Prospective New Build

[Sowser]

Hey Everyone,

It's been about 5 years since my last full build and specs have changed just a bit in that interval! Through A lot of research and some help from people on this forum I've narrowed everything down to what I think is a pretty good build:

Case: Antec 1200 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6811129043
Power Supply: TOPOWER POWERBIRD TOP-900W http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817342012
Mother Board: ASUS P6T Deluxe http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813131346
CPU: Core i7 920 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819115202
Memory: OCZ Gold 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820227365
GPU: SAPPHIRE 100270SR Radeon HD 4850 X2 2GB http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814102809
DVD Player: LG Black 6X Blu-ray DVD-ROM 16X DVD-ROM 40X CD-ROM http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6827136133
Monitor: LG 32LG60 LCD 32" HDTV - 1080p, 1920 x 1080 http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... CatId=3649
OS: Vista Ultimate 64

If anyone has any input as to potential problems I may encounter, places where I can upgrade without a significant price increase, downgrade without a significant loss of performance, or anything else that springs to mind please chime in. I will be using this computer for gaming, video editing, as a home theater system, and for general web surfing and word processing. I'm thinking of making a foray into the water cooling world to reduce noise so any thoughts there will be helpful. (the Legit Review on the Coolit Domino intrigued me) I have about 300 movies to rip to a HD so I am considering going with either a SSD or raptor for my C: drive and then a couple of 1TB drives for storage. Has SSD reached the point where it can make a good primary drive? I'd really like to go that way to reduce noise. Thanks again for any advice/suggestions/constructive criticism and I'm sure I'll be posting pictures and asking (begging) for lots more help as I struggle to assemble this thing!

[Skippman]

Well lets start with what I like.

Case. Excellent choice. Ton's of room, plenty of space for all your components, and even some water cooling option right out of the box.

Motherboard. ASUS is ALWAYS a good choice.

Proc. The i9 is king of the hill for right now, but a bit toasty warm.

GPU. I'm an ATI fan and I can't help but think you'll be pleased with your choice having owned cards from Sapphire in the past.


Now to what I don't.

PSU. I've never heard of Topower before and the last part in the PC you wanna save money on is the PSU. It's the part that's mostly likely to stick with you when you upgrade other than your case. I'd recommend something from Corsair or PC Power and Cooling. Most of the stuff in the same power output band you're looking at for the same price won't be modular however, like the Corsair CMPSU-850TX. OCZ's power supply line has also been very reputable.

Hard Drive. Solid States come a long way and is excellent for sequental read/writes. But to be honest, you'd be better off with a RAID 0 setup for the price you'll pay for it. Solid State is great where power consumption is a concern but if you're already talking about 700+ watt power supplies that's a non issue for you.

[werewolfdaddy]

Not sure I'd trust a topower psu. Antec, Ultra and silverstone are some of my favorites. Like Skippman said, the psu is most likely to be the part you will re-use in an upgrade.

[Sowser]

I dropped by Fry's tonight and with the help of a friends employee discount picked up the Antec 1200 for $155 and the LG Blu-Ray for $100! Combo deals at Newegg pair the ASUS P6T Deluxe with the OCZ Gold 6GB and the i7 920 with the Corsair CMPSU-850TX that Skippman suggested so things are dove-tailing nicely. I'm still not decided on what HD to use for my OS. The G.SKILL FM-25S2S-128GB 2.5" 128GB SATA II Internal SSD http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820231221 or 2 Western Digital Raptor WD740ADFD 74GB 10000 RPM http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822136033 in RAID 0 are my top two options right now but I've never actually put together a raided system. Any input keeping in mind this will be partially a HTPC?

[Skippman]

Well, if it's going to be a HTPC and you're seriously concerned about noise then the SSD's are the way to go. They boot fast, are silent, and are generally more energy efficent than traditional hard drives. The downside is cost/space.

I'd say for your needs I'd recommend 3 or 4 large cap harddrives in RAID 5. This will give you data redudency which you'll want after spending all that time ripping those movies. Its also the best balance of redundacy/drive space. There will be a performance hit for that though.

If you're not worried about data redudancy then by all means setup a RAID 0 array. A RAID 0 array is suprisingly easy to set up these days. Only took me about 10 min not including installing the physical drives themselves (which is tricky with my setup). It's been MUCH faster than my single 74G Raptor I was using. The only downside to RAID 0 is that if one of the drives fail you loose the whole set so it's not ideal for storage.

I'm facing a similar problem myself. On my media server I have 3 1TB hard drives that I'd like to turn into a multipartition RAID 5 array as I'm terrified of loosing all my data. The problem is I don't have anywhere to store the data that's already on there while I build the RAID volume. I'd need about 2TB of offline storage in either removable HD's or some other storage medium. Backing it all up to DVD's is out of the question as it would take some 250 dual layer discs.

[mr_noname111]

Don't go SSD yet! Especially if you want an HTPC; you will want terabytes not 100~ gigabytes ;)

As for the PSU, I would go Corsair.

[Sowser]

Don't go SSD yet! Especially if you want an HTPC; you will want terabytes not 100~ gigabytes ;)

As for the PSU, I would go Corsair.

Nope won't be using SSD for everything. I've been saving for this computer for a while but I'm not made of money! I was just talking about using it for my OS drive. Yes, I'm going with the Corsair! So if I've got this right if I create a RAID 5 array with say four 1TB drives it will show up as one large 3TB drive? If next year I want to add another drive can I just plug it in for five drives at 4TB or would I need to reformat the entire array? Does RAID 5 have to consist of equal size disks or can you have two 2TB disks and one 1TB disk and still have a total of 4TB? What kind of performance hit are we talking about with RAID 5? Obviously anything that would cause a movie to stutter during playback would be unacceptable. Also I'm assuming that I can do this through VISTA 64 Ultimate's software and wont have to utilize a RAID controller? Oh and about that, is Vista Ultimate for System Builders the same as Vista Ultimate retail only without the end user support?

[Skippman]

RAID 5 typically gets built at the hardware level at which point adding and subtracting drives can be problimatic if not outright impossible depending on the hardware implementation. Most motherboards now support RAID 5 onboard. The board you're looking at has 6 SATA connectors and hardware support for RAID 5 which is what I would use FOR YOUR STORAGE DRIVES.

RAID 5's performance hit can be compenstated for by RAM. The problem with RAID 5 is that like a SSD it doesn't like random writes which are typical of a Windows Swap File. Having enough memory in the system will ease this burden as applications will need to swap less and less to the hard drive and more RAM becomes available.

RAID 5 isn't built for speed, it's built for fault tolerance. It's designed to be able to recover an entire drives worth of data using the remaining drives. Unfortunatly RAID want's matching volume sizes otherwise it will default the the volume size of the smallest drive. That means that if you had two 1TB drives and a 750G drive the RAID set would be built as if you had three 750G HDs.

There are software implementations suchs as Windows Dynamic Disk but they tend to be more resource intensive as the OS has to determin what data goes where as opposed to a hardware RAID contoller managing it at the hardware level. To my understanding WDD acts more like a striped volume (IE RAID 0) than a proper RAID 5 array.

I'm sure someone will chime in here and correct me on some of this but I think I've covered the basics.

[Sowser]

I ordered all my parts from newegg and should be able to start my build this weekend! I decided to go with the GSkill 128 GB SSD for my OS drive rather than the 300 GB Raptor but I'm still looking for drives to put into the RAID 5 array that Skippman suggested. Anyone know how the Seagate Barracuda 1.5TB drives are preforming?

[Sowser]

Anyone have a suggestion on a good wireless router with an emphasis on LAN party capability and multi-media streaming?

[werewolfdaddy]

Will primary lan play be wireless or over ethernet? Are you in the US or Europe. If you're in europe, I would suggest a WL-308 Wireless 300N XR Gigabit Gaming Router from Sitecom. They're not available in the US, but for anyone across the pond, you owe it to yourself to get one. http://sitecom.com/product.php?productn ... groupid=39

A friend of mine has a Linksys WRT330N Wireless-N Gigabit Gaming Router and it is screaming fast too.

[The Flying Pig]

Just a suggestion (I know you already ordered), but I have heard of plenty of problems with the 4850x2.
And there are even more with the 4870x2.
For general use, a single 4870 will be able to power your 1080p screen for slightly less than the 4850x2.
It'll also be able to give you some eye candy in your games. Getting 1 now and then getting a second one if you really want to turn up every setting in the games you play would be the route that I would go.
If you haven't opened it and are not building it for a bit longer, that is my recommendation. Browsing around the ATI forums, the x2's are just full of issues (mine included).

[Sowser]

WWD: I'll be using it strictly as a wireless device. As I live in California (across the pond, over the hills, through the plains, and over some more hills) I won't be able to pick up the router you suggested but clicking on the link it looks pretty sweet!

TFP: Thanks for the input! I'm going to try out the video card I have and if it shows any hint of problems RMA it and pick up a 4780.

Still looking for input on a good router and the Barracuda 1.5 TB if anyone has two cents to throw in!

Also, am I right in thinking that on a ASUS P6T Delxe a SAS connector can be utilized as a SATA connection but not vica versa?

[mr_noname111]

Don't know about routers but avoid Seagate, atleast for now. They are having mass firmware issues on their 7200.11 series, and if you look at their support forums you will see a BUNCH of pissed off customers with bricked drives

[The Flying Pig]

Still looking for input on a good router and the Barracuda 1.5 TB if anyone has two cents to throw in!

Also, am I right in thinking that on a ASUS P6T Delxe a SAS connector can be utilized as a SATA connection but not vica versa?

Looking at the specs on newegg, it includes two SAS inputs.
Taking a peek at the picture, I'd presume they are the orange connectors.
And (if I'm not mistaken,) you are correct. You can plug in a normal SATA Drive into the SAS ports.
But you cannot plug in SAS hard drives into the regular SATA ports.

As for hard drives, I've heard that some computers can boot within 2 seconds with the Intel SSD's. Let us know how your SSD works out for you.
Because you are planning on using large drives as general purpose storage for media and whatnot, I'd recommend Western Digital's green line. The HDDs will spin down to 5400rpm when not really being utilized. They are generally much quieter (won't hear the hard drives seeking all that much), and not to mention, you won't notice much of a difference in speed if at all. Its still more than fast enough to play your movies and music and what have you.

I have 2 of them in a RAID 0 configuration. To be honest, one of them seems to be going bad, but I'd replace it with another in a heartbeat. I have my raptors to make noise for me, I don't need the excess noise ;)
(You won't have to worry about much noise at all with your spiffy SSD).

As for the router, I currently have a D-Link DIR-655. It has tons of settings to configure, from port forwarding to QoS.
But afaik, the current 'new' technology with routers is dual band, but that only affects the wireless performance.
Most all routers come with the same basic features, so if you want to stay current, maybe look for a dual band N router?

Just my two cents
PS: I want some pictures when you end up building your rig

[Sowser]

Bummer, the video card I bought from Newegg last week is 10% off this week! I was looking into returning it and upgrading to the 4870 X2 with the 10% off covering the shipping I expected to pay but then I noticed the 15% "restocking fee" that Newegg charges so I guess I'll stick with my original plan. I think I'll pick up a caviar green and give it a try. If it plays movies well enough I'll go ahead and put it into an array if not I'll try out the caviar blacks. I'm still waiting for my Domino water cooler so I won't be able to put everything together today but I can get a good start! Thanks for the feedback TFP!

[The Flying Pig]

I store mostly compressed avi movies on my caviar green's.
But I have a few HD .mkv files on there, as well as some that are just plain image dumps.
Never had a stutter in my video playback, so I doubt you will too - especially with your setup.
AFAIK, its generally the processor that can bottleneck when decoding movies.
My laptop (Intel T7400 2.16Ghz) is able to play 720p movies, but decoding 1080p movies is too much for it to handle.
I could never get Nvidia's CUDA/whatever to work at decoding my movies for me :/ (gpu is a 7950gtx).
When I looked at the task manager while trying to play 1080p movies, it was quite the busy bee, and my laptop's hdd was only a 5400rpm.
So with that being said, I would be hard-pressed to find that your system will bottleneck on video playback :]

[cardnyl]

That PSU is overkill. You could easily power a power hungry 4870x2 in crossfire using a decent 5-600watt psu. I suggest going with something a bit more modest and use the money saved for whatever tickles your fancy.

[stopthekilling77]

That PSU is overkill. You could easily power a power hungry 4870x2 in crossfire using a decent 5-600watt psu. I suggest going with something a bit more modest and use the money saved for whatever tickles your fancy.

If you scroll up and read through the thread, he decided to go with a Corsair CMPSU-850TX, a good choice IMO

[Sowser]

Hey Everyone, thanks for the interest. I picked up five more WD Caviar Green hard drives on sale at New Egg today so hopefully all of my parts will be in by Friday and I can start building by this weekend. For anyone interested here's what I ended up buying.

Case: Antec 1200
Power Supply: Corsair CMPSU-850TX
Mother Board: ASUS P6T Deluxe
CPU: Core i7 920
CPU Heatsink: CoolIT Domino Advanced Liquid Cooling
Memory: OCZ Gold 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600
GPU: SAPPHIRE 100270SR Radeon HD 4850 X2 2GB
Boot Hard Drive: G.SKILL TITAN Series FM-25S2S-128GBT1 2.5" 128GB SATA II Internal Solid state disk
RAID 5 Drive: Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EADS 1TB 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive x6
DVD Player: LG Black 6X Blu-ray DVD-ROM 16X DVD-ROM 40X CD-ROM
Monitor: LG 32LG60 LCD 32" HDTV - 1080p, 1920 x 1080
Mouse: Logitech G7 Black 6 Buttons Tilt Wheel USB RF Wireless Laser 2000 dpi
Keyboard: Logitech Pro 2000 Black 104 Normal Keys 14 Function Keys USB Cordless Standard Keyboard
Router: Rosewill RNX-N4 IEEE 802.11b/g/n Wireless-N 2.0 Gigabit Router (2T3R)
OS: Vista Ultimate 64 (will be upgrading to the newly released SP2)

I'm think I'll be able to use the P6T Deluxe's two SAS ports as SATA connections for my SSD (boot drive) and DVD drive and the six regular SATA connections for a RAID 5 array. I'm also curious to find out what kind of processor temps the Arctic Silver ceramic thermal compound I bought coupled with the Domino will give me. If noise is too much of a factor after I get everything together I guess I'll try to water cool everything, (though I have no idea how I'd water cool my GPU) but I'm hoping with the well designed Antec 1200 it won't be an issue. Based on the parts listed here if anyone sees any potential problems I might run into when putting this thing together please speak up now so I have some time to do any necessary research before the weekend!