Built a Fun Computer!

[OtherSyde]

This isn't really about building a computer, mind you (lots of people do that), it's more about reaching the long-awaited milestone of building a completely new computer. Sort of like buying your first brand-new car (one day...)

I've known how to build computers for a long time (went to trade school for it during high school for 2 years), but I've always either had an all-in-one like an iMac back in 2001 or, more recently, a series of laptops since I've lived on a war-ship for six years now and needed the portability. I worked at a computer store for a brief while back in 2004 and sort of cobbled together a makeshift PC tower out of discarded, used components in the back warehouse, but I've always wanted to build my own flashy, stylish rig out of completely new components.

A week or two ago when my wife's laptop croaked, I seized the opportunity to go nuts on newegg.com, taking advantage of their Columbus day sale. I scored a motherboard, power supply, and 8GB of RAM for about $100. Then I bought the DVD-R drive and CPU (it's a Core i5 3570k with unlocked bus multiplier, if anyone speaks techie) a week later. It's not an incredible rig, but it's the fastest computer I've had yet by far, the only one comprised of all-new parts, and definitely the most colorful. I plan to get a GeForce 560 graphics card as well to top it off. But tonight I'm just using it to avoid doing my upper-division Sociology homework by making this post.

Sorry for the crappy cell phone pic, my awesome Sony camera got crushed on a carnival ride a few weeks ago

[EDIT] - The keyboard and mouse are, ironically enough, from the previously-mentioned old iMac from 2001... They're the only spares I could dig up haha... Definitely going upgrade those soon, too

[OE800_85]

Niice, building computers is becoming a bit of a lost art, what with all our compressed mobile devices.

I recently got myself a mini-pc that I set up as an HTPC. You can use any passable computer with a good video card to do it, it'll change your viewing experience forever. Particularly if you're a media geek like me

xbmc.org

[Bibby]

That's really neat. If I ever get a new desktop, this is precisely the route I'm going to take.

[LaterBloomer]

Pretty neat. Now get back to sociology!

[scorched]

Come on man...you can't tease us with just a few tidbits.. give the specs.. motherboard, which i5?, case? powersupply? mem?
And what size is the power supply in it? those 560's are quite hungry and require up 150W, 560Ti = 170W and the 560Ti LE = 210W!

Now if your ridiculously nerdy like me, you may know that that graphics cards can be used for something other than games.
The nvidia card of course is CUDA parallel program enabled. So if your into math and science, you can get applications that access the GPU for computation.
A simple example is R, the free statistics package.. it can be enhanced to use the nvidia. But the possibilities are endless, because CUDA is available to everyone, and you can optimize your own applications.
One university using R went from an intel chip that processed data in 4 hours to less than 2 minutes, and that was using a much older video card.

For those that don't know, even the greatest intel i7 chip will only have 8 cores, but an nvidia 560TI LE will have 448 cores.

Cheers!

[OtherSyde]

Wow... I did not know that GPU's were that powerful in terms of math, but I guess it makes sense since 3D rendering is basically just calculating vast amounts of geometry and light-ray interactions.

Like I said though, it's not the biggest monster rig; here's the components I bought...

-Core i5 3570k Ivy Bridge with Unlocked Multipler; stock 3.4GHZ with 3.8GHz turbo, overclocks fairly easily to 4.4GHz from what I hear. One of the reviews that convinced me to buy it said, "This thing is an absolute monster....nothing more to say. If you are a gamer, save the money and go with this over the i7."
Newegg.com - Intel Core i5-3570K Ivy Bridge 3.4GHz (3.8GHz Turbo) LGA 1155 77W Quad-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 4000 BX80637I53570K

-8GB DDR3 G.SKILL Ripjaws RAM (2 4GB sticks); mixed reviews, but it's working great so far. On sale it was like $29 with warranty, so I can't complain either way I guess.
Newegg.com - G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory Model F3-10666CL9D-8GBRL

-Motherboard: Typical mainstream LGA 1155 Micro ATX by Gigabyte. Nothing special, but it was about $48 on sale, so once again I can't complain. Maybe one day I'll swap it out for an SLI-ready model when it's upgrade time.
Newegg.com - GIGABYTE GA-H61MA-D3V LGA 1155 Intel H61 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard

-PSU: COOLER MASTER Elite 460w. $26 on sale. Probably my weakest component, and I've been getting more and more worried that it won't be able to handle a GeForce 560 TI. It's got a PCIe x16 connector and a safety overload prevention feature, so hopefully it can handle a decent GPU.
Newegg.com - COOLER MASTER Elite 460 RS-460-PSAR-I3 460W ATX12V V2.31 Power Supply


hmuchmo1, is that enough power for one PCIe x16 video card if I have no other PCIe cards plugged in? I've never really been clear on how to calculate that O.o

[scorched]

Thats all fairly decent equipment.. but by nvidia specs your PS is not enough. the Ti has a 500W minimum, and the Ti LE is 550W.
Doesn't mean it won't work, but if your machine acts weird during intense video games and such, that may be the reason.

Also, crazy it sounds nvidia released the kepler video cards update from the fermi, which is what the 560 would be based on..
The keplers can have 3 times as many cores and lower power..
so importantly for you, if you can squeeze extra $$ to get the 650Ti kepler card, it only requires a 400W PS but comes with 768cores.
Should be able to find one for $150 on newegg.

[OtherSyde]

Wow! Thanks, that is incredibly useful information. I was gunning to buy this card:
GeForce GTX 560 Fermi 1GB 256-bit GDDR5
Newegg.com - EVGA SuperClocked 01G-P3-1461-KR GeForce GTX 560 (Fermi) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card
It requires two PCIe power connectors (I only have one, and would need an adapter), and might well draw too much power from my PSU

Now I'm looking at this one, which is a generation newer, $10 cheaper, and like you said, only requires a 400w PSU:
GeForce GTX 650 Ti Kepler 1GB 128-bit GDDR5
Newegg.com - EVGA SSC 01G-P4-3652-KR GeForce GTX 650 Ti 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card


The only difference is that the second one, although newer, is only 128-bit as opposed to the older 560, which is 256-bit... Is that a major bottleneck/deal-killer? I think my old GeForce 260M in my ASUS G60 latop from 3-4 years ago is even 192-bit. Do you think the upgrades to 768 cores and PCIe 3.0 make up for the halved bandwidth? O.o

It seems in this review that the 650 TI is significantly faster than the 560 TI, although it doesn't specify what the bit-rate is in either.
http://www.techspot.com/review/583-nvidi...page2.html

Honestly I guess it's sort of a moot point anyway, unless I want to buy a new PSU as well, which I don't really have the extra cash to splurge on right now, especially since I would have this brand-new 460w PSU to use as an attractive paperweight (I don't think "I was stupid and bought too small of a PSU" is a good enough reason to return it to Newegg).

[ryoder]

Awesome!
This is what makes PC's so much cooler than Macs. Think of how much you learn when you build your own PC.
I put my first one together in 1991 right as the US led the assault on Iraq. It was a 286 16Mhz with 2MB of RAM and I was so excited to build it.
That knowledge allowed me to get a job as a computer tech at a local computer store. I built and repaired thousands of computers from 1993-1998 and it was great experience.
I do it every few years now when my PC won't run the latest game, like StarCraft II and its a joy to see how much power you can put together on a tight budget.

[OtherSyde]

Yeah, it really blows my mind how far the technology has come. A strong PC used to cost $1,500 to $2,000. Now you can build a snazzy speed demon for less than $500, easily.

I used to be a "Mac guy," back when being a Mac Guy was all under-dog and stuff. Back before being a typical Mac user revolved primarily around "wear tight jeans and "ironic" thick nerd glasses while sitting in StarBuck's, drinking a $9 latte and typing narcissistic poetry into your blog." Just not my scene anymore. Maybe I'm old. o.O