HR Forums

Finally got some extra cash and gift cards for Christmas so I'm going to take the opportunity to replace my 6 year old P4 setup. Here is what I have saved and ready to purchase, largely based off the budget gaming guide here.

CPU: AMD Phenom II x4 955 BE
Motherboard: ASRock 870 EXTREME3
GPU: Gigabyte Radeon HD 6850
HDD: Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB
PSU: SeaSonic M12II 620 Bronze Modular
Heatsink/Fan: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus
Case: CM 690II Advanced or Lancool PC-K62
RAM: G.Skill 4GB (Already purchased)
DVD/CD: Asus 24x (Already purchased)

Now for some questions...

-I have never used ASRock before for myself or builds for friends/family, for the features you get with that board it almost seems too good to be true. Is this a good guy?

-I can't decide on which case to get, I like both really and with it only being a $10 price difference once you add in shipping it's a hard choice to make. Push me one way or the other, or to a totally different case.

-Is that PSU adequate for what I'm building here? From everything I have read it seems good to go, and I've always wanted a modular PSU.

-Should I be picking up any extra wires, extenders etc?

Realistically I'm hoping to get 3+ years out of this setup largely unchanged, though I will probably add another set of the G.Skill RAM to fill the remaining slots just for the hell of it. I mostly play WoW right now and will be picking up Black Ops soon, and plan on getting into Diablo 3 next year when it's released. Outside of gaming I'll be doing everyday task. Sorry for the long post I just get nervous about making a large purchase like this. Thanks for all the great info on the site.

I'd get a few extra SATA cables... I found the 90 degree ones that were included with my drives were useless in some of the configurations on my MoBo and/or drive slots...

-I have never used ASRock before for myself or builds for friends/family, for the features you get with that board it almost seems too good to be true. Is this a good guy?
Like I tell everyone else, I wouldn't recommend ASRock in some builds if I didn't believe that they offered a good bang for the buck, while being just as reliable overall, compared to other brands.

-I can't decide on which case to get, I like both really and with it only being a $10 price difference once you add in shipping it's a hard choice to make. Push me one way or the other, or to a totally different case.
Both are great choices really. If I had to pick between the two and I actually had to, back in March 2010, I would and did go with the LIAN-LI for a few reasons:

1. Crasftsmanship is top-notch on LIAN-LI cases
   
2. Two speedrails are included for cable management
   
3. 4 quiet fans compared to 3 on the CM
   
4. You get a side window
   

-Is that PSU adequate for what I'm building here? From everything I have read it seems good to go, and I've always wanted a modular PSU
Yes, that PSU will do the job.

-Should I be picking up any extra wires, extenders etc?
Nope, every cable that you'll need is included with the parts themselves.

(12-29-2010, 09:06 AM)MathieuB Wrote: [ -> ]-I have never used ASRock before for myself or builds for friends/family, for the features you get with that board it almost seems too good to be true. Is this a good guy?
Like I tell everyone else, I wouldn't recommend ASRock in some builds if I didn't believe that they offered a good bang for the buck, while being just as reliable overall, compared to other brands.

-I can't decide on which case to get, I like both really and with it only being a $10 price difference once you add in shipping it's a hard choice to make. Push me one way or the other, or to a totally different case.
Both are great choices really. If I had to pick between the two and I actually had to, back in March 2010, I would and did go with the LIAN-LI for a few reasons:

1. Crasftsmanship is top-notch on LIAN-LI cases
   
2. Two speedrails are included for cable management
   
3. 4 quiet fans compared to 3 on the CM
   
4. You get a side window
   

-Is that PSU adequate for what I'm building here? From everything I have read it seems good to go, and I've always wanted a modular PSU
Yes, that PSU will do the job.

-Should I be picking up any extra wires, extenders etc?
Nope, every cable that you'll need is included with the parts themselves.

I'll be placing my order tonight, thanks for all the input. I'll post some pictures when it's done.

I finally got around to finishing my build Friday night, after a few hours everything fired right up (sigh of relief). I only ran into a few problems along the way, first was an issue getting the standoffs to screw into the case but that was taken care of. The second biggest pain was trying to install the Hyper 212+, great cooler but damn was it a bear, luckily I had my wife to give me a hand.

I do have a couple questions though. First wire management was a bit tougher than I thought it would be. I had to connect a total of 4 case fans and it's a mess with all the molex connectors stuffed behind the motherboard tray. Add on top of that I wasn't able to connect any of them to the fan headers on the motherboard so I can't monitor them. Would something like this work, or would this work better?

Second I noticed every time I boot up I'm still getting a single beep when the motherboard post. The board has the nice Dr. Debug indicator but it cycles through the numbers too fast to see what's going on. Is there another way to find out what's going on? or am I worrying about nothing.

Regarding the fans: The first option would allow you to monitor three fans. The second would only allow you to monitor one fan. So the first option would be the best one. Another alternative would be a fan controller, with a LCD, that would monitor your fans RPMs, as well as allow you to control them easily. Although that's more expensive.

A single beep is what you want, it simply means that your PC booted successfully