Posts by Carol Brooks

Solid case, comes with fans built-in, 250-$117...

Thanks everyone, catch ya later... Gonna lock this thread... I finally made up my mind:
- power supply for about $100 - Fortron Hexa Plus, 400W, 80+.....
- hard drive for about $133 - WD Caviar Blue, 1TB, 7200rpm, 64MB.....

Basically $33 cheaper, uh, if it's actually tough and high quality enough (is it though?) - then I'm grabbing it... And if I end up waiting 5 years (thinking about that warranty) before getting a new rig, then screw it all...

How big of a deal is the difference between 7200rpm and 5400rpm drives?

As for the power supply, could I get away with something even cheaper or lower wattage? It doesn't even need to be quiet—honestly, anything will sound silent compared to that buzzing/dying one I had before... 😁

I settled on using Micro Center for this build, so if you feel like browsing, here are my top picks from their site: www.microcenter.com

So I'm looking to grab a new PSU and an HDD...

My current setup:
motherboard - ASUS B85M Pro3
CPU - i3 4170
GPU - EVGA RX 560 2GB OC
RAM - 8GB DDR3
old PSU - PowerEdge Core edition 450 w
old HDD - Seagate BarraCuda 500GB

The rest of my parts are pretty recent, but the power supply and hard drive have been running for almost 6 years now... Just want some peace of mind and better data security. Plus, my current PSU has started making this weird crackling noise (probably just a factory defect), so I'm looking for something quiet and reliable to make me happy, haha...

I don't plan on upgrading anything later, I just need stuff that works well with what I already have... I'd like a 1TB drive... Keeping it budget-friendly is key, but nothing total junk, if you know what I mean...

Any shop is fine... Thanks...

Thanks, I dig it! Just doing a little digging now and I think that might be the one... How risky would it be to just grab a cheaper graphics card instead?

By the way, my PSU is an EVGA 450W, is that enough?...

Madden NFL 18 just dropped, so I need a new GPU, any suggestions?... Honestly, I'm looking for something cheap, not trying to build a beast here, just enough to run Madden NFL 18 smoothly at 1080p and hit at least 60fps...

Current specs:
- motherboard - ASUS B85M-K
- CPU - i3-4170 3.7GHz
- GPU - (integrated)
- RAM - 8GB

Since Madden NFL 18 supports Vulkan, if it's true that Vulkan shifts more of the load to the graphics card and takes some pressure off my weak little processor, should I be looking specifically for that? Aiming for Vulkan-ready graphics... Either way, it should work, my system requirements are already pushing it, but people play stuff on way worse rigs than this... Anyway, let me know what you think, I'm all ears... :

Looks like this monitor doubles as a TV too. Might actually just be a TV for my aunt since she doesn't have a PC, haha. Quick question though—is the tuner MPEG2 or MPEG4...? Will I need MPEG4 once we switch everything over to the USA standard...? Just some random questions from a newbie...