First of all **** all of that Core I7 bullshit, those processors are so overpriced for what you get, if you build a computer with one of those you better be prepared to double your budget.

I built a budget AMD/ATI based gaming/design computer this winter, my old one actually lagged in photoshop.



Cooler Master RC-690 case
Gigabyte GA-MA790GPT-UDH3 motherboard (AMD/ATI)
OCZ Stealth Stream 700W PSU
AMD Phenom II X3 720 with the fourth core unlocked (guess that means it's an X4) @ 3.2ghz
x2 Western Digital Caviar Black 640GB drives in raid 0
8GB Dual-channel G.skill Ripjaw PC12800 DDR3 RAM @ 1600mhz
XFX ATI 4890 1GB DDR5/ 256bit (out-performs the GTX285 and all new ATI cards with the exception of 5850/5890)
Lite-on 24X dvd burner/lightscribe.

Spent $891 building the tower. But I also bought a 23" 1080P Acer monitor on sale for $140, a virtual 7.1 headset for $25 (actually sounds amazing.), and the newer Logitech G15 keyboard. So after all of that the total price was $1,131. And you will NOT get that much bang for buck if you buy an Intel processor, or Nvidia video card.

Booyah.

 

Specs sound awesome, man. I'm gonna be building one in a few months when I get my camera paid off.

 

Totally agree. I used to be an nVidia freak, until I built my last PC, now I'm all about AMD/ATI. I really need to look into building a new PC, but mine has worked great for over 2 years now and it's till going strong so I'm just going to wait it out.

That is an amazing setup, the one thing that I don't really understand is the need for so much HD space, I guess it's because of the 3dsmax though.

Good work Kevin.

 

I've got roughly 5-6 TB of hd space

 

What's the point? Do you really have that much pr0n on your computer?

 

I have almost 1TB worth of movies. 5-6TB is alot, but I'm sure I could fill it with music and movies.

 

Stuff like raw format photos, video footage, any design project files usually take up a ton of space and I'll definitely fill up the 1.18 TB pretty fast. I'm going to look into buying two of the 1TB drives and add them to the raid array once I need the space.

But thanks, it hauls ***. Haha

 

nice. kicks the **** outta my Core 2 duo machine...but it was only 350 shipped.

 

I stream blu ray movies from my computer to my tv and surround sound system. Each blu ray movie is roughly 8-12 gigs if I download the compressed versions and upwards of 30-60 gigs for the uncompressed ones.

 

This is pointless for me to say, but this is what this thread looks like to me:

skdlk jaldk jd 10/12 ddidol khadioi ngihoei;lk'adf
dkldfhf 6 jadkljf doikjah 1 cnosidng tplkm seoint
fidnd nown ec,wlene oltn 4 6.649 dsiso dnd't 'snsienz.sk
ddk jwi intkj blue ray gnndlls netosnekl;alxnd of;ene;l

 

Weak. No SLI, No watercooling. And core i7 is expensive, but worth it. Its basically like 8 cores with the hyperthreading and has no FSB.

 

my buddy built a monster computer last year. spent 2200 on everything. we water cooled it and made an external reservoir attached to his ac unit/window. let everything get nice and cold and cranked that bad bad boy up to about 4.3 ghz (from 2.8) before it crashed.

 

I DON'T KNOW WHAT'S GOING ON.

 

Good! Now I'm not the only stupid person here!

 

AMD/ATI FTW

 

+1. All I know is my computer at work has windows 98 and sucks ***.

 

Why not just go with the AMD phenom II black editions then? Half the price of the i7, but from the manufacturer who created the hyper-thread technology anyways?

I've seen gigabyte/phenom II combos for like $300. And I've seen Asus/high-end phenom IIs for like $500. That is the best way to go. Especially for photoshop, that ***** rough.

 

nice build. personally, I like an AMD/Nvidia based setup, but I understand ppl going with AMD/ATI. would've gone with a black edition, though. few more bucks, but worth it, especially for the video editing.

BTW, air cooling handles all but the most extreme of overclocking. mainly ppl use it for stupid high OC's, and looks. trust me, I been doing this chit for years.

 

well what would yall say the best laptop would be?

 

There is no difference between regular Phenom II and the black edition, it just means it's a four core chipset, but..so is the non-black edition. They are sold as tri-cores but in the motherboard bios of most boards you can unlock and fully utilize the fourth core. Same thing. The Phenom II 720 I bought was a combo-deal with the gigabyte mobo for $180. That deal can't and won't ever be beaten by an Intel, price-for-performance. The processor alone is now up in price to $165, I guess newegg finally caught on that the Phenom II X3 > Phenom II X4. My processor has never gone above 30% load in 3ds max, any game, photoshop, adobe premiere, etc.

SLI setups are no better than this, money for performance-wise. The 4890 is very powerful all on it's own and I don't see the need for having it in Crossfire for a very long time. I could have bought two and put them in crossfire but that would have just been money spent for nothing.

And water cooling setups are just cool to have, the airflow in this case is good enough with the 120mm fans to not need water-cooling.

 

But still, in about three-four years you're going to be in the same spot again. Just my $0.02.
The Black editions are wayyy faster, better power usage, and also don't run as hot. Generally the mobos for them are much better than the basic gigabyte or asus. I got a 965 AMD with an Asus for $230 a month or two back for a buddies computer. For $50 more than what you paid, thats a much bigger step. Ohh and all he does is CS4 and Pinnacle editing, but he's had me build him a computer every three years so far and just wanted to spend some extra to keep from spending $1200 in a few years.

Intel and AMD are both under agreements that processor speeds will double every two-three years. So no matter what really you're fucked. But oh well...

A beautiful setup nonetheless. But you can't say anything about going overboard. You have 8 TB or whatever. I have 8.5 TB, but thats with three different OS on those hard drives.

 

I know man, I was just messing around. But seriously those i7s are worth it. My fantasy build is:

Dual socket motherboard with two PCIe slots
two core i7 cpus
two GTX280s
12gigs DDR3 ram
1TB HDD array in raid 0
watercooled. which I already have so can just xfer that over.

 

Having two i7s is impossible because they can't talk to each other. You'd just be using one or the other. You have to get Intel's Xenon series for them to be able to converse and coexist. Those aren't fun either. The technology will come, but by then they'll have i7s with eight-cores (already have six) and you won't need it anyways unless its a server.

Watercooling is nice, but almost useless now with i7s and the like. They run so cool anyways that you can overclock them with air and still get close to 4ghz, which is more than anyone would ever actually NEED. But bad *** to have nonetheless. Thats why crossfire and SLI was invented in the first place. Lol.

 

Lol..they are not faster dude. The AMD Phenom II X3 720 and the Phenom II X3 720 Black edition have the exact same specifications. It's just a marketing gimmick with the Blacks.
Socket AM3+
95w
45nm
6mb L3 cache

2.8ghz clock speed.
4000mhz HT

I have mine overclocked to 3.2ghz and it hovers around 40*c on the stock HSF with the stock heatpaste, no fancy AS5 or anything.

You can't really take another 'step' from this in AMD's line. You can buy an X4 processor but it's essentially the same thing, but for more money. Heka core = Deneb core with 1 core disabled. My fourth core is re-enabled therefore it = Deneb core. So basically what I'm saying is, that Deneb X4 965 you bought, is no better than the Heka X3 720 I bought; and it was $80 more.

And as far as mobos go..they wouldn't be any different than this. They are the same socket processor. This motherboard has DDR3 slots that support 1600mhz/PC12800 out of the box and has crossfire support, and that can't be beaten for under $100.

 

Thats very false. The 965 stock is clocked at 3.2ghz and ran only 30-34* in a full-size tower on air. The 965 I have is overclocked to 3.8ghz on air. Running only 40*-45* in a full-size tower. So wherever you're logic is I believe you're mistaken. It's not a gimmick lol, and for you to say that it is obviously means you have no idea what the blacks actually do.

Along with a bigger cache and better technology for the same price. I was just saying you should've spend the little extra more and got a BE Phenom. The 940 is on Newegg with a mobo for 205. Thats a much better deal than the two year old Heka processors. Technology progresses for a reason. AMD wouldn't make a new processor if it wasn't better. Intel yes, AMD no.

i7s are way overpriced. But for the same power, same hyperthreading, and clocking abilities the BE Phenom IIs are amazing. I'm a firm believer in that. Not saying that you bought a shitty processor, but its already outdated and will only get worse IMO.

If you could buy a clocked out Pentium 4 and be fine, but it costed the same price as an i7 which would you get? Thats my point. I think for around $200 the Black Edition Phenom X4s are the way to go, especially if you know how to overclock them.

 

The X3 720 can be OC'd stabiliy to 3.5ghz on the stock HSF and run completely fine, and I don't doubt at all that it can go to 3.8ghz just like your 965 with an aftermarket HSF. It might run 5 degrees hotter but that doesn't affect anything.


It's the SAME core chipset, SAME L1,L2, L3cache, L4 cache, SAME amount of cores, SAME FSB, SAME hyperthreading, SAM chipsize, and SAME power consumption. But my processor was $100 and yours was $180.

Your processor's technology is no better than what mine is, they just disabled a core in the X3s to meet a market demand.

That is why the X3 720s are much better deals than the X4s.. it's because they ARE X4s, that caught on and that's why you'll see the X3s are mostly sold out, because people know they can get something way better for almost 50% the cost of the same X4 processor.


edit: after looking at my processor again I guess it does say 'Black' in the description and the end all of of the **** about it,but that doesn't change the fact that it's more or less the same processor you have but was almost half the price when I bought it.

BTW this is the board I bought
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128398
And this is the processor
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103649

At the time I bought it they were in a combo deal for $180. The price on that processor before it became unavailable (sometime last week) was $165.

 

My bad I should have specified Xeon with server OS.

 

pretty kewl setup, I would tiddy up those cables sitting on top of the fan in the lower chassis so it cool better, but otherwise it looks pretty good!

You running Win7 Pro on it or something else?

 

Haha, that's about as tidy as they're going to get. They're all squashed into the case's cable management holders but since I didn't buy a modular power supply I have a bunch of excess ones hanging around. I've got Win 7 Ultimate 64bit on it.

 

yeah Win7 x64bit is the way to go with something like that, I am rolling out that to our newsroom here. Really makes a diff running all these Adobe apps they use!