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largedarryl on 09 February 2010
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Garcian Smith said:
largedarryl said:

What's wrong with the case, one of the best cases I've ever purchased.  4 system fans and easy access to the HDD bays.

Do you have something against Antec?  They make good products, but I do agree there are better PSU manufacturers and I was attempting to grab a cheaper one for this price breakdown.

Find me a game that this CPU will not work with?  If this guy is buying a gaming rig, why would he spend the money on a more expensive processor when all current games are offloading workload to the GPU.

Seagate, again whats wrong with them, from my standpoint the were still offering 5 year warranties on their HDD's last year (vs 3 year from every other HDD manufacturer)

Okay, I was being a bit harsh on the case. I just can't stand a case manufacturer that crams bright blue LEDs everywhere - it basically means that whatever room you stick it in will glow blue 24/7. That's fine if that doesn't bother you, but for that price you could have something sleek, classy, and LED-free like the Lian Li Lancool PC-K7B.

Antec's PSUs aren't bad, per se, but for that price you could've had one from a top-of-the-line manufacturer like the Corsair 550VX.

Again, there's nothing wrong with the X4 620, but it's outperformed on most games by the cheaper X3 435/440. The lower clockspeed of the cores really hurts it in games that only take advantage of one or two cores.

Finally, larger Seagate drives are known to have reliability problems ever since they bought Maxtor. (Don't worry - I didn't even know this myself until recently.) I'm guessing that the one you got is this one, which should work decently but only has a 3 year warranty. Western Digital offers an extra two years for just a five-spot more.

Well at least this response is less harsh.  I don't like LEDs either, but it seems to be the trend and I'll go with a less obtrusive case whenever I get the chance (black with blue LEDs is better than most good cases).

In terms of CPU, I didn't look very hard, I just grabbed one that was available at one of the Canadian distributors (trying to cater to the OP).  Yes the X3 would be better, but the truth is that most games now do not require a very power CPU to run, so going for an AMD is better choice for a gaming rig, IMO.  The i5/7/9 series blows AMD out of the water, but the in-game performance boost is minor compared to spending more on the GPU.

When did Seagate by Maxtor?  I make sure I always by the Seagate Barracuda drives (my home PC has a 200GB and a 300GB at home).