Computer Rebuild

[!King_Amazon!]

Yo. I'm wanting to rebuild my computer in the next few months and I was wondering if anyone knows when the best time to buy the parts will be. I'm guessing that Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales might be my best bet, but I'm not sure. I'm not looking to buy brand new top-of-the-line parts, so release dates of new parts shouldn't really factor into this question unless they affect the price of parts that are out already.

[Goodlookinguy]

I've never seen specific computer components go down in price on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. I'm assuming that's because it's a sort of a niche thing. Although I have seen HDD and SSD go down in price on random days and weeks on Amazon. All-in-all though you can probably just buy the parts whenever.

[Sovereign]

Newegg has a lot of bundle deals all year round. No need to wait for holiday sales.

You can also save some cash by going AMD for the CPU / GPU

[!King_Amazon!]

I've already procured a video card (SAPPHIRE AMD Radeon HD 6870 1GB GDDR5). Is it worth saving money to go AMD for the CPU?

[-Spector-]

No, AMD is shit. Go with intel. Also I use tigerdirect.com and they usually have great deals.

[Sovereign]

No, AMD is shit. Go with intel. Also I use tigerdirect.com and they usually have great deals.

You can get a good quad core AMD factory clocked at 4.2 ghz for 120 dollars. Intel cpu's hover around 300. Unless you absolutely MUST have max fps @ 1080P resolutions, are doing a lot of number crunching (prime 95) or video editing, the AMD will do quite nicely.

Even for gaming, as long as the fps stays around 40-60 the game shouldn't be choppy. As a reference, movies at movie theaters play at around 24 fps. When was the last time you heard someone complain that the movie was laggy ~_~

[!King_Amazon!]

AMD's hardware certainly sounds better if you only look at the numbers they provide. Unfortunately, when compared to actual performance, Intel does seem to be better based on the limited research I've done.

[Sovereign]

Oh definitely intel is better.

Here's some comparisons
http://www.ocaholic.ch/xoops/html/modules/smartsection/item.php?itemid=779&page=0

If you have the cash go for the intel. The way that you phrased your first post had me assuming you weren't too picky on performance.

[WetWired]

Have the ATI video drivers gotten any better? Ever since I went dual monitor, I've gone Nvidia, because with ATI drivers, applications do strange things.

Only concerned with 1080p? I recently built a new computer for video editing, but played some DX:HR on it. It's a lot better than my other computer, but with default settings, it bogs down in spots at 2560x1600. Of course, I'm only running a GTX480, because that was the most expensive part and I was more concerned with Adobe Premiere support than game acceleration.

[WetWired]

Newegg has posted it's Black Friday deals already. http://www.newegg.com/Black-Friday-Deals-Sales/PromotionStore/ID-42

[!King_Amazon!]

Oh definitely intel is better.

Here's some comparisons
http://www.ocaholic.ch/xoops/html/modules/smartsection/item.php?itemid=779&page=0

If you have the cash go for the intel. The way that you phrased your first post had me assuming you weren't too picky on performance.

Nah, I just happen to be building a new computer and figured there might be some way to time it right to get good deals. My budget is pretty flexible though.

[Goodlookinguy]

Newegg has posted it's Black Friday deals already. http://www.newegg.com/Black-Friday-Deals-Sales/PromotionStore/ID-42


I always forget about newegg for some reason...thank's for that link. I see that 512GB OCZ SSD in there, which I'm very interested in. Although I wonder how it matches up to some other SSD.


Have the ATI video drivers gotten any better? Ever since I went dual monitor, I've gone Nvidia, because with ATI drivers, applications do strange things.


Although I'm an AMD fanboy, I wouldn't say that they've gotten better. I mean, there's a computer I built a little over 8 months ago with the AMD Radeon HD 6990 and one of the video driver updates caused the system to BSOD. I had to go in and remove it in safe mode to fix it. Pain in the ass.


AMD's hardware certainly sounds better if you only look at the numbers they provide. Unfortunately, when compared to actual performance, Intel does seem to be better based on the limited research I've done.
Oh definitely intel is better.


You shouldn't jump to conclusions like that, unless you simply meant at the moment. Even to that though, AMD can calculate more single and double float values on it's AMD-FX CPUs than Intel's i7. On the other hand, I should mention, Intel's processor design is better than AMD-FX's, so overall better performance is there almost by default. I believe AMD is going to be changing their design over the next few years. I think it might have something to do with Moore's law coming to an end.


To be honest, with a decent graphics card, any nVidia GTX 6xx or AMD 78xx+, a Intel i7 or AMD-FX CPU, a good SSD, and a at least half-way decent mobo. The realistic speed difference of a computer in a slightly better or lower standing becomes almost indistinguishable from one other.

Edit: You know what I think is even more important than the parts, the amount of electricity i.e. watts, that the system will require. A 1200 watts PSU is on the system with the AMD Radeon HD 6990. It drains a crazy amount of power. So much that it caused a circuit breaker to flip more than once.

[WetWired]

You know what I think is even more important than the parts, the amount of electricity i.e. watts, that the system will require. A 1200 watts PSU is on the system with the AMD Radeon HD 6990. It drains a crazy amount of power. So much that it caused a circuit breaker to flip more than once.Before this system, I'd always bought PSUs with the case (except for one store brand aluminum case that didn't come with one), but I was surprised this time to find that I couldn't find any decently priced case/PSU combos that would support my new computer, which only draws just north of 600W, much less than your crazy 1200. Good grief, you could practically dry clothes with that much heat.

[Sovereign]

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/697?vs=551

There's the FX vs I7 comparison. You can use that site to compare any two CPU's you want.

[Sovereign]

How many video cards do you have? With my gtx 680 and I7 that's 30% overclocked it requires between 500-600 watts.

Newegg's PSU calculator says I'd need 4 gtx 680's to max out a 1200 watt psu.

[Grav]

Yo. I'm wanting to rebuild my computer in the next few months and I was wondering if anyone knows when the best time to buy the parts will be. I'm guessing that Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales might be my best bet, but I'm not sure. I'm not looking to buy brand new top-of-the-line parts, so release dates of new parts shouldn't really factor into this question unless they affect the price of parts that are out already.

IIRC, Newegg has low prices immediately before new year's eve.

[Goodlookinguy]

How many video cards do you have? With my gtx 680 and I7 that's 30% overclocked it requires between 500-600 watts.

Newegg's PSU calculator says I'd need 4 gtx 680's to max out a 1200 watt psu.

Well, do you have your motherboard and all peripherals calculated? The Radeon HD 6990 requires 1000 watts minimum. The mobo requires a minimum of 400 watts. As far as overclocking, the CPU, GPU, and memory are all overclocked well above their stock settings.

[Sovereign]

http://www.extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp is what I used for power calculation. Gtx 680 / i7 2600k 1.38vcore 4.5ghz clock speed/ 4 sticks of ram, 2 HD, high end Mobo.

http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph4209/35816.png
That is a very very power hungry card.

[Goodlookinguy]

http://www.extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp is what I used for power calculation. Gtx 680 / i7 2600k 1.38vcore 4.5ghz clock speed/ 4 sticks of ram, 2 HD, high end Mobo.

That is a very very power hungry card.


We've jumped quite off-topic, but using that calculator, I wasn't able to put everything in it's entirety, but it still came out to a minimum of 897w.

[!King_Amazon!]

Results:
http://i.imgur.com/c4Bnd.png

I need a SSD.

[Goodlookinguy]

I wouldn't trust the Windows Vista/7/8 performance test. It's rated high-end SSDs low in the 4-5 range and low-end, 5200 RPM, spinning hard disk drives as 6-7.

Although I wouldn't say that a spinning drive isn't the bottleneck, I just recommend not putting too much faith in that particular performance test.

[Sovereign]

I use an Intel SSD 80 gb to boot windows off of. It's fast and I've had no problems with it.

Corsair also makes some good ones.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233191
Im jealous. SSD prices have come down quite a bit since I bought mine.

[!King_Amazon!]

I had planned to get an SSD until I realized I needed to upgrade my PSU. SSD is on hold for now :(