Help me build a super computer!

witnessmenow

Ok so I wanna build a beast of a computer and i was wondering if any of knowlegable folks could help me out! I'll have loads of questions for ye, i've built pcs before but i really wwant to do a class job on this one and have everything considered!

I will be using the PC mostly for gaming.

First thing a really need to decide is my processor. Definitly going with intel, question is what one?

Can get the QX9650 for a lot lot less than retail, but can get the Q9550 for half that agian. I dont mind spending the extra money if there is substantial enough diffrence. So my first question is:

Is there much of a diffrence between QX9650 and Q9550?

Also feel free to suggest other processors if you think there worth mentioning .Follow up question would be:

What Mobo do you suggest?

Thanks in advance for the replies, and dont worry i'll have more questions after we get past the above 2

Spear

Budget?

witnessmenow

€1500 kind of money, More if i think its worth it (i really dont think i'll need to spend that much even). Less if i think im not sacraficing much! Have a monitor, keyboard and mouse im happy with.

But i can get the CPUs for way cheaper than they normally cost.

Im thinking of 4gb of ram, 2X GT8800 (or whatever there called), big power supply, Whatever for hard drives, case and cooling.

Spear

witnessmenow wrote: »

€1500 kind of money, More if i think its worth it (i really dont think i'll need to spend that much even). Less if i think im not sacraficing much! Have a monitor, keyboard and mouse im happy with.

But i can get the CPUs for way cheaper than they normally cost.

Im thinking of 4gb of ram, 2X GT8800 (or whatever there called), big power supply, Whatever for hard drives, case and cooling.

The 8800 series is replaced by the 9800, so you could look at the 9800GX2.

witnessmenow

Thanks for the reply!

I guess this will be my third question:

What Graphics Card/s Should i get?

There a massive step up in price!
Do you reckon two 512mb 8800GT XT in SLI out preform one 1gb 9800GX2 by much ? If they were any way close i'd go with the 9800GX2 so i'd have the slot open for going SLI down the line

We'll say my budget for graphics cards is in and around the €400-€450 mark

EDIT: This fairly answers my question, i guess its the 8800 for me so

KerranJast

One of the lads in my thread made a good point re: graphics cards. 2x 9600 SLI would be more than enough oompf for a year or so. The 9900 series from NVidia will be out soon and could be a big improvement on the 9800s.

RoyalMarine

what size monitor do you have?
and what harddrives & optical drives are in your current computer?

no point buying new ones if the ones you have are good.

witnessmenow

22" monitor

I'll prob leave my hard drives from my current where they are, 250gb and a 320gb .. hardly worth it. Might just buy a few 500gb and maybe a raptor...are they worth it?

Spear

If you're going with 4GB of RAM you'll probably want a 64bit OS as well. My personal recommendation would be Corsair's stuff, but you'll want to up the voltage slightly if it's in the form of 4 modules.

AlmightyCushion

With a 22" monitor I'd probably get an 8800gts. It should do you fine. Sli would be a bit of a waste of money at the resolution of that monitor.

Sqaull20

I would get something like this...



Add a Q9450 if you can get it for sub €200 and a good cpu cooler...

Sli is not pointless @ 1680 by 1050 especially when you turn on AA and other effects, games like Crysis, Call of Duty 4, Assassins Creed and upcoming games need that power...

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/geforce_9600_gt_sli_performance/page8.asp

AlmightyCushion

Never said it was pointless I said it was a bit of a waste at that resolution. I knew it would show some improvements but I didn't think it would show as much of an improvement as that link shows. Witnessmenow, if I were you I'd go with the build squall has above. It's a quality system for the money.

mathias

Crysis, Call of Duty 4, Assassins Creed and upcoming games need that power...

I just built a killer machine myself , with SLI and two 8800's , but cmon now , Crysis is the only one of that bunch that needs power ,

Assassins creed and COD4 dont ! They'd run on almost anything !

KamiKazi

What I'd go for with your budget: Click

witnessmenow

mathias wrote: »

I just built a killer machine myself , with SLI and two 8800's , but cmon now , Crysis is the only one of that bunch that needs power ,

Assassins creed and COD4 dont ! They'd run on almost anything !

Mathias im interested to hear what CPU you bought as i believe i remember reading you work for intel, im co-oping in shannon and thats why i have access to the cheap CPUs


@Squall: Thanks very much for the detail you went into. I'd say I'll be using them alright, there prices are great! Would it make much diffrence going for a Q9550 instead, i'd still be well in budget

EDIT: 1000 posts , a milestone thats only been reached by 1,745 other boardsies

witnessmenow

Ok if i was to buy right now this is what i'd go for, opinions please

Case:
Antec Nine Hundred, ATX

Mobo:
MSI P7N Sli Platinum

CPU:
Undecieded - Possibly Q9550

CPU Cooler:
No Idea, please recomend one!

Ram:
4gb OCZ DDR2 Pc2-6400

Hard Drives:
2 x samsung 750gb sata II

GFX:
Thinking maybe - 2 x Sparkle 9600GT, 512mb

DVD drive:
Samsung SH-202N

Extras:
TEAC 7-in- card reader & Floppy Drive
abit Wireless Card

Overall I'm looking at about €1100 or so. What do you think?

Grim_Wreeper

looks good, Are Sparkle graphics card supposed to be good. and as far as I'm aware, windows only uses 3 gig RAM unless you go 64 bit.

jakedixon2004

Is That u Eric?

Sqaull20

mathias wrote: »

I just built a killer machine myself , with SLI and two 8800's , but cmon now , Crysis is the only one of that bunch that needs power ,

Assassins creed and COD4 dont ! They'd run on almost anything !

Fair point, Cod4 doesnt need insane power but Assassins creed does, most of the new games are going to need that power too..

2 x 9600gt's for €220 is just too good a deal to pass up imo, they can get close to a 9800gx2...

@ Wreeper sparkle are a pretty good brand,they are just not that well known.All brands are virtually the same card most of the time..

@ Witness if you can get a Q9550 cheap go for it...

Grim_Wreeper

jakedixon2004 wrote: »

Is That u Eric?

F no.


And I think I'm going to go for 2 EVGA 8800GT (superclocked).cause I already have one and it's a beast of a card.

Blowfish

witnessmenow wrote: »

Ok if i was to buy right now this is what i'd go for, opinions please

Case:
Antec Nine Hundred, ATX

Mobo:
MSI P7N Sli Platinum

CPU:
Undecieded - Possibly Q9550

CPU Cooler:
No Idea, please recomend one!

Ram:
4gb OCZ DDR2 Pc2-6400

Hard Drives:
2 x samsung 750gb sata II

GFX:
Thinking maybe - 2 x Sparkle 9600GT, 512mb

DVD drive:
Samsung SH-202N

Extras:
TEAC 7-in- card reader & Floppy Drive
abit Wireless Card

Overall I'm looking at about €1100 or so. What do you think?

The other option if that is your total budget is to drop the second HDD and put it towards dual GTS's at €163 each.

TerrorFirmer

When did video cards start becoming so friggin cheap? I paid 300 for my GTS about 6 weeks ago!

mathias

When did video cards start becoming so friggin cheap? I paid 300 for my GTS about 6 weeks ago!

Theres quite a range of GTS cards out there at the moment , depending on which one you bought the price can vary a lot , along with the performance , I bought 2 tuned 1GB gainwards ... not cheap !! and not small either , had to modify those huge red heatsinks just a tad !!

I went for the striker extreme motherboard.

I went for the Q9550 by the way.

Grim_Wreeper

And how do you find the Q9550? that's the one that I'm looking at!

mathias

Its a flyer , no issues so far , but the system is only two weeks old , Its running Vista 64 and Ive had one blue screen so far , and that was a motherboard driver issue , once I got all the latest drivers there were no problems.

Ive ran some encoding tests , and Ive never had a system as fast as it , Im still getting the figures together , but so far , at a conservative estimate , Im looking at at least a 35% inprovement in speed encoding large video files ,( Over my AMD 4800 x 2 ), these would be 12GB grabs from my mini DV camcorder , encoding to xvid.

Encoding mp3's to lame VBR zero is ridiculously fast , I havnt got round to running some real benchmarks yet , but Im expecting good things.

nibble

Here's what I'd go for, you could definitely do it cheaper but if the cash is spare why not? It's not SLI because I would never but an Nvidia board, there's no arguing P35/X38 are far superior especially in terms of overclocking..
You could switch the Q6700 for a Q9550 if you wanted but it's not going to be much better really.
The DFI has tons of overclocking options and looks sweet IMO too! The X38 one is similar but a bit more pricey.





I put in a pretty nice case, you could cheap out on that if you wanted too but that's something I'd never do
For cooling a few Zalman F3's or Scythe S-Flex's for the case and for the CPU a Thermalright IFX-14 or an Ultra-120 Extreme, you could get a Scythe Mugen either. They're basically top of the air cooling pack.

PogMoThoin

:rolleyes: Nice, but I'd change the hd to either a 1Tb or 750Gb f1 sata's with 32Mb cache. Not a fan of sli myself either, I prefer intel mobo's and a single gpu.

c0rn

Hi everyone.

My first post

Was looking at the config you have so far and it looks sweet I have to say.

Thought I should drop my 2 cents as well hehe.

The hard drives you have picked are Samsung 750Gb, is that the SpinPoint F1 model? If so then they are going to fly. In many reviews they are faster then Raptor drives in many tests.

Here is a big review of hard disks for you.

The Samsung F1 drives are really fast and so are the Western Digital Caviar SE16. I would deffo take a look at them if I was you

Hard drives effect your system more then most people actually think.

Hope that my little thoughts help you towards your goal.

witnessmenow

Hey , Welcome to boards!

Thanks for the link, I didn't realise they were that good, i was only buying them cause they're dirt cheap! €160 for 1.5TB of storage...mmm .. yes please!

Ok so i'm happy with most things so far, things i need to decide on:

• Graphics cards: I've basically three options: 2x 9600GT, 2x 8800GTS or a 9800xx (at the moment the 9600's are edging it in my mind)
• CPU cooler, have no idea whats good, never used anything but a stock one before!

Blowfish

witnessmenow wrote: »

• CPU cooler, have no idea whats good, never used anything but a stock one before!

If you are going for bang for the buck, this is the one you want.

c0rn

For your CPU Cooler I would deffo go for something from the ZALMAN 9xxx series or a Tuniq Tower, they both have amazing cooling power and don't sound like jet planes.

Frostytech has a nice review of the Tuniq Tower here, you can also see many other coolers in comparison in that review.

You can of course stick with the stock cooler, I can't honestly say if they are any good I always just put my ones in the bin (well not really but you get the point hehe).

But with the rest of the stuff that you are getting I would really want you to go for something else then a stock cooler, it would hurt my soul to see a stock cooler in a new comp like that