Building A New Computer Here · 6:15pm Nov 22nd, 2014
I realized it was time to replace my Win XP Pro 32-bit computer with a new one. It keeps hanging up, freezing, CTD whenever I play Skyrim. So I decided to take the plunge and do something I swore I would never do, migrate from XP to Win 7 64-bit.
I went here http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/ and then went here http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/Black_Friday_Z97-I7/ and then made these adjustments to it :
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*BASE_PRICE:[+1319]
BLUETOOTH:None
CABLE:None
CARE1:Ultra Enhanced Packaging Solution - Protect Your Dream System During Transit [+19]
CARE2:Professional Wiring for All WIRING Inside The System Chassis - Minimize Cable Exposure, Maximize Airflow in Your System [+19]
CAS:AZZA GT1 Full Tower Gaming Case w/ Easy Swap HDD2.5 & 3.5, support 480mm Radiator & front USB 3.0 [+80]
CASUPGRADE:None
CD:24X Double Layer Dual Format DVD+-R/+-RW + CD-R/RW Drive [-46] (BLACK COLOR)
CD2:24X Double Layer Dual Format DVD+-R/+-RW + CD-R/RW Drive [+17] (BLACK COLOR)
COOLANT:Standard Coolant
CPU:Intel® Core™ i7-4790K 4.0 GHz 8MB Intel Smart Cache LGA1150 (All Venom OC Certified)
CS_FAN:Maximum Corsair AIR Series AF120 Performance Edition 120MM High Airflow Case Fan [+39] (Maximum Corsair AIR Series AF120 Performance Edition 120MM High Airflow Case Fan)
DOCKINGSTATION:None
ENGRAVING:None
ENGRAVING_MSG:
FA_HDD:None
FAN:V3 Voltair High Performance Thermoelectric CPU Cooler with TEC Technology [+27]
FLASHMEDIA:None
FREEBIE_MB:None
FREEBIE_VC1:NVIDIA Pick Your Path Coupon (The Crew, Far Cry 4 and Assassin's Creed Unity) [+0]
GLASSES:None
HDD:128GB Apotop SSD + 1TB SATA III Hard Drive Combo (Combo Drive)
HDD2:128GB Apotop SSD + 1TB SATA III Hard Drive Combo [+113] (Combo Drive)
<<Should I get these? What is a combo drive? Would I be better off with the
1TB Western Digital Caviar Blue SATA-III 6.0Gb/s 7200 RPM HDD (Single Drive) [-28]
1TB Western Digital Caviar Black SATA-III 6.0Gb/s 7200 RPM HDD (Single Drive) [-9]
listed above? What is the difference between the blue and the black, besides the price? If I wind up choosing one of the above, I will choose it for both the primary and secondary drive.>>
HEADSET:None
IUSB:Internal USB 3.0 4-Port Hub [+25]
KEYBOARD:AZZA Delta Gaming Keyboard w/ Anti-Ghosting & red backlight
MB_SRT:None
MEMORY:8GB (4GBx2) DDR3/2133MHz Dual Channel Memory (Corsair Vengeance [+43])
<<Would I be better off with the
16GB (8GBx2) DDR3/2133MHz Dual Channel Memory (Corsair Vengeance) [+129]
instead? I plan on using Windows 7 Professional 64-bit Edition as my OS and I heard if the HD is too large or the RAM is too big it will not work.>>
MONITOR:None
MOPAD:None
MOTHERBOARD:ASRock Z97 Extreme4 ATX w/ Intel GbLAN, 3 PCIe x16, 3 PCIe x1, 1 x M.2, 8x SATA 6Gb/s (All Venom OC Certified) [+62]
MOUSE:AZZA Alpha 1600 DPI Gaming Mouse
NETWORK:Onboard Gigabit LAN Network
<<Should I stick with this or use the
Intel Pro Gigabit 10/100/1000 Network Card [+34]
instead? I don't even know what these things are. So I have no idea about it.>>
NFC:None
NOISEREDUCE1:Sound Absorbing Foam on Side, Top And Bottom panels [+29]
NOISEREDUCE2:Power Supply Gasket [+5]
NOISEREDUCE3:Anti-Vibration Fan Mounts [+9]
OS:Microsoft® Windows 7 Professional [+31] (64-bit Edition)
OVERCLOCK:No Overclocking
<<Should I get one of the other options listed?
Pro OC (Performance Overclock 10% or more) [+19]
Extreme OC (Extreme Overclock 15% or more) [+39]
? I eard that overclocking can damage your computer. I've also heard it plays games great.>>
POWERSUPPLY:1,000 Watts - Corsair RM1000 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Fully Modular Ultra Quiet Power Supply [+101]
RUSH:Standard processing time: ship within 5 to 10 Business Days
SERVICE:STANDARD WARRANTY: 3-YEAR [3 Year Labor, 1 Year Parts] LIMITED WARRANTY PLUS LIFE-TIME TECHNICAL SUPPORT
SOUND:HIGH DEFINITION ON-BOARD 7.1 AUDIO
<<Should I stick with this? I once had a computer long ago and when I replaced it's on-board with a card, the sound was worse. I don't know if the choices on this site are any better.>>
SPEAKERS:None
TEMP:None
TUNING:None
TVRC:None
USBFLASH:None
USBHD:None
USBX:None
VIDEO:EVGA Superclocked NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 4GB GDDR5 PCIe 3.0 x16 Video Card (Maxwell) [+328] (Single Card)
WNC:None
_PRICE:(+2220)
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First, who are you and how the heck did I wind up subscribed to you if there are no stories in your profile? That aside...
A combo drive is a hard drive that has both the spinning platters and some flash memory. The drive's firmware tries to figure out what the PC is accessing frequently and then copies it to the flash memory to speed up access to commonly used files such as parts of Windows.
(The alternative is to explicitly buy an SSD and a traditional hard drive and put Windows and common applications on the SSD and everything else on the traditional drive.)
WD Blue and WD Black are different product lines. Here's the comparison chart on their website.
Basically, Blue is "normal", Green is "energy-efficient, cool, and quiet", Black is "performance", Red is "for use in RAID arrays", and Purple is "for use in TiVo-like security camera systems". (WD Black drives also tend to have longer warranties than Blue)
As far as hard drives go, the two main pieces of advice I can give are:
1. Research them on sites like NewEgg. No company does enough quality control on their drives, so you want to find the model with the fewest people complaining that it died or ate their data.
2. If you're getting your second drive for backup purposes, make sure you get two different models to ensure that, if they do die, they're unlikely to do it at the same time. (If you get the same model, there's no way to ensure they're from different production runs. Ideally, get them from different manufacturers.)
Are you sure it's actually called the Delta? I can't find any "Delta" on the AZZA website's product list and, when I google it, I mostly see people complaining about defective units.
(I definitely do recommend mechanical key switches though, whatever keyboard you may wind up getting. Overclock.net has an excellent guide on their forums.)
See this MSDN chart. It's only the 32-bit or Home Basic editions that can't handle 16GiB of RAM and I can confirm that, before he switched to Linux, my brother had no problem with 16GiB in Win7 Pro.
(64-bit Win7 Home Premium is good up to 16GiB and 64-bit Win7 Pro is good up to 192GiB)
As for the hard drive, it's not the size, but the raw sector format. You want to make sure you get hard drives that either aren't Advanced Format or support 512e (512-byte emulation) mode. (It's the 4Kn (4K native) type that only work with Windows 8)
If your motherboard has onboard gigabit, then a separate gigabit card is one of those "if you need to ask, you don't need it" things.
Basically, overclocking is setting the parts to run faster than they were designed and tested for.
If you overclock without overvolting, reliability varies from unit to unit. If you overclock and overvolt, you increase the reliability but decrease the lifetime. (eg. My old black-cased 600MHz-version OpenPandora has push-button overclocking but can't get over 800MHz without freezing. If I also chose to overvolt, it'd go higher, but the manufacturer's predicted lifetime of the chip drops from 10 years to 5 years.)
I've never overclocked a desktop machine, so I can't tell you anything more than that.
Generally speaking, onboard audio is fine for output... and, if you do have noise problems, that motherboard has an S/PDIF digital optical output you can hook up to a stereo amplifier or suitably advanced PC surround system to bypass the DAC on the motherboard. (See "TOSLINK". It's that square fiber-optic port that the PlayStation 2 also had.)
The one thing I'd suggest is buying one of these $3 Chinese USB Audio devices to plug your microphone into. I've no clue why, but they seem to always have less noise than the motherboard's onboard microphone jack.
(Heck, buy a handful (Use the BULKRATE code when buying 5 or more) and give them to your friends whenever you want better audio quality. I'd also suggest trying them in combination with the ~$2 microphones at your local dollar store. Nothing beats a cheap-yet-Skype-certified microphone for value, but the dollar store ones beat whatever your friends have surprisingly often.)
The key to making them work is the two "set as default for ____" options in the input section of the Windows sound control panel.
Also, you might want to ask for a more experienced opinion somewhere like the Tom's Hardware forums. Other people do.