First time builder would love some critiques

[scr4wl]

I also think the Lian Li cases are a bit more than I care to spend on a case as well. I know lots of people think the HAF is nasty ugly, but I kinda like it lol.

 

I asked about the ram earlier, anybody have a comment on it? Get something better? Something cheaper?

 

I like the HAF two

 

As for ram

 

so far I've only used Corsair (XMS, and Dominator), Mushkin, and Gskill ddr3 memory

 

I'd say they were all pretty good.

 

If you wan't the cheapest RAM you can get I'd pick up the G skill, It had great performance, and was cheap:D

 

The XMS was the first ddr3 I used and I didn't notice any better performance over the Gskill RAM.

 

For overclocking I'd have to say the dominator wins, but it's expensive and the RAM you showed has the exact same latency and Timings.

 

I've heard great things about OCZ so unless you want something cheaper I'd stick with that.

[johnnyfive]

Ive been reading about the 10000 rpm drives and many complain that they are noisy. How much louder are they than 7200 rpm hard drives?

[ebarone]

I cant imagine you'd hear them at all inside a case. Buy a $1 package of rubber grommets to put between your drive and anything it could vibrate against and theres no way you'll hear them, especially not over your fans or games. Speaking of which, if you dont already have one, a surround system is really cool.

[Verran]

I guess instead of the raid setup, i could run this 10000 rpm drive with one of the 500 gb seagates as storage. I dont think I can justify the cost of a SSD right now. So expensive! Are they really that good?

An SSD like this 60GB OCZ is cheaper than the Raptor you listed. 60GB should be plenty for OS and program files...

[johnnyfive]

Another noob question. Are the SSD drives superior to the raptor drives? It seems to me they are, but again I know enough to get in trouble and thats about it! lol

 

My main need for speed is my simulations, which write and read often throughout the simulation. Gaming is important but secondary.

Edited March 11, 2009 by johnnyfive

[ebarone]

Statistical simulations and gaming? You must be a grad student

 

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/hard-drives,3.html <--- the TomsHardware.com hard drive comparison charts. If your purposes are close in nature to the "Database I/O" chart, which was my guess, then you'd see quite a bit of a performance gain from an SSD. Seems it even beats out the best raid setup there is. Raptor vs SSD... go with the SSD, but also do like Verran said and pick up a big backup drive also.

[lowersidecustoms]

thats an impressive build for that budget,seeing that im kicking myself in the ..mine cost close to the same and its not nearly as good

[itsmee]

Hi all.

Firstly, first forum post ever so hope cut & paste works.

Second, I'm due to build a similar spec computer soon and have spent ages checking reviews on most of the named components, so not trying to tell any techno-whizzies out there how to suck eggs, just giving johnniefive a little food for thought before he splashes out on the plastic.

I've named a few specific components that I'm hopefully going to be happy using, I would guess the quality of most mainstream manufacturers products will be far above what we'll be subjecting them to.

Couple of things you may want to consider:

CPU: Intel Core I7 920 .. Given

Motherboard: ASUS P6T6 REvolution .. Good reports but pricey as a very specific end-user board. Slot placement is primarily geared towards Tri-SLi/ quad+ ATI single slot graphics cards with a view to extreme benchmarking or video processing etc. The former obviously will require hearty overclocking of the CPU if that's your thing [seems not to be]. The Asus P6T Deluxe board for example will provide you with the option for a more rounded system, ie possibility to add proprietary sound card, tv tuner/ physics, etc in conjuction with the 2 double slots that you may eventually want for GPUs. Tri-SLi may hang over the end of the board if you eventually go that way but ample space in HAF932. Also, P6T Deluxe is great for noob overclocking too (i7 965 specs easy with appropriate cooling). Other notable... Gigabyte X58 extreme but expansion slot placement could be better for general use.

GPU: EVGA GTX 285 SSC edition .. nVidia/ ATI - personal preference. I don't like nVidia's recent pricing policy so will be opting for the Sapphire ATI 4870 1Gb "Toxic" until someone comes up with a decent cooling option [other than expensive watercooling slap-ons] for the 4870X2. All great cards.

RAM: OCZ Gold 6 gb tri channel .. Consider the OCZ3P1600LV6GK. The Platinum version has tighter C7 timings which is appreciated by the i7 and I believe price is comparible to the Gold version you identified. Side note: Many reviewers seem to say OCZ modules need 1.7volts to hit max stability but have great potential once there(?). Geil has just brought out the 1600Mhz C7 Ultra modules at a reasonable price too, however, so far no-one has seemed to have reviewed these so cannot provide you with any info on overclocking overhead etc.

PSU: Coolermaster UCP RS700 700W .. The PCP&C 750W identified by others has continuously achieved great reviews but without checking, I can't remember whether this unit is modular cabling. The Enermax Revolution 85+ is meant to be very tasty but will carry a much higher price tag. Corsair also seems to carry a lot of good will from users. I think I'm going to opt for the Coolermaster 850W Real Power Pro which also carries a lot of respect and seems to be very quiet too.

DD: 2 X Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm 320GB in raid 0 .. As noted by others. I personally prefer the Western Digital HDDs due to their outstanding reliability and quietness, however, on paper they're slightly slower on continuous throughput than the Seagate or Samsung, individual access times seem to be faster though .. In real-life, I think it's probably all much the much. Whilst writing, velociraptors.. check which version you're buying as certain editions adaptors are incompatible with raid(?). SSDs: Intel is the tasty tottie here but you've got to pay for perfection. The OCZ Core series(?) originally seemed to have serious latency problems in the way it stacked up commands for processing. I believe Samsung has brought out a reasonably priced line too, however, not sure if it's prone to the same malarkey as the OCZ? Check out review sites for more pertinent information if you're going to opt for the cheaper versions.

CD/DVD: Samsung 22x DVD/CD .. <

Edited March 12, 2009 by itsmee

[IVIYTH0S]

Hi all.

Firstly, first forum post ever so hope cut & paste works.

Second, I'm due to build a similar spec computer soon and have spent ages checking reviews on most of the named components, so not trying to tell any techno-whizzies out there how to suck eggs, just giving johnniefive a little food for thought before he splashes out on the plastic.

I've named a few specific components that I'm hopefully going to be happy using, I would guess the quality of most mainstream manufacturers products will be far above what we'll be subjecting them to.

Couple of things you may want to consider:

CPU: Intel Core I7 920 .. Given

Motherboard: ASUS P6T6 REvolution .. Good reports but pricey as a very specific end-user board. Slot placement is primarily geared towards Tri-SLi/ quad+ ATI single slot graphics cards with a view to extreme benchmarking or video processing etc. The former obviously will require hearty overclocking of the CPU if that's your thing [seems not to be]. The Asus P6T Deluxe board for example will provide you with the option for a more rounded system, ie possibility to add proprietary sound card, tv tuner/ physics, etc in conjuction with the 2 double slots that you may eventually want for GPUs. Tri-SLi may hang over the end of the board if you eventually go that way but ample space in HAF932. Also, P6T Deluxe is great for noob overclocking too (i7 965 specs easy with appropriate cooling). Other notable... Gigabyte X58 extreme but expansion slot placement could be better for general use.

GPU: EVGA GTX 285 SSC edition .. nVidia/ ATI - personal preference. I don't like nVidia's recent pricing policy so will be opting for the Sapphire ATI 4870 1Gb "Toxic" until someone comes up with a decent cooling option [other than expensive watercooling slap-ons] for the 4870X2. All great cards.

RAM: OCZ Gold 6 gb tri channel .. Consider the OCZ3P1600LV6GK. The Platinum version has tighter C7 timings which is appreciated by the i7 and I believe price is comparible to the Gold version you identified. Side note: Many reviewers seem to say OCZ modules need 1.7volts to hit max stability but have great potential once there(?). Geil has just brought out the 1600Mhz C7 Ultra modules at a reasonable price too, however, so far no-one has seemed to have reviewed these so cannot provide you with any info on overclocking overhead etc.

PSU: Coolermaster UCP RS700 700W .. The PCP&C 750W identified by others has continuously achieved great reviews but without checking, I can't remember whether this unit is modular cabling. The Coolermaster Revolution 85+ is meant to be very tasty but will carry a much higher price tag. Corsair also seems to carry a lot of good will from users. I think I'm going to opt for the Coolermaster 850W Real Power Pro which also carries a lot of respect and seems to be very quiet too.

DD: 2 X Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm 320GB in raid 0 .. As noted by others. I personally prefer the Western Digital HDDs due to their outstanding reliability and quietness, however, on paper they're slightly slower on continuous throughput than the Seagate or Samsung, individual access times seem to be faster though .. In real-life, I think it's probably all much the much. Whilst writing, velociraptors.. check which version you're buying as certain editions adaptors are incompatible with raid(?). SSDs: Intel is the tasty tottie here but you've got to pay for perfection. The OCZ Core series(?) originally seemed to have serious latency problems in the way it stacked up commands for processing. I believe Samsung has brought out a reasonably priced line too, however, not sure if it's prone to the same malarkey as the OCZ? Check out review sites for more pertinent information if you're going to opt for the cheaper versions.

CD/DVD: Samsung 22x DVD/CD .. <

[johnnyfive]

Thanks again to all of you for your replies.

 

ebarone - yes im a grad student in Statistics and thanks for pointing out that chart. Ill definitely spend some time on that.

 

lowersidecustoms - thanks, yeah i imagine the only reason its cheaper is due to the passage of time. The longer you wait the better bang for the buck, so they say.

 

itsmee - wow, thanks for the well researched post! I dont know if a recent arrival like me can say this, but welcome to the forums! I was wondering if my mobo was overkill. Ive been told yes in one forum, and no on others. I certainly dont NEED tri sli (but talking about needing something in an overclockers forum...). My second choice would probably be the asus p6t deluxe or an EVGA x58 board. Noob overclocking is right up my alley though! Never done it. NVIDIA is my personal preference, for no other reason than thats what I have always bought. Im thinkin about bumping up to a gtx295 instead of the gtx285ssc because there is only a little difference in price. I have almost as little knowledge about ram as I do about mobos, so Ill take a look at it, but Ill have to take your word on the difference. The PCP&C is not modular, which would be awesome, but there is a lot of room for hidng extra cables in the HAF, so I am not too concerned about it.

 

Anybody know if the OCZ SSDs are still having problems? I can justify one of those, since they are in the pricerange of the raptor (even if they are at half the capacity), but the intel ones are quite pricey! That DVD burner i listed was the top model according to maximum pc's test of dvd copying speeds. Seemed like a good choice.

 

I do think I will add either a TRUE or a Noctua cooler, since it seems a nobrainer to overclock the 920, even if its just a mild overclock to 3.2 or so.

 

Keep the comments coming, I really appreciate the feedback.

[ebarone]

SSDs: Intel is the tasty tottie

 

I am soo gonna start using "tasty tottie" in my day to day speech, you rock itsmee! Welcome to the forums! And fantastic info! I can tell you the PCP&C is not modular, however I own one at home and its easily the best power supply I've ever used. Its not outstanding enough for me to say I'll only ever buy PCP&C again, but it is outstanding. At work I only ever bought from them except when 750 wasnt enough, at which time I went to the modular Corsair 1kW, which is also a stellar PSU. And for the price, it better be. OCZ, even though they own PCP&C, makes a junk PSU imo, so they're really the only PSUs I'd caution against right now.

 

What school, if you dont mind me hijacking?

[johnnyfive]

The only computer I have ever bought came with a generic psu, which I ultimately replaced with a rosewill that has worked wonderfully. Will the 750w PCP&C be sufficient for a gtx295? I imagine id need 1kW for dual gtx 295 (not planning on this any time soon, just thinking).

 

I go to Baylor University in Texas. Im wrapping up my 3rd year of 4 for the PhD program in statistical science.

Edited March 12, 2009 by johnnyfive