Advice needed on components for new PC

[DickieMoules]

Hi guys,

I've just ordered the below configuration, but would appreciate any advice if anybody knows of any compatiability problems or better components (for roughly the same price), as it's awaiting delivery of the motherboard and is therefore still changeable.

1 x ASUS P5N32 SLI PREMIUM WIFI Motherboard £144.95
3 x 320GB WD SATA2 WD3200KS 16Mb Cache/7200rpm £58.89each £176.67 for the 3
1 x Intel E6700 Core2Duo 2.67GHz £301.59
1 x 1000W ENERMAX EGA1000 PSU £173.99
1 x LiteON 16x DVDRW LSCRIBE B/S/I £26.89
1 x Gigabyte 3DAurora GZ-FSCA1-ATS Silver Aluminum Tower Case £69.99
1 x OCZ 2GB (2x1024MB) DDR2 PC2-8000 Titanium Alpha VX2 £279.00
1 x XFX nVidia GeForce 7950GX2 Extreme Edition '520MHz' 1GB GDDR3 £325.00

All thes prices are excluding VAT

Total Inc. Vat £1777.94

Thinking of changing case for Antec P180 Performance One Super Midi Tower, and adding Arctic Cooling Freezer7 Pro Cpu cooler.

Cheers,

Richard

[Games Guru]

As someone who has been looking to get a new pc lately I can offer the following advice.

Get an i975x or i976x mobo, with conroe, and potentially kentsfield support (I believe this is limited to the i976x mobo?)

Get ram that you can overclock with your cpu in a 1:1 ratio, and a decent (zalman) fan.

Bang for buck, I would recommend the e6600 over the e6700.

Apparently the e6300 offers the best overclocking for the chip, but comes with half the cache of its bigger brothers.

IMO the PSU is overkill, and the maximum you will need is 600W. 1KW is more powerful than most kettles mate, and almost as much as an oven (1.2KW) so totally unneccesary. Not to mention the electric bill if you plan to use it for downloading etc.

If you can, get a SATA dvd drive as they are much quicker and quieter than IDE dvd drives, but again you need a mobo with 4x sata.

Good idea to get several smaller HDD as they offer much better value for money.

Raid is an absolute waste of money, unless you plan on mirroring the configuration for back-up purposes so well done not bothering with that. Similarly the 10,000 rpm HDD are a waste of money and offer miniscule benefits over 7,200 rpm HDD.

IMO the GPU you have is overkill and represents poor value for money, with DX10 graphics cards just around the corner. You are better off going for the single graphics card and upgrading to SLI when the initial DX10 cards come out, as they will be far, far cheaper.

The mobo you have chosen is fantastic however, probably the best mobo that is out there ATM.

I am by no means a professional, just been doing a lot of reading, because as I said, I am planning on building a new system from the ground up.

For a monitor I would suggest the Dell 2407, it is very cheap ATM from dell direct for about £560 inc vat and delivery.

The new Benq 24" monitor offers identical contrast ratio of 10,000:1 and refresh rates of white to black 16ms, but costs over £100 more, so again doesn't represent as good value as the Dell 2407.

Hope this helps mate.

Feel free to ask anything else from my limited knowledge.

[DickieMoules]

Hi Games Guru,

Firstly thanks for the reply.

I've been recommended to get the PSU as it would be ready for further improvements to the system in the next few years, and I was considering getting a second GPU to make it quad sli in the future along with the NVidea Physics card and was informed that that config would require a seriously powerful PSU. Do you know if that is the case?

I have actually brought the GPU already for £275 delivered of eBay, so am definately stuck with that now.

The DDR2 ram has also been purchased, but was also informed that it was the best on the market, so hopefully is!!!!

[Games Guru]

physics cards are a waste of time mate. That kind of thing will probably be done onboard with multi-cores in future and they probably aren't compatible with DX10.

In the future graphics cards are more likely to have their own psu as well, so again a large psu isn't really needed.

Honestly mate, I teach physics, and 1KW is serious overkill.

If you plan on upgrading to quad core, don't think that your mobo will support it and if it does, you can always upgrade your psu in the future.

I can't see how a 1KW psu will ever be needed.

Most filament heaters don't use that much wattage, and they build up some serious resistance.

I can 99.9% guarantee that unless you plan on running nasa from your pc in the future that your psu is a complete waste of money.

[Games Guru]

Indeed if you read the manual for that mobo you have ordered, it says that 515w is the maximum you will need, and that is with 4 sata devices, crossfire graphics cards an e6800 extreme and loads of other gear.

Also forgot to mention, the P5W DH deluxe would be better off with ATI graphics as it supports crossfire.

[DickieMoules]

Thanks again for the advice.

I'm stuck with the NVidea graphics card as I've already bought it, but am considering changing the PSU for 1 of these:

750W SilverStone SST-ST75ZF Black SLi/Xfire Quiet Quad 12v Rail ATX12v 2.2 EPS12v 86% Eff' £116.35

600w Seasonic M12-600 SLi Modular PSU 2xPCI-E 4xSATA 120mm Fan ATX1.3/2.01 £118.96

Also adding the Zalman CNPS9500-AT Intel LGA775 Aero Flower Cooler for the CPU

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Rich

[Games Guru]

That cooler is awesome.

The seasonic one sounds good.

[DickieMoules]

Thanks for all the advice.

The order is now:

1 x ASUS P5N32 SLI PREMIUM WIFI Motherboard £144.95
3 x 320GB WD SATA2 WD3200KS 16Mb Cache/7200rpm £58.89each £176.67 for the 3
1 x Intel Core2Duo X6800 Extreme 2.97GHz £391.50 (off eBay ex. vat)
1 x Zalman CNPS9700-LED Super Aero Flower Cooler (775/AM2/754/939/940) £38.00
1 x 600w Seasonic M12-600 SLi Modular PSU 2xPCI-E 4xSATA 120mm Fan ATX1.3/2.01 £118.96
1 x Pioneer DVDRW Dual layer
1 x Antec P180 Performance One Super Midi Tower
1 x OCZ 2GB (2x1024MB) DDR2 PC2-8000 Titanium Alpha VX2 £279.00
1 x XFX nVidia GeForce 7950GX2 Extreme Edition '520MHz' 1GB GDDR3 £325.00

Can't wait to put the beast together and see what she can do!!!!!

[Games Guru]

Good luck!

[Rasczak]

Originally Posted by DickieMoules

1 x XFX nVidia GeForce 7950GX2 Extreme Edition '520MHz' 1GB GDDR3 £325.00

I had this card installed in my PC until the onboard memory failed (which i'm sure is quite rare). However during my search for a new card I was quite surprised by how the 500MHz 7950GX2 didn't dominate on Tom's Hardware Graphic Card Tests. Is the 520MHz version significantly faster than the 500MHz one?

[DickieMoules]

I haven't had a chance to try it out yet, but it seems as if a few people have had faulty cards and had to send them back. Also it looks as if the ATI latest cards perform better.

This is only what I've read in the forums though, I have no stats or numbers on performance benchmarks.

If I was able to swap the card, I'd probably go for the Radeon X1950XTX for £300

[DickieMoules]

OK,

All the bits finally arrived yesterday and I was able to get it all built.

I am going to spend the evening installing the operating systems etc..... and was looking for any advice on a raid setup.

I have the 3 x sataII 320gb hard drives and was thinking of a raid 5 setup. I want a good read write speed, but would also like the safety net of parity to protect the 80gb of music in my iTunes and all the photos and documents that would cause a lot of problems if they were lost.

If anybody has any advice on which raid setting to use and why, it would be much appreciated. Also how to setup the raid, is using the bios the best way?????

The other factor is that my system will be dual boot, with Windows XP Pro on a small partition and Windows Professional x64 on the larger partition. Will this cause me any problems setting up the raid??????

Thanks in advance,

Rich.

[Tigerblade]

Originally Posted by DickieMoules

1 x XFX nVidia GeForce 7950GX2 Extreme Edition '520MHz' 1GB GDDR3 £325.00

Good card(s) but it ain't 1Gb I'm afraid. These retailers hsouldn't be able to get away with marketing it like that either, it's 2 cards with 512mb each. SLi doesn't add the memory together unfortunately.

Other than that enjoy

[booyaka]

personally - would never RAID my systems. to much hassle if one of the three drives dies!

It doesn't really have any major speed improvements in gaming.

[Bilbob]

The idea of a raid 5 array is so that if one hard disk in the array goes down, you DON'T lose the data, but you also retain the speed advantages of stripe write data.

Can't help you with the set up, your board should take care of this in bios. Set it up, then once the bios recognises it, then windows should see just one volume (drive), and the driver should alert you if a device fails.