22 replies to this topic

[THE RED DRAGON]

http://www.walmart.c...indingMethod=rr

Farva showed me this - What do you guys think

[Mister Maf]

If you're gonna buy from CyberPower, do it from their website so that you can customize it. AMD FX is underwhelming and 16 GBs of RAM is excessive. It also doesn't list a GPU, which you'd want for your video making even if you don't plan on gaming.

[THE RED DRAGON]

Mister Maf, on 03 March 2012 - 08:53 PM, said:

If you're gonna buy from CyberPower, do it from their website so that you can customize it. AMD FX is underwhelming and 16 GBs of RAM is excessive. It also doesn't list a GPU, which you'd want for your video making even if you don't plan on gaming.

http://www.walmart.c...indingMethod=rr

What about if you pick the top processor and graphics card from that Mafia - is that worth the price jump?

Jumps the processor to

Intel Sandy Bridge Core i7 2600K (3.4GHz)

Graphic card goes to

NVIDIA GeForce GTX570 1280MB Video Card

[Mister Maf]

Basically, no. Those prices are ludicrously marked up even compared to the same change in parts on http://www.ibuypower.com/. Such is the nature of middlemen.

If you answer the following, I can configure one to fit you (assuming you would prefer to buy it pre-assembled):
*Budget?
*Planned uses:
**Most stressing software (i.e. your video encoding which is very graphics-based, or code compiling which is very computation-based, etc.)
**Any games? What would be the most demanding ones?
**Any special use (i.e. a media center, which might demand a sound card, TV tuner, card reader, etc.)?
*Do you ever intend to overclock and/or learn how to?
*Would you rather have a flexible platform for future upgrades or the best power for the money right now?

The most important questions are "budget?" and "what do you plan to use it for?", but if you have an answer for the others it would only serve to fit it better for you in the long run.

[THE RED DRAGON]

Mister Maf, on 04 March 2012 - 11:39 PM, said:

Basically, no. Those prices are ludicrously marked up even compared to the same change in parts on http://www.ibuypower.com/. Such is the nature of middlemen.

If you answer the following, I can configure one to fit you (assuming you would prefer to buy it pre-assembled):
*Budget? Approx 1K - No more than 1.5 preferably
*Planned uses: Video Editing - Streaming - Gaming
**Most stressing software (i.e. your video encoding which is very graphics-based, or code compiling which is very computation-based, etc.) Sony Vegas
**Any games? What would be the most demanding ones? I'd like to have one that can run basically any new game and I won't have to upgrade for the foreseeable future
**Any special use (i.e. a media center, which might demand a sound card, TV tuner, card reader, etc.)? No
*Do you ever intend to overclock and/or learn how to? No
*Would you rather have a flexible platform for future upgrades or the best power for the money right now? Best Power for now - I don't want to upgrade anything for a long time

The most important questions are "budget?" and "what do you plan to use it for?", but if you have an answer for the others it would only serve to fit it better for you in the long run.

I do need a graphics card that can handle atleast 2 monitors - thats really the only other concern I have. So your saying the Processor is good on that last idea I had - but that price is too much going through Walmart? Thanks Maf

[Mister Maf]

You should have a couple emails in your inbox.

[THE RED DRAGON]

I'll list it here so anyone else can chime in - can you tell me whats the big difference in these two and going with the one that was going to be 1300 on the link i listed where you can build your own and put the top stuff in?

http://www.cyberpowe...om/saved/1E0NL1


http://www.cyberpowe...om/saved/1E0NGA

[Mister Maf]

My opinion on i7s is that they're really not that great of a value. The only difference between a Gen 2 i5 and i7 (aside from a small difference in the size of cache memory) is that an i5 doesn't support hyperthreading and an i7 does. Don't listen to anyone who says "they effectively double the number of cores so it's twice as fast!"; that's not true and they know not what they speak of. It makes each physical core work as two "logical cores", but it doesn't yield a 100% performance increase and certainly not all the time. It will yield up to a 30% performance increase in highly threaded applications. More and more applications are being designed to take advantage of this feature, but in my opinion, it's a lot of money to pay for one feature.

Anyway, the difference between Door #1 and Walmart is that the given configurator for Walmart does not let you individually choose your motherboard, power supply, cooling, or brand of RAM, and the CyberPower one has free shipping. You can safely bump your power supply down to the 750w Thermaltake TR2 RX with the $32 mail-in rebate, regardless of what the "recommended" value says, looking over it again. If you don't want to shoot yourself in the foot for upgrades, the motherboard could use a small upgrade (such as the Asus P8Z68-V LX - the biggest limiting factor on this one is the inflexible motherboard). The CPU compared to the Walmart setup is the non-K version, which means it doesn't have an unlocked multiplier and is much harder to overclock - not a problem since you don't plan on doing that and the K versions cost extra. The GPU is from a special promotion from CyberPower right now where you can get an EVGA factory-overclocked version of the card for the price or the regular card. It also has slightly more VRAM.

Door #2 coming in shy of $1.5k has an i5, which is a better value though not outright better than an i7. The motherboard is the strong point here, because it features two PCIe 3.0 expansions slots (among plenty other expansions slots) for the HD 7950 (which is a PCIe 3.0 card - it will work on less but you'd be limiting its potential..) and a sister 7950 to Crossfire together at a later date should you so choose (two together would destroy anything, even while recording/streaming).

My thoughts aren't organized very well right now... I'll put together an AMD one soon, though, just to look at all the options. Nothing is final :\

Edited by Mister Maf, 05 March 2012 - 09:31 PM.