So, after dealing with an eight year old PC with 64mb of integrated graphics, I've decided to take matters into my own hands and build my own PC. I ordered a WD 500gig, an AMD Phenom 955 Black Edition, an XFX Radeon HD 5770, A coolermaster elite 335, some PNY DDR2 Ram, a Gigabyte AM3 Micro ATX board, and an OCZ 600 watt PSU. All in all, it cost me $598 USD after mail-in rebates.
I was thinking about making a photo diary of sorts; taking a picture after each individual step, but it proved tedious. I'll just post the components instead.
The AMD Black Edition and the 5770 are both easily overclocked without too much of an increase in heat, and they will suffice for a while to come. The heatsink originally gave me some trouble, but eventually locked into place. It was a little unnerving hearing it snap into place with as much force as it had on the cpu, to say the least. After seeing the 5770, I was a little worried that it wouldn't fit in the case. Obviously, it did.
Mobo/PSU, which both worked out flawlessly. For the amount I paid for them, I'm more than happy.
The finished product:
Obviously, as this is my first build, my cable management is non existent. I'll probably go through tomorrow and ziptie things to get some better airflow through the case. But, I'm proud of it. It really wasn't all too difficult (aside from the case refusing to have any hint of how to open the front 5.25 bay), and it cost so much less than having it prebuilt. I'm getting good temperatures so far, and the only thing left is to install Windows 7.
It's awesome being able to actually use my computer.
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One more thing, make sure your motherboard is NOT socket 775, because the bastards at intel made that socket obsolete with their freakin new socket in the i7 processors
It really is. :)
@Om Nom:
I will get to playing that, as soon as my copy of windows 7 gets here and my bank account cools down.
If I had an extra ~300, I definitely would have went the intel route. It's just that for the amount I had, AMD had much more bang for the buck, and hyperthreading isn't all too useful for the things I'll be using it for. At least so far.
And I would update the ram, but unfortunately my mobo is only ddr2 compliant.
Other than that the system is good :), while you probably should have pushed for the high price and gotten i7 & ddr3, this setup will work plenty fine. Its pretty much the same system as mine tho I'm on intel quad rather than amd!