[Buckeye]

I was asked to build a gaming/work rig for a friend of mine, her old machine was a HP or Dell with a older Pentium CPU and has seen better days. The usual story of the computer getting very slow and not able to keep up with modern programs. I do not know the full spec of that machine.

So we set off to come up with a parts list and her is what we ended up with.


Motherboard:
Gigabyte GA-P55-UD4P - $169.99
Newegg.com - GIGABYTE GA-P55-UD4P LGA 1156 Intel P55 ATX Intel Motherboard - Intel Motherboards

CPU:
Intel Core I5 750 - $199.99
Newegg.com - Intel Core i5-750 Lynnfield 2.66GHz 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1156 95W Quad-Core Processor - Processors - Desktops

RAM:
Corsair XMS3 4gb kit - $80.99
Newegg.com - CORSAIR XMS3 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model CMX4GX3M2A1600C9 - Desktop Memory

Hard Disk:
Western Digital 1TB - $84.99
Newegg.com - Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EADS 1TB 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

Graphics Card:
Gigabyte GTX 260 OC - $199.99
Newegg.com - GIGABYTE GV-N26SO-896I GeForce GTX 260 896MB 448-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Desktop Graphics / Video Cards

Power Supply:
OCZ 500watt - $59.95
Newegg.com - OCZ ModXStream Pro OCZ500MXSP 500W ATX12V V2.2 / EPS12V SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply compatible with core i7 - Power Supplies

DVD Drive:
Sony DVD/CD SATA Rewritable Drive - $29.99
Newegg.com - Sony Optiarc Black 24X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 12X DVD+R DL 24X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 12X DVD-RAM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM 2MB Cache SATA DVD/CD Rewritable Drive - CD / DVD Burners

Cases:
Look through here and see what you like
Newegg.com - Computer Cases, PC Cases, ATX Mid Tower, Gaming Computer Cases, Custom Computer Cases, Cheap Computer Cases

She picked...
Newegg.com - COOLER MASTER RC-690-KKN1-GP Black SECC/ ABS ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Computer Cases

So off she went shopping and here is the big pile of parts all ready to be put together.



A few pictures of the case.
This is a pretty nice case, lots of room inside and not super huge. Very easy to mount the DVD's and HD's inside with snap in mounting system. It comes with 3 fans for plenty of air flow and keeps teh case rather cool. You can put in many more fans but its not really needed.







So lets get the motherboard put together.
Here we see the Gigabyte P55-UD4P and Core I5 750 CPU + RAM all getting put togehter.











The paste that came with the stock heat sink was cleaned off and Ceramique was used as a TIM.



And we will be using the stock heat sink for this, no super over clocking will be done as she wants a nice stable system that won't give any problems for a long time.





Everything all installed and a little cable managment left to do, but all is good and the machine is installing Win 7 64 bit.



First test runs are being made here after the install and updating is completed. Here I am running Prime95 which will stress the system very hard, I will run this over night to make sure it doesn't over heat and remains stable.

I did do a slight over clock on this to a 3.2ghz and its holding up very well.



This has been a fun build and is a very fast machine. The case does have a few things I did not like about it. It came with these cable managment clip things that seemed like a good idea, but in the end they are not strong enough to hold the cables in place and I ended up taking them out and using zip ties to clean up the cables.

The CPU is a very nice CPU for its price, performs very well and has low power usage and runs very cool. I took the stock settings of 2.66ghz and over clocked it to 3.2ghz and that took all but 2 minutes to do. With the stock heat sink this stays within load ranges and temps running Prime95 are in the high 70's. A better aftermarket heat sink would perform better but this user does not do very high end tasking stuff so there will be no problem.

The Gigabyte 260 OC graphics card is very powerful and can handle any game out there with out any problems. She does not play and online games for shooter types of games so this should be more than able to handle what she plays.

She is also a big photoshop user so with a new I5, 4gig's of ram on a 64bit system she should be very pleased at how Photoshop performs and the ability to multi task many programs at the same time.

All in all this is a really nice computer and one that will last a long time. With the 1TB hard dive that gives plenty of storage and the ability to add more HD's very easly is a big plus. Just open the case, plug in a new HD and away it goes.

[Neuromancer]

If she is big into photoshop you might show here a dual monitor setup. I am considering throwing a 1024x768 15" LCD until I can get my 24" CRT here, because single monitor setups are horrible for multitasking. How am I suppposed to game in windowed mode, watch stargate have 3 IM clients running (let alone how many chat windows) plus a webbrowser window or two on a single monitor.

I never understood that whole "multiple desktops" thing that linux users seem to love, (which apparently they do not know has been available on windows at least as long as the radeon series video cards ) It hides everything. I like it all easily viewable, like checking my mirrors while driving

[Buckeye]

Man stupid pictures, sorry about them being so big. I will get those fix'd.

I will let her know about dual monitors. She is using the same DELL 24" wide screen LCD that I am... wait maybe I need to go to dual monitors.. or better yet get Simon to get me setup with 6, yeah thats what I will do

[Kal-EL]

Pics look good on my 30" monitor but horrid on a lappy, lol.

Nice build Bill

[Neuromancer]

Pics look fine on my 22" monitor too. But i have 'fit to width' on