Motherboards

[hgtonyvi]

Hello guys I'm starting to get the feel of building my own computer. Is this a good motherboard? Please fill free to post me some good ones. This is what I'm thinking of getting.    http://us.msi.com/product/mb/Z87_MPOWER_MAX.html#overview

[Bizman]

Yes, it's a good motherboard. The military grade components promise longevity, hopefully they also fulfil the promise. - It's also quite expensive. You shouldn't build anything below $1500 on that board.

For a little more moderately priced computer this would perform almost equally well and save you €100: http://www.msi.com/product/mb/Z87G45_GAMING.html. You might also want to know about other Z87 motherboards: http://www.ocaholic.ch/modules/smartsection/item.php?page=0&itemid=1007

As a rule of thumb don't pay for features you'll never use. There's often a family of motherboards of the same brand sharing the same basics, such as the Z87 chipset, the most expensive of which can cost way over double of the cheapest model. Yet their actual speed may be exactly the same. The price difference is based on extra features such as RAID, WiFi, a bunch of software etc. Buy what you need, not just something fancy. Good luck!

[hgtonyvi]

Thanks so much and also should I stay with 7200rpm or go with a 10000rpm hard drive?

[Bizman]

7200 is enough, but don't buy anything "green". There's huge differences in speed within the 7200 rpm disks, so do your homework. Again, if you want to build a $2000 rig, go for the faster. The most expensive compilation I've seen costs €10800: http://www.jimms.fi/tuote/JIMMS-LEGEN-KRAKENV2. So choose your budget and build the best within it.

[hgtonyvi]

Thanks bro. After doing so much homework my knowledge of building a comp increased from 2% to 95%. Btw bizman my in game ID is Rud3boi if u know me. I'm going to keep reading and eventually I will build this thing. I thank all of u guys so much to be posting information to me and keeping me updated.

[amulford]

I liked the MSI Mother boards myself.  I just got this one:

http://us.msi.com/product/mb/Z87GD65_GAMING.html#overview

For the rig I plan on building this weekend.

That one looks pretty good tho.  It looks like a good start to a nice rig.

[eagl]

I have had good luck with ASUS "pro" series motherboards.  The price/features balance seems about right with them in my opinion.

As for hard drives, for a system in the $1500 range you might as well go with an SSD for the boot drive.  Get a Samsung 840 EVO in 500GB or 1TB size for your boot drive and a secondary 7200 rpm drive for data, and use the properties menu option to move your "my documents" over to the 7200 rpm data drive.  I like western digital black drives for price and performance and, for me at least, reliability.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Asus has some great products but I've seen a lot of dirt thrown on Asus for lack of customer service. People have been having huge problems with RMAs and many swear they'll never buy another Asus product again.

I have never had to RMA an Asus product (and I have used a lot of them) so that won't stop me from continuing to buy them. Perhaps it will bite me in the hiney some day, perhaps not.

[1701E]

Asus has some great products but I've seen a lot of dirt thrown on Asus for lack of customer service. People have been having huge problems with RMAs and many swear they'll never buy another Asus product again.

I have never had to RMA an Asus product (and I have used a lot of them) so that won't stop me from continuing to buy them. Perhaps it will bite me in the hiney some day, perhaps not.

To be fair, that's almost every company ever, people just like to whine. Hell, I see constant hate for Logitech's Customer Support/RMA yet they continue to replace things for me even when they shouldn't without issue. 

[MrRiplEy[H]]

To be fair, that's almost every company ever, people just like to whine. Hell, I see constant hate for Logitech's Customer Support/RMA yet they continue to replace things for me even when they shouldn't without issue. 

These whines are from a forum that are on above average computing level so I take their complaints a bit more seriously than on general.

[Copprhed]

I use MSI almost exclusively, and have had great luck with them. I'd recommend a 120 Gb Corsair SSD(Sata6gig) for your OS and progtrams, and another standard drive( Iuse WD Black sata 6gig) for storage. My rig boots in 17 seconds flat.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

I use MSI almost exclusively, and have had great luck with them. I'd recommend a 120 Gb Corsair SSD(Sata6gig) for your OS and progtrams, and another standard drive( Iuse WD Black sata 6gig) for storage. My rig boots in 17 seconds flat.

120 gigs is way too little, it will get filled in a second. Unless you plan to install only the OS on the SSD you should get at least 256Gb. One example: My kids Steam folder is 140 Gb alone.

[eagl]

120 gigs is way too little, it will get filled in a second. Unless you plan to install only the OS on the SSD you should get at least 256Gb. One example: My kids Steam folder is 140 Gb alone.

+1

Unless you WANT to constantly fiddle with your computer just to make it work, or you don't actually use it for anything...

[Copprhed]

I have the 128, Win764, Adobe CS5, microsoft office, several games....still have 50 gigs.
I have another 3 terabytes for storage, all WD Black drives.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

I have the 128, Win764, Adobe CS5, microsoft office, several games....still have 50 gigs.
I have another 3 terabytes for storage, all WD Black drives.

I guess your games aren't very new titles then. BF4 takes around 10 gigabytes just by itself. So you have space for 5-6 BF4 size games on your ssd before it fills up. And you know what happens when the OS drive fills up don't you?