How to Build a Computer – 002 – Choosing a CPU

Building a computer isn't as hard as people think. There are many benefits when building your own rig. By the end of this tutorial the YOU WILL feel comfortable to build your very own kick ass Computer!

Part 002, Choosing a CPU.
Central Processing Unit – The CPU or simply processor, is the component in a digital computer that interprets instructions and processes data…

[GOS_SAND-MAN]

27 digrees on idle, 61 on max load.. Runs Crisis like a dream.. currently playing mass effect 2

[t850]

Quad core is the way to go these days, due to small price differences between quad and duo.

[Reigen]

or you could buy a used ps3 take out the cpu and hawe one of the most poverfull pcs

[t850]

Even if you could, Cell would suck for general purpose tasks.

[jjesso1993]

if your thinking of getting new processor then you should wait a little bit amd are bringing a quad core with two disabled cores so you could unlock it to six core processor not very usefull yet but it just makes your rig future proof and its only going to be £120

yeah dont know where people getting information theres was guy in an another article saying the cells more powerfull than the i7 lol

[GOS_SAND-MAN]

on paper.. yes
but in reality.. no

Sony locked it down.. we cant take advantage of it for every day tasks... it was designed to process complex equations and render some hard core sh!t,,

PC: i7>Cell
Gaming: PC>PS3 only because it can utilize more ram and improved hardware (v.cards n ssd)

Cell is still crazyy good.. but we havnt seen its full potential

[evrfighter]

cell is destined to die a lousy death. Sony should have invested more into bringing it to the pc market with linux as its operating system. They sent the cell to die a very lousy death.

Horrible way to kill off a good piece of tech. All this bragging about purposefully making the cell hard to develop for to keep this current gen long was a stupid idiotic decision.

[Hotel_Moscow]

how is cell destined to die a lous death

2009 ''ibm said that only one CPU development cycle is being 'halted' which is the successor to the current PowerXCell-8i cpu. IBM have said they are planning to work on other CPU's in the Cell Processor 'family' and we would assume that by the time the Playstation 4 hits market that they could very well be involved on some level.''

in 2009 the worlds fastest computer that uses cell was dethrowned in power but its still one of the most energy efficient supercomputers

and it wasnt about making it hard to develop for to draw out the generation they made it that way so you dont have a bunch of crap games being thrown out their because the company just wanted to make a quick buck

[Nihilism]

are you really that retarded... the cell you refer to is NOT the same cell you have in your little black lunchbox, they make $8000 server based cell CPU's...yes, and $8000 cpu is better than a desktop cpu....no one will deny that, but the PS3's budget ass cell is not the same as a server based cell cpu, when ps3's are made into clusters they can get $#!+ happening, but this is not a console article so you may wish to crawl back to the open zone.

[Hotel_Moscow]

idiots im not talking about performance hes saying the cell project has been dropped by sony when it hasnt

[THESWAT]

how is this crap featured?

[Letros]

When building my new PC's my first priority is to make sure my socket selection is a wise one. You never want to pick a motherboard with a socket which will not be supported in the near future, and have to buy a bunch of new components a year later, rather you just want to be able to swap out your processor, only assuming you did not buy something cutting edge. If you do buy an expensive processor it should last you 2-3 years easily.

Right now, it may be beneficial to just wait for in Intel Sandy Bridge, as those chips will require an 1156 H2 socket(a new socket, so I've read). These should launch Q1 2011.

If waiting is not an option, it is always safe to go with an i7, socket 1366 LGA build, there will be more affordable Intel 6-core processors Q3 2010, which will ensure a long life of no upgrading.

AMD is another alternative who has been doing great things with their sockets. AM3 sockets will be compatible with their new 6-core series which launch at then end of this month, and from some preliminary benchs, the Phenom II X6 1090T is on par with the i7 930 in CPU synthetic tests. If you strictly want to play games, and want to get the biggest bang for buck, AMD is the way to go. The money you save on the CPU/Mobo/Ram will buy you one hell of a GPU.

Bottom line is, do some research, choose wisely, and make sure you are NEVER CPU bound.

[Nihilism]

If I was buying a cpu right now the i5-750 is the best value for money, insane overclocker and cheap as hell motherboards for it are as cheap as $90, it can easily be clocked to 4ghz, you can get a 1.5TB ( 1500gig ) HDD for about $110 ( mine is a Seagate ), as for the gpu, you can't beat a 5850 on price/performance.

Antec 300 case is cheap and has all the features of a full tower minus the removable motherboard tray.

Gotta be a corsair power supply, I've tried a few others and corsair is by far the best ( my last antec one killed my GPU ), they have a 7 year warranty on all their PSUs.

OCZ is an amazing RAM brand and they are cheaper than corsair but they have a lifetime warranty :D.

I current monitor is Acer, my last was LG, I can honestly say that the acer is every bit as good as the LG one, and much cheaper, the default colours etc suck though, so just fiddle with the settings, you can build a beast of a PC on the cheap these days, F what you heard.

[peowpeow]

Just a quick question..

Got:
i7-920 stock 2.66ghz
6 gigs 1333mhz
500 gig hd
9500gt
generic 500w

I was looking at getting a hx-750..and 5770 (crossfire in the future)

Are they good, price / performance wise =]

[champ21]

I got the same cpu as yours its OC'd to 3.5ghz

As for the gpu 5770 in crossfire will net you performance that might be greater then the 5870. Which is a bargain. 5770 crossfire will cost you 300usd. 5870 costs 400usd.

take a look at this benchmark 5770 crossfire vs 5850

http://www.tweaktown.com/re...

the 5770 crossfire wins by a large margin and probably will beat the 5870 as well.

[Nihilism]

Well you COULD get a 5770 and X-fire later but any there are problems inherent in dual card setups like game that don't have x-fire profiles ( aka it only uses one card ) and input lag problems etc, the 5770 is still amazing in price/performance, and is about as good as a 4890 in dx10 games etc, but if you have the money you'd do better getting a single 5850 for now and then postpone getting a second card for longer.

500watt is often enough power but a generic power supply can be a big risk for the rest of you're components

* You NEED to overclock your cpu as well, even with the stock cooler and with stock volts you should be able to get 3.4-3.8ghz, there is no risk when you don't up the volts, and at those speeds, the stock cpu fan is easily enough.

[peowpeow]

Just searched hx-750, seems like an excellent choice as corsair always is. I've decided on 5770 now, as I can't wait long enough for a 5850 :P..hopefully it'll handle games well enough at 1080p (med-high, no AA).

Oh and that talk about 5770 cf performing similar or even better than a 5870 in some games? That is great news!

[champ21]

Sinle 5770 should hold up very well for most games.

As for crossfire, as dchalfont said game there may be games where crossfire is not supported. However from personal experience i own a 5970 (which crossfire as well), i would say 90% games make good use of crossfire.

Hence in most games you can expect 5770 crossfire to give you very good performance around the levels of the 5870, which is really good for the money and yea you could save your money for now go for a single GPU upgrade later when you have the $$.

[iamgoatman]

I built a new PC last year on a budget, and went with an Intel E8400 dual core, it was a toss up between that or a Q6600, the quad was still £150 at the time, which was £40 more expensive than the dual. I went with the higherclocked dual as I probably wouldn't make use of the quads cores.

Current my CPU is sitting at 3.83Ghz, and if it wasn't for my overclocking unfriendly mobo I could reach 4.1Ghz with ease. Unless a lot of games suddenly start using quads, I'm alright for atleast another year and a half.

If I had the money a year ago I would have liked to go for an i7, so I wouldn't have to upgrade my processor for some time, but I was on a budget.