Possible new computer in very near future

JCitron said:

The first system is nice. The Intel 960 chip is a really nice chip.

The only thing, besides the hard drives at 5400 RPM, I would be leary of Tiger Direct. They have a reputation of bait and swap that doesn't seem to go away even with the lawsuits and hand slapping by the BBB and the Attorney General's office.

Having said that, check out the offerings of similar hardware at New Egg. www.newegg.com They have great customer service, excellent support, excellent shipping, and excellent prices. I've purchased 3 systems from them over the years with zero (0) problems. I ended up doing one return because I purchased 2 of something instead of only one, and the return was painless.

John

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I gotta respectfully disagree and say it's the other way around; I've had nothing but exceptional service from Tigerdirect and nothing but problems with Newegg; everything I've bought from the Egg has been falsely advertised, defective or bottom-of-the barrel and didn't last long. Bought from them 5 times, and 5 times I've gotten defective product that didn't last long if it worked at all. That's a lot of strikes. It's like night and day with Newegg versus Tigerdirect, though I won't by HDDs from Tigerdirect either.

But I confess I just may have had bad luck with Newegg (and Asus) so I won't discourage one too hard from dealing with them.

RRSignal said:

I gotta respectfully disagree and say it's the other way around; I've had nothing but exceptional service from Tigerdirect and nothing but problems with Newegg; everything I've bought from the Egg has been falsely advertised, defective or bottom-of-the barrel and didn't last long. Bought from them 5 times, and 5 times I've gotten defective product that didn't last long if it worked at all. That's a lot of strikes. It's like night and day with Newegg versus Tigerdirect, though I won't by HDDs from Tigerdirect either.

But I confess I just may have had bad luck with Newegg (and Asus) so I won't discourage one too hard from dealing with them.

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I use newegg for professional purposes daily, and have only had 2 piece of RAM DOA(dead on arrival) that had to be RMAed for replacement. Other then that I have nothing but good remarks for them...However UPS on the other hand is hit and miss.....:hehe: Get a package in 1 day when u choose 3 day guarantee and get a package 3 days later if you select overnight....kinda arse backwards I would think....:hehe:
However I cannot attest to how good or bad the service is from tiger direct.

Please:

Let us not make this a tigerdirect v newegg thing.

I have nothing against both.

Thank You.

If you guys have had good luck with Tiger Direct, so be it. I wasn't so lucky and had to bring them to the AG's office to get my money back. I've never had bad equipment come from NewEgg, so perhaps I've just had better luck with them. I agree with Gandalf. UPS can be a bit of a snot to deal with. They no longer leave packages, and if my dog doesn't bark, the guy leaves a note because he claims no one is home! It sometimes takes a few minutes to go from the basement to the backdoor, particularly when I stand up because I get really dizzy if I jump up too fast, and pass out. By the time I make it up the stairs, he's gone and theirs that yellow sticky on the back door!

Regarding Mr. DJT, I found him to be a bit annoying because no matter what someone one chose for hardware, it was never as good as his, and he could always build something better! Mozel-tov to him! I wish I had his budget for hardware. Like everyone else here, I measure my purchases carefully, and try to get the most out of a system so it will last for at least a few years before it becomes a doorstop.

I admit that I am no expert, but I've been at this game since 1984 when I built my first XT compatible system. I was a hardware technician before I moved on to IT, and I've seen a lot happen over the years. Over the years, I've seen both good and bad hardware, and have made my share of mistakes when building systems. You learn by getting hit in the head and knowing when to duck out of the way!

I try my best to be fair, and hopefully someone will benefit from my experiences with various pieces of hardware.

At any rate, good luck with your new system, William. I hope you are satisfied with your purchase.

John

William0d0 said:

I'm surprised djt has not chimmed in on this.

< chipset / cpu / mobo > seems to be the area where he really shines.

His advice for me (in a previous post) to not upgrade my cpu has definitely been correct as current history is showing me now. My current video card (GTS 450) can easily slide into an upgraded everything else.

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You’ll be much better of getting your hardware info from somewhere else besides this forum. A quick look in any decent hardware forum (or even in other train game forums for that matter) will prove to you right away that the majority of the advice given in this forum is so far off it’s actually become good humor for visitors from other forums.

One thing William that I forgot to mention and just another example of the information given here in this forum, the Intel 6 cores (i7 hex core) were never “pulled” because the i7 6 core processors aren’t even SandyBridge 1155 LGA CPU’s they are for the LGA 1366 X58 chipset based platform only . In other words there is no such thing as a 6 core LGA 1155 (SandyBridge) CPU.


The recall with SandyBridge was because of a SATA issue with the chipset and only affected the motherboards not the processors themselves.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4143/the-source-of-intels-cougar-point-sata-bug

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4142/intel-discovers-bug-in-6series-chipset-begins-recall

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/...el-core-i7-2600k-i5-2500k-core-i3-2100-tested



By the way I didn’t get furloughed I just took the advice of others and realized that this forum has been scraping the bottom of the barrel for a while as far as forum members and advice goes so as someone else has already said “let them learn the hard way”.

djt said:

You’ll be much better of getting your hardware info from somewhere else besides this forum. A quick look in any decent hardware forum (or even in other train game forums for that matter) will prove to you right away that the majority of the advice given in this forum is so far off it’s actually become good humor for visitors from other forums.

One thing William that I forgot to mention and just another example of the information given here in this forum, the Intel 6 cores (i7 hex core) were never “pulled” because the i7 6 core processors aren’t even SandyBridge 1155 LGA CPU’s they are for the LGA 1366 X58 chipset based platform only . In other words there is no such thing as a 6 core LGA 1155 (SandyBridge) CPU.


The recall with SandyBridge was because of a SATA issue with the chipset and only affected the motherboards not the processors themselves.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4143/the-source-of-intels-cougar-point-sata-bug

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4142/intel-discovers-bug-in-6series-chipset-begins-recall

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/...el-core-i7-2600k-i5-2500k-core-i3-2100-tested



By the way I didn’t get furloughed I just took the advice of others and realized that this forum has been scraping the bottom of the barrel for a while as far as forum members and advice goes so as someone else has already said “let them learn the hard way”.

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Well the ASUS Sabertooth P67 B3 TUF Edition Motherboard is definitely locked in as my mobo choice. B3 eliminates the recall problem.

An i5 2500K is the CPU of choice. Liquid cooling is planned.

I'm looking at Corsair 1600 mhz memory with 8-8-8-24 timing which is on the ASUS vendor list.

Originally I was thinking of moving my GTS 450 video card, but now that I think about it maybe something 256 bit would be better. GTX 460?

From there maybe a VelociRaptor or SSD drive.

It all depends on how much money I receive from car accident settlement.

William0d0 said:

Well the ASUS Sabertooth P67 B3 TUF Edition Motherboard is definitely locked in as my mobo choice. B3 eliminates the recall problem.

An i5 2500K is the CPU of choice. Liquid cooling is planned.

I'm looking at Corsair 1600 mhz memory with 8-8-8-24 timing which is on the ASUS vendor list.

Originally I was thinking of moving my GTS 450 video card, but now that I think about it maybe something 256 bit would be better. GTX 460?

From there maybe a VelociRaptor or SSD drive.

It all depends on how much money I receive from car accident settlement.

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Honestly I wouldn't go overboard. You can build a fairly future-proof system for about $1000, though I would *might* splurge on a Raptor and am considering doing so as it may help with Surveyor and some other things. I don't know if your gaming machine is your internet machine but, if it is, you may see a lot of improvement relegating your old machine to internet/email and using your new one strictly for gaming i.e. no anti-virus, firewall...maybe not even a network connection! All you need is a KVM switch and those are cheap.

William0d0 said:

Well the ASUS Sabertooth P67 B3 TUF Edition Motherboard is definitely locked in as my mobo choice. B3 eliminates the recall problem.

An i5 2500K is the CPU of choice. Liquid cooling is planned.

I'm looking at Corsair 1600 mhz memory with 8-8-8-24 timing which is on the ASUS vendor list.

Originally I was thinking of moving my GTS 450 video card, but now that I think about it maybe something 256 bit would be better. GTX 460?

From there maybe a VelociRaptor or SSD drive.

It all depends on how much money I receive from car accident settlement.

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Looks good William, I wouldn’t go any lower then a GTX 460 for that machine and you probably can get tighter with the timings on the memory for the same price.


You might want to do some homework in a hardware forum before you make a final decision. Here are a couple of decent ones –


http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=59

http://hardforum.com/



I wouldn’t recommend getting hardware information from a train game forum but there are a few experienced PC builders that frequent this forum once in a while if you want to ask questions –


http://www.trainsim.com/vbts/forumdisplay.php?93-PC-Tech

I would hardly consider doing your homework at a hardware forum any different then here, or anywhere else on the web.
Most of it is all garbage and the same good old arguments as we had here earlier any Joe schmo can enter a "hardware forum" and think they know what they are talking about and feed a bunch of BS into the forum.. No one has said any of the people are wrong on the hardware forums, but no one has said they are right either. Just because it is a hardware related forum does not mean they are always right. Just browsing through those links for a few minutes resulted in many disagreements and people not getting along at all simply because someone disagreed.
Not to mention trying to get people to buy stuff they don't necessarily need.

People have different opinions and that automatically makes 1 person a moron because he simply doesn't agree I guess.

Gandalf0444 said:

Not to mention trying to get people to buy stuff they don't necessarily need.

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DING! DING! DING! We have a winner!

That's EXACTLY what a lot of hardware forums are: People buying junk they don't need, often just so they can try to one-up some guys they'll never meet and no woman would talk to. It's not a bad idea to look at them but one really has to take them with a few grains of salt. Or, much more accurately, hold your nose as you wade up to your waste in bull....

BTW, William, although I would still consider an i7, be it a Sandy Bridge or not, you seem to have made an assessment based on a realistic budget. The i5 SB is a good chip too. Let us know what you are planning or do end up getting and your results.

RRSignal said:

DING! DING! DING! We have a winner!

That's EXACTLY what a lot of hardware forums are: People buying junk they don't need, often just so they can try to one-up some guys they'll never meet and no woman would talk to. It's not a bad idea to look at them but one really has to take them with a few grains of salt. Or, much more accurately, hold your nose as you wade up to your waste in bull....

BTW, William, although I would still consider an i7, be it a Sandy Bridge or not, you seem to have made an assessment based on a realistic budget. The i5 SB is a good chip too. Let us know what you are planning or do end up getting and your results.

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I built myself a computer(finally after building many other people computers) and gave myself a realistic budget of 400 dollars. (I spent 430 but 30 bucks over I am not going to complain)
I can run every game I throw at it very well and on ultra high settings, and can run TS2010 with all the sliders to the right.. What more can I ask for? For the computer to launch itself and me included to the moon? Every stop to think do I REALLY need 4 way SLI or crossfire? Do I really need this 6 core processor when a quad core is about half the price and can do the job equally well for the time being? Do I really need 24GB of ram RIGHT now?
Answer to most would be no. Of course 24GB of RAM and 6 core processors are very future proof, however you still have to take into account do you need that now? If you don't why spend all the excess money.

I would still be careful of the SSD drives. They sound good in theory, and perhaps they are better than they used to be, but they wear out pretty fast. They can only be written to about 10 to 20,000 times before they die. I mentioned this to one of the sales consultants where I work at Oracle America, and he confirmed what I had read. They maybe good for booting up quickly, but that's about it. You don't want to use them to run anything that will write a lot to them because of the failure issue, and the fact that the writes are generally slower than the reads on these devices. Keep this in mind with Trainz because the program does do a lot of read-writes when it's in full swing.

Honestly too, since this is such a new system, I would go with a more recent CPU such as an i7 instead of the older i5. Not that the i5 was any fluff either. The i7 is the latest of the bread, so I would go with that. So far I've had excellent results with the i7 chips I've used.

For video cards, the 400-series from NVidia run very hot. It's due to the GPU design and the Fermi chipset. Later, more recent boards, such as the 500 series are a bit cooler, even though they're based on the same chipset, but an improved design, which uses a smaller traces, and run quite a bit faster than their 400-series cousins.

John

Again William check the information that I’ve given you against a forum with members that actually have experience with the hardware and setting it up.

I’ve build plenty of gaming setups for members of other sim forums. Some of people I’ve built machines for frequent Train-sim.com so if you have questions about my hardware suggestions you can post some questions over there.

One graphic artist I’ve built machines for in the past is very well known for his development of content for various train sim/games –


http://www.3dtrains.com/

Feel free to question him about me also if you like.

Typical hardware forum. You take the flux capacitor and insert it into the gamma-tron connector. Then you take the fusion reactor chipset and place it into the hyperdrive acceleromator. Then you take your doo-dad and place that into the thingamajig.

rztaylorjr21225 said:

Typical hardware forum. You take the flux capacitor and insert it into the gamma-tron connector. Then you take the fusion reactor chipset and place it into the hyperdrive acceleromator. Then you take your doo-dad and place that into the thingamajig.

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From the looks of Williams’s first post in this thread, he does have the mental capacity to understand information given in a hardware forum, so it doesn’t look like he would have any problems.

Well I say if you want to build one, build it.

If you don't want to or haven't had the experience or don't want to learn there is always Dell...

Now contrary to what some here will say about Dell they offer at the moment a xps 8300 that when speced out is as good as one could build and when you consider a 3 year onsite warranty plus the operating system is actually quite competitive pricewise...

The one I just spec'ed with a i7-2600 3.4,12 gb of ram, ati 5870, and a Soundblaster X-Fi Xtreme for about 1500.00

More than enough to run 2010 and anything else you want to run and you won't have to worry about replacing a dead drive, cpu or video card or ps or mainboard for 3 years (they overnight with a prepaid return label) and IF you don't want to do the work yourself they will send a tech, plus the OS.

The warranty and the OS are two things people don't really think about when talking about PC prices. They are however two things one should consider. You have a mobo die 90 days into it's life from tiger or egghead and you are dealing with getting an rma from the manufacturer and paying for shipping both ways...

May not be a big deal for most but it is something I think about and making a call and having the part the next day (as I have had to do on more than one occasion, laptop nvidia card and memory and a hard drive on the desktop) is more than worth some in this forum who claim dell is "proprietary junk" call me and anyone else who own a Dell "suckers":hehe:

rztaylorjr21225 said:

Typical hardware forum. You take the flux capacitor and insert it into the gamma-tron connector. Then you take the fusion reactor chipset and place it into the hyperdrive acceleromator. Then you take your doo-dad and place that into the thingamajig.

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I can haz flux capacitor.:hehe:

William0d0 said:

I can haz flux capacitor.:hehe:

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I wouldn't mind a DeLorean...

RRSignal said:

I wouldn't mind a DeLorean...

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Only new car I EVER bought myself and loved it until the ex wife took it in the divorce and sold it to an ABSOLUTE **** who painted it red...

I can laugh now but it still hurts...:'(

I bought one of the last 150 that came over from Pete Ellis Dodge in Southgate Ca in 1984 for a whopping $11,995.00

But if you got an extra 60k laying around you can still buy a new one...

http://www.delorean.com/newbuild.asp

Ugh, I'm sorry man, I feel for ya, I really do. I did see something about the DeLorean restoration fairly recently. It's sweet for nostalgic value - hey, the 80s are coming back - but $60,000 is nuts. I would spend that on a boat (but I didn't! lol) or a plane, though...guess I have a couple expensive tastes too...