New, affordable build

[funkmasta]

So I'm going to try a build of my own to hopefully accompany my MBP. So far, I've zeroed in on

 

Gigabye GA-G31-ES2l

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...pk=ga-g31m-es2l

 

Intel E5200

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16819116072

 

These are supposed to be good value combos, especially with overclocking in mind and very OSX86 compatible. Any comments?

 

Now I'm looking at graphics cards. Possibilities include: 8500 GT, 9600 GSO. Any comments on these cards? They're both very reasonably priced, but I'm not sure how their compatibility would be. Also, it'd be nice if the video card has output that I can use in a HTPC capacity.

 

As far as other things like cases, power supply, cooling, best RAM for overclocking, etc., I'm looking for advice as well.

 

All help is appreciated, thanks guys.

[pirloui]

Very good combo.

Don't know for the cards, both should be compatible.

[funkmasta]

Very good combo.

Don't know for the cards, both should be compatible.

 

Yeah, it seems pretty good. For everyone else's benefit, Slickdeals has a thread on this combo

http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?t=1506699

 

You say both video cards are compatible. Does that mean work out of the box, minimal tweaking involved, or big trouble or what? Also, I don't quite get which RAM to choose to get a good overclock as I don't fully understand the relationship between RAM speed and FSB for overclocking.

[brandon DuBois]

I went with the same MOBO and CPU for my HTPC hackintosh - check it out - here is the link - the video card i used was VERY resonable - i have it hooked up via HDMI to my 50" plasma

 

Brandon

 

Building HTPC - A Couple of ?s

[funkmasta]

Thanks, that thread is a nice resource.

 

Can anyone else chime in for me?

[broken]

Thanks, that thread is a nice resource.

 

Can anyone else chime in for me?

 

 

That mobo and cpu are an excellent combo. I am using the ES2L with a quad and its a great board. My last machine build had an e5200 cpu in it and it was fantastic for the money.

 

 

Video Card: Do you need high'ish end 3D for games and such?

 

If not, I would go with a passively cooled 9400GT or 9500GT.

 

Sparkle makes at least one of each card and since they have no fans on them, they run dead silent. Both combined with the e5200 cpu can play back HD material like a champ.

 

Plus they are pretty cheap:

 

Sparkle 9400GT

 

Sparkle 9500GT

 

I have used both cards (and still use the 9500GT) and can attest to them working well in OS X.

 

 

 

 

Case: As far as case suggestions go, whats your budget and would you prefer something that looks more like a typical hi-fi piece or would a tower do?

 

 

Ram: I would buy 4 gigs (2x2) of probably 1066MHz stuff. Something like this stuff from OCZ. I have used the same stuff and its a good value. Other excellent brands are G.Skill, GeIL, Corsair, Crucial and so on. Just try to avoid the dirt cheapest no name stuff and you should be fine. You should easily be able to keep this between $50 and $70 and have some good stuff. Just buy a matched pack of 2 dimms and you are good to go.

 

 

HD: You keep media on the machine, streaming it across the network or combo of both. Bigger is obviously better as far as storage goes.

 

Seagate 7200.11 1.5 Terabyte drive - This drive is stupid fast, and has a huge capacity. I have one in another rig and its great. Earlier problems that plagued this series seems to have been ironed out.

 

Western Digital 640 Gig WD6400AAKS drive - Don't need quite as much space, this drive is an all around great value. Quiet and very fast, its probably the all around current dollar per gigabyte vs speed champ. Its a really great value. I use one in my Hack and its fantastic.

 

There are a lot of other examples of great values depending on your storage needs and budget. Just don't buy a smaller, older tech drive as most of these drives are slower and not that great a value. Both those drives I outlined about are capable of over 100 megabytes a second read and write. Quick to boot, quick to shutdown , quick to load big files (movies) and quick to install software. Don't cripple your machine with an old ass drive.

 

 

DVDRW: Don't spend more than $30.

 

Samsung DVDRW - I have bought a ton of Samsungs DVDRW drives over the last couple years and they are a great value. Works great in OS X of course.

 

 

 

Power Supply: Lots of good brands out there. Corsair (my pic if you can swing the cash), OCZ, BFG, SeaSonic and Antec and plenty of others. I would buy a high quality 400 watt PSU with a single 120mm cooling fan and quiet characteristics. Also if its 80 plus rated thats a good thing as its more efficient and should run cooler.

 

 

Corsair 400CX 400 Watt 80plus PSU - This is my pick for a great psu thats quiet, 80 plus rated and it delivers a solid 30 amps on the 12 volt rail. More than many cheapo "600 watt" psus can provide.

 

 

The power supply is one of the most important components you can buy, so don't go extremely cheap on it. But at the same time you do NOT need 800 watts or crazy stuff like that. Some Antec cases come with psus in them and they are generally of decent quality. Their stand alone power supplies are usually pretty good as well.

 

 

This is just an overview of some items you could use. Once you decide on what you want, just post it up and we can give you some better thoughts on them.

 

 

 

Just keep this in mind: With OS X, the motherboard and video card are the two most critical components that determine how well it will run. Keep it an Intel cpu and compatible mobo and vid card and it should be smooth sailing. I purpose built the box in my signature to run only OS X and its a fantastic machine.

[funkmasta]

Thanks for such a thorough response! Good to see a fellow Buckeye on the board. I'll try my best to let you know what I'm going for. Overall, I'm trying to spend under $400, but up to $500 if necessary. I'd like to overclock the E5200 decently and fit the rig into either a micro ATX or HTPC case if possible.

 

Video Card: Do you need high'ish end 3D for games and such?

 

If not, I would go with a passively cooled 9400GT or 9500GT.

 

Sparkle makes at least one of each card and since they have no fans on them, they run dead silent. Both combined with the e5200 cpu can play back HD material like a champ.

 

Plus they are pretty cheap:

 

Sparkle 9400GT

 

Sparkle 9500GT

 

I have used both cards (and still use the 9500GT) and can attest to them working well in OS X.

 

Those look OK, but what about the 9600 GSO card. It's more powerful and at a good price. Maybe the pros and cons? I'd like a card that could work well in a HTPC setup, but is good enough for games as well if needed.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16814121320

 

Case: As far as case suggestions go, whats your budget and would you prefer something that looks more like a typical hi-fi piece or would a tower do?

 

I'd prefer a micro atx or HTPC case, but a smaller tower could do as well.

 

Ram: I would buy 4 gigs (2x2) of probably 1066MHz stuff. Something like this stuff from OCZ. I have used the same stuff and its a good value. Other excellent brands are G.Skill, GeIL, Corsair, Crucial and so on. Just try to avoid the dirt cheapest no name stuff and you should be fine. You should easily be able to keep this between $50 and $70 and have some good stuff. Just buy a matched pack of 2 dimms and you are good to go.

 

Sounds good to me. Will these sticks overclock well?

 

HD: You keep media on the machine, streaming it across the network or combo of both. Bigger is obviously better as far as storage goes.

 

Seagate 7200.11 1.5 Terabyte drive - This drive is stupid fast, and has a huge capacity. I have one in another rig and its great. Earlier problems that plagued this series seems to have been ironed out.

 

Western Digital 640 Gig WD6400AAKS drive - Don't need quite as much space, this drive is an all around great value. Quiet and very fast, its probably the all around current dollar per gigabyte vs speed champ. Its a really great value. I use one in my Hack and its fantastic.

 

There are a lot of other examples of great values depending on your storage needs and budget. Just don't buy a smaller, older tech drive as most of these drives are slower and not that great a value. Both those drives I outlined about are capable of over 100 megabytes a second read and write. Quick to boot, quick to shutdown , quick to load big files (movies) and quick to install software. Don't cripple your machine with an old ass drive.

 

I'm planning on dual booting with Windows 7 (basically NEED it since I tried Office for Mac and hated it, Excel is such a pain), so I've read the best solution is to go with a 2 hard drive setup, which I would like to do.

 

Power Supply: Lots of good brands out there. Corsair (my pic if you can swing the cash), OCZ, BFG, SeaSonic and Antec and plenty of others. I would buy a high quality 400 watt PSU with a single 120mm cooling fan and quiet characteristics. Also if its 80 plus rated thats a good thing as its more efficient and should run cooler.

 

 

Corsair 400CX 400 Watt 80plus PSU - This is my pick for a great psu thats quiet, 80 plus rated and it delivers a solid 30 amps on the 12 volt rail. More than many cheapo "600 watt" psus can provide.

 

 

The power supply is one of the most important components you can buy, so don't go extremely cheap on it. But at the same time you do NOT need 800 watts or crazy stuff like that. Some Antec cases come with psus in them and they are generally of decent quality. Their stand alone power supplies are usually pretty good as well.

 

Thanks for the suggestion. Seems like a nice PSU.

 

Again, thank you for all your help. I hope my comments have helped to clear up where I'm trying to go with this build.

[broken]

Those look OK, but what about the 9600 GSO card. It's more powerful and at a good price. Maybe the pros and cons? I'd like a card that could work well in a HTPC setup, but is good enough for games as well if needed.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16814121320

 

Did a little research and that card should work perfectly. Its not fanless, so you might have to put up with a little extra noise. I didn't even realize that the 9600 GSO cards existed...lol. Looks like a good value between the 9500GT and 9600GT. If I upgrade my card I might have to keep those in mind... /rubs chin

 

 

I'd prefer a micro atx or HTPC case, but a smaller tower could do as well.

 

Since you budget is limited to a max of $500, your best bet is probably going to be a mATX tower case. Most decent HTPC cases cost around $100 or more, and with your budget thats not going to work. There are cheaper ones, but they have {censored} cooling or limited to half height expansion cards. Meaning that that nice 9600 GSO you want won't physically fit. Not good.

 

 

A good mATX case is the CoolerMaster Elite 341. I use this same case and its great. It comes stock with no PSU, 1 120mm fan in the back and a spot in the front for another 120mm fan. Has two internal HD mounts.

 

Heres a quick pic of the inside of mine to give you an idea of a real world install with the same motherboard.

 

 

 

 

I'm planning on dual booting with Windows 7 (basically NEED it since I tried Office for Mac and hated it, Excel is such a pain), so I've read the best solution is to go with a 2 hard drive setup, which I would like to do.

 

Are you planning to dual boot into Windows just because of Excel/MS Office? Do you plan to run any Windows games? Reason I ask is because you could run Windows (XP, Vista, 7) inside a virtual machine and never have to leave OS X. This would save you the expense of buying a second drive and you could put that money towards buying a larger single drive.

 

There are several Virtualization products on the market for the Mac.

 

Virtual Box - Free and works very well

 

Parallels - $80 and has lots of neat options to integrate Windows apps into OS X to appear native. Better support for older 3 games then Virtual Box.

 

VMWare Fusion - $72 and probably the most all around stable of the bunch. This is my personal fav and I use it to run XP inside a vm. VMWare has been making VM software for years and they know their stuff.

 

 

But, if you want to play modern Windows games then you will need to dual boot as these are good for running apps and older games, but modern 3d games will not work well at all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

With all that said, here are my suggestions

 

 

All hardware priced from Newegg.

 

 

Gigabyte GA-G31M-ES2L - $53

 

Intel E5200 CPU - $64

 

OCZ 4gb 1066 DDR2 ram - $51

 

Asus 9600 GSO video card - $60

 

Samsung DVDRW - $27

 

CoolerMaster Elite 341 case - $45

 

Corsair 400CX PSU - $55

 

 

Total = $355 NOT including Hard drive(s). I left those out as it depends if you still want two, or a single larger drive.

 

 

Most of the components I selected even have free shipping on them to help save some money there.

 

Depending on what your choice for your hard drive situation is , there is still money left over that could be applied in a few other areas. One thing you might want to do, that I didn't include in the price list is to add an 120mm fan to the front of the case. I would suggest a slower, quiet fan like one of the 800 rpm models from Scythe. Gives you some cool air into the front of the case without sounding like a leaf blower.

 

You could also spend about $20 more and get the Intel e6300 cpu. It has a faster clock speed (2.8GHz) and supports intel's VT technology which assist with running virtual machines (especially 64 bit guests).

 

Also, since you mentioned OC'ing, you defiantly want to use a different after market cooler as that stock one isn't that good and is kinda noisy. But, like most mATX boards, the ES2L doesn't allow for really huge heatsinks and depending on size, it might block one of your dimm slots and thats no good. I use the OCZ Vanquisher and it does fit this board (the fan sits over top of one dimm socket, but doesn't block it). Its pretty inexpensive and sells for under $20. There are lots to choose from and you will probably have to do some research on this.

 

 

 

 

Also, you will want to use the excellent ES2L guide by weaksauce12. His guide walks you through a completely retail install using just a boot-132 disc and a few extra kext files for added hardware support. Besides the boot-132 disc, you will also need a OS X 10.5 disc. I would suggest 10.5.6 as I believe its the latest retail boxed one that Apple sells.

 

Also, starting from 10.5.7, Apple includes Nvidia drivers that we can use to support our hardware. However, you will still need to add some efi strings to make OS X recognize your video card, or you could use netkas's ATY_INIT injector kext file. I use it and it works fantastic. This package takes the pain out of adding a video card to machine and trying to figure out what efi strings to add.

[funkmasta]

You are much too generous with your time. I really appreciate all your help.

 

I think I will go with the E6300 as you suggested. For my purposes, it may be worth giving it a try. The only concern I have is will it be able to overlclock very well with the motherboard we've picked? I noticed that the ram for this MB is rated to be DDR2800. Will this impede the overclocking in anyway? If so, and if I were to move up to the GA-G41, how would it fair for hackintosh?

 

Besides that, I'm giving extra thought to the RAM. How important are the ram timings? I know lower numbers are better; this set has 5-5-5-18. I'm pretty sure the speed is more than enough for overclocking.

 

Last, the 9600 GSO seems to be a bigger card with the site saying it is 4.376 inches x 9 inches. That looks like it will be fine in the case, but just want to confirm with you.

 

Thanks again for all the help.

[broken]

I think I will go with the E6300 as you suggested. For my purposes, it may be worth giving it a try. The only concern I have is will it be able to overlclock very well with the motherboard we've picked? I noticed that the ram for this MB is rated to be DDR2800. Will this impede the overclocking in anyway? If so, and if I were to move up to the GA-G41, how would it fair for hackintosh?

 

I believe this boards supports 1066 via OCing. Usually that means you have to bump the memory voltage up a notch from 1.8 to 2.1 or so.

 

Besides that, I'm giving extra thought to the RAM. How important are the ram timings? I know lower numbers are better; this set has 5-5-5-18. I'm pretty sure the speed is more than enough for overclocking.

 

Lower timing numbers are generally better, but sometimes with OC'ing you have to adjust them back up to get you OC stable.

 

Last, the 9600 GSO seems to be a bigger card with the site saying it is 4.376 inches x 9 inches. That looks like it will be fine in the case, but just want to confirm with you.

 

I can measure my case later tonite and let you know if 9 inches will clear. I am pretty sure it will since there isn't anything obstructing it all the way up to the front.

[funkmasta]

Thanks. Could you also tell me what kind of measurements I will have to be looking at in a CPU cooler? It seems like choices are very limited in that regard, so I want to get it right.

 

This is really exciting for me and I can't say it enough, thank you for all the help!

[broken]

Did some measuring and a 9 inch card is no problem. You could fit a video card up to nearly 12 inches in there with a 120mm fan installed up front. Plenty of room.

 

Only possible issues I see being if your video card takes up 2 slots and has a massive full length heatsink on it like some of the 9800GT have. It might bump into the hard drive if its mounted in the bottom spot. But with your card that doesn't look to be an issue since its cooling system isn't that large.

 

 

Also, the card will probably extend over top a couple of the sata connectors. Don't think it would block them, just make it so the card would have to removed to plug/unplug anything from them. Kinda typical mATX issue with a larger vid card.

 

 

Thanks. Could you also tell me what kind of measurements I will have to be looking at in a CPU cooler? It seems like choices are very limited in that regard, so I want to get it right.

 

 

Sadly I don't have that info available. I looked over the reviews for it on Newegg as sometimes you will see people listing what heatsinks they are using and didn't spot anything over the first couple pages.

 

Might want to research that question via some of the hardware sites.

[funkmasta]

This is what I've come to now

 

Motherboard GA-G31-ES2L

CPU E6300

Video Card ASUS en9600 GSO

RAM G.Skill 4 GB DDR2 1066

Case: Cooler Master Elite 341

PSU Corsair 400CX

CPU Cooler : Cooler Master GeminII S

Hard Drive: not yet decided

 

Cost: ~$320

 

How does it look? Will I have any trouble with fitting the stuff in to the case? I'm particularly worried about the cpu cooler fitting in the case and allowing space for the RAM.