Help Building Gaming Pc

[hoofhearted4]

its like you guys dont know anything about PSUs and only go for price. that PSU has amazing reviews all over the internet (not just talking newegg here) ive seen the statistics about it. its ripple is near flat. it can actually go up to just over 700W completely stable. its a solid PSU. again, if he wants to spend more, get the AX650 Watt by Corsair.

 

power supply calcs are a just a reference. they are usually programmed to add wattage to whatever your calculating so that it naturally over estimates, sometimes by quite a bit.

[FMod]

The 650w psu that you're talking about is DOA for quite a few people, and I'm not convinced that it'd run anything overclocked. Not only that, but overclocking can be very bad for your pc if you don't do it correctly, and no offense, but the OP doesn't sound like he knows enough about overclocking to do it safely.

This is not a specialist hardware forum and I'm not going to run around telling people they're wrong, but this just isn't so.

TX650V2 is built by Seasonic, it's their model, they literally just put a Corsair sticker instead. It lacks modular cables and it's louder than some of the fancier PSU, but it's an old and very well known platform.

 

650W is enough for an overclocked SLI rig. It's more than enough, with good headroom, for overclocked Phenom II X6 and HD7970 GHz Edition (that will take about 500W). OP's going to buy a 7850, which is a 100W video card. Really a 500W PSU is enough. TX650V2 just happens to sell for a good price.

 

I'm not sure what kind of calculator you're using. If it's on a PSU maker site, they're probably highballing everything on purpose. There's no way for a non-OC Phenom II X4 and 7850 to draw 500W. In fact, a non-overclocked component may not draw more than its TDP (except in Furmark), so it's easy to calculate. 130W+95W+25W is where you're at. That's 250W.

 

Price and quality don't always match - a $20,000 Toyota will be built better than a $35,000 Peugeot. With CPU and GPU, performance is easy to check, so you tend to get what you pay for. With power supplies, it's not and most people never notice, so quality and price only have a weak correlation. HX series are good PSU, they are even a little better than TX V2, but AX is just that much better, and TX V2 is good enough for anyone.

 

Overclocking today is very safe. In fact, you're tied up by so many safety checks and protections that it's one of the hardest ways to kill a component. The easiest? Do a manufacturer recommended firmware update on a buggy old Windows install. Everyone is worried about fuel economy right now, so almost everything you buy is underclocked on purpose (cars too). This manufacturer-permitted, safety-bound overclocking is really just about getting design performance back.

[zack1293]

I don't really have a precise budget I'm really looking for a ballpark goal to save toward so 600 seems like a perfect mark. I have a crappy monitor and the like to start and I'll just get new toys as the money becomes available. By my understanding the motherboard would be the only part I'd run into trouble when it comes to upgrading. I would rather spend 400 dollars on the motherboard alone as long as it means that later on I can get myself better hardware.

Perfect. Thanks for the links. I know about newegg I'm just new enough to computer building to not know exactly what all of it means haha. I don't think 800 would be too crazy for me I'm just looking for a machine to build on. If 800 will get me skyrim on ultra I'll be more than happy to play on oblivion until then. I played the crap out of both games on xbox and sold the system later for rent because I was bored and found my crappy laptop could play oblivion and a whole new world opened to me. I'll never play a console again. I don't think I can ever accept a game that forces me to accept the small things that bother me instead of giving me the option to rebuild all of it.

I mostly play games like skyrim and oblivion. I'm not real into the online shooter type games but I like to play around with most single player games that give me the option to kill anything I want. I'll also be using the computer for modding projects. I'm just now learning about blender and the like so I don't really NEED the computer to be geared toward that but I'm sure if I skimp on the build's ability to handle that I'll hate myself for it later. All of these links are great thanks to everyone. Buying a already built gaming computer is just tossing money at a halfassed machine from everything I hear and figuring out what to buy can be so hard to dive in to.