Building Frankenstein

[EN0]

Hi Everyone,

I'm building my own PC (Frankenstein) and wanted to confirm that everything looked compatible!

Processor

MotherBoard

Case

CD/DVD/Blu-Ray R/W Optical Drive

DDR3 RAM

HDD

PSU

Video Card

What do you guys think? I want to be sure I have this right the first time, so feel free to make any comments or suggestions.

Thanks,

Austin

 

[gabeNC]

Looks like a nice setup. Personally I would use the 2TB drive as a data drive and find something faster for the O/S. 5400 rpm seems a little slow to me when you've got a fast machine like that. What are you going to use it for?

 

[EN0]

Hi Gabe,

I've chosen to go with this HDD.

What do you think?

I'm going to use this for in-depth programming capability of many different languages, simulation, my school work, etc.

 

[Reloadron]

Good move on getting away from the 5400 RPM HDD. The overall system should meet your needs. One must work within the needs and budget.

Ron

 

[EN0]

Alright, I will plan on ordering soon.

I am glad to hear it passed inspection!

 

[Reloadron]

Alright, I will plan on ordering soon.

I am glad to hear it passed inspection!

On a side note when I give any advice on a home build I generally start by asking what the application(s) will be? The intended use of the system is what should drive what goes into it. The intended use combined with budget to get the overall best bang for the buck. Generally for my own use when building a system I lean toward Intel or Asus motherboards with a focus on Intel (obviously when the chosen processor is Intel). Not to say they are better boards just that in the past they have worked for me.

I think for what you mention you will have a good system with a reasonable cost and that is all that matters.

Ron

 

[cr0sh]

I think I'd go for a higher wattage PSU, given the specs on the rest of the system (500 watts seems a little small to me)...?

 

[Reloadron]

I think I'd go for a higher wattage PSU, given the specs on the rest of the system (500 watts seems a little small to me)...?

I don't know cr0sh, I may have had reservations but he is going with a 500 Watt Corsair brand which I would be comfortable with. As to the GPU Nvidia rates the board at 150 watts maximum board power draw and that board only uses a single PCIE aux connector. The remainder of the system is pretty basic from what I saw. Just my opinion. While personally I lean towards larger supplies I think he will be fine with what he has for now.

Then too, if anyone really needs power may I suggest the super custom PSU backup system that I am attaching with a battery to cover those large surges.....

Ron

 

[cr0sh]

I don't know cr0sh, I may have had reservations but he is going with a 500 Watt Corsair brand which I would be comfortable with. As to the GPU Nvidia rates the board at 150 watts maximum board power draw and that board only uses a single PCIE aux connector. The remainder of the system is pretty basic from what I saw. Just my opinion. While personally I lean towards larger supplies I think he will be fine with what he has for now.

I guess it's the CPU that throws me - I always figure you shouldn't skimp on your power supply. Some weird and difficult to troubleshoot problems can crop up when using a PSU that's either too small or on the edge (not saying that this entire system is on the edge or anything - I didn't look at it that closely - I just though the CPU to be a pretty beefy one, but maybe it isn't as bad as I think).

Then too, if anyone really needs power may I suggest the super custom PSU backup system that I am attaching with a battery to cover those large surges.....

It wouldn't surprise me if there wasn't at least one person out there who did something like that (I know I've seen custom homebrew UPS designs that used deep cycle wet lead-acid batteries - then again, the batteries in my UPS at home, while SLA, aren't anything to sneeze at either - and none too cheap to replace).



One other thing I would encourage the OP to do would be to add a second drive to his machine and set his system to backup the first to the second on a periodic basis; nothing is worse than losing your data (and while an in-machine backup isn't ideal, it's better than nothing - but if the OP has a network, I suggest setting up a file server or something to backup to - at a minimum, use a USB connected drive).

 

[Reloadron]

I was going to mention that and didn't. For a few bucks I would add another drive and use it as backup. Unless someone is really into saving countless GB of video a 1 TB drive is a pretty big drive. Adding another 1 TB isn't all that much money. Both Vista and Windows 7 offer an OK backup feature that allows easy backup to another drive. Anymore HDD space is pretty cheap.

The battery and additional PSU were something I did as a spoof years ago using the wife's old system. It was done for a PC Magazine forum discussion about the then new GPUs power demands. I still had the images.

While everything here is on pretty large UPS units the entire house is on an emergency backup generator so at most I only need about 10 seconds of UPS support and yes, every few years battery shopping is a *****!

Ron

 

[vivid2012]

I was going to mention that and didn't. For a few bucks I would add another drive and use it as backup. Unless someone is really into saving countless GB of video a 1 TB drive is a pretty big drive. Adding another 1 TB isn't all that much money. Both Vista and Windows 7 offer an OK backup feature that allows easy backup to another drive. Anymore HDD space is pretty cheap.

The battery and additional PSU were something I did as a spoof years ago using the wife's old system. It was done for a PC Magazine forum discussion about the then new GPUs power demands. I still had the images.

While everything here is on pretty large UPS units the entire house is on an emergency backup generator so at most I only need about 10 seconds of UPS support and yes, every few years battery shopping is a *****!

Ron

I would do that too.

 

[EN0]

I just finished building my computer and it works perfectly! I've worked on junk computers for too long; I was very surprised as to how fast it can download and execute programs!

Thanks for the advice.

 

[Reloadron]

Glad it all worked out well for you. Enjoy!

Ron