[mav2000]

I looked at the cosmos 2 recently and for water cooling its an absolute disaster. I am still using the atcs 840 and I now find it difficult to appreciate a lot of the cases in the current market. The corsair 900 d looks like a good alternative, but my heart is also set on waiting for the new atcs, whenever it comes.

[R2D2]

To me the CM ATCS 840 is one of the most beautiful cases I have owned in the past 10 years ever since I got serious about builds & moved from normal generic beige coloured boxes to branded ones.

The 1st one was an Antec, as was the 2nd. The pleasure of working in a well designed branded case without risking cuts (from sharp, unfinished edges) on your hands and fingers is unparalleled.

I too was waiting for a successor but how long is it possible to wait? CM increasingly seems to cater to the gamer crowd nowadays making cases with a lot of bling. Thought of giving Corsair a chance now. The 800D seems solidly constructed. As for the 900D it will be purchased only after I sort out the location constraint.

[R2D2]

Many of us 35 years old and over would remember the initial days of gaming starting off with hand held Nintendo consoles (remember Donkey Kong, Parachute guys?), progressing to PC games like Pacman, Tetris, so called '3D' games like Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake on VESA-LB or PCI accelerator graphics card with 2 MB video RAM till the advent of powerful dedicated graphics cards with the advent of Nvidia in the '90s.

I played quite a few back (favourite was, you guessed it...NFS/NFS II/III, and Quake) in the good old days before gaming and other interests (including photography) took a backseat due to career and job commitments.

This week I was hit by a sudden craze to play the latest NFS, Crysis 3, all thanks to a youngster, all of 22 years old, who I met at an acquaintance's place. This youngster proudly showed me his collection of 2000 (!!!!) odd games loaded on his multiple HDDs. He gave me a demo and I was most impressed by Crysis 3 and NFS.

So I rewind time back to my younger days in 1990s, remembering the simple PC games that morphed into sophisticated multiplayer games which in turn spawned crazy LAN parties (10Mbps network!!) in the late 90s and early 2Ks.

Inspired by the mind blowing graphics of todays games I finally thought of upgrading my graphics card from the middle of the rung to the top..to complement my Core i7 3970x. So here it is installed in my PC - the GTX Titan with 6GB GDDR5 RAM. Here's to gaming. Game suggestions welcome. I might need to change my KB and Mouse to something that is gaming friendly, but that's for later.

Wish me fun!

[r_devakumar]

I am planning to move from Laptop to Desktop for home usage as my son started playing games. I want to assemble a medium range PC (no high end games) and planning the following configuration. Let me know if you have any specific suggestions. My budget is 50 - 60K max.

- i5 3450 and CPU cooling fan Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo
- ASRock H77 Pro 4
- 4 GB DDR3
- No dedicated video card for now
- Corsair Carbide Series 200R
- PSU: Corsair VS Series VS550 550W
- Seagate Barracuda 1 TB
- Benq 21.5inch LED Monitor (Requirement is full HD, Minimum possible size with small speakers built in)
- Windows 8
- APC Back UPS 1100 (600W)
- Standard wireless Keyboard/Mouse and Optical drive

I have few questions.

1. PSU 550 W will be sufficient? I am not looking for any significant addition anytime soon
2. PAC Power packup of 600W is sufficient is ok or need more? I have to connect the monitor, router and modem also along with that. I looking for 15 min of backup minimum.

Regards
Deva

[mjumrani]

Originally Posted by r_devakumar

- i5 3450 and CPU cooling fan Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo
- ASRock H77 Pro 4
- 4 GB DDR3
- No dedicated video card for now
- Corsair Carbide Series 200R
- PSU: Corsair VS Series VS550 550W
- Seagate Barracuda 1 TB
- Benq 21.5inch LED Monitor (Requirement is full HD, Minimum possible size with small speakers built in)
- Windows 8
- APC Back UPS 1100 (600W)
- Standard wireless Keyboard/Mouse and Optical drive

I have few questions.

1. PSU 550 W will be sufficient? I am not looking for any significant addition anytime soon
2. PAC Power packup of 600W is sufficient is ok or need more? I have to connect the monitor, router and modem also along with that. I looking for 15 min of backup minimum.

Regards
Deva

The configuration you have mentioned is decent but I would advise you to get a GPU be it a low end one. It would assist in any sort of video encoding and decoding, especially during Hd movie playback.

To answer your questions,

1. Even a 450W PSU would be enough for the config, 550W would give you a bit of room for future upgrades. Corsair is by far the best PSU company I know, good choice.

2. APC 1100VA is actually a 660W UPS, which will more than suffice for 15 minutes. If you want more the. Go for APC 1KVA UPS which provided a longer backup and has better features like a information display, PC communication software, green energy saving. But the price is also higher by 2k IIRC.

[nipcarlover]

Originally Posted by r_devakumar

I am planning to move from Laptop to Desktop for home usage as my son started playing games. I want to assemble a medium range PC (no high end games) and planning the following configuration. Let me know if you have any specific suggestions. My budget is 50 - 60K max.

- i5 3450 and CPU cooling fan Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo
- ASRock H77 Pro 4
- 4 GB DDR3
- No dedicated video card for now
- Corsair Carbide Series 200R
- PSU: Corsair VS Series VS550 550W
- Seagate Barracuda 1 TB
- Benq 21.5inch LED Monitor (Requirement is full HD, Minimum possible size with small speakers built in)
- Windows 8
- APC Back UPS 1100 (600W)
- Standard wireless Keyboard/Mouse and Optical drive

I have few questions.

1. PSU 550 W will be sufficient? I am not looking for any significant addition anytime soon
2. PAC Power packup of 600W is sufficient is ok or need more? I have to connect the monitor, router and modem also along with that. I looking for 15 min of backup minimum.

Regards
Deva

I don't know the prices of all of these, but if this is the max your budget can take, I would suggest going a little lower in the CPU and get a dedicated GPU. A GPU improves things to no end especially with the animation full Windows 8. Also, you mentioned that your soon will play games on it. A GPU is absolutely necessary for any modern PC game, assuming it is a proper game and not one of those online downloadable things.

[vasudeva]

Originally Posted by nipcarlover

I don't know the prices of all of these, but if this is the max your budget can take, I would suggest going a little lower in the CPU and get a dedicated GPU. A GPU improves things to no end especially with the animation full Windows 8. Also, you mentioned that your soon will play games on it. A GPU is absolutely necessary for any modern PC game, assuming it is a proper game and not one of those online downloadable things.

A GPU is definitely recommended and you may get a decent one for 5-7K (go to flipkart to check prices) As to CPU, you have the right idea of a i5-3xxx series, but Intel's Haswell series of CPUs (4xxx series) are going to be released in early June and they will definitely be better than 3xxx series that you are planning now. They require less power than 3xxx series and have a better Integrated GPU. That does not substitute for a dedicated GPU but is definitely good enough if you do not have the cash for a GPU now. Of course, availability will be tight early on and you may not get one in India till July-Aug. If you are planning to purchase something in the next few days, then definitely i5-3xxx series+GPU. Or invest in a GPU somewhat later.

See this very recent news about pricing for Haswell:
http://www.extremetech.com/computing...-and-mid-range

[msdivy]

Originally Posted by r_devakumar

> I am planning to move from Laptop to Desktop for home usage as my son started playing games.
> I want to assemble a medium range PC (no high end games) and planning the following configuration.
> - i5 3450 and CPU cooling fan Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo
> - No dedicated video card for now

You can try AMD A10 series APU, which will match the CPU performance and give good graphics capability. A10-5800K is available for 8K.

[vasudeva]

Originally Posted by msdivy

You can try AMD A10 series APU, which will match the CPU performance and give good graphics capability. A10-5800K is available for 8K.

Can you give some supporting data for the opinion that A10-5800K will match i5-3450. As far I can gather from two sites:

1. Anandtech Bench
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/675?vs=702

AMD's CPU is left in the dust by i5-3470 (tested). i5-3450 is 3.1 Ghz while i5-3470 is 3.2 Ghz. So even i5-3450 should beat AMD

2. cpu benchmarks
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

In my personal opinion, AMD has a devoted following but sadly for us consumers, not much else going in the way of matching up to Intel in CPU. Read sometime back on Anandtech or Tom's that they found it increasingly difficult to recommend AMD over Intel except for budget compromised customers or in low end CPUs.

[msdivy]

Originally Posted by vasudeva

Can you give some supporting data for the opinion that A10-5800K will match i5-3450.

Well the OP is not planning to built the system with *fastest* CPU. There are many of factors that play in overall system performance. CPU performance is not the bottleneck. My CPU (i7) scores a full 7.9 in CPU Windows Experience Index. While my wife's APU (A8) scores 7.2. For my normal Windows usage, I haven't noticed any difference in performance. I think i5-3450 scores 7.5 & A10-5800K 7.3. So for Windows OS, what is the performance benefits of 7.5 CPU score over 7.3 CPU score?

I would recommend to save money on CPU & jack up other scores such as memory index, graphics index & disk index score, which will improve overall system performance.

[vasudeva]

I do not at all doubt your WEI. However, WEI rating should be taken with a huge helping of salt and a high/low score should not read as is. Do google on this.

On a personal note, as long as I had a mechanical hard disk as a boot disk, it stayed at 5.9. There was no change in score whether it was a conventional hard disk, a 5400 rpm disk, a laptop hard disk, or a high performance Caviar Black. The score refused to budge.
Further, is the scoring index static or dynamic. For example, On my old system (i7-920, win 7), I got a CPU score of 7.4 out of 7.9 since I went with win 7 in Feb 2010. Since then, many new and faster CPUs came, and one would think it should have come down on a relative basis to perhaps 7-7.1. But no, it always remained at 7.4 on cpu.

People have also complained that with the same hardware, if one has a Win 8 N version, WEI does not work and they get the error `Unable to run performance assessment error: cannot complete the requested assessment. the system does not have the neccessary multi-media support to run the requested assessment'.

Even win 7 N has this problem.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968211


On my new build (i7-3930K) I have Win8 which now perhaps rates till 9.9 (7.9 in win 7). I get a score of perhaps 8.1-8.5 (I am not sure about the exact score because I do not care about this score but it is definitely lower than 8.5). There are other CPUs which may get a higher, though I wonder how many other CPU is worthy of a score of 9.9. Even my old GTX560 gets a higher score. There are so many complaints about WEI on the web. If you get a good score, be happy. If you get a pathetic score, do not rely on that only to rush into a new purchase. FYI, there are tools that can increase your WEI without the expense of buying new hardware!!!

If you trust Tom's Hardware, they recently did a gaming comparison on sub-$200 CPUs and compared AMD and Intel:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...ance,3427.html

[msdivy]

My point is simple: i5 3450 costs around 11K & A10-5800K costs 8K. If someone is willing to settle for WEI CPU score of 7.3 over 7.5, then the additional 3K will fetch 4G RAM and a gaming mouse. Overall benefit is better graphics of A10.
Of course, if price is not a constraint, i5-3450 with add on graphics card is better option.

[r_devakumar]

Originally Posted by nipcarlover

I don't know the prices of all of these, but if this is the max your budget can take, I would suggest going a little lower in the CPU and get a dedicated GPU. A GPU improves things to no end especially with the animation full Windows 8. Also, you mentioned that your soon will play games on it. A GPU is absolutely necessary for any modern PC game, assuming it is a proper game and not one of those online downloadable things.

Originally Posted by mjumrani

The configuration you have mentioned is decent but I would advise you to get a GPU be it a low end one. It would assist in any sort of video encoding and decoding, especially during Hd movie playback.

To answer your questions,

1. Even a 450W PSU would be enough for the config, 550W would give you a bit of room for future upgrades. Corsair is by far the best PSU company I know, good choice.

2. APC 1100VA is actually a 660W UPS, which will more than suffice for 15 minutes. If you want more the. Go for APC 1KVA UPS which provided a longer backup and has better features like a information display, PC communication software, green energy saving. But the price is also higher by 2k IIRC.

Thank you. Since i was never into games (though i was with computers for the past 20+ years), the GPU part never came into my mind. Please let me know if you have any specific suggestions on the change.

I have one related question now. From a quick search i found GPUs consumes more power (say 250W). In that case do i need to increase the capacity of the PSU and UPS?

Originally Posted by vasudeva

A GPU is definitely recommended and you may get a decent one for 5-7K (go to flipkart to check prices) As to CPU, you have the right idea of a i5-3xxx series, but Intel's Haswell series of CPUs (4xxx series) are going to be released in early June and they will definitely be better than 3xxx series that you are planning now. They require less power than 3xxx series and have a better Integrated GPU. That does not substitute for a dedicated GPU but is definitely good enough if you do not have the cash for a GPU now. Of course, availability will be tight early on and you may not get one in India till July-Aug. If you are planning to purchase something in the next few days, then definitely i5-3xxx series+GPU. Or invest in a GPU somewhat later.

See this very recent news about pricing for Haswell:
http://www.extremetech.com/computing...-and-mid-range

Thanks for the detail. I am planning to do this by this month end or early next month, so will go with i5-3xxx + GPU

Originally Posted by msdivy

You can try AMD A10 series APU, which will match the CPU performance and give good graphics capability. A10-5800K is available for 8K.

Thanks, but as of now i am planning to stick with Intel (though i don't have any specific reason for not going to AMD.

[vasudeva]

Bear in mind that only CPU and GPU consume triple digit power load in watts. Other components should not add up to much on an individual per component basis. For a reasonable system config (such as yours), 550 W is adequate though it would make more sense to go for around 650-700 W. Always better to buy more of PSU now and keep in reserve than run out of PSU soon enough, junk the old PSU, and buy a new one. Plus, I think the lesser the load on your PSU, the more efficient it is in terms of power. The price diff in 550 W and 650-700W should not be much and if you are gaming, I would suggest somewhat higher PSU. That keeps you ahead of power load during gaming and enables you to add some more components later (eg RAM, hard disks etc).

I personally underinvested in PSU earlier (<500W) which caused problems later. Then I went to 700 W and now use 1000W CM PSU. Use this good guide/calculator for your PSU requirements. Remember to select somewhat more components (hard disks, RAM etc) than you presently plan to buy.

http://www.extreme.outervision.com/p...ulatorlite.jsp

550W seems adequate but go for >600W if you can afford the extra minor change.

Your UPS: I have a APC 1100VA UPS (same as yours) which barely gives me enough backup (1-2 mins). Yet I cannot buy a bigger UPS because of space constraints (need to spend >25K on a new study rack with more space to accomodate the bigger UPS). I use 1000W on a core i7-3930K, a GTX 560, 4 conventional hard disks, 1 SSD, 4 RAM sticks, one Corsair H80 cooler, and other smaller stuff. 800W would have been more than adequate but having underinvested earlier, I have somewhat compensated for that now.

[vasudeva]

Originally Posted by r_devakumar

- Seagate Barracuda 1 TB

Any particular reason to prefer the 1TB over the 2TB. I can see only the cost advantage of around 1K that 1TB (4.7-5K) has over the 2TB (around 5.7-6K). 2TB will be faster than 1TB (read reviews) and of course performance in Barracuda drives peaks at 3TB drives (8-8.7K). There is also a 4TB at Rs. 11-12K.

Another reason for 1TB over the 2TB could be that you consider even 1TB to too much for your requirements, but could not get the cheaper 500GB in the market. That is around 3K and so maybe you have been forced to pay 2K extra for a 1TB hard disk simply because the 500GB is out of stock.

If extra 1K is not a constraint and you can fill up 2TB, go for that drive.