New computer and monitor questions...

Greetings all, I'm hoping to get some help from all the technically inclined people who live here. I've been playing on a macbook pro for the past 4 years, but it's increasingly obvious that I need to upgrade. As a sort of graduation present to myself, I'm planning to put myself together a new desktop, and I need some help picking out components. While I'm technically literate enough to assemble the thing, install windows myself, etc, I definitely don't have the knowledge needed to pick the pieces.

I was thinking of using Father Xmas's builds as a baseline, but unfortunately it's looking like my budget will fall somewhere in between his two setups. So, looking at his 1375$ rig, what components can I trim down to get it to maybe 1100$? I also would like to up it to 6gigs of ram, could I just add another 2gigs of the same type already listed (i.e. will the motherboard take more)?

Also, since the only peripheral I have is a mouse, I will need a monitor and speakers. Does anyone have any suggestions for a relatively cheap, decent quality, medium sized LCD monitor and some 'budget' but decent 2:1 speakers?

Start with my $750 build.

Swap out the Power Supply for a 650 Watt Corsair 650TX, +$27.

Swap out the Athlon II X2 245 for a 3.0GHz Phenom II X4 945, +$79.

Swap out the HD 5770 for a Gigabyte or Sapphire HD 5850 in the $320 range, +$150.

That's about $260 worth of upgrades. For $20 more you could go to the 3.2GHz Phenom II X4 955 or $40 more to the 3.4GHz Phenom II X4 965.

As for the memory most CPU/Motherboards perform better if RAM is installed in pairs (i7-9xx CPUs are the exception, they like RAM in threes). Performance will degrade if they aren't in pairs.

Muon,

I recently got a Samsung XL2370 monitor. It's a 23" and runs 1920x1080 widescreen, and when I bought it at Best Buy it had recently dropped thirty bucks or so. It's still in the upper $200's, so if your budget is less than that for a monitor, let me know - I have been doing a lot of looking lately, so probably stumbled across something in that range.

For inexpensive speakers, try these Altec Lansing ones. Well rated, and around $21.00.

Father Xmas, if you have to keep memory in pairs, is there such a thing as 3gb sticks? Given how much memory CoH likes to use, it seemed to me that it might be a good idea to put in more than 4gb. Is that just not necessary? Also, the CPU cooler you have for the more expensive rig - do you think that would be useful on mine, and would it fit this motherboard/cpu combination?

DarkEther, thanks for the speakers, that looks about like what I was looking for. As for a monitor, I was indeed hoping for a bit cheaper than that one - I was hoping to spend no more than 150$-200$ or so, but is it even possible to get a decent LCD for less than 200$?

Also, for anyone who knows about this sort of thing - how does that whole dual monitors thing work? I had a chance to use a computer with two monitors set up, and I was impressed with how useful it was, but I know absolutely nothing about what such a setup would require. Do you need two video cards? I wouldn't be doing this immediately, but I might want to upgrade to such a configuration sometime in the future. Does this put any limits on the components I will be getting now?

In the $200-ish range, there are a few possibilities, with a lot being in the 19" size.

Here's on from Samsung for $180 at NewEgg. Response time is 2ms and resolution 1920x1080 widescreen, 21.5" screen. I'm quite happy with my Samsung, but haven't seen this one in person.

Here is one from Asus that's a 23" with a 2ms response time and will run 1920x1080.

If you'd prefer 1680x1050 there are more options available.


As for dual monitors, a number of single video cards have more than one DVI connection available, so could run more than one monitor. If you want a dual monitor for gaming on one and info on another there are sites on the Net that will give you some great information on that. If you want to go all out, you can get three monitors for the mega-widescreen acting as one virtual monitor.

No, in the world of computers things come in powers of 2. If you see a PC for sale with 6GB it's either an i7-9xx system with 3x2GB or a system with 2x2GB + 2x1GB. I have a feeling that Dell, HP and others have a warehouse full of 1GB sticks they are trying to get rid of or as just about every system including low end ones come with 4GB now, they are offering 6 and 8GB as a way to add perceived value and to signal a higher end product.

Why the desire for 6GB? Do a lot of Photoshop?

As for the 6gb thing, while I do expect to be doing some astronomical image work I wouldn't expect it to need that much memory. It just seemed strange to me that 4gb was still standard - I know some people had that much a couple years ago, so it just seemed odd that larger amounts weren't common now. I was bottlenecked by my 1gb of ram so long on this laptop that I wanted to make darn sure it wouldn't be a problem on my next computer. Is 4gb really still enough to do everything, is this just my limited knowledge showing up again?

And, related, if there are performance issues with doing 3x 2gb, are there similar issues with 2x 2gb, 2x 1gb? I imagine you could get a pair of 1gb sticks pretty cheap. (Although, can you even get DDR3 1gb sticks? I assume you'd want them all to be the same speed, right?)

Also, do you think it would be a good idea and/or necessary to get that extra CPU cooler from the 1375$ version?

Muon

As for the difference between what's called single Vs dual channel memory modes, well it depends. With the size of CPU caches today plus advances in anticipating memory so the fetch can be started ahead of time we are only talking 5-10%. However if an application continually accesses a lot of data from memory, where caches don't help to hide the halving of memory bandwidth, then the impact can be quite large, over 20%. This includes applications like video encoding and 3D gaming.

PowerStream

Yes there's the "old" CM 690, which is a nice case and the "new" CM 690 II (basic and advance models). One of the things I like about the 690 II is a bit better cable management. More useful passthroughs for both power, drive and case cables. I also like that fact they moved the fan off of the side panel and stuck it on top (actually the front and top fans are bigger). I have yet to see a case with a fan in the side panel that has an easy way to connect/disconnect power from it and keep the cabling neat all at the same time.