Proposed build €2,500 (€2,000 + VAT)

midtower

I am very new to this, so I would be obliged for any help.
Budget; €2,000 + VAT (all prices shown are ex VAT)
Purpose; Work, picture editing with various software and after hours gaming, primarily strategy games like Civ 5.

My current thinking;

Case; Corsair Carbide 500R €86

PSU; Corsair HX1050 Pro 1050w €154

Mobo; Asus P9X79 Pro €207

CPU; Intel i7 3930K €€449

CPU Cooler; Intel Thermal Solution RTS2011AC €15

Graphics; Asus ENGTX580 1.5gb €372

RAM; G.Skill RipjawsZ 16gb (4 X 4gb) 2133mh €131

Hard Drive; Crucial M4 512gb €504

Blu-ray; LG super multi Blu-ray writer €70

I have the software, Windows 7 Ultimate, and a monitor HP LP2475W

I am dubious about the Intel CPU Cooler, At first, I thought that it was paste but it seems to be a cooler.

I do not intend to overclock initially. I intend to upgrade in the future by overclocking, adding high-end cooler, adding 4X4gb RAM, and doubling graphics card. I hope that I have sized the PSU with this in mind. The case comes with 3 fans which I hope will suffice until I upgrade. Maybe I need some dedicated cooling for the Graphics card or RAM ? I do not use much storage as most is stored off site so 512gb will be enough.

I intend to buy in the next day or so. Patience is not one of my virtues. I would very much appreciate your citicisms of my selection and any advice on improvements

Best Regards

Serephucus

Try something like this instead:

Item|Price
Total build cost: €2,170.08 + €30 shipping (inc. VAT)
Intel Core i7-3930K Retail, ohne Kühler, LGA2011|€515.74
ASRock X79 Extreme3, Sockel LGA2011, ATX|€184.61
16GB-Kit Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 MHz CL9|€80.57
HIS HD 7970 GDDR5 3072MB DVI/HDMI/2xMiniDP|€498.14
Super-Flower Amazon 80Plus 650W|€69.86
Corsair Carbide Series 500R schwarz, ATX, ohne Netzteil|€100.87
Noctua NH-D14 SE2011, Sockel LGA 2011|€70.99
Crucial M4 512GB SSD 6,4cm (2,5")|€578.54
LG BH10LS38 Blu-Ray bulk|€70.76


Can I ask what this work is exactly? Will you really be needing such a powerful computer?

Couple of things to note about your build:
- PSU is extreme overkill for what you're doing with it.
- Motherboard and memory were overpriced (not sure where you're buying from)
- Do you really need a 512GB SSD? could you not get a 128/256GB drive and a 1/2TB secondary?
- Work/gaming doesn't require blu-ray.

srsly78

Spend money on a 30" monitor (or some 27" ones), otherwise there is no point build a box that powerful. Don't really need that much power if you limited to 1920x1200 or 1080.

Nirnias

Jesus both of those are beautiful machines.. Its been years since iv been able to put aside that much money to build a beast like that.

The only note id say is to stick to your 1050W PSU if you plan on upgrading again in the future. Rather than having to buy another more powerful PSU down the line just in case the a lower wattage one doesnt cut it. I bought a 1000W PSU and been using it 2 years now with no problems.

Also difference in the RAM with MHZ.

Also i agree what Serephucus about the HDD. Id advise the same

But jesus, sweet sweet machines...

deconduo

Nirnias wrote: »

The only note id say is to stick to your 1050W PSU if you plan on upgrading again in the future. Rather than having to buy another more powerful PSU down the line just in case the a lower wattage one doesnt cut it. I bought a 1000W PSU and been using it 2 years now with no problems.

A 1kW PSU will run 3x7970s, I've no idea who on earth would need that much:pac:

Serephucus

Also, RAM frequencies don't make a difference.

Also also, not being able to use all the power of this build on a 24" monitor is just completely untrue.

blatantrereg

Hard Drive; Crucial M4 512gb €504

--big waste of money imo. I have 120gb ssd and that accommodates anything I might need. Much better off getting a 120gb ssd and a 1TB+ spindle hard disk

CPU; Intel i7 3930K €€449

--also a waste of money. You're looking at paying more than double the cost of the 2600K for about a 15% performance improvement.

Graphics; Asus ENGTX580 1.5gb €372

-- again I think this is a waste of money. Civ 5 is not exactly the most demanding game on your gpu. I've a 1gb gtx 560 ti which lets me play almost every game on max settings (certainly much more demanding games than civ 5) - again at a good bit less than half the price.

Nirnias

Yeh i was commenting on the MHZ cause id say thats why there was a big difference in price.

By the PSU comment i mean that getting 1 really good PSU will last you alot longer, rather than buying a PSU that is good for your build now, then maybe having to buy another PSU because graphics cards have become more powerful and need more power. Provided the PSU doesnt kapoot!

Also also also, i realised after i posted i put to many also's in my previous post but i wasnt arsed to change it

midtower

Wow, thank you all for so much help.
First, I should apologise as I had spent two hours writing everything out in detail and including all the links only to have the whole thing disappear when I tried to post it. The prices are all from Elara, Komplett or Pixmania-pro. I see that HVD is popular here but I am not sure about the VAT situation and the T&Cs are in German. Anyway, I would like to help those closer to home.
I mainly work on large photo files and collages, adding graphics etc for brochures. I am used to working on raster images which require a lot more grunt than vector images. The one thing about computer games is that evryu new game needs a more powerful computer that the game that it replaces.
I realise that this machine is more than I need now but I am hoping that It will be capable of taking on anything for the next 3/4 years. Then I would hope that by overclocking the CPU and doubling the graphics, RAM and cooling, I will get another 3/4 years out of it. Hence the large PSU which I hope will do up to 8 years if there is not much load on it initially.
I had looked at a 256gb Crucial M4 and a 1tb hard drive but then I saw that the 512gb was not much more and will do me for the next 3/4 years so I can look at adding a hard drive then. It keps things simpler in the short term.
Am I right in thinking that I could use SLI to add another graphics card at a later date? My thinking behind the faster RAM is that it might be around in a few years and that I can add another 4X4gb. As I understand it all the RAM modules have to match? I am concerned about this Intel CPU cooler at €15. Will it do the job? I assume that I will need to upgrade the cooler when I start to overclock.
Thanks again for all you time

ps.With Windows8 in mind, I hope to upgrade to a larger monitor in the near future which would cater for touchscreen and 3D.

midtower

Serephucus wrote: »

Try something like this instead:

Item|Price
Total build cost: €2,170.08 + €30 shipping (inc. VAT)
Intel Core i7-3930K Retail, ohne Kühler, LGA2011|€515.74
ASRock X79 Extreme3, Sockel LGA2011, ATX|€184.61
16GB-Kit Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 MHz CL9|€80.57
HIS HD 7970 GDDR5 3072MB DVI/HDMI/2xMiniDP|€498.14
Super-Flower Amazon 80Plus 650W|€69.86
Corsair Carbide Series 500R schwarz, ATX, ohne Netzteil|€100.87
Noctua NH-D14 SE2011, Sockel LGA 2011|€70.99
Crucial M4 512GB SSD 6,4cm (2,5")|€578.54
LG BH10LS38 Blu-Ray bulk|€70.76


Can I ask what this work is exactly? Will you really be needing such a powerful computer?

Couple of things to note about your build:
- PSU is extreme overkill for what you're doing with it.
- Motherboard and memory were overpriced (not sure where you're buying from)
- Do you really need a 512GB SSD? could you not get a 128/256GB drive and a 1/2TB secondary?
- Work/gaming doesn't require blu-ray.

A special thanks,
I have in mind that I will use blu-ray to archive some material and I suspect that blu-ray could supercede dvd in the coming years. Also this LG machine seems to play just about everything.

Tij da feen

Nirnias wrote: »

Yeh i was commenting on the MHZ cause id say thats why there was a big difference in price.

By the PSU comment i mean that getting 1 really good PSU will last you alot longer, rather than buying a PSU that is good for your build now, then maybe having to buy another PSU because graphics cards have become more powerful and need more power. Provided the PSU doesnt kapoot!

Also also also, i realised after i posted i put to many also's in my previous post but i wasnt arsed to change it

Graphics cards keep dropping their power consumption and becoming more powerful so a 1Kw is a waste.

midtower

Tij da feen wrote: »

Graphics cards keep dropping their power consumption and becoming more powerful so a 1Kw is a waste.

You are definitely correct about the initial configuration. However I have substantial power-hungry improvements planned for the future. I have used this PSU calculator and dialled in all the overclocking, additions and upgrades that I would like to allow for.

http://extreme.outervision.com/PSUEngine

They tell me that the minimum that I need is 900w and they recommend 960w. I have a feeling that a PSU is more efficient and will last longer if it is not run at full capacity. The next step down from 1kw is 850w which is not much different in price. Hence my choice. I will be rightly pissed if it dies after a couple of years.

Do you think that this website overstates the power required?

Best Regards

Serephucus

Could you post exactly what you're planning to run? Odds are it's less than 1050W.

For reference: I have an overclocked CPU that uses more power than yours, same with the GPU, as well as a watercooling pump, optical drive, two 7200RPM drives, two 5400RPM drives, an SSD, as well as a few external drives, and I could run it all from a 600W unit. I chose 700W to facilitate upgrades.

You could add another GPU of the same (7970) to the build I specced, and run it all from an 800W unit, and this could easily handle heavy overclocking as well.

midtower

blatantrereg wrote: »

Hard Drive; Crucial M4 512gb €504

--big waste of money imo. I have 120gb ssd and that accommodates anything I might need. Much better off getting a 120gb ssd and a 1TB+ spindle hard disk

CPU; Intel i7 3930K €€449

--also a waste of money. You're looking at paying more than double the cost of the 2600K for about a 15% performance improvement.

Graphics; Asus ENGTX580 1.5gb €372

-- again I think this is a waste of money. Civ 5 is not exactly the most demanding game on your gpu. I've a 1gb gtx 560 ti which lets me play almost every game on max settings (certainly much more demanding games than civ 5) - again at a good bit less than half the price.

I have been looking at building a computer for all of two weeks and knew nothing beforehand and very little now. I have been using this website to look at different CPUs.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

This shows the i7 2700K rated at 9,435 and the i7 3930K at 13,478 or nearly 43% higher. Are there factors about these tables that I do not understand?
I have a few bob now from the company. The way things are going it may be quite a few years before I can afford any upgrade so I am hoping that this computer will be able to take on any games that come out over the next four years or thereabouts. With overclocking and other upgrades, I am hoping that I will get up to eight years out of this CPU. I will be even more pissed if this CPU dies after a couple of years that I will be if the PSU fails.
It is much the same story with the SSD and the graphics card. I am hoping that, with additions and upgrades, I will get up to 8 years out of these parts. I am looking at this longer term and therefore I think that I need to look at the top end.
That all said, I very much welcome your comments and will reconsider my choices.
Best Regards

deconduo

midtower wrote: »

I have been looking at building a computer for all of two weeks and knew nothing beforehand and very little now. I have been using this website to look at different CPUs.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

This shows the i7 2700K rated at 9,435 and the i7 3930K at 13,478 or nearly 43% higher. Are there factors about these tables that I do not understand?
I have a few bob now from the company. The way things are going it may be quite a few years before I can afford any upgrade so I am hoping that this computer will be able to take on any games that come out over the next four years or thereabouts. With overclocking and other upgrades, I am hoping that I will get up to eight years out of this CPU. I will be even more pissed if this CPU dies after a couple of years that I will be if the PSU fails.
It is much the same story with the SSD and the graphics card. I am hoping that, with additions and upgrades, I will get up to 8 years out of these parts. I am looking at this longer term and therefore I think that I need to look at the top end.
That all said, I very much welcome your comments and will reconsider my choices.
Best Regards

That chart is pretty useless, for example it puts the i7-970 ahead of the i7-2600k which is very wrong. Here is a better comparison between the two chips:



As you can see the 3930k is 15% better on average, but for certain tasks performs better.

midtower

Serephucus wrote: »

Could you post exactly what you're planning to run? Odds are it's less than 1050W.

For reference: I have an overclocked CPU that uses more power than yours, same with the GPU, as well as a watercooling pump, optical drive, two 7200RPM drives, two 5400RPM drives, an SSD, as well as a few external drives, and I could run it all from a 600W unit. I chose 700W to facilitate upgrades.

You could add another GPU of the same (7970) to the build I specced, and run it all from an 800W unit, and this could easily handle heavy overclocking as well.

All that I know about overclocking at this time is that you put in more power into the CPU and you get out more heat and speed. I hope that my ignorance does not piss you off!!
This is what I think that the computer could ultimately include and what I dialled into the calculator

High end desktop
LGA2011 socket
i7 3930K CPU
Overclocked to 5000mh and 1.5v (I have no idea if this is feasible)
8 sticks of RAM
2 X GTX580 with SLI
AGEIA Physics PPU (which I do not have a clue about but I think that I need it)
2 X High rpm SATA HDDs
1 X SSD
1 X Blu-ray combo
1 X DVD combo
PCI Cards
Sound Blaster
TV tuner - cable
SATA RAID (for two HDDs)
4 X USB
Fan controller
Card reader
5 X fans
Corsair H100 water cooler (for overclocked CPU)
1 X relay (dont have a clue but figure I need at least one)
Finally I have allowed for 20% for capacitor ageing and the calculator tells me that I need a minimum of 1090w!!!!!!!!!!!
However I think that I would never be using all of the above at the same time and I doubt that I will ever have it all.

Best Regards and thanks for your help.

Serephucus

I assume that excludes overclocking too. The 3930 will only get to about 4.4-ish, I think? The 2600 will happily do 4.8, which should put them about even. When you take the cost of the platform (motherboard and processor) into account, the 26/700 is a better buy. The 2600 in particular.

Edit:
5.0GHz is not feasable with the 3930K. Highest that I know of stable for anywhere near 24/7 use is around 4.6-ish, and that's only if you get a good chip.
The 580 is a bad buy. The 7970 is far superior.
All of the above could be powered on an 800W PSU with no problems. 850W if you really want headroom.

midtower

deconduo wrote: »

That chart is pretty useless, for example it puts the i7-970 ahead of the i7-2600k which is very wrong. Here is a better comparison between the two chips:



As you can see the 3930k is 15% better on average, but for certain tasks performs better.

Thank you for this information and I can see what you mean. However, the one name that I am familiar with and use is Photoshop which is 30% faster. I also want to start video editing and Premiere Pro is 25% faster. I can see that the 3930K will help my work more than my gaming As it happens, I have just come across this website;

http://www.shawnlam.ca/2012/premiere-pro-cs6-video-editing-computer-build/

I am not sure now if I need to go for a better CPU Cooler up front.

Best Regards

deconduo

Coolerwise, the Thermalright HR-02 Macho is very good value. It cools about as well as the corsair H80 for half the price, and is extremely quiet.

midtower

Serephucus wrote: »

I assume that excludes overclocking too. The 3930 will only get to about 4.4-ish, I think? The 2600 will happily do 4.8, which should put them about even. When you take the cost of the platform (motherboard and processor) into account, the 26/700 is a better buy. The 2600 in particular.

Edit:
5.0GHz is not feasable with the 3930K. Highest that I know of stable for anywhere near 24/7 use is around 4.6-ish, and that's only if you get a good chip.
The 580 is a bad buy. The 7970 is far superior.
All of the above could be powered on an 800W PSU with no problems. 850W if you really want headroom.

Thank you very much for this information. I must think more about this. I have to reconsider from the beginning:( I thought that there was some issue about using AMD Cards in Intel Mobos?
Regards

Nirnias

No issue with using different cards in different mobo's they are all standardized and interoperable. Only issue would be a compatible CPU for whatever mobo you choose to purchase.

midtower

Serephucus wrote: »

I assume that excludes overclocking too. The 3930 will only get to about 4.4-ish, I think? The 2600 will happily do 4.8, which should put them about even. When you take the cost of the platform (motherboard and processor) into account, the 26/700 is a better buy. The 2600 in particular.

Edit:
5.0GHz is not feasable with the 3930K. Highest that I know of stable for anywhere near 24/7 use is around 4.6-ish, and that's only if you get a good chip.
The 580 is a bad buy. The 7970 is far superior.
All of the above could be powered on an 800W PSU with no problems. 850W if you really want headroom.

I like to understand these things. That is why I am here. My choice of the GTX580 over the HD7970 had been based on this comparison website which shows the GTX580 to be faster and cheaper.

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

However, you and other experienced people here seem to strogly favour the HD7970. Why do you think that it is better?

Best Regards

deconduo

midtower wrote: »

I like to understand these things. That is why I am here. My choice of the GTX580 over the HD7970 had been based on this comparison website which shows the GTX580 to be faster and cheaper.

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

However, you and other experienced people here seem to strogly favour the HD7970. Why do you think that it is better?

Best Regards

Again, that website is very very wrong with a lot of things. Delete it from memory :P

Here's an example of the 7970 OC vs 7970 vs GTX 580:



Stock is 30% better, overclocked is a massive 60% better. Granted this is a non-reference card, but most of the 7970s perform similarly.

srsly78

Look at resolution those benchmarks are taken with. Then look at ops monitor :pac:

deconduo

srsly78 wrote: »

Look at resolution those benchmarks are taken with. Then look at ops monitor :pac:

It was just an example to show how wrong the passmark ranking table is. Obviously the difference between the two is smaller at smaller resolutions, but the 7970 is the better card no matter what.

midtower

deconduo wrote: »

Again, that website is very very wrong with a lot of things. Delete it from memory :P

Here's an example of the 7970 OC vs 7970 vs GTX 580:



Stock is 30% better, overclocked is a massive 60% better. Granted this is a non-reference card, but most of the 7970s perform similarly.

Ok, will this do the job or do I need to go for another manufacturer?

http://www.pixmania-pro.ie/ie/uk/12322090/art/amd/radeon-hd-7970-3-gb-gddr5-pci-express-3-0.html

Regards

darego

midtower wrote: »

Ok, will this do the job or do I need to go for another manufacturer?

http://www.pixmania-pro.ie/ie/uk/12322090/art/amd/radeon-hd-7970-3-gb-gddr5-pci-express-3-0.html

Regards

that's so cheap for a 7970 :eek: going to order mine from there as well. how much is vat on top of that?

Serephucus

23%. Comes out as about €485, and Pixmania (regular site) has one for €455.

midtower

Serephucus wrote: »

23%. Comes out as about €485, and Pixmania (regular site) has one for €455.

They must have heard you. The price now seems to have gone out to €470 inc VAT but still over a tenner less. I must see if they produce a VAT receipt which I need for the bean counters.

midtower

Are there any noticeable differences between the various brands of HD7970. I see that ASUS, MSI, Saphire etc all seem to have their own version. Are they any better than the AMD unit????????