Shifty wants to build a PC. Help!

[Shifty Geezer]

So I'm looking to upgrade (replace) my PC to a Haswell. Don't care for a GPU just yet but want Quick Sync, and the option for a GPU later. I'm wanting to be cheap but good, so not necessarily the cheapest solution, and importantly I want it to be quiet.

Given that the 4770 is either 85W or 65W for the S, a case with a quiet fan and quiet CPU cooler should be enough. Is my thinking. I'd prefer the 85W as it's faster, natch, but not if it comes at considerable volume, or requires a £100 HSF to cool it quietly. With development+productivity stuff I could be pushing it quite hard at times, and I don't want it turning into a hairdrier at those times. If I'm barely touching the GPU, will heat output be greatly reduced?

I have components down to £640 from Amazon after shopping around a dozen stores and comparison sites - Case, CPU, mobo, cooler, fan, RAM, SSD, HDD, OS and PSU. The major problem is knowing what's going to be effective and quiet or not. The cooler I had picked was a £17 Coolermaster Evo 3 something which claimed 17 dBA at 900 RPM, but if it has to crank up to 3000 RPM it might be noisy. Strangely I can't find info on fan speeds versus watts. I understand that's affected by environmental temperature, but how can one estimate fan speeds for a given chip thermal output?

And how much difference do mobos make? By going with a mini ATX I can buy a £20 cheaper mobo, and I've no need for more than 2 drives+optional GPU in future. But is a £50 Gigabyte better than a £30 MSI or whatever??

What about SSDs? I've been looking at a 120 GB OS SSD and basically picking the cheapest with some big read/write numbers, but do things like IOPS matter? TBH I'm not totally fussed with getting the best performing machine - that'd require more effort than I can be bothered with. Anything will be a world away from my current Pentium Core2Duo! But if there are any easy pointers to consider for getting a bit better experience, I'd like to hear them.

 

[homerdog]

For the SSD, go with something not totally off-brand. Kingston makes a great cheap 120GB SSD.

No reason not to go mATX if you don't need the extra PCIe slots.

The stock cooler on the 4770 is not very loud, and should be especially quiet on the S model. Something like the Evo 3 should be even quieter for sure, but beware it is humongous like all 12cm tower coolers.

MSI vs Gigabyte is a matter of BOIS (or UEFI) features. Your day to day experience will be the same no matter the brand of the mobo.

What power supply and case are you looking at?

 

[DuckThor Evil]

Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo is about 8 pounds more expensive, but should be a little better/quieter due to the fan not cranking up as easily as in the Evo 3 you mentioned, whether the difference matters in real life I don't know, but it might be few pounds well spent, just make sure the case has enough clearange like homerdog mentioned, but this probably isn't too big of a concern unless you go mini-ITX.

A pity that RAM is quite expensive at the moment.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

I have a coolermaster hyper 212 evo and a 4770 and all I can say is that the only fan I only ever really hear is the one on my 560ti while gaming. Apart from that it's pretty silent. My pc is on the end of my bed and I can even have it on while sleeping without hearing anything and I'm a light sleeper.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The stock cooler on the 4770 is not very loud, and should be especially quiet on the S model. Something like the Evo 3 should be even quieter for sure, but beware it is humongous like all 12cm tower coolers.

Might be worth trying the stock cooler and getting a replacement when I gauge how loud it is, I guess. Bare in mind that the last PC I built was in the days of hideously noisy P4's when quietness was a luxury few cared about, and I needed to source fancy quiet PSUs and quiet fans and chunky heat-sinks. I think things have improved drastically so my concerns may be a little over cautious.

MSI vs Gigabyte is a matter of BOIS (or UEFI) features. Your day to day experience will be the same no matter the brand of the mobo.

Okay.

What power supply and case are you looking at?

I had a Coolermaster Silencio 550, but then I found I don't need full ATX so that's a bit overkill. Then I just looked at a Zalman Z9 as a brand I know values quiet with a few positive reviews. It's under £50 which seems about right for a decent case.

PSU in the basket is a...Be Quiet Pure Power L8-CM 430W, chosen because it's got orange trimming and comes from a company called Be Quiet. . Also I only need, like 300 W if that, so I was going for one of the lowest power PSUs I could find.

I should probably list everything thus far.

case: Zalman Z9 Midi Tower Case, £49 - would like something smaller, but it'll probably sit under the desk anyway, so doesn't really matter.
CPU: i7 4770, 85W, £220, or 4770S for ~same price
Mobo: Asus H81M-E Motherboard £44 - I have used other ASUS stuff and consider them reliable
RAM : Kingston KHX16C9B1RK2/8X 8GB 1600MHz CL9 £49 - known brand, nice and red
SSD: Toshiba THNSNH128GCST4PAGA 128GB - £82
HDD:Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB £40, or maybe Caviar black
PSU: Be Quiet Pure Power L8-CM 430W PSU £58
HSF: Cooler Master Hyper TX3 Evo £17
OS: Microsoft Windows 8.1x64 - haven't looked into whether to go W7 or W8 yet, but they're the same price.

 

[Albuquerque]

That's a great cooler for so little money. I use a Zalman CNPS9900 Max on my 3930k and it's dead-silent even under full load 4,5Ghz. However, it was quite a bit more than 17 pounds

 

[Grall]

Be Quiet is a German brand I believe, so it should be not just quiet, but also good quality too. Make sure it's haswell certified (IE, can handle zero amps on the 12V rails for when the CPU naps, older PSUs may wonk out and trigger undercurrent protection - IE, shut off - if there's not enough load), but I suppose most everything is these days.

I like my Asus ROG board because of the 4-way optimization app to control fanspeeds and such. With optimized silent fan profiles, my system is really rather quiet even at full load despite 3x 120mm and 1x92mm case fans and 120mm CPU fan. Of course, ROG isn't exactly synonymous with cheap, but the uATX board really isn't terribly expensive either. Quality build and components throughout, though.

I use Noctua tower CPU cooler myself - again not the cheapest - but I love the build quality and the awesome mounting system. Super easy really and super secure. Can't get any better - but perhaps other manufacturers are just as good these days. Haswell doesn't really benefit that well from uber-pwn air coolers anyway due to the non-soldered heatspreader, so pretty much anything decent should be able to handle the heatload. It's more a case of what quality the fan is - better fan, less noise for same cooling.

In my quick testing, I did not experience a very large heatload from the GPU. It was pretty moderate, I suppose that's because the entire CPU shares the same thermal limits, so it never loaded the cooler very much. When running some GPGPU, the GPU didn't even hit 80C I seem to recall. Under regular gaming the heat should be even lower since the workload is less efficient.

As for HDD, if you have SSD for speed critical stuff like your OS and pagefile, the HDD won't matter much. I bought a WD Green for bulk storage, it's really really cool running and also very quiet. That's worth considering if performance is not that big a factor - all HDDs, regardless of spindle speed - are really slow anyhow compared to SSD, so any performance difference is only going to be somewhat of a gradual improvement compared to a Green drive.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

WDGreens cost a little more. My audio sensitivity can cope with an HDD head moving around. Thanks for the info on the PSU requirement. That's the sort of caveat I'm a little concerned with.

Also, what about cables and stuff? I'll need some thermal paste I guess, or will that come with the HSF? Will I need SATA cables or do they come with the drive? The only thing I can recycle from my old PC (before current laptop) is the DVD writer.

 

[homerdog]

I would give the stock cooler a try before ordering an aftermarket one.

Grall is right on with the PSU; I forgot about the whole Haswell compatibility thing. I mean it's like an non-Haswell certified PSU won't work, but you'll miss out on Haswell's lowest power states. You'd be surprised that not many <$60 PSUs are Haswell certified. Be Quiet is a good brand.

Why don't you go for a mATX case? With full ATX you'll have a box full of 90% empty space...
Zalman makes the uber cheap ZM-T2, but IMO it's worth a little extra for something like the LIAN LI PC-A04 or SilverStone SST-PS07. Those are guaranteed quiet with effective cooling, and quite stylish IMO.

BTW the mobo should come with a couple of SATA cables at least, so you shouldn't have to purchase any. Well, I'm assuming you already have 1 SATA cable for the DVD writer.
The old DVD writer isn't IDE is it? No IDE on new motherboards now. New optical drives typically DO NOT come with SATA cables.

More edits
You want positive pressure inside your case - that is, more air coming in than going out. Otherwise your case will be vacuuming up all the dustbunnies in your room (trust me from experience this is a legitimate concern ). Many cases in their stock fan configuration don't take that into account. The Lian Li case I linked does.

 

[Grall]

I vote for Silverstone SST-FT03 (is also available in a smaller size still), it's a really nice case. Easy to work in since you can remove both the side panels and the front completely, allowing easy access to the guts.

Good advice with the air pressure. Frankly, I don't bother myself with that because I CAN'T. I pack too much hardware into my systems and they overheat unless I tune for maximum airflow at any and all costs... But when optimizing for utility and noise, it's a good rule of thumb. Also, cases with dust filters won't do much unless there's positive pressure inside.

My mobo came with six SATA cables, but it's a premium model. There's probably a couple still included with more mainstream variants. If buying rock bottom cheapest available, you may need to fix yourself up with some on your own, so it may not be the best deal after all. I usually prefer to pay more for nice components that I'm happy with rather than sit at home and stare lovingly at money I saved in the latest deal I just made...

 

[homerdog]

I vote for Silverstone SST-FT03 (is also available in a smaller size still), it's a really nice case. Easy to work in since you can remove both the side panels and the front completely, allowing easy access to the guts.

Very good choice. Keep in mind you must use a slot-loading optical drive with that case. Does it come with one?

Good advice with the air pressure. Frankly, I don't bother myself with that because I CAN'T. I pack too much hardware into my systems and they overheat unless I tune for maximum airflow at any and all costs... But when optimizing for utility and noise, it's a good rule of thumb. Also, cases with dust filters won't do much unless there's positive pressure inside.

When I first built my PC in the Antec Three Hundred Two, I forgot to plug in the top 14cm exhaust fan. Never had any heat issues then, but when I went back in the case to retrieve a HDD, I connected it. Now there is negative pressure in the case, and I'm having to clean the dust filters on a weekly basis. Made a HUGE difference. That thing's gonna get disconnected for sure

My mobo came with six SATA cables, but it's a premium model. There's probably a couple still included with more mainstream variants. If buying rock bottom cheapest available, you may need to fix yourself up with some on your own, so it may not be the best deal after all. I usually prefer to pay more for nice components that I'm happy with rather than sit at home and stare lovingly at money I saved in the latest deal I just made...

Typical mobos (I think even the lowest-end models) come with 2 SATA cables. 6 is a little overboard IMO but hey why not?

 

[Grall]

Keep in mind you must use a slot-loading optical drive with that case. Does it come with one?

Nope. And yea, slot-loading drives are more expensive, but also neater looking and don't need such huge amounts of internal space. Or you could simply pass on the optical drive as the use of such in the PC space is ever diminishing these days. Next time I build a new box I'm sure I won't need an optical drive in it.

I wish I would not need mechanical drives either, but I can't imagine solid state tech advancing at a pace fast enough to cover my needs in less than the major part of a decade, especially if games are going to explode in size this upcoming console generation. Few games eat even 10 gigs of diskspace these days, and we're looking at 50 gigs... Jeez! That will make even my 200Mbit/s cable connection feel sluggish.

Typical mobos (I think even the lowest-end models) come with 2 SATA cables. 6 is a little overboard IMO but hey why not?

Yeah, but it was fortunate, because half of the cables were straight and half were L-shaped, and I ended up needing all three straight ones... If there had only been say, 4 cables included, I'd probably been short a straight cable.

 

[homerdog]

200Mbps? Does your firewall even support that kind of throughput?

Speeds like that are truly unheard of in my state, probably in the entire southeastern US. And I thought my 30mbps connection was fast...

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Grall is right on with the PSU; I forgot about the whole Haswell compatibility thing. I mean it's like an non-Haswell certified PSU won't work, but you'll miss out on Haswell's lowest power states. You'd be surprised that not many <$60 PSUs are Haswell certified. Be Quiet is a good brand.

Okay. Something to ensure. Edit: Be Quiet website lists the L8 as Haswell compatible.

Why don't you go for a mATX case? With full ATX you'll have a box full of 90% empty space...

Yeah. I searched mini ATX cases on Amazon and that was a result which I recognised as a quiet brand, so I threw it in the basket for costing, but Amazon's search results are pretty crap. You really need to know the product you want and search for that. The Silencio 550 I tried because I found some silent PCs online as prebuilt machines (with a £300-400 markup! Hence my new DIY policy) and just went with whatever case they had.

Zalman makes the uber cheap ZM-T2

£44.92 - well above the $40 you link to. Plus £61 delivery. Ha ha ha ha ha!!!!

LIAN LI PC-A04

£80

SilverStone SST-PS07.

£60. That one's not too bad.

The old DVD writer isn't IDE is it? No IDE on new motherboards now.

Oh, widdle! All over the floor. It's IDE. I'll see if I can borrow a DVD drive for installation. Once my old disk based software is on there, I can run from HDD and downloads.

You want positive pressure inside your case - that is, more air coming in than going out. Otherwise your case will be vacuuming up all the dustbunnies in your room (trust me from experience this is a legitimate concern ). Many cases in their stock fan configuration don't take that into account. The Lian Li case I linked does.

Does any 2x front fan count as a positive pressure design? I don't really follow the difference. Whether the air is being pushed through or sucked through, it's still moving in, right, taking dust with it. My old PC was full of dust (a good reason for a full sized case - more room to fill up with dust before it reaches the components . Plus less vacuuming to do as the PC takes care of dust extraction) but it didn't affect it. I think my laptop may run a little hotter now thanks to years of dust, but I've never removed dust from any device ever.

I usually prefer to pay more for nice components that I'm happy with rather than sit at home and stare lovingly at money I saved in the latest deal I just made...

I'm afraid I'm a real bargain hunter. Don't pay full price for anything, certainly no big ticket items. Anything less than 25% off and I don't usually bother. I don't buy for any specific deadline so I'll cruise retail until the right deal comes up. I was looking at £1000 laptops before changing plan (tablets mean the portability of the PC isn't such a boon any more), and now I have a subconscious aim to get the PC for under £600. Which might be being ridiculous, and I won't cut corners, but I will have a smile on my face if I pull it off.

 

[Grall]

It's IDE.

Holy smokes it's gotta be a real oldie then! Even optical drives have been SATA since like 2006 or thereabouts...

Whether the air is being pushed through or sucked through, it's still moving in, right, taking dust with it.

Negative flow, sucking air, means you'll pull in air through cracks and other openings in your case which won't be protected by your (hopefully existing) air filters...so you'll end up with more dust in the case this way. Also, I imagine - and admittedly this is just my speculation - that with sucky fans, you run the risk of getting "dead" air inside your case where there's no movement, which means dust will settle inside the case there. With positive flow, air will move more vigorously inside and keep dust particles airborne. Hopefully, anyway.

I'm afraid I'm a real bargain hunter.

There's room for all sizes and colors on this world, luckily. Too bad not all will agree on it tho! I am one of those pathologically impatient people who just can't resist buying The New Shiny as soon as I got the money to afford it. I just gotta do it, no matter what, pretty much. Yeah, it causes many headaches, but it's also fun!

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Holy smokes it's gotta be a real oldie then! Even optical drives have been SATA since like 2006 or thereabouts...

I don't think it's that old. It was a cheap Sony writer bought a few years (5 tops) back. But the PC has no SATA so I had to get IDE.

That's the problem with the upgradeable PC concept. After a while, everything is out of date. Unless you keep a rolling update, you get to a point where nigh everything needs replacing.

Negative flow, sucking air, means you'll pull in air through cracks and other openings in your case which won't be protected by your (hopefully existing) air filters...so you'll end up with more dust in the case this way. Also, I imagine - and admittedly this is just my speculation - that with sucky fans, you run the risk of getting "dead" air inside your case where there's no movement, which means dust will settle inside the case there. With positive flow, air will move more vigorously inside and keep dust particles airborne. Hopefully, anyway.

That makes sense.

 

[zed]

Why no price for the OS? everything else has a price

I recently got a haswell PC - cpu = i5 4430 like my last ~4 pc's I dont notice the difference in speed, sure in benchmarks they might get higher but in general stuff nada, unlike last century when each PC upgrade was noticable

 

[homerdog]

zed what did you upgrade from?

Shifty it looks like prices are much different where you are. The Silverstone case looks to be the best deal. Go with a good quality mini-ATX, you won't regret it.

My first full build involved a $40 Logisys case that included a "450W" PSU. The PSU didn't make it 6 months, and the case literally rusted out.

 

[Arwin]

With consoles coming and SteamOS and such within a year probably, I think it's not the best of times to build a PC, so if you really need one, I would probably focus it in upgradeability or on staying cheap with an eye to early replacement. But knowing you, you probably already figured all that out.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Why no price for the OS? everything else has a price

£71 either way (7 or 8) is the cheapest I've found

With consoles coming and SteamOS and such within a year probably, I think it's not the best of times to build a PC, so if you really need one, I would probably focus it in upgradeability or on staying cheap with an eye to early replacement. But knowing you, you probably already figured all that out.

Nah. I'm wanting a machine, fire and forget, that'll serve me another 5+ years. I have considered waiting for the new technologies (eg. HMC), but they'll be two years down the line I reckon, and at that point I may be looking for portability too. Who knows.

I suppose it'd be nice to test some different hardwares and see what the speed difference is. If an i5 would suit me well, I could go with that, but i7 is definitely better for productivity. We'd be talking £100 difference tops and I think, as I intend it to last years, spending out now is good economy.

Steam is interesting because with the i7, I'm good for CPU for years on games that also target consoles. I can dabble with Steam (eg. Awesomenauts I played a lot on PS3, but I learnt that it stopped getting upgrades unlike PC version. ) and, if that appeals, I can slap a GPU in there and have my gaming, avoiding the consoles entirely. But I'm not even into AAA gaming these days. Spend my time doing other stuff.