Building a PC for a friend.

[imported_Wreck]

Alright long story short my long time friend who often plays BF2 on my secondary PC has come into some money from selling his house. He is very determined to get the best parts and wants a PC that is exactly like my main rig to play BF2 on and other basic PC tasks like email, music, video storage etc...

There are a few things different for instance I said all he needs is an XT instead of an XTX, he wants a bigger 400Gb storage drive, and I suggested G.skill branded Infineon instead of the Mushkin I have. I also suggested the Tuniq Tower instead of my Schythe Ninja because of a few reviews that score it a little better.

I'd say in all he's spending about $500 less on these components than I probably spent due to falling costs of these parts compared to when I bought them.

Note: This will be an overclocked system.

DFI LANPARTY UT nF4 Ultra-D - Retail $122.99
AMD Opteron 170 Denmark - Retail $396.00
Tuniq Tower 120 P4 & K8 CPU Cooler - Retail $52.99
G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR PC4000 (3-3-2-8) 2GBHV - Retail $269.00
Western Digital Raptor WD740GD Hard Drive - OEM $155.00
Western Digital Caviar SE16 400GB SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM $194.00
ATI Radeon X1900XT 512MB PCI Express - Retail $519.00
ARCTIC COOLING Accelero X2 - Retail $31.99
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic - Retail $121.99
ASUS 16X DVD±R DVD Burner With 5X DVD-RAM - Retail $44.99
PC Power & Cooling 510 SLI-PFC ATX12V 510W Power Supply - Retail $219.99
ViewSonic VX922 Black/Silver 19" 2ms LCD Monitor - Retail $319.99
Microsoft B2M-00015 Black USB Wired Ergonomics Keyboard - OEM $43.00
Logitech MX518 Mouse - Retail $36.89
Saitek PS28 X52 Flight Control USB Joystick - Retail $96.99

Total for parts including shipping: $2700.00

These are the parts he's getting from Newegg and don't include speakers/headphones, or a case. He's still doing some shopping around for those three things. We were digging around through some cases and I realized it's really hard to find a case you like. After scouring through all the case mod sites I finally took him over to Mountainmods.com and showed him their cases. He is pretty sure he wants the U2-UFO :

http://mountainmods.com/product_info.php?cPath=21_32&products_id=77&osCsid=8d7c5ee1547a841b0fee325b9a071688

Anyway the point of this thread is to get some suggestions on speakers/headphones and maybe some case suggestions or case mods sale sites I may have missed. I think the U2-UFO may be a little excessive and expensive even for my tastes.

P.S. No waiting for AM2 or Conroe, he wants it now.

[lonegunm4n]

Re: Building a PC for a friend.

Make sure that the speakers aren't outside his hearing range.

huh?

Everyone has hearing loss to some degree. It's going to happen no matter you do. Now, when it comes time to buy speakers, headphones, etc. each one can go so high and so low. So, what's the point of buying speakers if they go as low as 75hz, buy you can only hear down to 125hz? You couldn't hear anything deeper than 125hz. So, you save yourself the money and buy speakers that only go down to 125hz, which is what you can hear. Same goes for the high pitched frequency as well.

This may sound gross, but it worked for me. I started having trouble hearing acute sounds, so I went to the doctor. He looked in my ears, and flushed them out. He stuck a fairly large syringe in my ear (not all the way to the ear drum), and flushed all the stuff out with slightly warm tap water. All the wax has built up deep inside the ear canal, and you may find that you can hear so much better once you get everything cleaned out, as I did.

[Eden]

Re: Building a PC for a friend.

Alright long story short my long time friend who often plays BF2 on my secondary PC has come into some money from selling his house. He is very determined to get the best parts and wants a PC that is exactly like my main rig to play BF2 on and other basic PC tasks like email, music, video storage etc...

There are a few things different for instance I said all he needs is an XT instead of an XTX, he wants a bigger 400Gb storage drive, and I suggested G.skill branded Infineon instead of the Mushkin I have. I also suggested the Tuniq Tower instead of my Schythe Ninja because of a few reviews that score it a little better.

I'd say in all he's spending about $500 less on these components than I probably spent due to falling costs of these parts compared to when I bought them.

Note: This will be an overclocked system.

DFI LANPARTY UT nF4 Ultra-D - Retail $122.99
AMD Opteron 170 Denmark - Retail $396.00
Tuniq Tower 120 P4 & K8 CPU Cooler - Retail $52.99
G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR PC4000 (3-3-2-8) 2GBHV - Retail $269.00
Western Digital Raptor WD740GD Hard Drive - OEM $155.00
Western Digital Caviar SE16 400GB SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM $194.00
ATI Radeon X1900XT 512MB PCI Express - Retail $519.00
ARCTIC COOLING Accelero X2 - Retail $31.99
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic - Retail $121.99
ASUS 16X DVD±R DVD Burner With 5X DVD-RAM - Retail $44.99
PC Power & Cooling 510 SLI-PFC ATX12V 510W Power Supply - Retail $219.99
ViewSonic VX922 Black/Silver 19" 2ms LCD Monitor - Retail $319.99
Microsoft B2M-00015 Black USB Wired Ergonomics Keyboard - OEM $43.00
Logitech MX518 Mouse - Retail $36.89
Saitek PS28 X52 Flight Control USB Joystick - Retail $96.99

Total for parts including shipping: $2700.00

These are the parts he's getting from Newegg and don't include speakers/headphones, or a case. He's still doing some shopping around for those three things. We were digging around through some cases and I realized it's really hard to find a case you like. After scouring through all the case mod sites I finally took him over to Mountainmods.com and showed him their cases. He is pretty sure he wants the U2-UFO :

http://mountainmods.com/product_info.php?cPath=21_32&products_id=77&osCsid=8d7c5ee1547a841b0fee325b9a071688

Anyway the point of this thread is to get some suggestions on speakers/headphones and maybe some case suggestions or case mods sale sites I may have missed. I think the U2-UFO may be a little excessive and expensive even for my tastes.

P.S. No waiting for AM2 or Conroe, he wants it now.

If you are going for headphones, I would strongly recommend the Speed link Medusa's 5.1 headset, they are excellent.


How much room does he have? Although LCD/TFT screens are great a good CRT provides much better colour quality then LCD's do and if he has the room he should definitely consider getting a CRT not to mention it will save your a few hundred dollars for the same size screen.

If you are buying a CPU cooler it also might be a good idea to get the CPU as an OEM as it will save you some money.

[sackynut]

Re: Building a PC for a friend.

well it looks nice.
One things though: I wouldnt get the Arctic Accelero to cool the x1900xt, there are much better coolers out there that will not only cool better but help for OCing better IMO. IMHO the accelero is for lower cards (such as mine) for better OCing and stuff. Not for higher end cards. and if you are looking for silence (because the stock fan is too loud) the artic silencer is much better.

and that ram is f-ing awesome.... PC4000 G.skill really rocks. But I would use that Lanparty to tighten the timings
other than that the rig looks really nice, maybe a plain old Dual Core instead of the Opty? but what the hell, Opty's are still awesome and overclock like demons. good luck with the rig its really nice. and that case is fricking sweet!

[LoD]

Re: Building a PC for a friend.

Alright long story short my long time friend who often plays BF2 on my secondary PC has come into some money from selling his house. He is very determined to get the best parts and wants a PC that is exactly like my main rig to play BF2 on and other basic PC tasks like email, music, video storage etc...

There are a few things different for instance I said all he needs is an XT instead of an XTX, he wants a bigger 400Gb storage drive, and I suggested G.skill branded Infineon instead of the Mushkin I have. I also suggested the Tuniq Tower instead of my Schythe Ninja because of a few reviews that score it a little better.

I'd say in all he's spending about $500 less on these components than I probably spent due to falling costs of these parts compared to when I bought them.

Note: This will be an overclocked system.

DFI LANPARTY UT nF4 Ultra-D - Retail $122.99
AMD Opteron 170 Denmark - Retail $396.00
Tuniq Tower 120 P4 & K8 CPU Cooler - Retail $52.99
G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR PC4000 (3-3-2-8) 2GBHV - Retail $269.00
Western Digital Raptor WD740GD Hard Drive - OEM $155.00
Western Digital Caviar SE16 400GB SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM $194.00
ATI Radeon X1900XT 512MB PCI Express - Retail $519.00
ARCTIC COOLING Accelero X2 - Retail $31.99
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic - Retail $121.99
ASUS 16X DVD±R DVD Burner With 5X DVD-RAM - Retail $44.99
PC Power & Cooling 510 SLI-PFC ATX12V 510W Power Supply - Retail $219.99
ViewSonic VX922 Black/Silver 19" 2ms LCD Monitor - Retail $319.99
Microsoft B2M-00015 Black USB Wired Ergonomics Keyboard - OEM $43.00
Logitech MX518 Mouse - Retail $36.89
Saitek PS28 X52 Flight Control USB Joystick - Retail $96.99

Total for parts including shipping: $2700.00

These are the parts he's getting from Newegg and don't include speakers/headphones, or a case. He's still doing some shopping around for those three things. We were digging around through some cases and I realized it's really hard to find a case you like. After scouring through all the case mod sites I finally took him over to Mountainmods.com and showed him their cases. He is pretty sure he wants the U2-UFO :

http://mountainmods.com/product_info.php?cPath=21_32&products_id=77&osCsid=8d7c5ee1547a841b0fee325b9a071688

Anyway the point of this thread is to get some suggestions on speakers/headphones and maybe some case suggestions or case mods sale sites I may have missed. I think the U2-UFO may be a little excessive and expensive even for my tastes.

P.S. No waiting for AM2 or Conroe, he wants it now.

Nice rig, but I would change a few things.

Get a 3rd party cooler for your CPU. I have the XP-90 and its great though a little dated at this point. Im not sure a $60 cooler is needed here is it?

You dont need to spend that much on ram, good PC4000 G.Skill HZ ram is only $190 on newegg, low latency ram for A64 doesnt help performance that much, not $80+ more.

Im not sure about the case, but get one based on asthetics, i wouldnt worry about benchmark reviews, unless its specifically quieter than yours. What about a Lian-li tower? those are very slick. $350 for that U2 POS is a waste of time, get him something classy and nice, not some cheese ball case filled with 100 fans.

http://www.frozencpu.com/cst-298.html?id=r72N44Nh

For the DVD burner you dont need to spend $10 extra on DVD-ram support, I know its only 10 bucks, but no one will ever be buring DVD-Ram disks.

If your going with a raptor, give him the latest, the 74GB raptor is nice, but it came out 2 years ago. Get a 150GB instead.

Lastely I see 1900XT's for under $430 on newegg, why the >$500 picking?

Also the powersupply is very nice, but near similar quality can be had for ~$120, your paying a hefty premium for the PCPC name.

[SO19Visionaries]

Re: Building a PC for a friend.

can't go wrong with the beastly Logitech Z-2300 2.1 Speakers,

just bought a pair myself to thrash.

[Heavy552 AWG]

Re: Building a PC for a friend.

I am hearing impaired to 80% since birth. I prefer Plantronics as they can reach down low in the bass range where I prefer to be. I realize that the standard Plantronics with a microphone may be too basic for the customer but they do the job very well for me.

Some folks tone down the decibel levels to protect hearing, I beef mine up to get the information I need to survive the fight. And Plantonics has outperformed the Logitech headsets for me in this regard.

Good luck!

[imported_Wreck]

Re: Building a PC for a friend.

To answer a few questions, my friend is really solid on the parts listed and doesn't want any changes.

@ Sir. Eden
The LCD has to stay, he has limited space and it's what he wants. I have two of that model here for him to compare to.

I suggested he get retail processor for resale value, and I always buy retail for that reason. There is also less chance of an item getting damaged if it's in retail packaging.

We'll check out the speed link Medusa's 5.1 headset, thanks.

@sackynut
The Arctic Accelero X2 took my XTX temps from 60-80c to 40-60c. It's an excellent and quiet cooler.

The next closest AMD X2 in performance is the 4400+ and it's $60 more. While the retail Opterons are still available I'll continue to recommend them.

@ twsmit
The new coolers like the Tuniq/schythe have given me stability and a drop in temps enough to net me 100mhz more on my 170 compared to my old XP90. IMO they are worth the extra money for stability.

He want the Infineon base IC's that will guarantee DDR500 speeds. I know the samsung based (3-4-3-8) will do the same at looser timings, but he has a thing against buying anything Samsung. The Micron based PC4000 is even more than the Infineon so I'm left with that option only. Besides all that, the Infineon is actually faster than any IC's out at when run at the same speed. Infineon at 250mhz 2.5-3-2-5 is faster than the Samsung at 280mhz 3-4-4-8.

Yes I did recommend the Lian Li V1000B Plus since thats the case I have. I love it, but it's just my style, simple and effective. Thats not the road he wanted to take. He doesn't want something that looks plain.

It's only an extra $10 for the DVD Ram version of the drive. It's the one I have and is quiet and hasn't failed me on a burn yet.

IMO the 150Gb raptor is still too expensive. The 74Gb is nearly as fast and plenty for a windows partition. Also the technology is old, tried and true.

The expensive ATI retail X1900 XT again is for resale purposes. ATI brand goes way faster and for more money when selling them on ebay when you want to upgrade.

There are no better PSU's than PC Power and cooling. I went through reviews and comments on alot fo the top PSU's and brands. PC Power and cooling consistently got negative points for price, but possitive for everything else. In the end he wants the best even if it costs more. I had to talk him out of getting the 1000kw version...

@ SO19Visionaries
I have a couple pairs of Logitech speakers and this is the only brand I'm familiar with. We'll also check out the reviews and see how these look. Thanks.

@ Heavy552(AWG)
I have two pair of Plantronics, and I did suggest them to him. Headphones is one area I don't have alot of experience with so basically if none of the other suggestions look appealing he'll be getting a pair Plantronics. Thanks.

There are three things up for debate here. The speakers, headphones, and case. Thats about all we are still looking for right now and everything else is basically locked. Thanks for the suggestions about other parts, but alot has been taken into consideration with what was chosen including expert reviews, average user reviews , and my own personal experience with each of the products.

[Eden]

Re: Building a PC for a friend.

What kind of case does he want? something simple, something fancy?

If he wants something simple I would recommend the CoolerMaster Centurion 5. I think it is an excellent case, it provides good cooling with the entire front panel being mesh (with foam behind it to stop the dust getting in) and the stock fans are actually quite good.

I would say the only downside to it is there is no removable motherboard try but then that is a novelty anyway.

As for the speakers or headphones, considering you are getting an XF-i I would really suggest getting 5.1 speakers or a 5.1 headset otherwise although the XF-i provides simulated surround sound, it just isn't the same.

[imported_Wreck]

Re: Building a PC for a friend.

What kind of case does he want? something simple, something fancy?

Fancy and different. Modded cases are an option. For reference here are a couple other case designs he liked:

http://www.xoxide.com/nzxt-lexa-case-500w.html

http://www.xoxide.com/xg-dragon-case-black.html

http://www.xoxide.com/cooler-master-cm-stacker-830.html

http://www.xoxide.com/lian-li-pc-777-black.html

As for the speakers or headphones, considering you are getting an XF-i I would really suggest getting 5.1 speakers or a 5.1 headset otherwise although the XF-i provides simulated surround sound, it just isn't the same.

Yeah, any suggestions for 5.1 speakers?

[LoD]

Re: Building a PC for a friend.

Its good to know you've thought out the memory situation, shows you put alot of care into this project.... but i still shudder at that price for ram. Yikes!

If i were you i would force upon him some form of lian li of other high quality computer.... the novelty of fancy lights and lots of fans wears out fairly quickly, tell him its an investment, probably the only component that will outlive the computer.

I dunno, looks like you have everything planned out, too bad he wants an uber l337 modded case instead of something classy.

As for speakers I have the z-5500 mated with my X-Fi and they are very good for the price i paid. I got them new from Dell for $204 with some special rebates.

I would recommend them, but the lack of tweaters probably makes them less appealing next to a klipche, but for the price I paid i am very happy.

[imported_Wreck]

Re: Building a PC for a friend.

Its good to know you've thought out the memory situation, shows you put alot of care into this project.... but i still shudder at that price for ram. Yikes!

If i were you i would force upon him some form of lian li of other high quality computer.... the novelty of fancy lights and lots of fans wears out fairly quickly, tell him its an investment, probably the only component that will outlive the computer.

I dunno, looks like you have everything planned out, too bad he wants an uber l337 modded case instead of something classy.

As for speakers I have the z-5500 mated with my X-Fi and they are very good for the price i paid. I got them new from Dell for $204 with some special rebates.

I know the ram price seems high, but thats about what I paid for my Mushkin about nine months ago, and these weren't guaranteed to do DDR500 speeds. Trust me I drug him through all the PC4000 and gave him pros, cons, and average overclocking results for the IC's.

I'm trying not for force anything on him... I'm trying to be objective and give him pros and cons of all the parts. I totally agree with you about the case, but in the end it's his decision.

So far we have speed link 5.1 headphones, and some logitech 5.1 speakers...

[Heavy552 AWG]

Re: Building a PC for a friend.

The case will have to be chosen VERY carefully.

I myself am eyeing the Thermaltake Armor Full Tower to replace my medicore ATX Midtower. The problem Im facing is the potential for going from Air Cooling to Liquid cooling at any time in the future.

I must caution on the Plantronics... If you throw them around the room as might happen if you got emotional they will eventually fail around the ear cups and maybe the microphone switch. But I would be getting another one (I usually go thru one or two a year being very hard on them) anyways.

Good LUCK!