System Builders Guide

[Wolframium]

Nikc10’s System building guide for JV (both folding rigs and non-folding rigs)
Parts:
CPU: The design of the computer will often revolve around this choice, so it is one of the most important you can make. The first choice you will have to make is between AMD and Intel. For gaming purposes, there won’t be much of a difference, as long as you get at least a 3GHz dual core. For folding, its less of a wash, since intel is generally better, but only in the $200+ price range. Below that, AMD CPU’s will tend to edge out Intel ones. Here’s a list by price:

$80 range:

• AMD Athlon II X3 455

$100 range:

• AMD Athlon II X4 645

$150 range:

• AMD Phenom II X4 975

$200 range:

• Intel Core i5-2500k

$300 range:

• Intel Core i7-2600k

$300+:

• Pretty much any hexacore on Intel’s Sandy Bridge-E platform, but if you are at this price range, you should know what you are doing already

CPU Cooling: If you are not going to overclock, there’s no need to get anything beyond the stock heatsink that comes with the CPU. If you are planning on getting very much overclocking out of your system, your best bet is with an aftermarket CPU cooler. If you are planning on getting one of these, you should check to see if it comes with thermal paste. If it doesn’t, then you will need to get your own.
Good CPU coolers (by no means a comprehensive list)

For cheap:

1. Artic Cooling Freezer 7 pro
2. Cooler master hyper 212 Plus

For not cheap:

1. Noctua NH-D14
2. Zalman CNPS9900

Closed loop water cooling:

1. Antec Kuhler 920 (what I have)
2. Corsair H70 or H50

Thermal Paste

1. Artic Silver 5

Motherboard: This is heavily influenced by what you really want out of your system. If you are just getting a simple system with a non-overclocked CPU, a single GPU, and not much else, pretty much any motherboard that has the same socket as your CPU will do. However, as soon as you start putting in multiple GPUs and overclocking the CPU, things get more complicated. I won’t list models and price ranges here, since there are so many motherboards around, but I will list some general guidelines:

1. Don’t buy MSI motherboards. They tend to fail.
2. If you are going to overclock, make sure the board your getting supports it. (i.e. P67 or Z68 for LGA1155)
3. If you are going to overclock, make sure the board you are getting has high quality VRMs that won’t fail when you push a lot of power through them.
4. Look at the ports on the motherboard, and make sure it has what you need.
5. If you are planning on running multiple GPUs, make sure that the motherboards supports it, and that there are at least two slots of space between the PCI-e slots so that you can actually put more than one double wide card in.
6. Make sure the motherboard has the same socket as the CPU

RAM: This is one of the easier components to buy these days, since its so cheap. Generally, just go with any 8GB kit of DDR3-1600 that you can find. In general, you don’t need either faster RAM or more RAM. Anything beyond DDR3-1600, and you will not really notice the difference in everyday usage. Also, if you are going to buy more than 8GB of RAM, you should really have some sort of particular use in mind, otherwise you are just wasting your money.

PSU: The important thing here is not to cheap out. It may be tempting to buy the $50 PSU over the $80 one, but you don’t want the PSU to fail and either have to buy a new PSU or a whole new computer if it damaged your parts. If you go with pretty much anything by corsair, PC power and cooling, or seasonic, you will be fine. To calculate your power usage, and find out what kind of power supply you need, this is a good tool: http://www.thermaltake.outervision.com/. Another thing to note: if you are going to put multiple GPUs in your computer, make sure that not only does the PSU have enough wattage, but that is has enough 6 or 8 pin PCI-e connectors as well.

Hard Disk/SSD: Currently, hard disk prices are very high, so if you have a hard drive from an older computer, you might consider using that as a holdover until prices come back down again, which they will. In general, for hard disks, just get whatever capacity you think you will use. For SSDs, you may want to put a HDD in as well for storage of larger items like videos. In terms of brands, for hard disks, it doesn’t really matter that much. However, there is a much bigger difference in the SSD world. If you want the greatest performance, get one of the latest generation SSDs from either Crucial, Intel, or OCZ.

Case: This is another area that its tempting to skimp on, but it can have a big effect on how easy the computer is to build, and also on overclocking, since a better case will have lower temperatures. There are two main types of cases that you might consider, ATX full tower and ATX mid tower. A mid tower case will generally be cheaper, smaller and be harder to build in than a full tower case, but those tradeoffs may be worth it if you are not building a machine with multiple large GPUs.
Here’s a list of some pretty good cases
Full tower:

1. Corsair 800D (I have this one)
2. HAF X
3. Silverstone Tejmin 07

Mid tower:

1. Antec 900 ( I have this one too)
2. Corsair 600T
3. HAF 922
4. Antec 300
5. Rosewill Challenger

Optical Drive: This one’s pretty simple. If you don’t want to watch blu-rays, get any SATA DVD burner that you can find. If you want to play, blu-rays, find a blu-ray reader that comes with software so that you can watch blu-rays, since some drives don’t come with any software and you would have to buy the software yourself.

Operating system: This will be Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit for pretty much everyone, unless you have a special case that calls for another operating system, in which case you should already know what operating system you are going to use.

GPU: Along with the CPU, one of the most important components in the system. You have a few things to consider here. First, are you going to go with one GPU, or multiple GPUs. Then you have to consider if you are going to go with ATI or Nvidia. Note: if you are going to do F@H, you are much better off getting an Nvidia GPU at this point, but this may change in the future. Another note: for the most part, GPU memory doesn’t matter much past about 1GB these days, unless you either have a 30” monitor, or you are going to use multiple monitors.

For $125:

• Radeon 6790

For $180:

• GeForce GTX 560 (not ti)

For $230:

• GeForce 560 ti (a Radeon 6950 would work here as well, but if you are doing F@H, it will be worse, and this is also true with the rest of the price ranges)

For $340:

• GeForce GTX 570

For $500:

• GeForce GTX 580 (though, at this point, you are getting really diminishing returns.

I don’t think I forgot anything major. This is still very much a work in progress, so feel free to make any suggestions. Over the next day or so, I’m going to try to put estimated ppd next to the GPUs and CPUs in case you are planning on building a machine for F@H. Also, its late, so I'll finish formatting tomorrow.

[Wolframium]

Reserved

[Wolframium]

Reserved (again)

[aaaaaa123456789]

Even though I strongly disagree with your OS choice (although I guess that's the only decent one you can find original), I find this an excellent guide. Great job!

[FinalCheetah]

8gb of ram is overkill for folding but this is a good guide to build a FRATS, pretty much agreed with everything else. (Folding Rig And Then Some)

Also I can't stress how important it is to have a decent power supply brick in your PC, the last thing you want to check is that everything is receiving power in case of computer failure, you'd need a multimeter for starters. Also when buying a power supply, don't buy an obselete one or you'll scream when you find you can't connect your modern hard drive to it without going out for some conversion wires which make your inside of your case look even more messy. I also recommend going beyond the power needed to run all the components in your PC, because if you upgrade it again, you might be wondering why your power supply is malfunctioning when the problem is, it's not outputting enough power.

[.JcJc.]

Gtx 550ti

[Wolframium]

8gb of ram is overkill for folding but this is a good guide to build a FRATS, pretty much agreed with everything else. (Folding Rig And Then Some)

Also I can't stress how important it is to have a decent power supply brick in your PC, the last thing you want to check is that everything is receiving power in case of computer failure, you'd need a multimeter for starters. Also when buying a power supply, don't buy an obselete one or you'll scream when you find you can't connect your modern hard drive to it without going out for some conversion wires which make your inside of your case look even more messy. I also recommend going beyond the power needed to run all the components in your PC, because if you upgrade it again, you might be wondering why your power supply is malfunctioning when the problem is, it's not outputting enough power.

As to the 8GB or RAM, I figured that, since the prices are so low these days, you might as well spend the extra $10 or so, even though you might not use it. If you are really strapped for cash though, that may be a good way to save a tiny bit, though.

[FinalCheetah]

As to the 8GB or RAM, I figured that, since the prices are so low these days, you might as well spend the extra $10 or so, even though you might not use it. If you are really strapped for cash though, that may be a good way to save a tiny bit, though.

If you buy 1000 cola bottles with that 10$, then you can have a taste explosion in your mouth while chuckling at your FRATS.

[Wolframium]

If you buy 1000 cola bottles with that 10$, then you can have a taste explosion in your mouth while chuckling at your FRATS.

Where can I find these cheap soda bottles?

[aaaaaa123456789]

If you buy 1000 cola bottles with that 10$, then you can have a taste explosion in your mouth while chuckling at your FRATS.

Cola bottles at a dollar's cent each? I WANT
(keep in mind I drink about two gallons a day, imagine how much I would save!)

[Slender Man]

Is it sad that I don't understand any of this?

[Wolframium]

Is it sad that I don't understand any of this?

No, not really.

[Agravaine]

Very nice guide, although I've had better resuts folding with Linux instead of Windows.

[aaaaaa123456789]

Very nice guide, although I've had better resuts folding with Linux instead of Windows.

That's just natural, since Linux takes much less resources for itself than Windows does. On the other hand, not many users (aka almost none of the common ones) are familiarized with Linux, and/or they cannot run the programs they would like to in it.

[Wolframium]

That's just natural, since Linux takes much less resources for itself than Windows does. On the other hand, not many users (aka almost none of the common ones) are familiarized with Linux, and/or they cannot run the programs they would like to in it.

Actually, there's a few more complicated reasons that linux tends to fold a bit better, but as said, unless you are using the machine to fold 24/7 and aren't planning to use it for any regular use, Windows is a better alternative for most people.

[aaaaaa123456789]

Actually, there's a few more complicated reasons that linux tends to fold a bit better, but as said, unless you are using the machine to fold 24/7 and aren't planning to use it for any regular use, Windows is a better alternative for most people.

Yeah, but is there a need to go into the more complicated reasons?

[Wolframium]

Yeah, but is there a need to go into the more complicated reasons?

Not unless you really care about algorithms, cores, and a 3% difference or so.

[RedxWings]

Just a small detail, the bolding in optical driver is off.


Good guide, any love for laptops?
(despite being a create your own desktop thread)

[Wolframium]

Just a small detail, the bolding in optical driver is off.


Good guide, any love for laptops?
(despite being a create your own desktop thread)

I fixed the bolding thing.

As to the laptops, I've considered it, but it would be a lot harder to write, because its much harder to mix and match parts. One laptop might have a great keyboard, but it doesn't come with discrete graphics. There might also be another one with great graphics, but that has the crappiest keyboard this side of mars. If anyone wants help choosing a laptop, you're welcome to PM or VM me and I'll do my best to help.

[SiX]

i would get dual 560 ti's instead of a 580