New PC Advice - Not sure where to start.

[[TC]»Elmo«]

(2012-08-12 17:13)Kenwood Wrote:  Yes, but I've heard that Ivy runs a lot hotter. I'm not sure if it's true, but I wouldn't be surprised considering it's a die shrink.

Ivy is more power efficient so generates less heat, however the die shrink has made it less efficient at dissipating the heat, so overall it runs hotter.

(2012-08-12 17:13)Kenwood Wrote:  So far I like XFX mostly because I've had a good experience and my GT 240 has a double lifetime warranty from them, which I assume would be with their new Radeon lineup.

My XFX HD4890 has been going strong for over 3 years now with no problems. TBH, I've personally never had any graphics card failures, but I have a mate that had an nVidia die (7000 series I think). Closest thing to a Radeon problem I've come in contact with was a X1950pro that had a slightly dodgy bearing after a few years of being mounted upside down (Dell BTX case). Most fans aren't designed to run that way up, so it's a common issue. We let it run the right way up in my PC for a few hours and it's been fine ever since (2 years and counting).

(2012-08-12 17:13)Kenwood Wrote:  Currently I'm using WLMM (eww) until I can acquire better software. What's GPGPU?

GPGPU means General Purpose GPU, where the GPU is used for processing other than displaying to screen. GPUs are much better than CPUs at certain general processing tasks - particularly things that can be done in massive parallel (100s of threads) - video renderers and compression are starting to use it more, some more than halving the processing time when using CPU+GPU. You may have heard of the CUDA (nVidia) or OpenCL (AMD/Open Source) implementations.

(2012-08-12 17:13)Kenwood Wrote:  I used to use Bandicam to record LFS, but the file size was no different than with FRAPS. So when my C: drive partition gets full, I wait 20 years for a couple hundred GB of video to mosey its way to my other partition. I now use Game Booster to record, and I get way smaller video files (from 30GB per video to 500MB, both about 30min long), so I wouldn't be file shuffling as often.

You should probably use the other partition for recordings anyway - especially if you get an SSD, which won't be big enough.
If you use Fraps/Bandicam again, it would be a good idea to compress the videos with 3rd party software, which will save a huge amount of space. Should also be possible to make the Game Booster files somewhat smaller - 1GB/min seems huge even for HD video. Blu-ray is something like 120MB/min.
You get such huge files because the recording software does very little compression for performance reasons. It can be compressed much more after recording when you have the time to do the processing.

(2012-08-12 17:13)Kenwood Wrote:  ...I think I would rather go with 12GB (3x4GB)...

Don't get an odd number of memory modules, you won't get Dual Channel if you do, which will half the memory speed. Only 1st generation i7 processors wanted Triple channel (multiple of 3 modules). You'll want 2x8GB (16GB), 2x4GB (8GB) or 2x4GB & 2x2GB (12GB).

(2012-08-12 17:13)Kenwood Wrote:  ...I was going with the 8120 instead for $25 less

Get the 8150 if you can afford it - it's 16% faster for 16% more money.

(2012-08-12 17:13)Kenwood Wrote:  For a graphics card, any specific recommendations?

I haven't got any specific recommendations atm.


You can probably get some cheaper memory - I don't remember it being that expensive in the US. You could also probably save some money by getting a cheaper, but still good quality, case.
I'll have a look around newegg later.