Is this a good motherboard ??

[perrinoia]

No, you won't need a mounting bracket. The case has a few internal 2.5" drive bays.
You only have one drive, so you don't need 3 sata cables.
$1.33 - https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/ ... 05777.html

[KILROY]

Damn E...I just gave away an ATX full tower with power supply, CD-RW burner, and multi-usb 3.0 plugs in the front and back. With a 27-inch CRT monitor. Wish I knew you needed it, you could of had it. Sorry bro. You might want to check again on that 1TB SSD, I'm seeing a bunch of listings for some just under the $110 range. Not familiar with the name brands though, so not sure how good they are.

As for my last post, sorry for the length...I thought you were building a laptop, not a tower, but hopefully it will help out someone.

As for the OS key...I have mixed feelings about these. I've never tried one myself, but thought about it. I've seen many relay they are not legit and a scam, and even paypal and ebay aren't refunding the funds spent on these now, but not seeing ebay remove all the listings after finding out the facts.

I also have seen where these are legit, due to Microsoft giving companies that make and sell computers a key generator, so they can load it up on as many computers as possible to sell to the consumer's, but these may not have a licenses, in which if something went wrong, the person owning the computer couldn't fix it themselves. Instead they would have to return to the store they purchased it from for the troubleshooting repair. I know, it sucks, but it's how these companies stay in business.

It's a 50/50 chance your taking with the listings on ebay. You could lose out the little bit you lost, and if paid via paypal, they might or might not refund your monies, same with ebay. The only thing you would get out of it, is report the listing in the hopes ebay removes them (Seeing the Better Business Bureau get lot's of complaints now on ebay and paypal). The other, is it's legit, and you get the OS, but it might not come with the license, or it does, but the license was already used, and it won't help you with future issue's, or...it's all legit, and your good to go. This is something you'll have to take a risk on, but if you do, I suggest reading up on all the reviews on the person who made the listing to see what had happen to other's who made purchases from the poster.

It's a shame, I don't have ways to seek out scammers like these, and put them in there place.

Perr....some really nice posts on equipment pricing and building, and kudos to you my brother!

[perrinoia]

Great points. I just checked the seller's ratings on ebay. 123 reviews, 100% 5 stars. 1 reviewer gave a neutral review.
The 1 neutral review says, "I tried to contact the seller and it will not allow me to."

I'm definitely thinking it's worth $2. LOL

[perrinoia]

I just decided to pick out the best possible parts to go with the full sized ATX mobo you bought without concern for budget... Here's what I came up with:

$44.99 - Fractal Design Focus G White ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
$49.99 - Rosewill Hive Series 650W Modular Gaming Power Supply, 80 PLUS Bronze Certified, Single +12V Rail, Intel 4th Gen CPU ...
$97.99 - Ballistix Sport LT 16GB 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 3000 (PC4 24000) Desktop Memory Model BLS16G4D30BESB
$69.99 - Cooler Master MasterLiquid Lite ML240L RGB AIO CPU Liquid Cooler, Sleeved FEP Tubing, Dual 120mm RGB Air Balance MF, RGB ...
$219.99 - Intel 660p Series M.2 2280 2TB PCI-Express 3.0 x4 3D NAND Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) SSDPEKNW020T8X1
$336.68 - Intel OEM Core i7-8700 Coffee Lake 6-Core 3.2 GHz (4.6 GHz Turbo) LGA 1151 (300 Series) 65W CM8068403358316 Desktop ...
$399.00 - Refurbished: EVGA GeForce GTX 690 DirectX 12 (feature level 11_0) 04G-P4-2690-KR 4GB 512-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI ...

7 Item(s) in your shopping cart: $1,218.63

That's not far off from what you spent, and if I'm being honest, this computer would crush yours...
Oh, and this case has 2x 5.25" external drive bays, which means I could put 2 bluray burners in it!

[KILROY]

I just looked at a bunch of vid's on these keys, and for the bunch I saw, ALL, are saying these are legit. You might have to pay an under a dollar fee due to it might be from another country and there is an exchange rate, but these seem legit, and some have shown to have Windows 10 for over 3 yrs. with no issues. A few said the key was from Window's 7 that was a conversion to Window's 10, but still worked.

I say...GO FOR IT!

EDIT: Sorry, forgot to mention all the vid's are on You Tube.

[jINKS{OZ}]

i was told much games out for buying right now dont support 6 core if im right perrinoia. Thts why i got a 4 core.
Something like it stretches its speed between each core instead of like the 4 cores dont. Is tht what u have perrinoia a 6 core...livin a life of luxury

[vistalize]

Perri... your the one that's been helping me build this why would you even say anything about "crushing" my comp?..... this is the first time I have ever done this shit.... I promise u once I learn more about what I'm doing I will be able to "crush" the same comp I have with the budget I'm workin with. All that be said what am I looking at

[vistalize]

The motherboard came with 2 SATA cables the top 2 things on the picture they are connectors to something one says 25 HB SLI Bridge the other has ground reset hdd led Pled

Am I missing anything?

[vistalize]

Hell I will probably build the beast your talking about with the other mobo in a few months we will see how business picks up

[perrinoia]

The SLI bridge is what you would use to connect 2 video cards if you bought a pair and had 2 slots to install them. Obviously you don't, so you can sell that on craigslist or ebay if you want, or hold onto it and buy 2 video cards for the full sized ATX build.

OK, I just examined your photos... I see you put your ram sticks in slots 2 and 4. Is that where the mobo user manual says to put them?
Also, what's the part in the plastic bag left of the SLI bridge in the second photo?
You shouldn't lay the mobo (or any part, for that matter) on the carpet, as carpets build up and discharge static electricity all the time.
Here's a video demonstration:


Lastly, I think your gonna have a hard time putting a fully assembled computer inside the case. Install the CPU and RAM into the mobo before installing the mobo into the case, but the tall stuff like the CPU cooler, video card, or anything connected via cable should be connected after the mobo is mounted in the case.

Oh, and when you installed the CPU cooler, did you peel off the sticker first, or apply thermal paste if there was no sticker? If so, don't take the CPU cooler off now, unless you plan to clean off all of the thermal paste and reapply it before reinstalling the cooler.

PS: The reason the full sized ATX build would be better than the microATX build is because you spent too much on less important parts and not enough on the important parts. For instance, the first mobo, RAM, and SSD were purchased without or despite my advice. Then you spent a ton on the wrong case (my bad). I think you got a good deal on the expensive parts though (CPU and GPU), but if you had saved money on the less important parts, you could have spent more on the important parts, or simply saved the difference.

I posted the full sized ATX build so you could reference it if you decide to build a 2nd PC instead of selling the old mobo as is, but keep in mind that most of the parts were on sale when I selected them, and different parts might be on sale when business picks up enough to blow another wad.

In the future, always pick out parts in this order:
1) CPU (This should be the most expensive part, except for maybe the GPU), I spend 1/3rd of the total budget on the CPU.
2) mobo (make sure it's compatible with the CPU, and has all of the features you want).
3) RAM
4) SSD
5) case
6) PSU
7) GPU (last because most mobo's have integrated graphics, so the GPU isn't required to set up the computer, it's just required for bad ass video games) I spend 1/3 of the total budget on the GPU, and 1/3 on everything in between.

Also, keep in mind that when it comes to GPUs, the interface speed is more important than the memory capacity. A 256-bit 1GB video card is equivalent to a 128-bit 2GB card.

You'll notice that Radeon is trying to capitalize on that fact by manufacturing cards up to 4096-bit while GeForce cards only go up to 768-bit. If that was the only factor, then the best Radeon card would be more than 5 times better than the best GeForce card, but it's not. Radeon cheated or cut corners to get those numbers, and it's evident during benchmark tests.

But the best advice I can give you is to buy everything all at once. My first build was spread out. One part per pay check, all summer long. I assembled everything when I went back to school. Since I didn't do it all at once, I didn't do a good job of verifying compatibility, and I spent the maximum on shipping and handling each week. When you make one big purchase, they usually wave shipping and handling on everything. Also, I lost some parts and had to re-order them. Learn from my mistakes. I make a lot of them.

i was told much games out for buying right now dont support 6 core if im right perrinoia. Thts why i got a 4 core.
Something like it stretches its speed between each core instead of like the 4 cores dont. Is tht what u have perrinoia a 6 core...livin a life of luxury

Nope. I built my computer in 2013, when 6 cores were way out of my price range.

Here's my gaming rig, which my sister pretty much strictly uses for netflix since there's no room for it on my boat.

Intel Core i7-3770S Ivy Bridge Quad-Core 3.1GHz (3.9GHz Turbo) LGA 1155 65W BX80637I73770S Desktop Processor Intel HD ...
Microsoft Windows 8.1 - Full Version (32 & 64-bit)
Crucial Ballistix Sport 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Desktop Memory Model ...
Refurbished: WD RE3 WD1002FBYS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive (Certified by Dell) Bare ...
GIGABYTE GA-H77N-WIFI LGA 1155 Intel H77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Mini ITX Intel Motherboard
Refurbished: Manufacturer Recertified OCZ Agility 3 2.5" 120GB SATA III MLC External Solid State Drive (SSD) ...
KINGWIN ABT-650MM 650W ATX 12V v2.2/ BTX SLI Ready CrossFire Ready Power Supply
BitFenix Prodigy Midnight Black / Black Steel / Plastic Mini-ITX Tower Computer Case
Refurbished: EVGA SSC GeForce GTX 650 Ti DirectX 11 02G-P4-3653-RX 2GB 128-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready ...
ORDER DATE:11/4/2013
Order Total: $985.24

I was bragging about my purchases before they arrived and someone pointed out that I should have bought a 256 bit card, so I did.

Refurbished: EVGA FTW Signature2 GeForce GTX 670 DirectX 11 02G-P4-3677-RX 2GB 256-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP ...[url]
ORDER DATE: 11/4/2013
Order Total: $249.99

While assembling the computer, I realized my power supply didn't have enough wires to power all of my fans... There were lots of fans in this build. Still a remarkably quiet computer, though.

[url=https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812311002]Evercool EC-DF002 11.81" Supports 3 PWM Fans From Single PWM Header
ORDER DATE: 11/8/2013
Order Total: $6.88

I shipped the 128-bit video card to crow when his video card bit the dust.

Now, I know this is gonna sound crazy, but this is what I was using for a monitor when I was playing games on my custom gaming rig:
ASUS All-in-One PC ET2400XVT-B063E Intel Core i7 740QM (1.73 GHz) 8 GB DDR3 1 TB HDD NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460M Windows 7 ...
Office 2010 Home and Student Product Key Card (no media)
ORDER DATE: 4/6/2012
Order Total: $1,099.98

I bought it for 2 reasons: My old laptop died and I wanted to play BF3, but the mobile graphics card was barely fast enough, thus I found the game unplayable until I built the custom PC. Once I was able to play it, I didn't even like it. Total waste of money. BF2 was better.

Now I'm playing Tribes on a Microsoft Surface Pro 2, which I bought on Craigslist for $275 from some hipster college student who wanted to cash in his Christmas gift and buy a mac book.

I want to upgrade to a Surface Book 2 with 1TB SSD and a dedicated video card, but I need a little more cushion in my finances before I blow that sized wad, too.