With the major component decisions out of the way, it was time to make a decision on what peripherals I wanted and then those that I could actually afford. It turns out in my original budgeting process that I made some assumptions on cooling and audio that were wrong - at least wrong in the fact that I thought the retail kit extras or "hand me down" components would suffice. Of course, the thought of having a shiny new trinket was too much to resist also. Therefore, besides the John Travolta autographed Saturday Night Fever wardrobe and Bee Gees album, it appears my Brad Delp autographed Boston paraphernalia will see action on eBay now.
Cooling
The SG03 case comes with a very good 120mm fan and has an option for a second 120mm fan in the case. Considering the setup being installed, I decided another fan would be wise. I have always liked the Noctua NF-S12-800, but since the inclusion of additional case fans was outside the original budget I could not afford two of them. Silverstone offers a nice series of fans including the FN121 already installed in the case. At $9.99, it was a relative bargain but another fan that Wesley has recommended to me a hundred times showed up in the same price range. I have used Scythe fans in the past and always liked them. I decided to remove the Silverstone fan in my case, install it in my daughter's, and purchase a couple of fans for my system that provide very good airflow with excellent acoustics. The price of $12.99, down from $29.99, sealed the deal for me and I ordered two of them.
I had planned to use the retail Phenom X3 heatsink, but even though it fit fine, the clearances in this case were just a little too close for comfort as I wanted some additional maneuvering room. I had an extra Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 LP cooler that would have worked, but my OCD kicked in again so I went on the prowl for something different. Silverstone offers the passive NT06-Lite cooler designed with the SG series of cases in mind - provided you have the right power supply. Besides having a power supply with a different layout, the unit was just too large for my tastes.
I figured my best opportunity would be a 1U or 2U type cooler. Thermaltake offered a unit that looked perfect but it was socket F/1207 only. After several product searches, I ended up back at Silverstone with the NT07-AM2 low-profile cooler. However, this unit is for 65W or lower TDP processors and our Phenom 8650 X3 is a 95W TDP design. I decided to take a chance after finding one on clearance for $12.99 and $3 shipping. It worked fine at idle and under light loads, but for gaming or heavy encoding activities it just could not keep the X3 in the 50C~54C range that I needed.
I was back to square one; a couple of low-profile coolers from Cooljag/Dynatron would have worked except the noise levels were going to be significantly higher than the retail cooler at load. I had a friend suggest the Scythe Shuriken cooler and Cooler Master Vortex 752 that were working well in his HTPC configurations. I decided not to take the risk of spending more money or having my friend tear down his system. Anyway, cost reared its ugly head again with these options.
At this point, I pulled a Zalman CNPS-8700 out of my HT system just to see how well it would fit as I started to rethink my obsession with creating as much free area as possible around the CPU socket. The Zalman would work; the problem was a $54 price tag that I could not afford. It appeared I was going to have to settle for the retail cooler after all... until I went closet diving.
I remembered I had bought a couple of coolers from Rosewill when the Phenoms first arrived, but I never had a chance to use them after I realized the Phenoms were not going into normal system builds anytime soon. After digging through what I can only describe as a historical treasure trove of computer related items (Ed: stuff he is too lazy to dump), I found the box containing two Rosewill RCX-Z1 units. At first glance, they really did not seem to be an improvement over the retail unit and I started wondering why I purchased them.
It then occurred to me that this particular model comes with a fan controller that allows the user to tailor their fan speeds and is the reason I purchased them. I will say in testing that these units operate quieter than the retail units do, especially when you run the fan on low speed. Temperatures are about 3C~4C lower than the retail unit when the fan speed is above 85%. Whether it is worth $20 over the retail unit is debatable for a stock system. However, since they were technically "free" at this point, I was going to use them and deal with my phobia about the space requirements.
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deruberhanyok - Thursday, May 29, 2008 - link
Just wanted to say I've never really understood the collective first person pronouns ("we" etc) in the context of an article, even when I was doing it myself. It seems to be accepted in journalism, but if an article is written by one person I don't understand why it isn't written with the singular terms.Also, nice writeup!
strikeback03 - Thursday, May 29, 2008 - link
Myspace requires users to be at least 14, don't they? Are you encouraging your daughter to lie about her age already?gochichi - Thursday, May 29, 2008 - link
I wish I had found more value in this but I simply think these choices were pretty random. Whenever you include a sound card in a "budget system" you already lost me, particularly when the superior Q6600 is "out of budget" and you force the situation into an oddball 3-core processor... all of this for less than the price of the completely uneccessary/absurd sound card. My speakers were $150.00 a few months ago and there is simply no discernable difference between an Audigy and onboard sound, they both sound fantastic. (I made a mistake and purchased a sound card, I would never recommend it to anyone, certainly not anyone on any sort of budget... unless you were connecting it to $500+ of sound equipment).To me getting the best core components makes sense when "on a budget" rather than buying 8GB of RAM, buy 4GB and leave expanding to 8GB later. The oddball 3-core processor is pretty much non-upgradeable... it is replaceable, not upgradeable. I guess my main problem is with the Phenom choice... and to pretend that this is a budget driven decision is beyond me. But it feels more like a bribe induced decision (budget... you take the payout, it's good for your budget) than a logical decision, particularly for a system with 8GB of very fast RAM.
Taking the rest of the selection into account, you have the fast RAM, the fancy-pants power supply... why not spend $50.00 on Q6600 and get your 3.0Ghz+ quad-core system?
It's not the only random choice by any means, and calling this system a "budget system" is simply outdated, a budget computer system in 2008 means around $500.00 not around $1000.00. It is certainly a faux pas in this day and age to go above $500.00 and go AMD. I can't let that slide, and I'm not a fanboy either, I am just a reasonable guy that would buy a $75.00 AMD processor without flinching if it fit the need and the budget. AMD is a great choice for a one task system, particularly if that one task is playing bluray disks and media center because of the superior onboard graphics that are available. But for an 8GB of RAM workhorse?? Yikes!
Basically for the reader of this website, the choices are simply too arbitrary to be useful. I concede that we were warned that this would be a blog and not an article, but still.
Comdrpopnfresh - Wednesday, May 28, 2008 - link
I feel something should be made of the fact that all the builds were overbudget. Even more so, I feel that mail in rebates should be used to allow for a component in the system (processing, graphics, storage, etc.) to be expanded a bit further. I feel the mail in rebates for the builds were used to minimize the already rampant budgets. Considering the companies that release the rebates will look for every possible way to void them, it isn't smart to treat them in this way.I've had the same problem in making systems to fit a budget envelope. However, a good change I think that could have been made is no graphics. The words that really stuck out with me are that the sims three and spore are upcoming. If the integrated gfx meet the needs, and the taxing demands have not been released, why not wait (esp. in the case of a computer for your child) to either get the same gfx upgrade for less, or more for the same?
I feel with current custom building, even with prices falling for components across the board, budgeting is the hardest part. I hope that this point is highlighted, because, even though this article shows the evils of this issue, it certainly brings it to the forefront nonetheless.
ishould - Tuesday, May 27, 2008 - link
I would have liked to see a GPU with hybrid SLI technology chosen primarily because you said you don't use it for gaming much. Pairing the chipset with a 9600GT, while it may be a little more expensive, will likely make up the cost in power requirements multiple times over by not having to run 100W+ idle all the time. Just my 2 centskmmatney - Tuesday, May 27, 2008 - link
It would seem to me that you would want a dual slot Video card, rather than a single slot, for an mATX system. That way you are blowing the video card heat out of the small case. Would a dual-slot card fit in the case?jmurbank - Tuesday, May 27, 2008 - link
It seems you selected components that you desperately want to get for your next setup. To decrease the price of each setup, you will need to rate each component what you need to get by and what you dream to have. I think you can get by with out a dedicated graphics card by playing games at the lowest quality settings and still use the LCD native resolution. Next I suggest go back in your junk closet and try to find AV receivers that are capable of handling digital audio. If you have three, you decrease the price by about $300. IMHO, card readers are not required for a setup. I suggest buy one unit that will work in each computer. Of course everybody in the household will be fighting over the device, but set rules where it should be placed. I think your dream components can wait for the upgrade budget that comes into play later.My opinion about Pioneer optical drives is they are poorly manufactured. I suggest change it to an ASUS optical drive. My Pioneer drive gave me problems at the beginning. The drive took hours to write a single layer DVD disc, so I use a 3rd party firmware to fix that. Then a few years later, it does not handle playing back movies from start to finish. My ASUS optical drive is lasting me 7 years and counting.
I doubt you need 600 GB of hard drive space. I think users will be waiting for programs to load up, I suggest downgrade the space and upgrade to low latency. I suggest a Western Digital 'Raptor' 150 GB or 75 GB. To store more data, setup a file server for everybody in the household to access files.
If you are thinking of over clocking the Phenom processor in the future, I suggest select motherboards with an EPS power connector. This does not guarantee the motherboard can handle the over clock or higher TDP processors, but provides a possibility.
I prefer Seasonic power supplies because they are high quality for their price. Also they are very energy efficient, regulate voltage well, filter the power well (low ripple voltage), universal voltage, puts less strain on your electrical system (circuit box and AC oultet) because of its active PFC feature. Power and Cooling power supplies are poor for the price. Be careful with Silverstone power supplies because they have a high minimum wattage rating.
psychobriggsy - Wednesday, May 28, 2008 - link
If you read the article, you can see his logic for a lot of your points.I really really don't understand why a ten year old needs such a setup. I'm sure we all have stories about the 14" monitors we had when we were 10, and how the computer had a single 2" speaker built in, and the like. We coped and the systems were awesome.
My computer build for a ten year old would be my old system, handed down.
Does she have a 42" plasma TV and personal satellite TV in her room as well?
Kobaljov - Tuesday, May 27, 2008 - link
Interesting article, but sometimes I didn't find the connections between the intended usage and the selected hw components. Look like the most common error in the "new PC" projects: performance (cost, power consumption, etc.) overkill.A Phenom CPU, 8 GB RAM, 640 GB HDD and a 8800 GT videocard is really needed for IM, MySpace, Sims, WoW, etc. in the next 3 years ?? I don't think so (maybe if the Sims 3 will use the CryEngine 2.. ;-)
"Just the normal daily life for a ten year old who apparently needs at least a 24" monitor just to keep track of the thirty or so open windows at any given time"
This come from a local PC Shop's marketing materials ? (The next "must have" will be the Optimus Maximus keyboard for word processing or a new Hi-Speed 256 GB SSD for listening online music) :-)
larson0699 - Tuesday, May 27, 2008 - link
Utmost...