People's opinions on new build.

amurph0

Hi,

This is my first build and i've done a lot of research over the last month or so to make sure all the components i'm getting are compatible before i buy.

I'd just like to get some other people's opinions on whether or not i've picked some good parts and whether i should change some out.

Here's the list:
Case: Antec 1200

CPU: AMD Phenom II X6 1090T

Motherboard: Asus Crosshair IV Formula AMD 890FX
(I'm interested in this motherboard as it will give me the option to go up to triple CrossFire in the future if i want to)

Memory: 4GB (2x2GB) Patriot G-Series DDR3 PC3-12800 1600Mhz CL9 (PGS34G1600ELKA)

PSU: Corsair Memory 1200 Watt Pro Series AX1200

HDDs: 2x Western Digital 600GB VelociRaptor 10000RPM SATA-600 32MB Hard Drive (in RAID0)

And for GPU i was thinking of getting a Radeon 5870 with the option of getting 1 or 2 more at a later date for a CrossFire configuration.

Also i'm stuck on what kind of CPU cooler to get. I want one that won't be obstructed by the DDR3 as i might also upgrade to 8GB (4x2GB) of the patriot kit shown above.

Are all of these compatible?

What do ye think?

aidan_walsh

I think I'm going to move this to Building & Upgrading

amurph0

aidan_walsh wrote: »

I think I'm going to move this to Building & Upgrading

Cheer's, i was about to ask a mod to move it. Didn't realize i was in the the other forum. My bad!

Jonny7

Maybe, instead setup two 1 tb Samsung F3 drives in raid (50 euros each) and spend the extra money saved on an ultra fast SSD to use for a system drive

New ATI graphics cards are out in... like 6 days, perhaps wait before you get the 5870.

The processor is a little slower than the i5 760 for gaming - but yes 2 extra cores always nice and easily overclockable - germany has these chips for 200 euros at the moment

What size monitor you going to run with this machine (what res basically)

scoobyjack

Yeah, I'd use an SSD for your system drive, and a nice quiet (even 5400rpm) drive for other data.

SSD will win over two velociraptors hands down for random access, which is what your computer will be doing most of the time.

amurph0

Jonny7 wrote: »

Maybe, instead setup two 1 tb Samsung F3 drives in raid (50 euros each) and spend the extra money saved on an ultra fast SSD to use for a system drive

Thanks.

Jonny7 wrote: »

New ATI graphics cards are out in... like 6 days, perhaps wait before you get the 5870.

Cheers. I'm not planning on getting the GPU straight away. I'm starting off with the case, motherboard, PSU and CPU, and i'm just going to use the GPU and HDD's from my old PC till i upgrade them. It'll be at least a couple of months so the're's plenty of time to decide on a graphics card

Jonny7 wrote: »

The processor is a little slower than the i5 760 for gaming - but yes 2 extra cores always nice and easily overclockable - germany has these chips for 200 euros at the moment

I was looking at the i5 previously but decided on the 1090T because of that over-clocking ability

Jonny7 wrote: »

What size monitor you going to run with this machine (what res basically)

I'll be running it on my 40" Samsung HDTV.

(EDIT: I haven't decided on what kind of resolution i'd actually have it set at. I never had my old PC at high resolution so i'll have to play around with it when i get it. What do you recommend?)

scoobyjack wrote: »

Yeah, I'd use an SSD for your system drive, and a nice quiet (even 5400rpm) drive for other data.

SSD will win over two velociraptors hands down for random access, which is what your computer will be doing most of the time.

That would be preferable for fast boot performance but i'm more concerned with how fast i can move around large pieces of data between my HDD's rather then how fast my system starts.

Which is why i picked the VelociRaptors because high capacity SDD's are much more expensive. Also, as i understand it, HDD's have a much longer lifespan don't they?

amurph0

The CPU cooler i'm currently interested in is the Corsair Air Series A70, but i'm not sure if it'll fit with 8GB of memory installed.

The patriot kit i selected above have heat sinks built in, so they maybe too high?

Also i was thinking of also getting a cooler for my RAM sticks so i want that to be able to fit too!

Skerries

how much are those velociraptors costing you?
would you not be better off going for Caviar Blacks as they would be a lot cheaper and are catching up on the VR's if not matched?

amurph0

Skerries wrote: »

how much are those velociraptors costing you?
would you not be better off going for Caviar Blacks as they would be a lot cheaper and are catching up on the VR's if not matched?

I'm sure the Caviar Blacks are 7200rpm? Unless there's a new version out that's 10,000rpm?

And i'm sure the VR has twice the data transfer rate? (600mb/s vs 300mb/s in the CB)

The reason i'm looking at the VR's is because i want to transfer/install/start stuff fast. Is there really much of a difference between 10,000rpm and 7,200rpm or 600mb/s vs 300mb/s??

And what kind of effect would a HDD's performance have on gaming and stuff like that?

techguy

The HD will have a huge effect on the gaming depending on the RAM..

I read on here that some guy had 8 or so gigs of ram and his games would load fully into the ram resulting in the hard drive to spin down.

Win!

Jonny7

amurph0 wrote: »

I'm sure the Caviar Blacks are 7200rpm? Unless there's a new version out that's 10,000rpm?

And i'm sure the VR has twice the data transfer rate? (600mb/s vs 300mb/s in the CB)

The reason i'm looking at the VR's is because i want to transfer/install/start stuff fast. Is there really much of a difference between 10,000rpm and 7,200rpm or 600mb/s vs 300mb/s??

And what kind of effect would a HDD's performance have on gaming and stuff like that?

Check recent reviews of the velociraptor vs something like the samsung F3

Its not actually that much better, not enough to justify the price difference really

Last time I checked it was about 10% faster or so, don't read into figures like rpm speed and the data transfer rate

SSD's are on a whole different level and you would see significant improvement with one of them but sadly only as system drive for now bc of cost

The black edition chips are 'easy' to overclock, but that doesn't mean they overclock higher or better than the i5's

Just read reviews and check benchmarks

Maj Malfunction

IMO on the HDD debate, if you went for something modest on the SSD front around the 120GB mark, it would be fine for running you OS and some programs that you use alot of the time. In terms of speed its amazing.

Get a large capacity HDD say 1TB to storage your music/videos/documents and software on.

The VelociRaptor's don't really offer that much in day to day use. If your running RAID0 you need to consider the lack of redundancy and maybe some sort of backup for important data?

I would plough any savings on the VelociRaptor's and invest in upping the RAM to 8GB it makes a big difference on Windows 7.

Monotype

amurph0 wrote: »

The reason i'm looking at the VR's is because i want to transfer/install/start stuff fast. Is there really much of a difference between 10,000rpm and 7,200rpm or 600mb/s vs 300mb/s??

Do you mean 6000Mb/s (6Gbps vs 3Gbps)? You won't see any difference except in SSDs which support it. You can't base your choices on 10K RPM vs 7.2K, it makes little real world difference. IMO, go for the SSD + hard drive.
Otherwise, go RAID 0 with maybe three hard drives if you need the space and it will still be cheaper than the velociraptors. Of course you should still have a drive for backup.

Or RAID 0 SSDs.

About the processor - maybe consider the 95W 1055T. Only available as OEM, but it's a newer revision and likely to be a little better than the previous 1055T and cheaper than the 1090T.

amurph0

Cheers lads.

I've decided to go with 2 1tb caviar blacks in raid0 for storage and a 128GB SSD for the system and commonly used programs like what was advised by ye.

I have a 500GB Barracuda 7200.11 left over from my old build and i'm going to use that for backing up stuff.

Monotype wrote: »

Do you mean 6000Mb/s (6Gbps vs 3Gbps)?

Yeah. my bad!

Monotype wrote: »

You won't see any difference except in SSDs which support it. You can't base your choices on 10K RPM vs 7.2K, it makes little real world difference. IMO, go for the SSD + hard drive.
Otherwise, go RAID 0 with maybe three hard drives if you need the space and it will still be cheaper than the velociraptors. Of course you should still have a drive for backup.

Or RAID 0 SSDs.

Cheer's. It's just that i was initially put off by the cost of SSD's compared to their capacity. I see now how they could be handy as a system drive with HDD's for storage.

Monotype wrote: »

About the processor - maybe consider the 95W 1055T. Only available as OEM, but it's a newer revision and likely to be a little better than the previous 1055T and cheaper than the 1090T.

I'd prefer to get a Black edition one because of the ease of overclocking it. Especially because i'm a noob when it comes to overclocking.

MMiskella

Hey,

I've got the crosshair forumla mobo, 4GB patriot viper 1600mhz CL7 ram and two old skool 36gb 10,000rpm SCSI raptor drives in raid 0 and the first thing that pops out is that the power supply looks to be overkill as ive got a corsair AX850 and I feel thats enough for my plans which also includes crossfire. 1000W+ tends to be if you have a lot more harddrives I think.

If you go here you can input what you expect and it will tell you how many watts you expect to use. With crossfire, overclocked, watercooled, etc. on my system it tells me 600W.

The 10,000rpm harddrives are fast but also much noiser when seeking, this is the biggest advantage of SSD drives for most home users as you wont get good price vs performance with general PC use of SSD's as a home PC does not play to a SSD's strengths.

I've also got a x4 955 processor and it is true they overclock extremely well, i'm using the stock cooler and thermal compound and with that i'm running overclocked by 400mhz while keeping temperatures under 57C (62C recommended max.) with prime95 stress testing (before the cold snap). Not having an unlocked multiplier the mobo might be overkill as its designed to take advantage of extreme overclocking.

scoobyjack

One thing about the SSD - make sure it has TRIM support. Otherwise it can get a lot slower as it gets older and fuller, and needs to overwrite old (deleted) data.

Check the reviews too - there are actually vast differences in performance between different SSDs.