Official "System Builders" Thread

[Wesley]

Nah, I don't overclock at all.

Intel Core i5 3450 @ R1880
GIGABYTE GA-B75M-D3H @ R837
TEAM Elite DDR3-1600 4GB @ R197
Western Digital Caviar Blue 320GB @ R546
Cooler Master K280 USB 3.0 @ R357
Total: R3817

That's the equivalent-price Intel setup, which will be faster. Its a quad-core i5 with a board that doesn't support overclocking but will run an i7 chip if you upgrade in the future (unlikely) and will properly support USB 3.0 and SSDs. To match the Core i5's performance, you'd need to overclock the FX-4100 to at least 4.5GHz to see it draw up in games and benchmarks. If you're looking to skimp a bit more to fit under budget:

Intel Core i3-2120 @ R1202
MSI PH61A-P35 @ R473
TEAM Elite DDR3-1600 4GB @ R197
Western Digital Caviar Blue 320GB @ R546
Cooler Master Elite 311 @ R321
Total: R2739

That's as low as I'd go gaming-wise. Its a bit confusing, but the cheaper Intel build here matches the more expensive AMD quad-core in most games and apps, sometimes beating it. You still have the option to bump things up all the way to a Core i7 and add in a SSD, just not in use as a cache drive. One thing that does limit the board is the RAM amount, although I think if you upgrade 8GB should easily be enough for another few years.

[Zoop]

Ooh, that first Intel build looks really nice. It's a bit more expensive, but I might be able to get the cash together by the end of December. I've already got a holiday job lined up for then that pays pretty well, and depending on when my exams end (meaning when I can start working) I might be able to get the entire sum together just from there. It's going to suck going without a gaming PC for so long, but eh. Will just have to shut my eyes very tightly every time a Steam sale comes around. :p

The cheaper build looks fairly decent, but I think it would be better for me to simply go up to quad-core instead of getting dual-core again.

Thanks for all the effort dude!

[.exe]

I wouldn't waste my time with dual core these days, except if you're using it as an office machine. Quad core is definitely the way to go.

[CrashHelmut]

The Fractal R3 is available at Landmark Computers, and it's not very expensive either.

http://www.landmarkpc.co.za/store/fr...is-p-8066.html

EDIT:

I've just been nosing around. Check this out:

Awesome Fractal cases:

http://www.fractal-design.com/?view=...tegory=2&prod=

Aaaand:

http://www.fractal-design.com/?view=...on=2&category=

http://www.pinnacleafrica.co.za/

...So, why aren't our local retailers bringing these cases in??

Yeah, it's such a pity the local agents are not importing the Fractal Define Mini into SA. It's almost ideal for what I need for my next build. In fact, the case is the major reason I haven't pulled the trigger on a new PC yet. Looking for something quite specific. It's a compromise, but I'm leaning towards the Antec Mini P180.

[Wesley]

I see Pinnacle is the registered distributor, that must have been a recent addition because it was previously another Joburg-based company that did it. You're more likely to find Fractal chassis at small-time computer stores than online with that company heading up all the imports.

[Wesley]

Laptop Buyer’s Guide: September Netbooks to R8000

Welcome back to the Laptop Buyer’s Guide, the show where all your money gets spent and you can’t upgrade your laptop. That’s right, you can’t upgrade them in any meaningful way, much like if you buy a Renault Sandero and expect to bolt a turbo onto it, its just not going to happen. It’ll be quicker, but it won’t turn in any faster. In fact, don’t buy a Sandero. Save up for a Toyota 86, you’ll be a lot happier. Today we’re shopping from the netbook to R8000 price range and we’ll be trudging through Intel Atoms, APUs, touch screens and SSDs. Follow me after the jump.

Linky

[.exe]

All done.

I had to wait for the PSU and sleeves to arrive, but finally I put them in, together with the H100 cooler and of course, the CM Storm Stryker. I'm quite tired now and I thought I'd just upload this one photo for now. I'm still playing around with the lighting, so maybe I'll only get around to that tomorrow and post some impressions of the case, the PSU and the H100.
I'll try and upload some more piccies as well, but the camera seems to be blurring...have no idea why.

PS-Sorry for the image size...for some reason resizing isn't workng.

[.exe]

Good morning gents. :)

A couple more pics...



It's really quite a striking chassis in the flesh.




The top panel of the Stryker is very reminiscent of some sort of fighter jet or sports car, particularly towards the back.

[.exe]

The bottom panel pulls out to reveal a handy storage box...useful for all sorts of things.



The I/O panel.



The carry handle.

[.exe]

I wanted to get more direct airflow onto the gpu, since the windowed panel obviously doesn't have a fan. I decided to reverse one of the hdd cages and reverse mount the fan, so that the gpu gets much more direct airflow. I could have installed a fan in the bootm of the chassis It has place for 2 x 120mm fans) but I think I like the way I did it better.

[.exe]

Despite my initial misgivings about the Stryker, I have to say that I have really gotten to appreciate the chassis a lot more, particularly once everything had been installed.

One thing I noticed right away is how light it is for a tower chassis. The side panel doors are much, much lighter in weight than my HAF 932 side panels...at least half the weight. Yet, they're sturdy and don't bend or flex any more than the panels of the old case.
Fully loaded with pretty much the same components, the case is a fair bit lighter than the HAF 932, even though it's very close to the same size. (The Stryker is ever so slightly taller in fact.)

I really like the I/O panel. So many chassis have the USB connectors built one on top of the other, so it's very difficult to use fat flash drives or 3G modems or something that takes up some space due to the proximity of the USB ports to each other. The Stryker lines them up neatly in a row and with a fair margin of space between each USB port, so that's no longer a problem.
The power button is pretty large and feels substantial, and the fan controller is very easy to use. Cues as to your fan speeed come with the different lights that light up, and continually pressing the 'minus' button will eventually yield two audible beeps, letting you know that you're on the lowest fan speed. Similarly, doing the same with the 'plus' button will also yield to audible beeps, telling you the fans are now at maximum speed.
There is not a massive difference in noise levels from lowest to highest, but you can feel the difference quite noticeably if you put your hand next to one of the fans.

The back panel bulges outwards and it's very easy to cable all the bits and pieces at the back without having to squash your back panel back into place afterwards. The windowed panel also bulges outwards so that even the tallest cpu coolers can be fitted easily enough.

The carry handle deserves mention, because it's got a nice, wide grip that is covered with a soft rubber, and the underside of the handle has ribs, making it very comfortable to hold a fully loaded chassis. Your skin never pinches and you don't feel the need to readjust your grip. It's also been nicely incorportated into the overall look of the case, so it doesn't look strange or out of place.

Strangely, the white interior of the chassis gives it a light, airy look and feel. The chassis looks bigger inside than it really is. I resprayed my HAF 932 black on the inside, and it looked quite sinister and it looked smaller on the inside than before. I was a bit skeptical of the white interior at first, but it really looks quite good, especially if most of your components are black, which helps breaks the white.

When I first got the chassis, I was not too impressed with what I perceived to be inferior build quality. But, having had a good sniff around and putting all my components in the case, it's become quite obvious what Cooler Master had in mind here. Basically, this is a case that is great for the guy who likes to LAN a lot, yet who still insists on the functionality that comes with a full tower. It's big enough to take any cooler, motherboard or video card, yet light enough (and has the convenient handle) that makes it quite easy to lug around, at least over fairly short distances. It also has nice little touches like the removeable 'secret' storage box...another nice feature if you LAN a lot, or work on your PC a lot.

Overall, I love this chassis. The looks to me are beautiful; it should have been called to Storm Trooper though, since it definitely invokes images of Star Wars with it's black & white theme and it's sleek overall appearance but oh well...I liked the HAF 932, but the squat, industral, robust look of that chassis was one I accepted rather than loved. The Styrker is much more up my alley personally. The white fans (that also have white LED lighting that can be turned off if needed) actually look very good and although I was thinking of replacing these basically straight away, I've changed my mind. They compliment the chassis very well overall.

As I said a couple of pages back, the main area of criticism for me is the fact the roof is not protected enough against dust, and that's still a valid criticism. The problem can be fixed, but some degree of effort (and money probably) is required to sort the problem out. The carry handle definitely obstructs the push-pull configuration if you've got a radiator in the roof. There is no way around it other than to accept it or to break off the handle for the second 'pull' fan. It's not a worry to me personally since I never intended that config for the H100, but some may be ****ed off about that.
But anyway...

I may as well also touch on the NZXT lighting kit I got for the chassis. The kit is has little LED lights joined together by black sleeved wires, and the intensity of the lights is controlled by an unobtrusive little pcb (with a molex connector) that fits into one of the PCI panels at the back of the chassis.
Basically, you simply clip the kit into place wherever you want in your chassis. I got a blue kit and white kit (both 2m) and although it takes time to map out where you want to run your lights, and it can be a bit tough to reach into small spaces, the flexibility it gives you over the old ccfl tube design can't be mentioned enough.
You can literally go nuts with the kit, placing the LEDs wherever you please. The on/off switch and the little switch for light intensity feel solid and don't feel cheap or plasticky at all, and the lights are bright enough (at maximum) to make a significant difference to your interior.
I'll try to post some pics with the lights on sometime...

The H100 which was also bought for the chassis and it looks good in uniform black and easy to install. I don't think it's as quiet a unit as my old Hyper 212+ though...you can certainly hear the fans even at the lowest settting. I won't even bother with the fans at maximum, unless I want to go deaf. I'm not sure how the Corsair digital link works or even sure what it really does, but I presume it's software that allows one to control fan speed or something?
At the moment, to change fan speed on the H100 is a royal pain, requiring the removal of the front panel to get access to the fan controller. But as I said, unless you want to go deaf or are hell-bent on making your CPU as cool as possible or going for a big overclock, there will never be a need to use anything other the the lowest fan speed for this cooler.
But yeah, the H sereis is gaining a lot of popularity with enthusiasts and it's not hard to see why. It doesn't have the size or bulk of a big air cooler, there are no issues with RAM heatsinks, and it looks really good. Plus, one can claim with a little but of credibility at least, to having a 'water cooled' rig. (Okay, okay not really, but still.)

[Toxxyc]

The bottom panel pulls out to reveal a handy storage box...useful for all sorts of things.

Everybody visiting .exe's house, check his tower for his drug stash.

[.exe]

Make that a porn stash. Good enough? :)

[Wesley]

Make that a porn stash. Good enough? :)

Your ambitions clearly aren't high enough :-P I'd put some victory cigars in there.

[.exe]

Well, maybe some drugs, porn and cigars then...it'll be fun.

[Toxxyc]

Well, maybe some drugs, porn and cigars then...it'll be fun.

With that combination, you'd better have some condoms in there as well. Just wrap the cigars nicely and keep them from heat, or they'll go bad.

:P

[Wesley]

Laptop Buyer's Guide: September R10, 000 to R13, 000

Welcome back to the Laptop Buyer’s Guide, the show where all your money gets spent and you can only overclock the GPU. I don't have any witty things to add onto that, but today we're into the high performance segment, so the hardware should be enough to keep you happy as a pig in mud. Today we’re shopping from the R10, 000 to R13, 000 price range and we’ll be trudging through Ultrabooks, discrete graphics cards and SSDs. Follow me after the jump.

Linky

[Mythor]

If you're looking to skimp a bit more to fit under budget:

Intel Core i3-2120 @ R1202
MSI PH61A-P35 @ R473
TEAM Elite DDR3-1600 4GB @ R197
Western Digital Caviar Blue 320GB @ R546
Cooler Master Elite 311 @ R321
Total: R2739

That's as low as I'd go gaming-wise. Its a bit confusing, but the cheaper Intel build here matches the more expensive AMD quad-core in most games and apps, sometimes beating it. You still have the option to bump things up all the way to a Core i7 and add in a SSD, just not in use as a cache drive. One thing that does limit the board is the RAM amount, although I think if you upgrade 8GB should easily be enough for another few years.

Greetings All

New to the forum and not much of a gamer myself. I do, however, have two small kids (daughter is 5 and son is 3) who are already bugging me for PC games. I then found that even simple games such as Disney's Cars will not run on my wife's home office PC (not letting them near my own one!!). As I never took gaming into consideration when buying the desktops, the specs are simply not up to scratch. So I am looking for a budget system which will keep the kids happy for some time. What would you advise? I am not worried about the looks of the thing, so no fancy case necessary. Nor are the kids likely to be getting into any high end graphics games at this stage. What would you advise I put together for them?

[Wesley]

Greetings All

New to the forum and not much of a gamer myself. I do, however, have two small kids (daughter is 5 and son is 3) who are already bugging me for PC games. I then found that even simple games such as Disney's Cars will not run on my wife's home office PC (not letting them near my own one!!). As I never took gaming into consideration when buying the desktops, the specs are simply not up to scratch. So I am looking for a budget system which will keep the kids happy for some time. What would you advise? I am not worried about the looks of the thing, so no fancy case necessary. Nor are the kids likely to be getting into any high end graphics games at this stage. What would you advise I put together for them?

Welcome to the forum Mythor. All you'd really have to do to the system you've quoted is add in a graphics card and you're set. You could also look at upgrading one of the desktops, sometimes that ends up being the cheaper option. Knowing the kinds of games your kids will play though, perhaps this is better suited:

Intel Celeron G540 @ R401
ECS H61H2-M12 @ R454
TEAM Elite DDR3-1600 4GB @ R197
Sapphire Radeon HD6670 1GB GDDR3 @ R752
Western Digital Caviar Blue 250GB @ R591
LG GH24NS90 @ R166
Cooler Master GX 400W @ R507
Cooler Master Elite 311 @ R320
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Basic 64-bit @ R794

Total: R4182

This gives you the option to scale things up pretty well over time. You can add in anything up to a Core i5 quad-core processor, more RAM and a stronger GPU because the power supply caters for it with the PCI-Express connector. It'll play anything your kids will want and with a few upgrades over time, should last you the next five years until the system needs replacement. When that happens, you could repurpose it as a media center PC/home server or even donate it to someone who needs a PC.

[Mythor]

Thanks a stack, Wesley. It makes a great change getting informed advice rather than someone just wanting to flog the most expensive or overstocked components. I really appreciate your input.