First New Generation Computer Build

[RobertVsWild]

Greetings OC Club,

 

I haven't been in the hardware loop since the late 90's and it's taken a couple of months to bring myself up to a reasonable speed with what all is out there now. Let me star off saying that the use of this new build will be for a top of the line middle class gaming PC with options to upgrade later down the road. The second priority is to be able to use it for my After Effects and 3D Max rendering. Overall, I would not like to spend more than 1600 upon building for a complete system.

Below is my intended build thus far (opinions are very welcome):

 

1) Intel Q9450 12Mb L2 Cache at 2.66Ghz (I plan on testing the waters with OC after building PC).

 

2) Gigabyte Motherboard with 1600 FSB and LGA 775, 2x PCI 2.0 and DDR2 Support. I want to go with DDR2 as DDR3 isn't all that impressive yet for its price. ( http://www.partspc.com/ProductDetails.asp?...mp;ProdID=14598 )

 

3) 2GB DDR2 800MHz Non-ECC Ultra Low Latency CL3 (kit of 2 - 1GB), 3-3-3-10, 2.3-2.35V

-or-

2GB kit DDR2 1200Mhz Non-ECC CL5 (kit of 2 - 1GB), 5-5-5-15, 2.3-2.35V

 

4) Sapphire Atomic HD Radeon 3870 or a 8800 GTS (This is my area of least amount of knowledge so far, I would like to run a duel Crossfire system ultimately with GDDR4 cards, not sure if a crossfire 3870 would be better than a single 8800 or if the NVIDIA tech can be dueled together like ATI)

 

5) I'll be running two SATA drives at 7800 rpms, maybe one at 10,000. Since I have an external USB drive at 500GB I don't worry about space too much but more or less latency and rpms.

 

6) I'll be using a Samsung 22" monitor with 2ms refresh and 8000:1 Contrast ratio

 

7) 1000W power supply, not sure if this is overkill but with 800W being about the same price, why not?

 

 

**Just a quick edit, I was going to use a case that had a 250mm fan in the front and a 360mm fan on the side. I love the way it looks like a jet engine and I figured it would cool pretty darn well. If anyone knows of any snazzy cases fitting this description please let me know. I really like LEDs and I haven't seen a case with this fan layout with much to offer in that area.**

 

 

Any modifications to this build are welcome, or maybe suggestions?

 

Thanks,

Rob

Edited April 20, 2008 by RobertVsWild

[hardnrg]

1kW is total overkill for that rig... even 800W is...

 

I'm running two 8800GTS cards (overvolted, so more power), 9 internal harddrives, overvolted CPU, RAM, NB, SB, ten Panaflo fans, two pumps, and I "only" have a 750W PSU...

 

get a *decent* PSU, not overkill wattage yet crap PSU...

 

and spend the money saved on more RAM than 2GB if you are serious about rendering animation with realistic lighting...

 

if you want SLI, you need a 680i or 780i board, the 780i boards are slightly better... the alternative is 790i but that means high priced DDR3... so basically it's 780i which doesn't work well with 45nm quads like the Q9450... so a 65nm like Q6600 is a better option for SLI rigs...

 

Crossfire is not limited in this way in that the motherboards that support it work well with 45nm quads, and also 65nm... they are just stronger for quads in general... I'd probably advise going with Crossfire just because of the difficulty of overclocking quads on nVidia boards (until DDR3 prices drop and the much better 790i boards become a more reasonable option)

[RobertVsWild]

Thanks for the heads up there hardnrg, I definitely don't plan on going with sub-standard PSUs. Although, I have a lot of periperial devices I'll be using with my PC along with a surround sound system. This is mainly why I've decided to go with a higher wattage supply. I guess it would have helped if I had listed what I was intending to get:

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16817104043

 

-or-

 

http://www.xoxide.com/kingwin-mach1-800w-psu.html

 

 

The kingwin I'm not as familiar with, but man do those blue LEDs ever get me or what....

 

 

As far as the video cards are concerned, I sure didn't know any of that about the NVIDIA support and quad cores. I've seen that the 8800's tend to be better at graphics in most games, but the performance isn't too much more than what a single 3870 could do. So I've been leaning towards the crossfire 3870 setup. I'm hoping after the new GDDR5 cards come out this summer their price will drop some more.

[hardnrg]

FSP (Fortron Source)

 

This company has some PSUs that are highly rated, but they also do some mediocre/crap PSUs that are weak or fail. So I wouldn't personally use one (I have done in the past).

 

 

Kingwin

 

All show and no go. Crap.

 

 

A good place to start is the OCC Recommended PSU List... I find it really hard to recommend anything other than a PCP&C PSU since the OCZ buyout brought the prices down so much... also I think they are the best PSUs in the world for performance... I used to like LED fans and flashy lights... now, for me, performance is the most important and products with lights are almost always gimmicky rubbish

 

Depends what you want... if you really want an LED PSU, there might be some that are actual performers...

[RobertVsWild]

I've been spending the whole day looking at PSUs and Video cards, and I completely agree with you on that point now. I've been really eying a PC Power & Cooling PPCT860 ATX12V / EPS12V 860W Power Supply. I'd love having a LED system, but I always buy on performance first. With all things considered, I wouldn't mind dropping $240 for a high quality power supply. Thanks again for the input and that link.

[Waco]

If you're going to be doing rendering work you'll definitely want more memory. 4 GB or even 8 GB won't add that much to the total cost and could make every difference in the world.

[RobertVsWild]

If you're going to be doing rendering work you'll definitely want more memory. 4 GB or even 8 GB won't add that much to the total cost and could make every difference in the world.

 

 

I definitely plan to max out the memory, just not right at the start. Once I get a working system that will be my first upgrade; I'll then probably move to a crossfire setup after I've maxed my memory.

[hardnrg]

I've been really eying a PC Power & Cooling PPCT860 ATX12V / EPS12V 860W Power Supply.

On Newegg the Silencer 750 is ~$120 cheaper... even I can't max out a 750... unless when you say you are running a surround system, you mean you are powering a multi-channel car amplifier from your computer's PSU, I can't see how you are going to need anywhere near 860W

 

seriously, take that $120 and spend it all on RAM, you could probably get 4GB of decent stuff with $120...

[RobertVsWild]

On Newegg the Silencer 750 is ~$120 cheaper... even I can't max out a 750... unless when you say you are running a surround system, you mean you are powering a multi-channel car amplifier from your computer's PSU, I can't see how you are going to need anywhere near 860W

 

 

Machine running at Full Capacity:

 

CPU: 95W

Mem: 10W([email protected] each)

Video Cards: 428W (214W per Radeon HD 3870)

HDD: 24W (2 x Seagate Barracuda 500Gb 7200rpm @ 12W average)

MoBo: 50W (A guess based off of the Energy Star standard of 50W since I couldn't find specs on a GA-X38-DS4)

 

= 607 Watts with the PC under critical load, something that happens a lot during a high-res render with lots of lighting solutions

 

With that in mind, while under full load from my machine the PC Power & Cooling PPCT860(860W Max and a rated 750W continuous) would run at 80% capacity on the 750W and 70% on a variable 860W. This of course is not taking into account fans, lights, and DVD/CD/Blu-Ray, or any USB devices which could possibly contribute to another 100W of power.

 

Now of course I don't expect this to be a common theme, most of the time I'll be running around 350-450W of power with light gaming and modest rendering scenarios? I just keep hearing that motto from my Boy Scout days resounding in my head, "Be Prepared."

Edited April 21, 2008 by RobertVsWild

[jammin]

I doubt very much that two HD 3870s will ever pull that much power.

Not sure where you pulled those figures from, but it looks like they are based on the power draw of a complete system with a single card.

 

Two HD 3870s should draw around 163W under load - Source

It can't hurt to add some overhead of course, but 750W will certainly be just fine.

I personally think you could easily bring that down to 650W and still be just fine.

Edited April 21, 2008 by jammin

[kingdingeling]

Ben, with the price difference of 20$, I'd say go for the Silencer 750W! 150$ for such a good PSU is a great price IMO!

[hardnrg]

I just keep hearing that motto from my Boy Scout days resounding in my head, "Be Prepared."

If you had unlimited money, then over-estimating the power required is OK, but you are on a limited budget and leaning towards a PSU capable of 100s of Watts more power than you'll ever use instead of more RAM which is a billion times more important...

 

I have a similar system to the one you are looking to build, except I have 9 harddrives (12W each), 2 pumps (28W each), and 10 high performance fans (most are 5.4W each)... around 161W for harddrives, pumps, and fans... and I'm not anywhere near the full capacity of my 750W PSU...

 

I've been using 3DSMax since R3, and while it can use the graphics cards for previews, they aren't used during rendering, unless you have found some sort of GPU-accelerated renderer?