[ask] Building PC with limited budget

[wonderwrench]

Hello wonderwrench, thank for your advice.

I have checked & re-checked the cabling on my sata drive, and I didn't find anything odd, though. But I do switch the sata cable into an another sata plug. I also removing a software from the Asrock CD called 'AMD Overdrive' & 'AMD Fusion', and since then my PC run just fine. I haven't counter anything wrong till this moment. I don't know which of those steps that contribute the most, but it surely did something good to my whole system.

Nice to see you got it fixed. BTW I have never had good luck with tweaking programs included with motherboards.

Bill

[juliand_fergie]

Hello wonderwrench, thank for your advice.

I have checked & re-checked the cabling on my sata drive, and I didn't find anything odd, though. But I do switch the sata cable into an another sata plug. I also removing a software from the Asrock CD called 'AMD Overdrive' & 'AMD Fusion', and since then my PC run just fine. I haven't counter anything wrong till this moment. I don't know which of those steps that contribute the most, but it surely did something good to my whole system.

[wonderwrench]

"Today, I'm playing Far Cry 2 and it run smoothly until I was killed (on the game), try to reload it, then... somehow it crashed and the PC restarted automatically. Next thing, the harddrive was not detected on BIOS. I turned it off and turn it on again, and it's still not detected. So I turned it off again and leave it for about 10-20 minutes. And it works well until now."

If you like you can disable the automatic reboot on error to make it easier to diagnose the problem. Go to control panel, system, advanced system settings, advanced tab. Under startup and recovery open settings. Uncheck automatically restart. When an error occurs now you will get a blue screen instead of a reboot. The error message should give us a general idea as to the problem. I'm still thinking its drive cabling or drive related by your explanation of the problem given above.

[wonderwrench]

The only difference in those two PSU's is the M is modular and the S is not.

Windows Experience Index explanation.

Your CPU temps look OK. What is the hottest you have seen under heavy load? You can use IntelBurnTest to load the CPU. Warning watch the CPU temp closely. Cancel the test if the temp goes over 65C.

First check the SATA and power cables going to the drives and make sure they are completely and squarely plugged in. SATA cabling is a poor design and prone to connection issues. I have had similar symptoms on my main PC before. Take a look in Windows event viewer and see if you have any related errors caused by a bad connection or bad cable. If you still have problems try another SATA cable. Double check all electrical connections while your at it.

If you are still having problems try locking out the 2 extra cores and see if anything changes. Run WD data lifeguard diagnostics on the drive. If that's not it strip your system down to the least amount of parts needed to run, cpu, 1 stick of ram, video card and hard drive. It's possible you got a bad drive.

Hope this helps
Bill

[juliand_fergie]

Hey did you get your parts ordered? If so what did you end up going with?

Bill

Hello wonderwrench, I'm sorry I haven't able to visit the forum until now. Thank you for all your support. In the end, I end up with the same specs with minor changes:

AMD AM3 Phenom II X2 555 Black Edition
Mb ASRock 870G Extreme3
RAM PATRIOT PSD3 4G 1333 KH (2 X 2G) DDR 3 Module
Harddisk 3.5Inch WDC SATA II Caviar Black 500Gb 32Mb
VGA Digital Alliance HD 5770 1Gb 128Bit DDR5 -> instead of HD 4870
PSU Seasonic S12II-520W Bronze -> instead of M12II-520W Bronze
Optical Drive LG DVDRW 24x

along with few parts from my old PC:

LG LCD W1953S
3.5 Inch Seagate SATA I 80 Gb (ST3808AS)

I changed from HD 4870 to HD 5770 because the HD 4870 with 1 gigs of RAM is currently out of stock, in almost every computer store that I could find in Jakarta. They only have HD 4870 with 512mb of RAM.

I also changed my PSU from M12II-520W Bronze to S12II-520W Bronze. The main reason is simply a budget.

I'm using Windows 7 Ultimate. The performance so far is nice, I got 5.9 rating on Windows Experience Index. What was that suppose to mean?

The CPU temp. is currently showing 45 C on a normal usage, is it normal? I'm also able to unlock the X2 core into X4 3,4 Gigs. The Asrock board provides an easy tools known as UCC to unlock it. But for now, none of my parts are being overclocked.

The only main downside is, sometimes the whole system doesn't perform like it should've been. Sometimes, it took me about 10 to 20 minutes to copy 3 gigs of a compressed (*.rar ) folder to another drive. For example, I used Ultra ISO to mount an Image file on my drive. then, I copy the file from the virtual drive into my harddisk. The file size is around 3,3 gigs (single compressed file). And it took me almost 30 minutes to complete the process, which is riddiculous IMO. So I cancelled it, and try to do same thing the day after. And guess what, it only took not more than 3 minutes!

Today, I'm playing Far Cry 2 and it run smoothly until I was killed (on the game), try to reload it, then... somehow it crashed and the PC restarted automatically. Next thing, the harddrive was not detected on BIOS. I turned it off and turn it on again, and it's still not detected. So I turned it off again and leave it for about 10-20 minutes. And it works well until now.

What could possibly caused something like this to my PC? I also partitioned my harddrive into two drive (100 gigs for the system, and the rest for various files). Could it possibly caused by the harddrive, or maybe something else?

Thank you for your further information, I really appreciates it.

Best Regards,


Juliandi

[wonderwrench]

Hey did you get your parts ordered? If so what did you end up going with?

Bill

[wonderwrench]

Here is some info on AMD chipsets. keep in mind that 7xx is older than 8xx.

760G - Budget, majority if not all are µATX, have integrated Radeon HD 3000 graphics, one PCI-e 16x lane.

770 - Budget, majority ATX IIRC, should have only have one PCI-e lane. Some come with two PCI-e lanes but the second one operates at 4x bandwidth, possibly resulting in bottlenecking in CrossFireX for some cards. More modern boards support SATA III and USB 3.0.

785G - Relatively budget, welll - suited for HTPC thus majority are µATX IIRC, comes with Radeon HD 4200 graphics, one PCI-e 16x lane, some has an extra PCI-e 16x lane which works at 4x like the 770 chipset.

790X - Higher end, ATX form factor supports 8x/8x CrossFireX. More modern boards support SATA III and USB 3.0.

790GX - Higher end, ATX form factor, supports 8x/8x CrossFireX, has integrated Radeon HD 3300 graphics.

790FX - Very high end, supports 16x/16x, 16x/8x/8x, 8x/8x/8x/8x CrossFireX, ATX motherboards.

870 - Budget, majority ATX IIRC, one 16x PCI-e lane, native SATA III support, some with USB 3.0.

880G - Relatively budget, mainly µATX, one 16x PCI-e lane, some come with a second at 4x, same situation with 770 chipset, native SATA III support, some with USB 3.0, has integrated Radeon HD 4250 graphics.

890GX - Higher end, ATX form factor, supports 8x/8x CrossFireX, comes with integrated Radeon HD 4290 graphics, native SATA III support, some with USB 3.0.

890FX - Highest end for AMD at the moment, all ATX form factor, supports 16x/16x, 16x/8x/8x, 8x/8x/8x/8x CrossFireX. Native SATA III support, some with USB 3.0.

[wonderwrench]

ECS has always been a lower end manufacture and people perceive them so. They have been trying to change peoples opinions by making some higher quality and higher end boards aka the black series. As far as I can see the ASRock and ECS boards you are looking at have similar spec's. I would expect ASRock to have generally better quality and better support, driver, bios updates etc. One thing I see is both boards have integrated GPU's which you do not need as far as I know. I tend to buy boards from MSI, Gigabyte, Asus, Asrock, and Biostar. MSI has been my favorite over the years. This sounds funny but I say go back to the first board you were looking at the MSI 870A-G54. See the comparison of 870 boards here. look closely at the features such as PS2, do you use a PS2 keyboard and mouse, PATA, do you have PATA/IDE drives you want to use, 1394a etc. Make sure the board you want has what you need/want. Any one of these boards should do the job just fine.

[juliand_fergie]

Thank you for taking your time reviewing my PC specs. If everything goes well, I'm going to buy all of those parts on Monday. I'm having a second thought, though, regarding my choice of motherboard. What do you think about ECS A890GXM-A? Is it much better than ASRock 870G Extreme 3 or is it only has a slight difference? I have read a few articles & reviews about this board, and I'm having a difficulty to decide whether to stay with ASRock or pick this ECS board.

I just want to make sure that I'm buying the right parts for my PC without having to regret about it someday.

Thank you very much for your help & information.


Juliandi

[wonderwrench]

I've visited the link that you've provided regarding calculating PSU, it is really helpful. I think I'm going to choose Seasonic M12II-520W Bronze PSU, in case I'm upgrading my components sometimes in the future. IMHO, the 520W psu would be a safe choice if indeed I'm having a thought to upgrade my specs in the future.

FYI, my current monitor is lcd LG W1953S, It supports to 1360x76 res. I can't decide it right now, but so far I tend to pick the HD 4870. what do you think of it? Also, just from its brand, which one do you prefer? VAIKOO or Digital Alliance?

Yes, I changed to Phenom II X2 so I could spend more budget in RAM. That is why I'm able to put 4 gigs of DDR3 RAM into my spec. Hopefully, the whole system could do well with this amount of RAM when I do my video editing project. I think my whole system would be no different than this one below:

and plus with some parts from my current PC:

So, what is your final thought / conclusion regarding the above specs?

Thank you for spending your time reviewing my whole specs, I really appreciate it.

Best Regards,

Juliandi

The Seasonic M12II-520W Bronze would be my pick also. The HD 4870 is a good choice. The brands where you live are way different than I have in the US so I have no idea which is a better brand card. Its most likely the same stuff we have here with different names?

On the CPU choice I did some research and there is a chance you can unlock 2 more cores on the Phenom II X2 555 Black Edition if you are really lucky. Do not get your hopes up though. What video editing software are you going to use? If it supports multi-threading an Athlon II 4x will be faster than a Phenom II X2 @ 2x. Gaming performance would be slightly slower on a Athlon II 4x in most cases because games even today do not use multi-threading very well an the Athon II's have no level 3 cache. Take a look at this review and see what you think. Note: this review is from January of 2010 so some newer AMD CPU's are missing from the test but the review still holds true today. From my experience quad core systems feel snappier than dual core systems when multi-tasking, even more so when running Vista/Win 7.

Your choice of parts looks good. It should be a nice system. I like researching stuff and helping people so no problem helping you out. I'm a computer junkie, I got one free in 1996 and I have been hooked ever since. Make sure you post back and let us know how everything worked out for you.

[juliand_fergie]

I've visited the link that you've provided regarding calculating PSU, it is really helpful. I think I'm going to choose Seasonic M12II-520W Bronze PSU, in case I'm upgrading my components sometimes in the future. IMHO, the 520W psu would be a safe choice if indeed I'm having a thought to upgrade my specs in the future.

FYI, my current monitor is lcd LG W1953S, It supports to 1360x76 res. I can't decide it right now, but so far I tend to pick the HD 4870. what do you think of it? Also, just from its brand, which one do you prefer? VAIKOO or Digital Alliance?

Yes, I changed to Phenom II X2 so I could spend more budget in RAM. That is why I'm able to put 4 gigs of DDR3 RAM into my spec. Hopefully, the whole system could do well with this amount of RAM when I do my video editing project. I think my whole system would be no different than this one below:

AMD AM3 Phenom II X2 555 Black Edition (Box)
Mb ASRock 870G Extreme3
RAM PATRIOT PSD3 4G 1333 KH (2 X 2G) DDR 3 Module
Harddisk 3.5Inch WDC SATA II Caviar Black 500Gb 32Mb
VGA VAIKOO HD 4870 1Gb 256Bit DDR5
PSU Seasonic M12II-520W Bronze
Optical Drive Sony DVDRW 24x Box

and plus with some parts from my current PC:

LG LCD W1953S
LG DVD-ROM
3.5 Inch Seagate SATA I 80 Gb (ST3808AS)

So, what is your final thought / conclusion regarding the above specs?

Thank you for spending your time reviewing my whole specs, I really appreciate it.

Best Regards,

Juliandi

[wonderwrench]

The info I gave in the above post is incorrect. Note: to calculate the true amperage output on a multi rail PSU as in the second screen shot take the total 12 volt wattage and divide it by 12. So 480/12=40. This should have read 480/12=30.

Listed in order best to worst IMHO.

Seasonic M12II-520W Bronze (It claims to have two 20 amp 12 volt rails but in reality its is a single rail with 40 amps) Seasonic actually makes PSU's and very good ones at that. website, review review 2

Cooler Master GX 550W (44 amps/12v) I think this PSU is made by SevenTeam, good company I found no reviews from reputable sites. I would still get this PSU no problem. website

Enermax Tomahawk 500W ETK500AWT (2 18 amp rails, 36 amps combined)
Review I'm not a fan of split rail PSU's under 650 watts.

FSP Saga II 500W FSP (FPS/Fortron Source) makes some good PSU's but I can't find any good info on this exact model. Lately they seem to be over rating their PSU's (calling a 400 watt PSU a 500 watt) so I would stay away anyway.

The video card choice is all yours as I can't decide for you. Its a tough call.
The HD 4870 is faster than the HD 5770 no two ways about it. But it has no DX 11 support. It may help to know what your monitors max resolution is. If its not a high resolution monitor I doubt you will have any performance problems playing the latest games with the HD 5770. If your monitor is 1600x900 or higher the HD 4870 will perform noticeably better than the HD 5770 will. Is your monitor a CRT or LCD? If its a LCD you will want to run the max resolution it supports so you get the sharpest image. If its a CRT you can run any supported resolutions and still get decent image quality in most cases. This would allow you to lower the resolution to increase frame rates in game if necessary. You can lower the resolution down on a LCD also but in my experience it looks bad.

FYI I can play the latest games on the system in my sig which has a Nvidia 8800 GT at 1440x900 without turning the in game settings down. Crysis and Crysis Warhead play fine at medium/high setting. The HD 5770 is as fast or faster than my 8800 GT BTW.

If you end up going with the HD 5770 the Corsair CMPSU-400CXEU would have no trouble handling your system. Corsair could have easily called it a 450+ watt PSU. I find most people buy way bigger PSU's than they really need. For max efficency you want your PSU at 20-25% load when your PC is idle. Check out the free power supply calculator here. I added your latest parts list to the calculator with a moderate overclock and came up with 381 watts as the recommended size PSU.

I just noticed that you changed from a Phenom II 4x to a 2x to get the cost down. Not a problem, I was wondering how you came up with more money. You may want to look at the Athlon II 4x 630 and 640. You loose the L3 cache but gain 2 more cores. So its slower than a Phenom II 4x but in most cases faster then a Phenom II 2x of the same frequency. BTW you do not need a Black Edition CPU to be able to overclock its just easier because the multiplier is not locked.

Bill

[juliand_fergie]

^^
Thanks for your research, wonderwrench. I really appreciate it. The CORSAIR CMPSU-400CXEU 400W is a really good option, but I think the watt 'rating' is too low for my overall specs, don't you think? I'm thinking to get a 500W or 550W PSU. After researching here & there, and asking some opinions from few of my colleague, I've come up with these options of PSU:

* Seasonic M12II-520W Bronze
* FSP Saga II 500W
* Cooler Master GX 550W
* Enermax Tomahawk 500W ETK500AWT

In my research, they said that these PSU have a true/pure 500 watt rating, which, if it's real, would be a great conclusion to my overall specs. What do you think of these 3 PSU? is it better than my previous option?

Also, your review regarding 4870 vs 5770 is really helpful. But I still have a doubt of which one to choose between these two. Both have 1 gigs of ram, both have their own pros & cons. The one thing that concerns me is the VAIKOO HD 4870 have 256 bit, twice better than Digital Alliance HD 5770 that only have 128Bit. Is the difference between this BIT means a lot on its performance? And which one is better, in your opinion?

I'm sorry for keep asking on such matters. Thank you very much for your advice.

Juliandi

[wonderwrench]

I did some research on PSU's available at http://rakitan.net/simulasi.php

The THERMALTAKE Lite Power 500w should power your system no matter which video card you choose. HD 5770 or HD 4870. It has two 6 pin PCIE power connectors. It has a combined 12 volt output of 36 amps. Note: the part numbers at the resellers link you provided do not match whats on Thermaltakes webite so I can't prove its the same PSU.

The CORSAIR CMPSU-400CXEU 400W is most likely the best quality PSU in your price range. It will power your system fine if you choose to get the HD 5770. It will not power a HD 4870 as it has only one PCIE 6+2 power connector and would be slightly under powered anyway. It has 30 amps available on a single 12 volt rail. I use this PSU in all my low/mid range builds when possible.

[wonderwrench]

The ASRock 870G Extreme3 looks good! I have had very good luck with ASRock boards though i have no experience with this exact board. It has all the latest tech and features so I give it a thumbs up!

As far as the video cards go the 4870 should be faster than the 5770. The 4870 was the top of the line single GPU ATI card in the 4xxx series. Its supports DX10.1 but does not support DX11. The 5770 is a current generation part that supports DX11 though it is mid level card. Its a judgment call on which card to get. As more DX11 games come out the need/want for a DX11 card will only increase. The 5770 would be more future proof but may not have the power to really take advantage of future DX11 games. Its hard to say. One other thing to think about is power draw and heat output.

The 4870 will draw more power and put out more heat as its a older design. This will be much harder on your PSU. I searched high and low for specs on the Speedpower AX-500-S but can't find a thing. Most lower cost PSU's can't come close to putting out their rated power. The watt rating really does not tell the whole story anyway. The combined amperage available on the 12 volt rail is what counts. A quality 500 watt PSU should be able to put out between 36-40 amps combined on the 12 volt rails. A quality 400 watt should be able to put out 30 or more amps combined on the 12 volt rail. Its is very possible that the Speedpower AX-500-S cant even keep up with a quality 400 watt PSU such as a Corsair CMPSU-400CX. Small multi 12 volt rail PSU's are problematic also. I would recommend that any PSU under 650 watts use a single 12 volt rail as this will help eliminate problems when using higher end video cards. See screen shots of two PSU's that give useful specs. Note: to calculate the true amperage output on a multi rail PSU as in the second screen shot take the total 12 volt wattage and divide it by 12. So 480/12=40. You can see Corsair is giving real 12 amp specs as the numbers match. With most low cost PSU's this is not the case.

The system overall looks great. The PSU is the only thing that bugs me.
You need to do more research on available PSU's in your area before you pull the trigger and buy the stuff. A good source of information on PSU's is http://www.newegg.com/

Bill