Brian The Dog on 30/1/2011 at 21:57
USB 3 is a bit niche at the moment, it will become mainstream towards the end of this year. It's definitely worth getting if you can find a motherboard for $20 more with it in, but (a) you can always add them later if you need them via a PCI-E card, and (b) it's backwards compatible, so you'd only notice a performance difference if you bought a new shiny USB3 external hard drive in a year or two, it'd still work.
Renzatic on 30/1/2011 at 22:05
Quote Posted by Brian The Dog
USB 3.0...you can always add them later if you need them via a PCI-E card...
I dunno, man. I've always been a little weary of add-in cards. I've seen SATA cards, USB 2.0 cards, RAID cards, all flake out sooner rather than later. I say get the stuff on the board if you can, and only get the add-in as a last ditch effort.
Brian The Dog on 30/1/2011 at 22:29
E-SATA brackets are definitely a good idea, you can "add" eSATA support for a few dollars. Personally I've never had a plug-in card fail, but they definitely add to the complexity of the PC. So I'd go for onboard USB3 support if you can get it for a bit more. I'm just saying I don't view it as a "must-have" item for a motherboard. But that's just my opinion.
lost_soul on 31/1/2011 at 06:54
On the subject of PC stuff, I sure wish I had some of those crappy cheap non-amplified computer speakers. I use nice headphones 99.9% of the time and this big PC speaker set just sits here wasting energy. The only time I use the big speakers is at night on very low volume... lol
Renzatic on 31/1/2011 at 07:20
Quote Posted by Brian The Dog
I'm just saying I don't view it as a "must-have" item for a motherboard. But that's just my opinion.
It all depends on what he'll be using those USB ports for. If he's only planning on plugging a gamepad, a printer, and maybe a few other little miscellaneous things in there, then he doesn't desperately need USB 3.0 over 2. But really, there's no real reason not to get it, so he might as well seek it out now while the getting's good.
Quote Posted by lost_soul
On the subject of PC stuff, I sure wish I had some of those crappy cheap non-amplified computer speakers.
Man, I think I've got like 5 tons worth of cheap computer speakers squirreled away in a box somewhere. If I find em, I'll send them all to you COD. :P
Brian The Dog on 31/1/2011 at 08:04
Sure, they're definitely worth having. :thumb:
june gloom on 31/1/2011 at 18:49
Quote Posted by lost_soul
On the subject of PC stuff, I sure wish I had some of those crappy cheap non-amplified computer speakers. I use nice headphones 99.9% of the time and this big PC speaker set just sits here wasting energy. The only time I use the big speakers is at night on very low volume... lol
Man, if you're not using them, send them my way! My speaker set is getting
quite old.
Raymond Luxury Yacht on 1/2/2011 at 07:36
Okay, so I looked at both motherboards. Renzatic's was over $100 more. But since I am trying to future-proof this system, maybe even never get a new one again, I am not too concerned. However, it seems that it will only accept Intel processors (no big deal) and i5 was one of the ones I was looking at anyway. However, on the page listing the processors, there were way too many to know what to get. I was looking at the i5 2400 on Dell, so I looked that one up. There were three at least, but each one had a different price and different specs, which I have no idea how to translate. What's Sandy bridge? What are the numbers after with the wattage? Power used?
I plan to use this for gaming and web-surfing only. Perhaps a printer will hook up, but it's an older one. USB 3 might be good to have for future use, but I am still trying to figure out what I'd connect that would be useful The 500GB hard drive I saw is far more than I'll ever use (I have a half-full 80GB right now), so needing an external drive is hard to fathom, and I don't know enough about other hardware to know what to use it for.
As a reference, one of the cheapo prebuilts I saw on Newegg had a 480W power supply. Several reviews mentioned that it was too little and had to replace it. Is that accurate, or is it just so for those who need the extreme gamer cards so they can play with everything maxed? I don't want a $500 system if I have to spend $200 to get it up to grade. lost_souls's seems perfect for what I need and it was not much more, so I am still considering it, even though there's no OS and i can barely stomach handing over another hundred buck to you-know-who
Brian The Dog on 1/2/2011 at 12:22
The problem with PSU power ratings is that they're the power drawn from the mains, not the maximum available power available to your PC. Each PSU has an efficiency that degrades with time, and the better the components in the PSU, the better that efficiency (and the lower the aging effect). 480W will be cutting it a bit fine. As Ali_B says, don't skimp on the power supply
I would have thought a 600W PSU from a good company like Corsair, Coolermaster or OCZ would be fine. The two things that eat power in a PC are the CPU and the graphics card. You can check how much power they will need (
http://www.antec.outervision.com/) here. The one lost_soul posted should be fine. I entered in the spec he suggested, and it comes in at about 5-600W depending on electronics aging.
