of games with these, so 5850's would be pretty overkill. Hell, I'd think two 5770's would be overkill, but I want to get Crysis.

[QUOTE=GraaahAngreh;23327780]Dude, Eyefinity. Three monitors. I don't want to get a HDMI cable, nor do I want to shell out almost twice as much to get two of them. Even then, I'm pretty sure that I could max out a pretty reasonable percentage of games with these, so 5850's would be pretty overkill. Hell, I'd think two 5770's would be overkill, but I want to get Crysis.[/QUOTE] Eyefinity with 3 monitors doesn't work with HDMI cables anyway.

[QUOTE=GraaahAngreh;23327780]Dude, Eyefinity. Three monitors. I don't want to get a HDMI cable, nor do I want to shell out almost twice as much to get two of them. Even then, I'm pretty sure that I could max out a pretty reasonable percentage of games with these, so 5850's would be pretty overkill. Hell, I'd think two 5770's would be overkill, but I want to get Crysis.[/QUOTE] Those aren't HDMI, correct me if I'm wrong but they're displayports? Which just means you need 1 displayport to DVI.

[QUOTE=GraaahAngreh;23327589] The cheapest RAM I can get at 1600MHz would be this ([url]http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=186_538_913&products_id=14253[/url]). I don't know much about RAM and I can't find benchmarks for the RAM I want to get, so I'm not sure where to go.[/QUOTE] That RAM's fine. With dual channel DDR3 at 1600MHz you get 25,6GB/s bandwidth and a lot of that goes unused by today's CPUs. When it comes to timings, lower is better, but the difference in performance between different RAMs is minimal. It's much better to spend the extra money on a better CPU or graphics card. About the PSU, would this be good? [url]http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=15_535&products_id=12402[/url] It's 700W and modular.

You should get a p55 motherboard

[QUOTE=pebkac;23328783]That RAM's fine. With dual channel DDR3 at 1600MHz you get 25,6GB/s bandwidth and a lot of that goes unused by today's CPUs. When it comes to timings, lower is better, but the difference in performance between different RAMs is minimal. It's much better to spend the extra money on a better CPU or graphics card. About the PSU, would this be good? [url]http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=15_535&products_id=12402[/url] It's 700W and modular.[/QUOTE] Sweet, that PSU is excellent, I'm just a bit of a Corsair fanboy after a cool story. Also, thanks for the info on RAM timings, so I'll downgrade the RAM. Now my case is seeming like a bit of a waste of money. I like the Scout, though. I like the handle, it's small, it doesn't seem like a human who likes to show off transformed into a case. It's just functional. Still, there's probably something better. Now, back to my design... With these cuts, I could upgrade the CPU to an i7 860. That's Quad-core, 2.8GHz, 8MB cache. Seems pretty nice, especially since the buid is probably mostly CPU bottlenecked. ------ -VENT- ------ (There's a TL;DR, since this does boil down to a point.) Currently, I'm running a year+ old Core 2 duo/9600GT machine. It was pretty powerful when I got it, but nowadays, it's a different story. For gaming, it's be lucky to score middle-range. For home use, it might be luckier. It still runs, though. My previously owned PC was running something like a 1.6GHz P4 before it got replaced. I don't think my odds of getting it replaced soon are awfully high, but then we get to my mother. She's running a really pathetic PC. It's tiny, running 7 with a 1.6GHz dual core Atom. The monitor has to use a USB-DVI adapter, because the stupid thing doesn't even have a VGA port. Needless to say, it doesn't do a thing. I've given up on it. I'm hoping that I could get a new computer, then give her my current one. My mother is computer illiterate. She's had this slow laptop for a few years now, so my father went to our computer guy and had him get a new one. Now, my computer illiterate mother demanded that it be small. She got small. She didn't ask for power. So the new computer is running mostly fine, but occasionally lags. Might not sound too bad. I'm sure a good deal of you would know that this is bad. Any computer will slow down noticeably within a week of being new. So this computer that is already lagging a bit, within a week, becomes garbage. Now it's been a number of months. I tried to get into task manager to see if there were any background processes to end to speed things up. I got a freeze for about 3 minutes, then something happened. I got a black screen, for about another 5 minutes. 'Hey', I thought. 'At least it's doing something.'. Back to desktop. 'Damn.'. 'Let's try again.'. Nothing happens. So for about a month now, I've been trying to convince my mother that a $400 investment in a decent computer for her would be good. "but i dont want a big computer", she says. "We can hide it under your desk, nobody will see it, and use proper grammar, damnit." So what I hope will happen, is I can convince my father to get these parts. Then I can just go all ninja and hook my computer up without her noticing. She'll be all like >:( but then she'll get on and be all like :O and then she'll be like :) ------ -VENT- ------ Alright, I promised you a TL;DR. Here it is. I want to replace my mother's arthritic computer with my 32y/o occasional tennis player. To do this, I'm going to need to talk with my father. Problem with that is, he's currently travelling around Australia. Right now, he's the equivalent of the height of Canada away from me, having a wonderful experience. I'm not going to ruin it for him, so I'm going to wait for him to get back. That leaves me with a bit over a month to get this setup organised. Now, to get my father to be willing to agree with this, I want to keep the cost down. Consider that my machine cost 1.5K over a year ago, plus upgrades probably totalling another $500, so I think I'm right for a machine that'll probably last longer.