Is this a good deal? /:

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So, i was browsing and i found this deal for 816usd. 

CPU- AMD CPU Desktop Athlon II X4 640 (3.0GHz,2MB,95W,AM3)

Mother Board- ECS AMD 890GX (Socket AM3 5200 MHz 4 DDR3 ATX 2xLAN 6xUSB2.0 VGA DVI HDMI HyperTransport 3.0)

ODD- SONY OPTIARC ODD DVDRW 24X, SATA

VGA- SAPPHIRE Video Card Radeon HD 7950 GDDR5 3GB/384bit

HDD- SEAGATE 7200 RPM (3.5",1TB,64MB,SATA III-600) X2=2TB

CASE- BIFENIX SURVIVOR

PSU-GLASIALTECH 700W

RAM- PATRIOT 8GB

 

I'm woried about the cpu and the mobo here, but the gpu and some of the other things are interesting. 

What do you guys think? Is this cpu and mobo going to bottleneck the system?

What I'm going to be doing is mosty gaming and graphics design. 

Thank You.  :) 

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I understand ur concern with the cpu and i have to say that this cpu will certainly bottleneck the gpu (this athlon is comparable to an i3 540) . The mobo is ok, the 890 is a somewhat recent chipset. In my opinion, stay away from this rig. For around $800 you can build a way superior and optmized rig compared to this one. Do you need a complete new rig? Or do you have some parts from a previous rig you can reuse? (eg. PSU, Case, HDD)

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i dont have any parts. Do you think i should buy it and replace the mobo and cpu? 

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Thanks for teh reply btw (: 

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Whats youe max budget and do you need a OS? Im a graphic designer andive just built a new pc for gaming and gfx design so inmight be able to help you out, also do you need a new monitor? or any other perifirals? :) -matt

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My budget would be around ~1,250, if i could get my dad to let me, yeah, im in in highschool. If im going to build a rig it will probably be in the next holiday. As for perifals i have what i need. os, i have a pirated win7 i've used for bootcamp, i barely use bootcamp, but im not too comfortable woth pirating it. What did you pic for your pc and how much was your budget?  

Thank you 

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With a $1200 budget, you can get a pretty serious gaming and editing rig. Here's my suggestion: 

CPU: if youre not doing some really serious editing, go with a i5 3570K. Its about $210 and gaming wise this will be everything you need. If you want to go enthusiast on this rig, spend some extra money on a i7 3770k. Its about $100 more but it will perfom better editing - again, we're talking about serious editing. If your graphics design isnt something professional, stick with the i5 and you'll be just fine.

CPU cooler: I'm a endorser of Corsairs Hydro Series. I'd go with either H55 or H60 or H80 depending on how much money you have left. Around $50- 80

Mobo: Get any Z77 chipset from reliable brands such as Asus, ASRock, Gigabyte. Here you can choose acording to your needs - Number of SATA ports, USB 3.0, Memory Standard. I'd go with ASRock Z77 Extreme 6. Beautiful board, USB 3,0, 4x SATA 6gbs and stupid fast memory standard. Around $150

Memory: Get either 2 8GB DIMMS. Either good overclockable 1600Mhz or just stock 1866. I'd go with Corsairs Vengence 16Gb 1866 kit. Around $80

GPU: Since you be editing and designing i'd stick with Nvidia since they have CUDA. Go with some overclocked edition of the GTX 670. You can find various prices here. I recently bought a EVGA FTW+ GTX 670 4GB for $430. Amazing GPU, extra GDDR will certainly improve editing performance.

PSU: Get any reliable brand with 80 PLUS Bronze certificate with 750W. Id go with Corsairs CX750. $65

Storage: 1x 128GB SSD (around $120) for OS + 1x 7200RPM 6gbs HDD for storage (get any size u'd like, prices vary alot. A Seagate 1.5TB is around $65

Case: Get any case you'd like with good airflow and cable management. You can get pretty good ones at $100

This rig sums up at around $1230. If you have money laying around and really wants to go enthusiast ( spend more money at little performance gain just to the get best of the best) , you could: get the i7 over the i5; get an GTX 680 over the 670; get an extra pair of DIMMS; Buy a enthusiast Mobo; get an Corsair H100. Or any combination of these modifications.

 

Good luck with ur Rig!

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Thank you SO much, i really appreciate this. :D 

But I have one question, why does the extra vram help with editing? Is that where the files within the layers in a ps file are stored? I thought the system stored them in normal RAM.

Once again, thank you!  

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I'm sorry, i made quite a falacy there. Lol. Extra VRAM will improve your editing experience per say but not during enconding, exporting and processing etc. I'm not sure im being clear here.Lets say you are in huge resolution cenarios (3 monitors) and you're editing images or videos with huge resolutions and within various layers. Before the image is sent to the monitor it is cached in the VRAM, processed by the GPU and sent to the monitor. So if you have more Vram, it can store more of what you see without needing to check back at the RAM. Lets say if youre cycling layers, it would be faster. So if you see something in your monitor, it is taking space in the VRAM. However, when you're enconding or exporting it goes directly from the RAM to the GPU since it is not actully shown onscreen. But now that you metioning it, i belive that 2GB of Vram would be more the suficient even in high resolution setups. You're correct, thanks for pointing that out. Extra Vram will certainly improve high resolution gaming though.

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Yeah, i know that more vram is needed for a higher res display. Much thanks man, youre awesome. :) 

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You're welcome! Glad I helped!