New Build - Opinions Please.

vestanpance · 20-01-2011 9:53pm #1

Hi,

Could some kind folk run their eye over this build, I'm currently looking to go with a new computer with gaming/film encoding/photoshopping high on my list of priorties, also, I need this to be as quiet as possible I have an os already and monitor (22" 1920 x 1080). I do hope to add a second monitor in the near future.

Is there anything obvious that won't go well together or just shouldn't be there in the first place? Or am I missing anything?

pcconfigurator.jsp

Moon54 · 20-01-2011 11:47pm

The 2 hard drives are the slower spinning 5,400 rpm ones.
Are u doing RAID with the 2 Hard drives?

I'd recommend the other Samsung SpinPoint F3's 1TB (HD103SJ);
http://www3.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=28152&agid=689
which spin at 7,200rpm.

It's going to be a nice build.
Have you considered an SSD drive?

vestanpance · 21-01-2011 11:40am

Moon54 wrote: »

The 2 hard drives are the slower spinning 5,400 rpm ones.
Are u doing RAID with the 2 Hard drives?

I'd recommend the other Samsung SpinPoint F3's 1TB (HD103SJ);
http://www3.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=28152&agid=689
which spin at 7,200rpm.

It's going to be a nice build.
Have you considered an SSD drive?

Cheers, will change the HDD's. To be honest I'm not too sure about RAID (what it does/how it works/how it improves in general) so will up on it in the afternoon. My plan was just to have the os on 1 hdd and use the other as storage.

Jonny7 · 21-01-2011 12:07pm

vestanpance wrote: »

Cheers, will change the HDD's. To be honest I'm not too sure about RAID (what it does/how it works/how it improves in general) so will up on it in the afternoon. My plan was just to have the os on 1 hdd and use the other as storage.

perhaps pick up an SSD drive for the OS, they are extremely fast

vestanpance · 21-01-2011 1:04pm

Jonny7 wrote: »

perhaps pick up an SSD drive for the OS, they are extremely fast

While I have a little knowledge about computers I'm not too sure how things like an SSD drive works. Would I be right in think it holds the os so for instance it boots up lightening quick but all information ie films/movie/games (I use steam) are on an ordinary HDD?

Basically what I'm trying to get at is what's the advantage on a normal day to day basis of an ssd over a normal hdd. I had a look at one before and I think the largest size as 100gb (I'd have well over that in my steam folder alone) so my guess is that things like that wouldn't sit on the ssd.

As you can see I'm a little confused but back to the rig above, if I changed to the faster hdd mentioned earlier do you see any other problems with the parts selected or is there anything that could be improved or even overkill (I know the 12gb is probably over the top but there's not a huge price difference between that and the same type of ram in the 6gb version).

dolihalix · 21-01-2011 1:08pm

it depends on what you need it for. while at it, you should go for i7-2600K as you can overclock it. If it's only for gaming, go for i-2500k. I'm quite sure some of the lads here will think that psu is a bit of an overkill. I personally wouldn't pay 220 for 6870 if you can get 6950 for 255 and unlock it to 6970.

Moon54 · 21-01-2011 1:10pm

vestanpance wrote: »

My plan was just to have the os on 1 hdd and use the other as storage.

Ahh, I see, I thought you were going to RAID them because you picked the 2 same drives. RAID is handy for business stuff (it mirrors your hard drive in case of failure), but may not suit everyone.

You could go a SSD for your OS and applications, like the 60GB OCZ Vertx 2 @ €109
http://www3.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=36616&agid=1145

and maybe a larger storage drive like the 2TB Samsung EcoGreen F4 (HD204UI) @ €77;
http://www3.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=38561&agid=1284
It's a nice, quiet drive, it spins a 5,400rpm, but that's perfectly fine for a file storage drive.

vestanpance · 21-01-2011 1:22pm

Cheers for the reply's lads.

dolihalix wrote: »

it depends on what you need it for. while at it, you should go for i7-2600K as you can overclock it. If it's only for gaming, go for i-2500k. I'm quite sure some of the lads here will think that psu is a bit of an overkill. I personally wouldn't pay 220 for 6870 if you can get 6950 for 255 and unlock it to 6970.

On the individual parts what I posted above is a first draft so to speak and I appreaciate the advice on the changes I should make. My main issue though is I don't think I would be overclocking anything as it's not something I'm familiar with and don't want to do any damage by pushing something too far, if that's possible.

Moon54 wrote: »

Ahh, I see, I thought you were going to RAID them because you picked the 2 same drives. RAID is handy for business stuff (it mirrors your hard drive in case of failure), but may not suit everyone.

You could go a SSD for your OS and applications, like the 60GB OCZ Vertx 2 @ €109
http://www3.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=36616&agid=1145

and maybe a larger storage drive like the 2TB Samsung EcoGreen F4 (HD204UI) @ €77;
http://www3.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=38561&agid=1284
It's a nice, quiet drive, it spins a 5,400rpm, but that's perfectly fine for a file storage drive.

If I could ask one more question on the SSD, when you say applications sit on it do you mean the likes of steam is on that drive but the game files sit on the larger storage device? Also, I may be wrong on this but I've a vague recollection that you can't de-frag a SSD drive so if I delete programs and it get's full then it needs a format and start off again, do I have that right and if it is, is it something that happens often, I know peoples usage are different so that a difficult one to answer.

dolihalix · 21-01-2011 2:18pm

have a look at this and this, might help you decide. Even if you don't want to do it, 6950 might be better value with obviously better performance. I think everyone will recommend you getting K chip, if I understand it correctly, all you do is set the multiplier in Bios and that's you done.

cian1500ww · 21-01-2011 2:32pm

You shouldn't need a 1KW PSU, something around 700W would be plenty.
Also you can't overclock that CPU, you'll need to get an i7-2600K to be able to overclock and the new boards take dual channel memory so you won't be able to use all of that memory effectively. Better to get 4 sticks of 2GB RAM.

marco_polo · 21-01-2011 2:41pm

vestanpance wrote: »

If I could ask one more question on the SSD, when you say applications sit on it do you mean the likes of steam is on that drive but the game files sit on the larger storage device? Also, I may be wrong on this but I've a vague recollection that you can't de-frag a SSD drive so if I delete programs and it get's full then it needs a format and start off again, do I have that right and if it is, is it something that happens often, I know peoples usage are different so that a difficult one to answer.

A defrag is used to keep sectors of files close together on a mechanical spinning disk so that the disk heads do not have to move far and wide to different location on the platter when reading from the same file, which improves read performance greatly. Because the data on an SSD is stored on NAND memory chips SSD do not have this issue as random reads from anywhere on the drive are the same speed (very fast), hence defrag is not required.

Because SSD need to fully delete a block before it can be written to again(a mechanical disk can simply overwrite the data) this can drastically reduce write performance on a near full disk (full as in all of the blocks have been written to at some stage during their lifetime, but the file may have since been deleted), second generation SSDs use the TRIM command to keep the drive clean and optimized. This means that when you delete a file from the drive, it is physically deleted from the disk, unlike with mechanical drives where the data is simply deindexed and the data remains on the disk (but free to be overwritten at any time).

This ensures that when the SSD goes to do a write to a free block it will not have to delete what was previously there first thus, keeping write perfomance high.

ScumLord · 21-01-2011 7:28pm

vestanpance wrote: »

While I have a little knowledge about computers I'm not too sure how things like an SSD drive works.

As far as the end user is concerned there is no difference with regards installing and using it (not with new equipment anyway) the only difference you'll notice is it's a hell of a lot faster. It's handy for keeping your most used programs on. I have one at home and comparing it to the computer at work photoshop starts in half the time at home and over all I just seem to spend time waiting around for the work PC. But I don't keep my photoshop files on that drive they're just to small it's really only for OS and most used programs down to the small size of the thing.

I wouldn't say the difference in speed was shockingly different but it is an improvement.

New Build - Opinions Please.

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