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Building a Black Friday Computer
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Chimel
Posted 11/24/2012 23:14 (#2715231 - in reply to #2710457)
Subject: Re: Building a Black Friday Computer


First, let me congrats you on choosing the home building option.
I can't repeat enough how fun and easy it is, as long as you own a Philips screwdriver, and also how reliable it will be for years if you stick to reliable manufacturers like you did.
Secondly, Black Friday is a bit overrated, at least for computer building: There are deals every week of the year, some sites specialize in them, so it's much better to spec your computer first, then see if you can snatch some components without sacrificing on quality or specs. Memory chips are a typical example, as competition between a dozen or two manufacturers is harsh, with each manufacturer having for instance half a dozen 4GB DDR3 1600 chip models to choose from.
Most of the times I bought one of these Black Friday deals, I have been disappointed. It's a great way to get spare components for debugging for cheap though.

Now, back to your computer build: The case should have front USB 3.0 to match your motherboard. That means there is only a few models to choose from, but that's good too, since having to browse a hundred models is a pain. The Corsair Carbide 200R is one of the roomiest mid-towers and not too bad looking either, it comes highly recommended by fellow builders.

As for the power supply, the wattage depends on whether you want the option to add a graphic card or more hard drives later without having to replace the PSU.
I recommend a Blu-ray player/CD-DVD burner since you have HDMI. You could have a TV acting as a first or second monitor.
As for storage, I recommend going for a small SSD for the operating system, and big hard drives for storage, but it depends on your needs.
I recommend a small SSD (128-256 GB) because a system image backup takes the whole size of the system drive, even the empty bits, so the smaller it is, the smaller size on the backup drive and the shortest time too. Although I must say I never had to restore a system image in the past 6 years, the Vista and Windows 7 restore points have always been enough in the few rare cases I needed them. 2 separate drives or sets of drives saved my ass quite a few times too, as you can set up a multiboot, install Windows 7 on one and Windows 8 on the other, for instance. If something goes wrong on one drive, you can always boot from the other.
An external backup drive is an absolute necessity too, RAID is not a backup solution. But if you go with 2 hard drives in RAID, you can temperate the need for an external drive by using Microsoft Skydrive or Google Drive free cloud mirroring options. That's 10 GB of free space for your important documents.

There are people much more competent than I who will give you the best recommendation based on your needs:
Go to http://www.hardocp.com/, it's primarily a site for overclockers, but the advice forum works for standard configurations too
Select "HardForum" in the top left
You"ll need to create an account at this stage
Select the "General Hardware" forum
Read some of the posts there to get a feeling of how to post
Copy the 10 numbered questions in the sticky post "Asking for Build Help?: ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS FIRST"
Click on "new thread" to create your own
Paste the numbered questions and answer each of them, preferably in a different color

I think the main counselor Danny is an AMD fan, he would know more about AMD than I do. My second rig was an AMD Athlon, but that's long ago.



Edited by Chimel 11/24/2012 23:17
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