Build Advice

Malice

Here is a build that I have put together. The budget is about €1,500. The machine will mostly be used for software development and some audio work.

Item|Price
Total build cost: €1,443.33 + €30 shipping
Antec Sonata IV, ATX, 620W-Netzteil|€127.49
Corsair Force3 120GB SSD 6,4cm (2,5") SATA|€129.87
16GB-Kit Corsair XMS3 PC3-14900U CL9-10-9-27 (DDR3-1866)|€138.38
Intel Core i7-2700K Tray, LGA1155|€290.05
ASUS P9X79 PRO, Sockel 2011, ATX, DDR3|€249.89
be quiet! Shadow Rock PRO SR1|€36.30
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit (SB-Version)|€78.65
ASUS ENGTX560 Ti DCII/2DI/1GD5, 1024MB,PCI-E,2xDVI,HDMI|€208.51
Asus BC-12B1ST Blu-Ray Combo Retail|€69.29
Seagate Pipeline 5900.2 2TB SATA|€114.90


Just looking for some pointers on the following:

• I intend to use the SSD drive as a boot drive. Is SATA the most appropriate interface or would PCI-Express be better?
• For the media drive, is it better to focus on a SATA III interface rather than the RPM of the drive? Which is likely to produce better performance?
• It seems Hardware Versand only sell System Builder versions of Windows. Is this that much of a problem? Would I be better off dealing with someone like Scan.co.uk for the OS at least?
• I've got a CPU fan listed but are there better ones available and does anyone have suggestions for a case fan?

deconduo

I'd change a couple of things:

-The i7-2700k is the exact same chip as the 2600k, with a tiny speed bump. Not worth the extra money when you can just overclock it.
-You picked an LGA 2011 mobo for an LGA 1155 chip
-If you aren't gaming then you don't need the 560Ti
-Yes, you want a SATA SSD as your boot drive, but I switched the Force3 for a Cruical M4
-For mechanical drives, SATAIII makes absolutely no difference in performance. In general a 5400rpm drive is fine for storing music/videos/pictures, but if you are going to be editing the files on the drive often, then you'd want a 7200rpm one.
-The OEM version is fine, especially considering that Windows 8 is just around the corner. The retail version just lets you change the license to a new computer.
-I changed the fan to the Macho, a really good, quiet fan.

Item|Price
Total build cost: €977.30 + €18.99 shipping
Intel Core i7-2600K Box, LGA1155|€266.70
Thermalright HR-02 Macho|€33.99
ASRock Z68 Pro3 Gen3, Sockel 1155, ATX|€82.61
2 x 8GB-Kit G.Skill PC3-10667U CL9|€33.31
FRACTAL DESIGN Gehäuse DEFINE R3 Titanium Grey|€91.69
Super-Flower Amazon 80Plus 450W|€41.89
Crucial M4 128GB SSD 6,4cm (2,5")|€144.89
LG BH10LS38 Blu-Ray bulk|€71.26
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit (SB-Version)|€78.65
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1000GB, SATA II (HD103SJ)|€99.00


There's no GPU in this build, but if you do want to do a bit of gaming you could add one.

Malice

Thanks for the clarification regarding the motherboard and the other answers. All those streams of numbers had managed to confuse me .

Any particular reason why you've swapped the hard drive, RAM and optical drive?

deconduo

Malice wrote: »

Thanks for the clarification regarding the motherboard and the other answers. All those streams of numbers had managed to confuse me .

Any particular reason why you've swapped the hard drive, RAM and optical drive?

RAM - Cheaper and same performance
HDD - Faster drive if you are going to be doing audio editing on the files that are on it
Optical - Same price for blu-ray burner, so you might as well. If you don't need blu-ray then drop down to a DVDRW for €50 cheaper.

Tea_Bag

Id change the M4 for the Samsung 830 version. its write speeds are quite a lot higher which could be important for big audio editing.

Up to 320 MB/s vs Up to 175 MB/s

Malice

deconduo wrote:

If you aren't gaming then you don't need the 560Ti

Assuming I wanted a decent but not top of the line graphics card is the 560Ti sufficient?

deconduo wrote: »

RAM - Cheaper and same performance

Does it make any difference having the RAM split across two chips rather than all together on one?

deconduo wrote:

HDD - Faster drive if you are going to be doing audio editing on the files that are on it

Good point, I hadn't spotted the speed difference.

deconduo wrote:

Optical - Same price for blu-ray burner, so you might as well. If you don't need blu-ray then drop down to a DVDRW for €50 cheaper.

I don't think I need it right now but I'll leave it in there anyway.

Tea_Bag wrote:

Id change the M4 for the Samsung 830 version.

Good point, I'll do that.

Lastly that motherboard has "Max Allocated RAM Size" of 1759MB. According to here that's only of relevance if I want to allocate system RAM to the graphics card. Am I understanding that correctly?

Tar.Aldarion

Max ram in that is probably 32GB, so i'd say whatever that link says is correct, for allocating memory elsewhere.

FlyingIrishMan

Looks like that is max memory allocated to the motherboard graphics.