Building a PC.

[pete.dakota]

I've decided to build my first home PC. Go, me!

I've a lot of experience tinkering and upgrading with desktop computers, so I know I'm not out of my depth trying to build one from scratch. Essentially, I'm taking what I can from my current PC, buying a new case, and then all new core components off of the internet. I'm going to chronicle this endeavour here, so any impending issues that arise can all stay in one place; instead of me making multiple threads down the line.

This is the spec for the machine I'm hoping to build with links:

MOBO: X58
GPU: Radeon HD 4870x2
CPU: Intel Core I7 920 or 940
RAM: 2GB DDR3 1800MHZ PC3-14400 CL8
Case: CoolerMaster Case
HDD: Seagate 147GB 15000RPM

They're mostly going to be from dabs.com. I did search around using Google's shopping filter, but dabs came out cheaper on ALL the parts. Also they're very trustworthy, and for clarity/returning, I'd like to keep all my orders in one place.

From my current PC I'll be taking: a CDRW, DVD, floppy drive, 80GB HDD, two case fans, a 600W PSU, and a decent PCI sound card. Apart from that, it'll all be new.

I'm going to post here with updates in the future, however I'm going to be planning and saving for the parts for a while; probably looking to build in the new year. So I wanted this time to research, and get to grips with it all before diving in and making a mistake or overlooking something crucial. I'm depening on you guys to stop me from doing something stupid. If anyone posting around here has experience building PCs or with the parts/systems etc. I'd appreciate you weighing in when you can.

First question: I currently have a 600W PSU that I'm hoping to use on the new rig. But I expect it will either just on the line, or short of the power I'll need for the above spec. So, will 600W be enough? Or should I look to buy a new PSU, too?

Second question: How much of a noticeable advantage is there from having a high RPM HDD? I currenlty have a 7.2K. And that seems to still be the standard on new PCs. However the 15k RPM HDD I found has plenty of space and is just as cheap as slower disks.

Third: The RAM I found seems to be very, very cheap. Consider this dabs.com search: similar RAM seems to be three times the price. Any idea why?

Thanks for any tips and advice, guys. I'll be checking here for your sage drops of wisdom all the while.

 

[thomasantony]

Do you really want a 15000 RPM HDD? There are far higher capacity harddisk now available. If you want speed, you can try getting one of the new Solid State Drives. They are only gonna get faster in the future.

Also, getting a 790i Ultra is a waste if you are gonna get an ATi card. I know HD4870X2 IS the most powerful card in the market now.

Get yourself a P45 or X48 board. Check out the ASUS P5Q3-Deluxe.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131298

Also, since you are spending so much money, why not wait for the Intel Core i7 (Nehalem) to release in a couple of weeks. Then of course, you will have to buy an X58 chipset motherboard. X58 has the specialty that it will support both ATi Crossfire and nVidia SLI.

As for PSU, you will be much on the safer side if you get yourself a 750W or even 1000W PSU from maybe Corsair or Tagan. 4870X2 can be a major power sucker. This is especially important if you intend to add another 4870X2 in Crossfire later on.

Make sure you read up a bit before you make such a big purchase. Also try hanging out a bit at hardware enthusiast forum.

Check out review sites such as:
http://www.tomshardware.com
http://www.guru3d.com
http://www.anandtech.com
www.bit-tech.net

Some hard-ware enthusiast forums:
techenclave.com -> Indian forum
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/
http://forums.guru3d.com/

Ask in such forums for advice. You are bound to get really good advice.

Also newegg.com has much better prices than dabs.com . But I don't think they deliver in the UK.

~
Thomas

 

[pete.dakota]

Do you really want a 15000 RPM HDD? There are far higher capacity harddisk now available.

Hi thomas,

HDD Capacity won't be a problem; I'm going to use the 80G drive I currently have, too. I'll have 260GB in total, and considering that drive is so cheap for it's speed, figured it was a good purchase.

Also, getting a 790i Ultra is a waste if you are gonna get an ATi card. I know HD4870X2 IS the most powerful card in the market now.

I certainly wouldn't say it's a waste. There are no real issues running ATI cards on nVidia chipsets, or vice-versa. It all seems to be a phantom assumption; not running nVidia cards on nVidia boards = trouble. But there is no real issue. For instance, Alienware's most powerful setups run the HD4870 X2 on 790is. I've looked up on it, and confliction doesn't seem to be an issue.

Also, since you are spending so much money, why not wait for the Intel Core i7 (Nehalem) to release in a couple of weeks.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I didn't realise these were about to be released. The Core i7 940 seems a good fit, and as I'm not buying straight away, should be quite easy to find at decent cost in a few weeks. Dabs.com doesn't have any LGA1366 socket MOBOs at the moment. I'll have a look around elsewhere. Does seem worth waiting for the i7s, though.

As for PSU, you will be much on the safer side if you get yourself a 750W or even 1000W PSU from maybe Corsair or Tagan. 4870X2 can be a major power sucker. This is especially important if you intend to add another 4870X2 in Crossfire later on.

I will intend to Crossfire at some point. But certainly not straight away. I could simply try running the new rig on my 600W, and if it doesn't work I'll buy a more powerful PSU. Probably 1KW+ for futre-proofing.

Thanks for the links, too. I'll check out a few of those.

 

[thomasantony]

Hi thomas,

HDD Capacity won't be a problem; I'm going to use the 80G drive I currently have, too. I'll have 260GB in total, and considering that drive is so cheap for it's speed, figured it was a good purchase.



I certainly wouldn't say it's a waste. There are no real issues running ATI cards on nVidia chipsets, or vice-versa. It all seems to be a phantom assumption; not running nVidia cards on nVidia boards = trouble. But there is no real issue. For instance, Alienware's most powerful setups run the HD4870 X2 on 790is. I've looked up on it, and confliction doesn't seem to be an issue.
.

I am not saying its a problem running ATi on nForce chipsets. I am saying its a waste. You can't crossfire on nForce chipsets. nForce only allows for SLI, which in turn is possible only for nVidia cards.

As for HDD, 260GB??? No offence, but dude which year are you in? Is that enough? I have a 200GB I bought 2 years ago and its barely enough. I am getting myself another 640GB in a few days.

Western Digital 640GB is only like $75.
And 1 TeraByte is only around $120-130 from most brands.

There is even a 1.5Tb one from Seagate at $180.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148337&Tpk=1.5Tb

If you wanted to see Solid state drives, see this:

http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=636&Tpk=SSD

IMO, they will be a MUCH better option than high-rpm hard drives. No moving parts. No noise. Much less power consumption ( in most cases). Very little heat compared to magnetic disks.

~
Thomas

 

[Epsilon]

If you wanted to see Solid state drives, see this:

http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCateg...ry=636&Tpk=SSD

IMO, they will be a MUCH better option than high-rpm hard drives. No moving parts. No noise. Much less power consumption ( in most cases). Very little heat compared to magnetic disks.

Problem is, Solid State Drives (SSDs) will wear out more quickly. It's nowhere near as bad as it was before, but if you're looking for longevity, the magnetic disks are still better.

Until they can get flash memory that resists the 'memory effect', that is to say, until they can keep a good level for '0' and '1' over many flippings of that bit, SSDs are going to be plenty lightweight, but they're going to be less reliable.

 

[pete.dakota]

I am not saying its a problem running ATi on nForce chipsets. I am saying its a waste. You can't crossfire on nForce chipsets. nForce only allows for SLI, which in turn is possible only for nVidia cards.

I wasn't aware that an nVidia board wouldn't support Crossfire. Confused, however, as I know Dell and Alienware both make rigs based on the 790i with two Crossfiring HD4870s. I looked into it and it seems Xfire on Nforce boards is possible with hacked drivers. A few forums mention that the hacked drivers can be kind of buggy. But there are also reports of them working with no issue. However, if I'm going to hold out for an i7 CPU - as you suggested - I'll be getting a Crossfire compatible board anyway. It seems strange that two big gaming computer companies would advocate using hacked drivers.

As for HDD, 260GB??? No offence, but dude which year are you in? Is that enough?

I've gotten by with 80GB (that's right: eight zero) for the last 4 years and never gone over 75% capacity. I have 4-5 games installed, a whole load of pictures and over 2000 songs. 280GB will be more than enough, easy.

If you wanted to see Solid state drives

Solid state drives, for me, are too expensive given the amount of storage I'd get.

 

[Tachyon]

Solid state HDD - too new of tech .. let it mature. And they're not that much faster.
Go with a very fast OS HDD and a very large 2nd drive to install everything to.

I agree with Thomas - if you're droppin that kind of bread on a mobo capitalize on it's features. Don't piss them away. nVidia GPU's on nVideo mobo. ATI GPU on a mobo that has the features that work together with the ATI GPU.

Did you do your home work on the choice of memory?

And power ... I also 2nd Thomas's thoughts here .... I've never thought to myself on any of the 100's of builds I've done "wow, there too much wattage in that cottage" Here, more is better. You can actually do harm if there is not enough power on tap. And if you're close to the line... you'll have "issues" that are really difficult to pin point. Is it bad memory? Am I too fast? Did a file in the OS get horked during install? It's just more better to have more power !!

.. and good luck it's a lot of fun to build them yourself ... you will never go back to pre-made.

p.s. be very diligent on the wire management. Not only does it look 1000x' better but it also promotes optimum air flow.

 

[thomasantony]

Hello,
Well .. currently the only architecture which supports both Crossfire and SLI on the same board is the Intel Skulltrail platform.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skulltrail

As for longevity of SSDs, the MTBF ( Mean Time before failure) of current SSDs are around 10 years.

http://www.storagesearch.com/ssdmyths-endurance.html

In the early days of flash SSDs managing this was a real headache for oems and users. The maximum number of write cycles to an address block - the endurance - was initially small.
....
How long have you got before the disk is trashed?

We assume perfect wear leveling which means we need to fill the disk 2 million times to get to the write endurance limit.

2 million (write endurance) x 64G (capacity) divided by 80M bytes / sec gives the endurance limited life in seconds.

That's a meaningless number - which needs to be divided by seconds in an hour, hours in a day etc etc to give...

The end result is 51 years!


...
As a sanity check - I found some data from Mtron (one of the few SSD oems who do quote endurance in a way that non specialists can understand). In the data sheet for their 32G product - which incidentally has 5 million cycles write endurance - they quote the write endurance for the disk as "greater than 85 years assuming 100G / day erase/write cycles" - which involves overwriting the disk 3 times a day.

So essentially, the problem with the disk wearing out isn't very real anymore.
Hey, you buy 15000 rpm drives .. while us mere mortals get by with 5400 and 7200 rpm drives . So you COULD get a small 32GB-64GB SSD for the OS only. If you choose the right one, it could dramatically speed up your system.

There are some very good articles on SSDs at Tom's Hardware. Check this one out for instance:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/flash-ssd-hard-drive,2000.html

 

[pete.dakota]

I'll hold off on an SSD for now. Though it would be prudent to load up the OS on a 32GB drive at some point in the future.

Regarding memory, Tachyon (I'll reply to your PM later), according to this, though the 790i has 4 DIMM slots, it can only support DDR3 on two: 0&2 or 1&3. Unless I'm getting that wrong? Not quite sure why there's 4 DIMM slots when it appears that the MOBO can only support DDR3 on two. I'm probably not understanding something, though.

However - as I've said above - I'll probably be holding out for an i7 CPU, and so won't be buying a 790i and looking into a board that supports Crossfire off the shelf.

 

[Tachyon]

I've not done the specific homework on that board re the DDR3 memory but I suspect it's related to dual channel mode versus single channel mode for the memory. If you have the option (you do) I'd get "matched" memory and install as dual channel. Again, taking advantage of an performance option simply by choosing the correct configuration path.

as I've said above - I'll probably be holding out for an i7 CPU

.... yeah I got side tracked and you'd posted that while I was typing my post ....

the problem with the disk wearing out isn't very real anymore

yep ... did the math .... anything past 5-7 years and it's getting replaced by something newer, faster, bigger anyways ....

 

[pete.dakota]

An X58 Motherboard definitely seems to be the way forward. Support for both the i7 CPUs and Crossfire. They've only just been realeased, however, and are around £300 from UK sites, and $300 (£180) from the US. However the delivery would be excessive and if I need to return it...

I'll plan to build around an X58 for now. Look into the other parts first. And wait for a while to see if they come down at all in price.

 

[thomasantony]

Just out of curiosity .. what will be the primary use of this rig? What display will it be coupled with?

 

[pete.dakota]

Everyday use at home by me and my family. So browsing, gaming, office work, arguing over who uses it; the usual.

It'll be coming through a 1400x900 19" monitor. I've an eye to upgrade to a larger res screen after the PC is built, though.

 

[thomasantony]

Well .. are you gonna be doing any hardcore gaming on it? Like .. say playing Crysis or Race Driver GRID or Far Cry 2 at 2560x1600 with 8XAA and 16XAF ?

I can't seen how you would get along with JUST 260GB

~
Thomas

 

[pete.dakota]

I do intend to buy and play DX10 games, yeah. Also, I'd like build a rig that can handle the latest games for a good 2 years before having to buy a second GPU or upgrading the processor. It's more of a future-proofing endeavour, rather than wanting nuke Crysis, WIC or any current games right now.

Regarding 260GB: Currently, all pictures, music, documents on the PC
takes up 16GB. DX10 Games, Crysis, WIC etc. average around 10GB. Vista Home Premium take 15GB, say 20 with updates.

So keeping all my music etc. I could install 5 DX10 games and Vista without even breaking 100GB. Other applications and general 'stuff' would get me close to maybe 150GB outside.

I really can't imagine how I'd get close to 280GB. Like I said, I've gotten by on 80GB for the last four years no problem.

 

[tl8]

Trust me, I have just filled one of my 250 GB hard drives (1 for file/data, 3 for programs), and that doesn't have the OS on it (That is on a 36Gb 10k).

It is cheap to buy storage, 500Gb would last a while

 

[pete.dakota]

Storage is cheap, yes. But trust me, I won't fill 280GB. No way, no how. Even if, somehow, I do - it won't be straight away. So the HDD I'm looking at to build the rig is suitable. If I do need extra space in the future, I'll buy a cheap disk then.

 

[Capt. Speirs]

I've decided to build my first home PC. Go, me!

I've a lot of experience tinkering and upgrading with desktop computers, so I know I'm not out of my depth trying to build one from scratch. Essentially, I'm taking what I can from my current PC, buying a new case, and then all new core components off of the internet. I'm going to chronicle this endeavour here, so any impending issues that arise can all stay in one place; instead of me making multiple threads down the line.

This is the spec for the machine I'm hoping to build with links:

MOBO: X58
GPU: Radeon HD 4870x2
CPU: Intel Core I7 920 or 940
RAM: 2GB DDR3 1800MHZ PC3-14400 CL8
Case: CoolerMaster Case
HDD: Seagate 147GB 15000RPM

They're mostly going to be from dabs.com. I did search around using Google's shopping filter, but dabs came out cheaper on ALL the parts. Also they're very trustworthy, and for clarity/returning, I'd like to keep all my orders in one place.

From my current PC I'll be taking: a CDRW, DVD, floppy drive, 80GB HDD, two case fans, a 600W PSU, and a decent PCI sound card. Apart from that, it'll all be new.

I'm going to post here with updates in the future, however I'm going to be planning and saving for the parts for a while; probably looking to build in the new year. So I wanted this time to research, and get to grips with it all before diving in and making a mistake or overlooking something crucial. I'm depening on you guys to stop me from doing something stupid. If anyone posting around here has experience building PCs or with the parts/systems etc. I'd appreciate you weighing in when you can.

First question: I currently have a 600W PSU that I'm hoping to use on the new rig. But I expect it will either just on the line, or short of the power I'll need for the above spec. So, will 600W be enough? Or should I look to buy a new PSU, too?

Second question: How much of a noticeable advantage is there from having a high RPM HDD? I currenlty have a 7.2K. And that seems to still be the standard on new PCs. However the 15k RPM HDD I found has plenty of space and is just as cheap as slower disks.

Third: The RAM I found seems to be very, very cheap. Consider this dabs.com search: similar RAM seems to be three times the price. Any idea why?

Thanks for any tips and advice, guys. I'll be checking here for your sage drops of wisdom all the while.

I have the Coolermaster 690 and the only complaint I have is the Power and reset switches, little cumbersome and fragile. Got it for $35 after rebates.

800 watt plus and use OCZ's PSU.


-----Posted Added-----

Storage is cheap, yes. But trust me, I won't fill 280GB. No way, no how. Even if, somehow, I do - it won't be straight away. So the HDD I'm looking at to build the rig is suitable. If I do need extra space in the future, I'll buy a cheap disk then.

LOL, I remember when I bought the first 512MB hardrive form WD for over $600.00, I will never need more, this will last forever, HA!

 

[blane]

Half a year ago I thought I wouldn't fill the 500GB so fast. Just yesterday I added another half Terabyte

 

[pete.dakota]

The biggest thing - still regarding memory... - is that we don't download music or film. Even through I-tunes or any other legal source. And as far as building the PC is concerned, as long as the HDD can hold the OS, that's good enough for now.