Newbie seeks advice (new build)

3s'n

Hi all,

Long time reader first time poster, can you guys give me some advice on my first build? I will mainly be using this rig for dealing with multimedia, encoding and transcoding HD video, and viewing HD video. I don’t really play games and I wont be overclocking, I would like this build to be as quite as possible with no flashing lights, lol. Because of the fact the computer will be encoding HD video I am assuming that CPU and RAM will be an important factor, the budget comes to about 1,500. I don’t need dvd drives or hard drives and I have a monitor and keyboard. I already got the case, a Cooler Master Cosmos 1000.

Intel Core™ i7 Quad Processor i7-920
Zalman CNPS9700 NT Ultra Quiet
OCZ Freeze Extreme Thermal Compound,
EVGA X58 3xSLI, Socket-1366
Corsair XMS3 DDR3 1600MHz 12GB CL9
Zalman PSU 850W, Ultra Silent, SLI,
PowerColor Radeon HD 5850 1GB GDDR5

The reason I picked that graphics card was because the performance to price ratio seams very good.

Thanks in advance guys.

Effluo

If you wanted it to be uber quiet you could just get a big ass heatsink! http://www3.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?adp=0&aid=25728&agid=669&apop=4 it's €30 which is particularly expensive considering you won't be overclocking!

Don't know why you went for that board... Yeah it's a great OC'er but for you a bog standard one would suffice! PSU is really quite crazy considering what you'll be doing with this get a max 450watt even a 400 would suffice(corsair/antec).

If you're not gaming then you certainly don't need a 5850...
Not sure what type of card (if any) would benefit hd coding. But i would presume the gpu should be under €100.

12gb's of ram? For most things 4gb's is overkill. You should get 6gb's though.

And that's about it. The ideal pc for you comes in at around €700...

Leman_Russ

To be honest though, you should look into overclocking it.

The i7 920 is just a monster and a half when you tweek it, and can actually result in real life reductions in time spent encoding etc.

I agree though you do not need that PSU, it's far too much overkill

3s'n

Sorry I should have giving a bit more information on the build. I wanted to future proof the build as much as possible because I have the budget to do so now.

I picked that motherboard because I have seven 1TB drives and 2 DVD burners so I need the 9 SATA ports and the ability to do raid 5. Also at the end of the I7’s life cycle I may overclock it and this board seems to be very good at that.

I picked the graphics card because it does audio over HDMI and it’s a good card for that price.

The power supply because of the amount of hardware I was putting into the computer, I need it to be reliable and quite.

I understand I may not need that much ram so I may just go for the 6gig.

Solitaire

There's very little reason to get anything more than a HD4350 (or even wait for the HD5350 to be released) if all you need is a hardware-accelerated HDCP card with reasonable Audio Over HDMI. This also affects the amount of power used and the kind of PSU to get. As for the Cosmos 1000... dear God... :eek:

If you're not into OCing go the LGA1156 route, as the i7-860 will give you a lot more bang-for-your-buck (and a bit more raw power due to the upgraded Turbo Mode) than a cheap LGA1366 build. I'm sorely tempted to tell you to get a cheap €15-20 PCI(e) SATA card and run the optical drives off that; it'd end up cheaper than paying the €60+ premium for a mobo with an additional onboard SATA controller and extra ports to match.

And with an assload of storage the main thing you need is a reliable unirail PSU, not some 850W monster. Each HDD will usually only gobble up a few watts each when running, the only issue is the initial current surge when they spin up the spindles from idle; that's when they gobble up power (on the 12V rail we're not talking watts, we're talking amps) for just a split second. Anything that wont go into OCP shutdown from that initial surge when the OS starts up and spins up the HDDs (all at the same time :rolleyes: ) will run your system fine. Given the complete lack of super-de-dooper gaming graphics cards (if you follow my advice) you're only talking about a 550W PSU - so long as it has a single 12V rail *cough*Corsair*cough*. Problems start when you try to run a heap of 3.5" multi-platter HDDs off a multi-rail PSU where on sub-800W models all the Molex/SATA devices in the system are shunted off onto just one feeble 18A rail or even the same rail as the mobo and non-PEG (i.e. up to 75W for PCIe) peripheral cards! Sticking them with the mobo and CPU on a nice 41A rail is a better idea

3s'n

Solitaire wrote: »

There's very little reason to get anything more than a HD4350 (or even wait for the HD5350 to be released) if all you need is a hardware-accelerated HDCP card with reasonable Audio Over HDMI. This also affects the amount of power used and the kind of PSU to get. As for the Cosmos 1000... dear God... :eek:

If you're not into OCing go the LGA1156 route, as the i7-860 will give you a lot more bang-for-your-buck (and a bit more raw power due to the upgraded Turbo Mode) than a cheap LGA1366 build. I'm sorely tempted to tell you to get a cheap €15-20 PCI(e) SATA card and run the optical drives off that; it'd end up cheaper than paying the €60+ premium for a mobo with an additional onboard SATA controller and extra ports to match.

And with an assload of storage the main thing you need is a reliable unirail PSU, not some 850W monster. Each HDD will usually only gobble up a few watts each when running, the only issue is the initial current surge when they spin up the spindles from idle; that's when they gobble up power (on the 12V rail we're not talking watts, we're talking amps) for just a split second. Anything that wont go into OCP shutdown from that initial surge when the OS starts up and spins up the HDDs (all at the same time :rolleyes: ) will run your system fine. Given the complete lack of super-de-dooper gaming graphics cards (if you follow my advice) you're only talking about a 550W PSU - so long as it has a single 12V rail *cough*Corsair*cough*. Problems start when you try to run a heap of 3.5" multi-platter HDDs off a multi-rail PSU where on sub-800W models all the Molex/SATA devices in the system are shunted off onto just one feeble 18A rail or even the same rail as the mobo and non-PEG (i.e. up to 75W for PCIe) peripheral cards! Sticking them with the mobo and CPU on a nice 41A rail is a better idea

I could always send the cosmos back, i picked it because it's silent and inconspicuous plus it has place inside for 6 hard drives, if you were to pick a case from Komplett with the same qualities, what would it be ? Cosmos S perhaps ??

Thanks for the advise on the power supply, maybe i was going a bit overboard, lol.

I've been looking at benchmarks for the i7-860 and it seems that it may have an edge over the i7-920 when it comes to encoding movies, thanks for the heads up :-)

Solitaire

Sorry... the words "Cosmos" and "inconspicuous" in the same line has given me the giggles Valid point on the HDD issue though, something with space for seven 3.5" HDDs is going to be annoyingly huge :rolleyes: If it was a HTPC I know a lovely little case that can take six HDDs On the other hand even the humble Antec 300 would work if you used a 5.25">3.5" bay adapter to give a home to that awkward seventh HDD Few midi-towers can take the seventh HDD without such an adapter, and while the Thermaltake M5 could (if you repurposed both the external 3.5" bays for internal use that makes seven ) it's even more garish than the 300. D'oh. Sophisticated performance cases often command fiendish price premiums I find; the Antec P183 might be more up your alley (if you find the Obelisk from 2001 more "inconspicuous" than street-racer-bling) but its €139! And the price of refinement is that the cooling layout is a bit last-gen; all the soundproofing means I'd take the 95W i7-860 over the 130W i7-920 as it'll get a wee bit sweaty in there!

As for the Cosmos S: :eek: That is all.

3s'n

Solitaire wrote: »

Sorry... the words "Cosmos" and "inconspicuous" in the same line has given me the giggles Valid point on the HDD issue though, something with space for seven 3.5" HDDs is going to be annoyingly huge :rolleyes: If it was a HTPC I know a lovely little case that can take six HDDs On the other hand even the humble Antec 300 would work if you used a 5.25">3.5" bay adapter to give a home to that awkward seventh HDD Few midi-towers can take the seventh HDD without such an adapter, and while the Thermaltake M5 could (if you repurposed both the external 3.5" bays for internal use that makes seven ) it's even more garish than the 300. D'oh. Sophisticated performance cases often command fiendish price premiums I find; the Antec P183 might be more up your alley (if you find the Obelisk from 2001 more "inconspicuous" than street-racer-bling) but its €139! And the price of refinement is that the cooling layout is a bit last-gen; all the soundproofing means I'd take the 95W i7-860 over the 130W i7-920 as it'll get a wee bit sweaty in there!

As for the Cosmos S: :eek: That is all.

Under your awesome tutelage :-) I shall go with the i7-860 with stock cooling, if I find it a bit loud I may get a different heatsink later on. I am leaning towards the Antec P183 case, reviews say it’s silent and there are no blinding lights coming from it, the only gripe I have with the case is as you said “the cooling layout is a bit last-gen”.

I am going to go with the ASUS Maximus III Formula, P55 motherboard, it has all the SATA ports I need as well as RAID. As for RAM Corsair XMS3 DDR3 1600MHz 8GB CL9, should keep me happy. As for the graphics card I think I’ll stick with the original choice, the brother may want to play games on it. I am thinking the Corsair HX 750W PSU, it has 12 SATA power connectors which I may eventually need, lol :-)

Im under budget, NICE ;-)