Building my first computer - would like advice on my spec

Drift

Hello all, first time poster. I've had numerous computers in the past but this time I decided to build my own one. I'm going for a fairly high spec machine, the main uses of it will be games, some intensive numerical modelling work and some CAD stuff. The spec I've chosen is below I'd like it if you guys could give me your thoughts and opinions on the various bits. I haven't mentioned a monitor because I know nothing at all about monitors, I might open a thread about that later.

Processor: Core 2 Duo E6700 - €529.96
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=322635
The numerical modelling I do for work is highly processor intensive and the faster the processor the faster I get my work done. I'd love to get the Dual Core Extreme processor but the price is just ridiculous, but if anybody knows of a faster processor for a reasonable price let me know please.


Motherboard: MSI 975X Platinum PowerUP Ed. - €209.00
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=323504
On the advice of Toms hardware. It seems to have all that I want. I'm no sound expert but from what I can see the sound card is built onto the motherboard. I think this will be sufficient for some 5.1 speakers. It seems a bit expensive but I think for future proofing the motherboard is important.

Graphics Card: Asus Radeon X1950XTX 512MB GDDR4 - €472.00
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=325455
GAMES, GAMES, GAMES. The rig will be a combined work and play system and I've been stung before by not getting a good enough graphics card. Any thoughts on this one?

Case and PSU: Bundle with NZXT Apollo Silver & XION Powersupply 500W SLI - €161.00
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=325863
Cooooool. LOL, I hope. I think this has enough room for everything and a 500W PSU sounds like its big enough. The case comes with a bay for a peripheral with an LCD screen, if anyone has any ideas of what I could get to put in this bay .... I like the look of LCD screens but I'm not overly sure what I could get?

Ram: Crucial DDR2 BallistiX PC5300 2048MB CL3 ,Kit w/two matched BallistiX 128Megx64 - €277.01
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=321129&cks=CMS
The RAM seems steep. I went for what seemed like the fastest. I need 2GB for the numerical work I mentioned earlier, and it does store a lot of info in RAM so I thought the faster the better, but I'd like to know if it really makes that much of a difference to get the really good RAM or would the slow down by getting cheaper RAM be negligible?

Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB SATA2 16MB 7200RPM - €105.02
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=320709
I would love to get the Western Digital 10,000 RPM hard drive but I just couldn't justify the price. My numerical work doesn't read much from the drive but over the course of a 2 hour run it may write up to 500 files ranging in size from 10kb to 300kb - I don't think the speed increase I'd get could warrant over €100 extra, but I've been known to be wrong before (although you won't get me to admit it!)

and finally:

DVD Drive: NEC DVD±recorder AD-7173 IDE Silver OEM Duallayer,LabelFlash,Multirecorder(Ram) - €39.51
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=325581
I know sweet FA about DVD drives, this just seemed like a good one! Any advice would be very welcome.



If you've waded through this post so far thanks very much. I've left out keyboard and mouse (Cos I reckon I can handle that myself!), speakers (cos I just don't know yet) and monitor (cos I have a lot of research to do on that yet.) The whole thing is going to come to well over 2 grand which is a bit more than I expected but I can't see any reasonable way of skimping back while still getting the performance I'm looking for. Any advice at all from you guys would be a big help......... Just don't give me a post saying "You're too dumb to build your own comp :rolleyes: "

Thanks again.


*edit* - All these prices are from Komplett, I've done a quick comparison with some UK online stores and the prices seem to be about the same. If I'm missing somewhere cheap though please let me know. Or is komplett pretty much the best in wesht so to speak?

koneko

CPU wise, I personally don't think buying the E6700 makes much sense, not for that price. The X6800 is too expensive, but you could get the E6600 instead (and quad cores are on the way or out, but expensive).

Graphics-wise, might be good to hold off a bit aswell, the 8800GTS and 8800GTX are out tomorrow.

For reviews, I wouldn't put an awful lot of faith in Tom's Hardware, their reviews are often off. But mobos wise I've always found Asus boards to be good. MSI boards are decent though, but awkward for updating the BIOS.

Harddrives, perhaps consider getting two drives and running in RAID. Might sound a bit complicated, but once you're up and running it really isn't, and there are good guides online on how to set it up.

KamiKazi

theres a few things id change there.

cpu. dont bother spending the extra on the E6700, buy the E6600 and with a good motherboard it can be easily overclocked to over 3 Ghz.

this motherboard seems to be the best at the mo: http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=321779
this thread will give you an idea of what you could get you cpu up to: http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055006045

gpu. why not spend another €60 and get a 7950x2? its two graphics cards stuck together, and beats the 1950xtx in most benchmarks: linky

hope that helped

Drift

Good call on the graphics cards I'll keep an eye out.

I don't know much about quad core processors but the €500 mark is kinda my limit so if its above that its no go for me.

I was wondering about RAID ..... is it true that if one hard disk in a RAID 0 setup goes balls up you lose all the info on both? Sorry if this is a silly question I don't know a huge amount about it. What benefits would I get from RAID?

Timewise, this computer has to be built before the Christmas so I need to get moving ........ :rolleyes:

Drift

It seems most people think that E6600 is a better bet. I've never overclocked before so I'm a bit wary about it .... would I need to spend a lot more money on extra cooling solutions? Actually this may be asking a bit much but if any overclockers would be willing to test one of my numerical models to see how fast it runs on their setup I could then compare it to my current computer and see. It comes as an executable file with a few .csv and .txt input files. I could change the source code so that it doesn't actually output any data, just runs and then gives a time.

That motherboard looks good kami, out of stock though and no delivery date

I saw the dual graphics cards alright but I could've sworn I read somewhere that for "normal" games they were no better than a single processor one?

KamiKazi

yeah that was true a while back, but its a lot better now.

as for the graphics card i showed ya, it isnt strictly sli, as its one unit and only takes up one pci-e slot. but in reality its two graphics cards withouth the draw backs of sli

as for the mobo, just get an asus p5b deluxe. same mobo, just no wi-fi

8T8

I wouldn't spend money on either the X1950XTX or 7950GX2 with the 8800GTX being so close (if you can afford it) as it's faster than both but be aware they will cost a lot like close to €600 euro. If that price is too much I'd consider the 8800GTS (somewhere around €500 I think) or stick with the X1950XTX as you can Crossfire the X1950 down the road on the 975X chipset.

As for RAID 0 yeah you will loose everything if one of the drives fail that doesn't mean it's a bad idea though what you should do is buy 2 or 3 extra hard drives and back up all your data regularly onto those either independently or in a RAID 1 array where it will mirror the data automatically.

That way if anything goes wrong with the RAID 0 setup you have something to fall back on.

I'd stick with the MSI motherboard very good reviews & upgrade potential.

As for monitors well with a high end GPU you will want to be going wide screen and somewhere around the 20" range or higher to keep that high end GPU busy.

You should check this thread for recommendations I personally use a NEC MultiSync 20WMGX2, 1680x1050 resolution and highly recommend it. Has fantastic brightness and colour rendering (ideal for things also besides gaming) but it comes at a high price and also has a glossy screen which is not to everyone's liking. They can be acquired on OcUK.

Drift

What makes RAID better than a "standard" SATA drive?


Everyone agress on the E6600 instead of 6700 I think so it looks like I'll save myself some money there.


I will probably wait for a look at the new card although I may still end up with the 1950XTX, I find that you often end up waiting for the next big thing and there's always a next big thing around the corner. :rolleyes:

One quick monitor question ....... from what I've seen flat panel monitors look better in native resolution. My question is that if the native resolution is very big ... eg. (1680 x 1050) or something like that and I need to run a game at 1200x whatever to get a good frame rate does that mean it will look crap cos the monitor isn't in native resolution anymore?

Thanks again for all the advice guys, its really helping.

8T8

Drift wrote:

What makes RAID better than a "standard" SATA drive?

With a RAID 0 array you are basically combining the SATA drives to enhance performance so it's just gets faster (it's a relatively cheap way of getting better performance), if you don't want RAID the fastest regular HD is the Western Digital Raptor but again they come at a premium. I'd recommend the Western Digital SE16 as a better alternative to the Seagate drive.

Drift wrote:

I will probably wait for a look at the new card although I may still end up with the 1950XTX, I find that you often end up waiting for the next big thing and there's always a next big thing around the corner.

The GeForce 8 series are hard launching in just another day or two so hold off till you see the benchmarks the leaked numbers on some forums already show it to be very powerful in DX9 and it looks like it will be in DX10 as well. IQ is on par with ATI if not better (finally) and it comes with some fancy features for reducing the impact of AA which will come in very handy at high resolutions. If the cheaper 8800GTS ends up faster than the X1950XTX then I would go for one of those instead.

Drift wrote:

One quick monitor question ....... from what I've seen flat panel monitors look better in native resolution. My question is that if the native resolution is very big ... eg. (1680 x 1050) or something like that and I need to run a game at 1200x whatever to get a good frame rate does that mean it will look crap cos the monitor isn't in native resolution anymore?.

Depends on the monitor some handle scaling better than others in general most displays have gotten good at this so the horrible blurry image problem no longer applies. Though the NEC display I mentioned has one of the best scalers/stretchers so if running at lower resolutions it will still fill the screen (you can turn this off if you like) & not have to deal with black bars at either side of the screen with non-wide resolutions.

{Though keep in mind with the very high end GPU's were talking about here you will rarely have to run games at a resolution that is not 1680x1050 unless the game simply does not support that res}

Drift

Thanks 8T8, scaling is what I was on about. Now that I know the technical term I'll do a bit of googling.

€550 is some whack for a monitor. Anything around the €300 thats still decent quality?

I'm going to wait for the GeForce 8 series and see the stats before I do anything.

I'll also do some serious looking at RAID stuff. If I can get better performance for the same price then why not.

8T8

Samsung are generally decent all rounders.

A little over budget but check out this Samsung 20" 1680x1050 for €375

Pixmania have the same display going for €315.

Drift

I'm liking the look of that samsung monitor.

I've also discovered that I can save €200 by going for the E6600 processor instead of the E6700 one so it looks like a good option, but I'd really be interested in overclocking it to get my numerical models to run faster. A 20% increase in speed could save 12 mins in every hour, but I'm not sure 20% is realistic. If I was planning on overclocking do I need to invest in some cooling equipment now too?

DOTA_POWA

Yea you would need a new heatsink. Fully copper would be good.

Drift

What would putting a new heatsink/fan on the processor entail? Am I likely to make a balls out of it ....... from what I understand you have to use a special glue (heat transfer stuff) and that if you do it wrong you could end up having a chip with really bad cooling?

(Sorry about the amateurishness of the question :rolleyes: )

awhir

its artic silver 5 and its like spreading butter on toast..

Drift

dammit, I always drop the toast on the floor butter side down

So by the sounds of things its not a big deal. Thats what I like to hear.

So anyone got any advice on the new graphics cards. I was thinking of going for the 8800GTS, am just a bit worried that because its so new it might be very buggy.

awhir

i would go for the gts but havent seen any reviews yet so dont know its performince..but pursume it would be good.

Drift

http://www.gamespot.com/features/6161267/p-2.html

http://tomshardware.co.uk/2006/11/08/geforce_8800_uk/page6.html

Looks good on the gamespot one in toms it seems to not be a huge amount better than the X1950XTX, but then it is almost the same price.

awhir

there both gtxs u said gts's

awhir

oh **** my bad srry.ya go for gts seems like agood card.

8T8

Yeah go with the GTS it has better features, better image quality and DX10 support thrown into the mix.

Don't worry about the drivers only a small number of games displayed minor visual bugs with the reviewer drivers NVIDIA will be polishing those frantically over the coming weeks.

SeanW

I'm not too familiar with the Core2 platform but processors and their processing power on the market tends to follow the laws of diminishing return. That means you can get a basic modern or semi-obsolete processor for next to nothing but it's relatively affordable to go extra money to get something closer to the mid-section of the market.
Whereas if you want to go into the high end of the market, the cost goes up exponentially and you have to pay a lot more money for a faster processor.
Essentially at some point you could end up paying €200 or more for an extra couple of hundred MHz in a particlar processor line.

So the question you should ask yourself WRT an E6700, is do you really need to be that far ahead of the curve in processing power?

Drift

Its a time vs. money issue for me with regards to the processor. The time it takes my work to complete is directly linked to processor speed so the question I have to ask myself is will the E6700 save me enough time when compared to the E6600 to make it worth my while. Which in turn comes down to how much money my time is worth ( which is NOT MUCH I can tell ya! ).

Then you have to throw into the mix that overclocking an E6600 could be just as good at a cheaper price but presumably in the long run theres a chance of decreased processor lifetime.