Marest's Sample Builds

[Drunkenvalley]

Reference card running hotter than normal is fine if it's quiet enough and genuinely works in dispensing the hot air out of the case. There's a pretty specific market of users for that sort of card.

[Cantii]

Reference card running hotter than normal is fine if it's quiet enough and genuinely works in dispensing the hot air out of the case. There's a pretty specific market of users for that sort of card.

Yep, me! Oddly enough, the XFX 6870 Black Edition is one of the quietest reference cards out there - but at the sacrifice of a little more heat. Though I generally keep a fan profile to have it at ~35% speed while gamin. It's really now all that loud for a blower fan, I'm actually impressed by it. It also helps that I put some of that wicked good NH-T1 thermal paste on there

[DeltrusDisc]

Yep, me! Oddly enough, the XFX 6870 Black Edition is one of the quietest reference cards out there - but at the sacrifice of a little more heat. Though I generally keep a fan profile to have it at ~35% speed while gamin. It's really now all that loud for a blower fan, I'm actually impressed by it. It also helps that I put some of that wicked good NH-T1 thermal paste on there

Yeah a lot of people don't seem to realize that some people go so far as to reapply their own thermal paste for their GPUs.... it can work wonders. Personally mine is just fine for me, so I see no reason to. lol

[Drunkenvalley]

Well, here I'd apparently lose warranty if I thought to do that, so.

[DeltrusDisc]

Well, here I'd apparently lose warranty if I thought to do that, so.

Likely for me, and idk where Cantii lives, but likely for him too. Some GPU manufacturers might be forgiving though and take a look at your job on applying thermal paste before saying "it's your fault" because if you did a good job, a good company would salute you and apologize for the faulty card. ;p

In a happy world at least!

[Cantii]

Nope! Good ol' US of A gets a lifetime warranty on all XFX parts and the ability to modify it as we see fit. Go check out XFX's US warranty, you'll see that they allow us to replace the cooler if we want, and they'll even walk us through the process over the phone OR we can send it in and have them do it, all without voiding the warranty.

As far as I know, XFX is the only company that allows this. A lot of people seem to have problems with their RMA service getting denied and whatnot, but I've never had any problems with them. I even asked them if I was allowed to change the thermal padding on the VRAM and VRMs, and they said I could... so I'm thinking about ordering some new thermal padding

[Drunkenvalley]

Well, Norway doesn't quite have the same stuff. For one, we rarely RMA to the manufacturer, but instead to the store from where it was purchased. :P

[DeltrusDisc]

Nope! Good ol' US of A gets a lifetime warranty on all XFX parts and the ability to modify it as we see fit. Go check out XFX's US warranty, you'll see that they allow us to replace the cooler if we want, and they'll even walk us through the process over the phone OR we can send it in and have them do it, all without voiding the warranty.

As far as I know, XFX is the only company that allows this. A lot of people seem to have problems with their RMA service getting denied and whatnot, but I've never had any problems with them. I even asked them if I was allowed to change the thermal padding on the VRAM and VRMs, and they said I could... so I'm thinking about ordering some new thermal padding

Okay....

That is damned impressive. O_o Surprised they aren't ahead of EVGA, MSI, Asus, and Gigabyte! :O With that kind of warranty you would think they would be at the top of the pack....

[Drunkenvalley]

Well, by and large there's no real reason to not pick the card with the right cooler in the first place. :U

[DeltrusDisc]

Well, by and large there's no real reason to not pick the card with the right cooler in the first place. :U

True... but if the card is good enough, does what you need it to do, for instance... why not get an XFX? ;p

[Cantii]

Okay....

That is damned impressive. O_o Surprised they aren't ahead of EVGA, MSI, Asus, and Gigabyte! :O With that kind of warranty you would think they would be at the top of the pack....

As I said before, some people have had a bad experience with XFX and they've been very vociferous about it. I tend to believe these are in a minority, but what do I know? XFX does have their own custom coolers, but you mainly get them just for the lifetime warranty and their welcoming approach to modding. EVGA is actually kind of like XFX, but they have a program called the Step-Up program. I'm not sure about the details, but I know you can trade in an old, outdated card for the current equivilant... or something like that.

True... but if the card is good enough, does what you need it to do, for instance... why not get an XFX? ;p

They have a single-mid fan and dual fan design as well, with actual bladed fans (instead of the blower). They're more open-air than the reference, but they're pretty quiet and cool well enough. XFX, though, is generally more expensive due to their warranty.

[Xuvial]

I expect Spinpoints to hit $200 by next year lol, Samsung are going to milk it.

[Deleted]

Spinpoint 1TB is $140 now. I expect it to reach $200 by next year.

I'd rather expect it to go down as supply steadily increases again. See the graph above or click these links: http://www.amosweb.com/cgi-bin/awb_n...ange+in+supply and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_...upply_schedule.

As such, expect the price to slowly move towards the price we had before; around $60. Unless of course the impact of the supply somehow has affected the demand to such a positive degree (people want a lot more HDDs than before); basically demand would have to increase at the same rate as supply will in the upcoming months (as it most likely will when the factories start to produce again). This would be the only theoretical cause of a price increase like that in the upcoming months given that supply will increase to the amount it was before.

If however supply keeps decreasing then yes, the price would theoretically go up a fair bit more.

[Drunkenvalley]

I expect Spinpoints to hit $200 by next year lol, Samsung are going to milk it.

Wasn't Samsung's HDD department bought out by Seagate or something? o.o

[Deleted]

Samsung are going to milk it.

Milk what? They earn more money by lowering the price as more costumers will buy the products. If they increase it further, fewer and fewer will be interested in buying their drives and as such they will earn less.

For example:
Say they can produce 5000 units per month. This is a fictional number. Lets say that each drive costs them $10 to produce and ship. If they sell their drives for $200, only 1000 units will be sold. This means they will have 4000 units not being sold which will still cost them production money. The net profit will then be ($200 x 1000) - (5000 x $10) which would end up as $150k. However, if they were to sell it for a hypothetical "less amount", say $50, they would sell all 5000 units that month. The net profit would then end up being ($50 x 5000) - (5000 x $10) which is $200k (not to mention that they wouldn't have to stall production until the remaining 4000 units were sold). Scale this up to "real world" values where they ship millions of units every year and the profit will scale and become much higher.

(And just to clarify my reasoning; the "$50" used here is the hypothetical sweet spot where supply meets demand; i.e. the hypothetical price needed (determined by demand; how many wants to buy the drives for a given amount of money) to sell all produced products within a given time frame.)

When calculating production it is important to determine where the sweet spot is for the given product. The demand is in theory static (can be manipulated with for example marketing); the consumers will always seek to buy a certain amount of units. The company then needs to calculate how much producing X units would cost in order to meet the consumers demand and as such make the highest profit.

What has happened with the flooding is that the supply has decreased drastically (in my example above that would correspond to say 500 units or less). This means that (in order to profit the most) they need to sell the drives at a much higher price; the consumers demand is still the same, but the supply has drastically decreased.

[Drunkenvalley]

Actually, I'd claim demand is probably going down. The sheer price is really staggering for a lot of HDDs right now and most websites quite clearly announce the reason for it, so purchase is limited to those who absolutely need one now.

Thankfully, I got my Spinpoint F3 1TB literally the week before all the prices began skyrocketing. They're now going thrice the price!

[Deleted]

Actually, I'd claim demand is probably going down. The sheer price is really staggering for a lot of HDDs right now and most websites quite clearly announce the reason for it, so purchase is limited to those who absolutely need one now.

But that is the point! You are mixing "total theoretical demand" with "true demand; total purchased units". These are not the same. The total demand is a hypothetical number determined by how many units the consumers would buy if supply was endless. Think: "if the drive was almost free". The reason why purchased units have gone down so drastically the past month(s) is because only the top percentage of the total hypothetical consumers (i.e. the top percentage of demand) find it worth the set price (they are also becoming obsolete to an extent).

In my example, this would mean that the price for the 500 units (after the flooding) would need to be increased to $200 per unit in order to push the demand down to 500 (instead of the previous 5000 units at $50).

Just imagine if the price for, say, potatoes skyrocketed to $500 per kilo. Only a very small margin of the population (<1%) would end up buying potatoes but most would move over to eating only rice and pasta. The total demand for potatoes would be the same, but due to the price people would end up buying something else.

[Drunkenvalley]

Though that's a nice clarification, giving an entire speech as a response to a short comment about difference between true and theoretical demand is silly...

PS: I already understand the difference.

[obiwannknowlton]

Warning, complete computer build novice here. I have a couple questions on this gaming build (from the samples at the top of this thread):

Gaming 1500

MoBo: Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3P – $179.99 Review
CPU: Intel i5 2500k – $219.99
RAM: G.Skill Sniper 1600Mhz 2x4Gb – $54.99
GPU: ASUS DCII GTX 580 – $499.99
HDD: Samsung Spinpoint 1TB – $59.99
SSD: Crucial M4 120Gb – $196.99
PSU: Seasonic X Series 650W – $109.99 Review
Heatsink: Corsair A70 – $38.00 Review
Case: Corsair 500R Black – $139.99 Review

- Is this a complete list of parts? Do I need anything else (e.g. cables, fans, etc)? If I get all these items from newegg, can I take them into my local PC shop, and have them build something I can take home and start playing SWTOR on?

- I don’t see a bluray drive on the list. Any suggestions?

- I was told I needed a stand alone sound card if I wanted to get the most out of the game’s ambient music. True, false? If true, any suggestions?

- Trying to decipher the numbers on the video card. Is it only a 1.5GB card? Why is it better than the 2GB cards I’ve seen listed with cheaper systems?

[Drunkenvalley]

--SNIP--

Do I need anything else?
This is only the tower. You still require mouse, keyboard, monitor and Windows. An optional piece is the DVD drive, but you can use a memory stick in its place as well if all you need to do is install Windows.

Optical disc drives
Bluray, DVD and CD drives are largely redundant, so unless you specifically need it it's unadvised. Most people require DVD-drive to install Windows, and that's about it.

Soundcard
You don't "need," but it's generally agreed upon that it makes win audio epic win.

Graphic cards & RAM
Sadly, the VRAM of the graphics card is only useful up until a certain extent. It's also just a temporary storage for the graphics card, and does not refer to the speed or power of the card.