New PC build.

[Orphiuchus]

Ok, I mentioned it in a thread yesterday and people seemed kind of interested, I figured I would get everyone's take on my current system plans:


CPU:
i7 2600k
I got it for $150, so this is set. I hear the stock cooling does 4.4 ghz easily, so I'm sticking with it.

Motherboard: $150
MSI P67A-C43 (B3) (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130571)
I'm leaning towards this one because I don't intend to use crossfire or sli, so as far as I can tell I only need the 1 PCI-E slot.

Ram: $150
Undecided, leaning towards:
CORSAIR XMS 8GB (2 x 4GB) -DDR3 2000 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145325)
I'm not really sure what the performance return is on the faster ram, I've read that you get diminishing returns over ddr3 1600 but I can't find a recent article on the subject. I'm also not sure if there is any benefit to going over 8 GB, or where that line is. Advice here would be appreciated.

Video: $280
Sapphire Radeon HD 6950 2GB (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102914)

Case: $100
Cooler-master HAF 922 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119197&cm_re=HAF_922-_-11-119-197-_-Product)
I already have a Cosmos housing my older system, I may do a migration to a cheaper case for that one and put the new build in the old case, since its still top of the line.

Power Supply: $150
CORSAIR CMPSU-850TX 850W (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139009)
I'm open to recommendations on this as well.

SSD: $180
Intel X25-M SSDSA2MH080G2K5 2.5" 80GB (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167031)

Storage HD: $90
Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB 7200 RPM (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136284&cm_re=western_digital_caviar_black-_-22-136-284-_-Product)
I already have one of these for storage in my current system, I may just use it.

Monitor:
Probably buy locally, I'm thinking 23.6 inch but I'll see what they have.


Final price range: 800-1200.

I'll probably play with things a little more to get the price down, but this is what I'm looking at right now. Thoughts?

[birdofprey_2000]

That's pretty much the same kinda build i have in mind. I am waiting for the z67 chipset to be released and only going with the i5-2500k. I don't really need the hyperthreading on the i7 and the speed gains for "me" don't justify the extra 100 bucks. I think 4 cores running at 4.0ghz+ should do for me.

Looks like you will have a smoking system

[Meusli]

If you aint going to crossfire then you probably don't need such a powerful PSU, but the money saved on that won't be that much. Apart from that pretty good.

[birdofprey_2000]

If you aint going to crossfire then you probably don't need such a powerful PSU, but the money saved on that won't be that much. Apart from that pretty good.

yeah, but when you look at some of the new cards, man they require a lot of juice. The new nvidia gtx 560 wants a 600w power supply. Give it 5 years you may have to have another breaker box just to run your graphic's card. :(

[Tintivilo]

Antec TruePower Quattro 1000w

[Orphiuchus]

I have a 620W PSU sitting around, and I have a 900W in my current system. If I can get either to run on the 620W then I can drop that all-together.

[Orphiuchus]

Ok, so my changes so far:

No new case. I found a old case with a 620W PSU in it just now, I'm going to migrate my current system to the old case and put the new one in the Cosmos, and I'm going to attempt to run the new system off of the 620W PSU(the old system has a 4870x2 which needs tons of power). I also have a 900W which made capacitor noise when I got it like 3 years ago, but since I never got it returned I may give it another shot if the 620W doesn't cut it.

No new PSU. Explained above.

Blu Ray drive (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827151222). I forgot this in the first post.

[Wombat]

Are you getting a sound card, or just using the motherboards sound? Just curious, I haven't bothered with separate sound card in a while.

[Orphiuchus]

There doesn't seem to be any reason to get a separate sound card anymore. They don't do anything. If the on board sound is bad I'll just use one of the old sound cards I have laying around.

[gzsfrk]

Storage HD: $90
Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB 7200 RPM (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136284&cm_re=western_digital_caviar_black-_-22-136-284-_-Product)
I already have one of these for storage in my current system, I may just use it.

Grab 2 of these and go ahead and set them up as RAID 1. The peace of mind you'll get for the relatively small incremental investment is one of the best values you can have in your desktop computer.

[Orphiuchus]

Grab 2 of these and go ahead and set them up as RAID 1. The peace of mind you'll get for the relatively small incremental investment is one of the best values you can have in your desktop computer.

90 bucks for piece of mind? No thanks, if I valued it that highly I would have health insurance.



Actually, I just ordered. I made a few more changes thanks to the people on tomshardware which I'll post in a few days when everything arrives and I assemble and benchmark it. I might do the Raid thing, I'll decide over the next few days while its in transit(its a commonly available HD, I'll just grab one at best buy).

[revelation]

90 bucks for piece of mind? No thanks, if I valued it that highly I would have health insurance.

Haha...that's terrific. I might have to sig that. :p

[Orphiuchus]

Ok, I'm up and running! I was able in install windows in about a minute flat, the SSD was a good decision. I'm currently downloading Crysis 2 on steam, I'll post again once I've benchmarked it.

[Anenome]

Awesome ;) I'm doing my build this upcoming week, about to order parts tomorrow.

I'm getting that same drive, it's awesome. But I'm getting two put in Raid zero.

And, nice CPU, I ended up going for a 6 core AMD Phenom II. I'll throw my build up later ;)

Last thing: check AMD's site for certified power supplies (go to the 6990 page and hit sys requirements, there's a link to certified PSUs). Because, I've got a similar GPU, a 6970, and I checked that power supply you've got listed there, and it was not certified for the 6900 series at all, IIRC and I think I do. Not sure why that should be, but there you have it. The AX850 can handle the 6990 even! And the AX750 is certified for handling two 6970s, so its weird that the AX850 doesn't show a rating for the 6950 or 6970, but anything that can handle a 6990 can handle the lesser 6900s. I'm going 850 because someday I might actually want to pop another 6970 in there and at that point you'd better have an 850w! But, again, I don't know that the PSU you have up there would work for one, but I don't claim deep knowledge on the topic.

The AX850 is about $30 more.

Also, don't screw around with old PSUs. They lose wattage over time as the capacitors wear out, etc. I have an old 750 laying around, but it's 4 years old. I don't trust it for a new system with power requirements like this.

I did some research into aging SPUs, and was pretty surprised to see that in a worst case scenario they can lose 300 watts or more.

[Orphiuchus]

I decided to go with an older 620 watt PSU I had laying around, then chickened out and picked up an Corsair GS700 at Best Buy during the build process. I figured it wasn't worth the risk, plus I needed to get a keyboard so I was going out already.

The biggest pain by far was my decision to use my old CoolerMaster Cosmos for the new system and migrate my old system to a case I had lying around. I actually had to take apart the wall of the old case to fit the cooling on my old e8500. I've got both up and running now though, and it sure is sweet.

By the way, Crysis 2 is a horrible benchmark. There's no canned benchmark like in the first one to get a strait average framerate from, and you cant even turn on the FPS display in game. I'm not going to FRAPS it, but it was silky smooth maxed, and it looked pretty damn nice on my 27 inch monitor.


Also, after I ordered my parts someone on tomshardware told me that the SSD I bought was 2 generations old, and that there had been advancements. I'm thrilled with the performance of the one I got, but you may want to look into the newer models if you're not worried about price.

[Anenome]

Yeah, price and size is still keeping me off the SSDs. I do love the performance possibilities, but I don't quite feel the need for something that small to be so fast.

I suppose you use it purely for hosting Windows itself? Fast boot times and all that.

Those Caviar Black drives on 6gb SATA in Raid zero will still be smokin' everything short of 10k RPM drives and SSDs :P So I'm cool.

I would love to run an SSD one day when the price comes down and I can get about a 1tb drive :> Now that would be freakin' awesome :P

Although, I do wonder if perhaps SSDs based on flash might not be soon replaced by PCM tech. Especially the recent breakthrough they had on carbon-nanotube based PCM tech.

Amazing time to be alive ;) Around this time a century ago, know what the tech enthusiasts were doing?

Trying to learn how to make an airplane fly :P

SSDs are the first real serious breakthrough in hardware to come along since the invention of the GPU.

I'm still choking on the thought of there being 2.6 billion+ transistors in the GPU you bought here >_> Last time I really kept up on chip tech they were talking like 300 million. In a CPU even. Your i7 apparently has about 730 million.

It will only take about 10 years or so until we're talking 1 trillion transistors on a GPU if you factor out Moore's Law >_>

[Orphiuchus]

I'm running just windows and whatever game I'm trying to max out off of the SSD. Load times in Crysis 2 are basically nonexistant, the bar just fills up instantly. My long term plan is for the SSD to hold nothing but windows and maybe a game or two, then my 1TB storage drive will have everything else installed to it.

[Meusli]

I'm running just windows and whatever game I'm trying to max out off of the SSD. Load times in Crysis 2 are basically nonexistant, the bar just fills up instantly. My long term plan is for the SSD to hold nothing but windows and maybe a game or two, then my 1TB storage drive will have everything else installed to it.

Its a shame steam does not allow you to do this as I would grab one if they did.

[Anenome]

My understanding is that Steam will only load games onto the drive it is loaded on.

My plan is actually to run Steam on an external USB3 drive. When it fills up, it's no problem. Buy a new drive :P

Actually my case has an external SATA drive mount, I could install to that.

[Orphiuchus]

My plan is to have 2 steam installs. I'm just about to try it out actually.

[stalazon]

You can do steam install on your big HD and use a lil proggie that some dude on their forums made that moves designated games over to another HD (SSD). Must have Win 7 (or vista, if you suck) to do it.

First link I found here at work:
http://www.ghacks.net/2010/09/03/steam-mover-automated-tool-to-move-games-and-apps-to-other-drives/

The software makes use of Windows command line tools to create junctions. We have explained the concept in the guide How To Move Large Apps Or Games To Another Drive. Junctions basically make files and folders accessible in another location on the hard drive. Windows and the applications think that the application or game is hosted in the junction directory, while in fact it is stored somewhere else.

[Anenome]

Meh, what I always end up doing is just deleting what I'm not playing. <3 Steam.

[Orphiuchus]

I saw that junction solution when I was looking for a way to do this thing, but I've decided its not worth the time to deal with it. I've already got my entire library installed on my old computer, and there are only a few games that require this new beast to run smooth. I hope that by the time I really need to get it set up steam has added the feature. Its got a lot of request threads on their suggestions forum, hopefully its an incoming feature.