Hi and request for build comments please :)

[Bandred]

Since this is my first post, I'll start by saying 'Hi all'

I'm looking to replace my 5 year old PC and have been having a play with the 'builder'. I think I've got to a spec that will meet my needs, but would appreciate any comments or suggestions that others might have about it please.

Lets start with my objectives, before I add the build:

I used to build my own, but I'm older than Bruce Springsteen and have a chronic illness that severely limits my mobility, so a home build is not a good option for me anymore. I probably average about 12 hours a day using my PC. One main use is for running 3d modelling and rendering software, such as Modo and Vue. I also play games a lot, but these are generally RPG or strategy , such as Dragon Age or Anno 1404, so I don’t feel that I need a ‘top of the range’ graphics card. Essentially I’m looking for a build with good multithreading processing power, good OpenGL performance (for the modelling software) and good reliability and longevity.

With these points in mind and a budget target of around £1400, I’ve come up with the following:


COOLERMASTER HAF 922 MID TOWER GAMING CASE

Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Processor i7-930 (2.80GHz) 4.8GTs/8MB Cache

ASUS® P6X58D-E: DDR3, USB 3.0, SATA 6.0GB/s, 3-Way SLI

12GB CORSAIR XMS3 TRI-DDR3 1600MHz (6 X 2GB)

768MB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX460 GDDR5 PCI EXPRESS - DirectX® 11

1TB WD CAVIAR GREEN WD10EARS, SATA 3 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE

1TB WD CAVIAR GREEN WD10EARS, SATA 3 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE

24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM

INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (READS XD, MS, CF, SD, etc)

CORSAIR 750W PSU (TX750) 80+ ULTRA QUIET

TITAN FENRIR EXTREME DIRECT TOUCH COPPER CPU COOLER

ONBOARD 8 CHANNEL (7.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)

ONBOARD 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT

6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD

Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence

--------------------------------------------

Although I’ve specified the 768MB GTX 460, I’m planning on holding off ordering until a 1GB model is available to spec.

I’m not planning on over clocking right now, but I might get tempted eventually At the moment I’ve gone for what I believe are sensible cooling options for improved stability and longevity.

I did originally spec an 80GB SSD for a boot drive, but decided that probably had more to do with bragging rights that with being a real benefit for me so decided to opt for 12GB RAM instead. This might turn out to be an overkill, but 2GB RAM on Windows XP is currently the main frustration with my modelling software.

My main area of uncertainty is in the hard drive spec. I currently have about 1TB data, so need more than that on a new machine. I don’t know much about RAID configurations, so if anyone has thoughts on that I would be grateful, although I would be more concerned with better protection of data integrity rather than additional speed from it.


Thanks for any thoughts you might have,

Mike

 

[Zeplini]

Welcome, I think you have pretty much covered Bandred(Mike) and wont have any problems with the modelling software with the system, a ssd does make quite a bit of difference but do take some setting up and looking after and are really for the serious enthusiast so i think you have made the right option there.

I would stay away from raid lol and maybe look at the Eco water cooler

 

[PCS]

Hello Bandred and welcome to our forums.

Regarding your specification and your points, we will be listing the 1GB version of the GTX460 very shortly, perhaps as close as tonight/tomorrow. This card will be more than adequate for your specified usage.

You could quite easily get away with less RAM - 8GB would still be more than adequate for your usage, although to be on the safe side I wouldn't go any lower than this, as depending on your usage 3D modelling can be very CPU and memory intensive.

For your HDD - given that you're more concerned with data integrity than the marginal performance increase, I would not recommend you choose a RAID configuration, as a RAID 0 configuration will result in data loss should one of the two hard drives fail. If you chose a RAID 1 configuration, you will increase the data security, but half your space from 2TB to 1TB.

On the other hand, if you really wanted to have the best of both worlds, for a little extra you could choose 2 x 1.5TB drives in RAID 1. This will give you an increased storage capacity with the added protection against single hard drive failure.

Other than that the specification looks great!

 

[PCS]

UPDATE

The GTX460 1GB version is now available to order

 

[Bandred]

Hi Zeplini and PCS,

thank you both for the replies. Easy decision on the RAID then ... think I will stick with the 2xITB setup and use the second one for backup .... until I need it for other things and buy an external drive for backing up.

I had thought about water cooling, but that's new technology for me and I did see some reviews that suggested air cooling could be on a par, if not better than it.

Since I read you comments, I've been looking at some reviews for the ECO. I like the neatness of it and durability wouldn't be a problem according to the specs, but I still have a couple of concerns. One of them is that all of the reviews conclude that the stock fan is very noisy at 1800rpm. That wouldn't bother me since I have hearing loss and wear headphones a lot of the time, but, sadly, my wife's hearing is still very acute

Secondly, I'm also a bit concerned about the units standard fan arrangement. If it's mounted in the fan slot at the top of the case back plate, then in a pull configuration (recommended) it will be fighting the exhaust fan in the top of the case for air. I guess this might be why the stock fan is noisy, if it is having to work harder to get the required airflow through the radiator. Having said that, I didn't check that the review setups did have a top exhaust fan ... but a lot of the gaming cases seem to these days.

If I was still building my own I would probably give it a try with the fan in a push configuration. As things are I think I will stick with the Titan Fenrir air cooler this time around. On that subject, however, I think I saw somewhere that the Titan Fenrir doesn't come with a pre-applied conductive patch. If so, do you know what will be used in the build ? and is there anyway I can spec and pay for a better one if needed ?

Thanks also for the good news on the 1GB GTX 460. Do you know which manufacturer it is ? I was dead set against Palit a week ago because of reports of high noise and temperatures. I don't know how much the whole thing was blown out of proportion, but Palit have now issued a revised BIOS so I'm prepared to risk giving them a try. If you didn't see anything of what happened last week, and are interested, these links provide a summary:

http://www.guru3d.com/news/palit-geforce-gtx-460-sonic-could-have-issues-/

http://www.guru3d.com/news/statement-palit-regarding-gtx-460-sonic-platinum/


thanks again both,

Mike

 

[Gorman]

Hi Bandred i will just throw a few notes in here. The Fenrir comes with a good stick of reasonable quality TIM that we apply. I agree with your decision on raid, its not going to benefit you.

The board you chose has 2 6Gbs SATA ports, maybe thats an option if you want faster disk access.

 

[Bandred]

Hi Gorman,

thanks for the response. Oddly enough the thought of 6GBs drives crossed my mind overnight. I'll check out the cost on that. I think I would like to go that way with the boot drive at least. I presume there is no problem in mixing 3Gbs and 6GBs drives without RAID ? My second drive would mainly be used for data storage and backup.

Thanks also for your comments on Samsung memory in other posts. I was thinking the lower speed would be more stable, but couldn't find any reports for Samsung on the web.

To be honest I'm still somewhat confused about DDR3 in a tri configuration. I'm under the impression that RAM should be used in multiples of 3 for best performance with the i7-930, although I've no clear idea of how big a deal that is.

I've currently specified 12Gb (6x2) of the Corsair 1066, since 12GB (6x2) and 12gb(3x4) of the Samsung RAM cost £40 and £150 more respectively.

Any additional thoughts on this issue would be helpful.

Thanks again,

MIke

 

[Gorman]

I've currently specified 12Gb (6x2) of the Corsair 1066, since 12GB (6x2) and 12gb(3x4) of the Samsung RAM cost £40 and £150 more respectively.

Thats fair enough and if its a better deal then go for it.

I am about as convinced by the benefits of tri channel as i was with dual channel. There is a difference in performance but it is so slight you have to be measuring it to notice.

There will be no issues combining a 3Gbs drive with a 6Gbs and good call having 6Gbs as system if you go that way.

 

[Zeplini]

If you intend to overclock in future stick with the corsair, the samsung is not really made for this on tri-channel, but it is rock solid ram so if you dont overclock its way better - my opinion

 

[Bandred]

Hi Gorman and Zeplini,

thanks for your responses and patience I'm having a really hard time getting up to speed on DDR3 and tri channel. From the lack of much clear information on the web, I've more or less come to the conclusion that there is more hype than practical reality in all of this.

I'm not planning to over clock (durability and stability being more important for me), so decided that the Samsung DDR3 1333MHz was the way to go.

PCS suggested in an earlier post that he thought 8GB would be a good solution for my needs and I'm inclined to agree with that. Therefore, am I right in concluding that there is no physical difference in the memory sticks contained in DDR3 TRI and DUAL packs and that the term simply identifies that they contain either multiples of 3 or 2 sticks? If so, I presume I can safely spec the Samsung 8GB dual (4x2) 1333Mhz pack for the ASUS P6X85D-E board ?

Sorry for being somewhat dense on this one, but I've not really kept track of hardware advances over the last 5 years.

Mike

 

[Zeplini]

8gb will be fine, and yes there is a difference between the tri-duel packs in most memory but the samsung will work in both

 

[Bandred]

okay then... here is my final build spec

COOLERMASTER HAF 922 MID TOWER GAMING CASE

Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Processor i7-930 (2.80GHz) 4.8GTs/8MB Cache

ASUS® P6X58D-E: DDR3, USB 3.0, SATA 6.0GB/s, 3-Way SLI

8GB SAMSUNG DDR3 DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz (4 X 2GB)

1GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX460 GDDR5 PCI EXPRESS - DirectX® 11

640GB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD6402AAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)

640GB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD6402AAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)

24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM

INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (READS XD, MS, CF, SD, etc)

CORSAIR 750W PSU (TX750) 80+ ULTRA QUIET

TITAN FENRIR EXTREME DIRECT TOUCH COPPER CPU COOLER

ONBOARD 8 CHANNEL (7.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)

ONBOARD 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT

6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD

Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence

I'm planning on ordering this tomorrow. Was going to go for the 5 day build, but I gather both the i7-930 and 1GB GTX460 are currently out of stock At least I have the old one to keep me occupied for now .... no !!! I didn't say that, famous last words and all that.

Thank you all for the helpful comments. I'm feeling very happy with this spec now, so hopefully it will live up to expectations. I'll see if I can find my digital camera when I do get it and try and post some pics .... I gather that is becoming mandatory

take care all,

Mike

 

[PCS]

Unfortunately the i7-930 and GTX 460 1GB are currently out of stock. There appears to be a delay on the 930's, we've had stock on order and it's long overdue. There may be a shortage at the Intel NL hub, but I'm sure it will show up soon.

 

[LDUK]

Unfortunately the i7-930 and GTX 460 1GB are currently out of stock. There appears to be a delay on the 930's, we've had stock on order and it's long overdue. There may be a shortage at the Intel NL hub, but I'm sure it will show up soon.

Aw crap! I just ordered a PC with the i7 930 CPU. Damn it lol!

 

[GazzaScotland]

Looks like I got in at the right time. The 930's seem to be popular as anything!

 

[PCS]

They are, we have hundreds on order, we're doing our best to secure stocks asap

 

[Bandred]

Aw crap! I just ordered a PC with the i7 930 CPU. Damn it lol!

ohhh .... it's your fault is it !!! .... I thought it was just my usual luck

never mind you can cry on my shoulder if I can cry on yours

If you've placed your order, you might have had the last one in stock ... I only got the message the last time I updated my quote earlier tonight.

 

[LDUK]

ohhh .... it's your fault is it !!! .... I thought it was just my usual luck

never mind you can cry on my shoulder if I can cry on yours

If you've placed your order, you might have had the last one in stock ... I only got the message the last time I updated my quote earlier tonight.

I believe it was Gazza that stole the last one. Leeds Depot was is? I'll be back in a couple of hours. Hey PCS, what if I were to, ehem, find one and send it your way lol.

Looks like we'll just have to suffer Bandred!

 

[Bandred]

Order placed ! .. so it's sit back and wait time, with frequent reading about the virtue of patience

oh, and in case anyone notices... I changed my Windows 7 spec to the 64 bit Professional version ... don't laugh ! I do have some old 2d applications that the XP mode might be useful for. I'll kick myself less hard for buying something I don't use than I would if I didn't buy something that I would have used

 

[GazzaScotland]

Order placed ! .. so it's sit back and wait time, with frequent reading about the virtue of patience

oh, and in case anyone notices... I changed my Windows 7 spec to the 64 bit Professional version ... don't laugh ! I do have some old 2d applications that the XP mode might be useful for. I'll kick myself less hard for buying something I don't use than I would if I didn't buy something that I would have used

Just remember to enable games! Windows without Minesweeper or Solitaire ain't Windows! I wish they brought the Pinball game back though .