My new build - awesome or suck?

Signum_01

Signum_01

Signum_01

Associate
Joined
1 Aug 2010
Posts
8
Hi all, I'm looking for some advice on my new build. I'll be using it for a mixture of work (design) and gaming so there are number of factors I need to take into consideration. I've gone for a bit of a posey minimalist case, its a toss up between the Lian Li PC-A71FB or the Lian Li TYR PC-X500 as they both look amazing and go with furniture (to appease the gf!). The monitor I've gone for I hope will give me a good range of colours and detail for both games and working in Photoshop.

Just looking for some advice on if I've chosen the right load of components that will create a high-end, quiet system that will last me a good 2-3 years before upgrading RAM/GFX/HDD etc.

• Retail Intel Core i7 930 2.80GHz (Bloomfield) (Socket LGA1366)
• Lian Li PC-A71FB Full Tower Case -Black View
• Asus GeForce GTX 460 768MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card View
• BenQ G2420HDBL 24" Widescreen LED Monitor - Black View
• Microsoft Windows 7 Professional -Retail (Full Version)
• Asus P6X58D-E Intel X58 (Socket 1366) DDR3 Motherboard View
• Corsair XMS3 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3 12800C9 (1600MHz) Tri-Channel (TR3X6G1600C9)
• Corsair TX 650W ATX SLi Compliant Power Supply (CMPSU 650TXUK)
• Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (WD1002FAEX)
• Sony Optiarc DRU-870S 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - Retail
• Logitech Illuminated Keyboard (920-001165) View

Cheers,
 
only thing I'd change is the WDC hard drive to a samsung F3 because they're a good £15 cheaper and perform about the same
 
Looks good imo. High-mid specs, good balance, good components.

I have the older case, it's big and roomy, especially along the length. Not cheap, but very good. I'd also consider a Lian Li mid-tower (PC 8NB, 9NB), those full towers are massive and very expensive.

I'd go with a 1024MB 460.

Also really pleased with my Logitech Illuminated Keyboard.

Maybe an after market cooler, although I do not know how good and quiet the Intel cooler is.

If going for a case with no front door, I'd slap in one of these as well

Lian Li 5.25" Aluminium DVD/CD Drive Bezel

CA-226-LL_200.jpg


For £6, helps keep the good looks.
 
Last edited:
Thanks for the responses so far everyone, much appreciated.

HW91 - Others have recommended the F3 over the Black to me, but the Samsung appears to be 300mb/s and the WD 6GB/s. I realise that there will be bottleneck in the motherboard so I won't be getting anywhere near that for the Black but are they really about the same in performance?
 
Yes. 6Gb/s is SATA theoretical peak, 300 mB/s is the actual transfer of a single mechanical drive (about the same for latest drives). About 500mB/s transfer rate if you have two of them in RAID0.

BTW, you could save your money on buying a smaller case, and use it to buy a SSD for OS / apps (Crucial C300 64GB).

EDIT : Just to clarify. 6 gigabits per second, 300 megabytes per second. big 'B', small 'b'. :)

EDIT 2 : I'd stil recommend the PC-A71FB, if you have the room for it. No reviews found of the PC-8NB. In the realm of good stylish aluminium, there are Silverstone, and Corsair to also consider.
 
Last edited:
yeah, also they're 3Gb/s and 6Gb/s, which is the max SATA bus speed or in layman's terms if the hard drive is faster than the max sata bus, then it will only show to be as fast as the max sata bus because the bus is limiting it. the b being capital or not needs to be handled carefully btw as 'b' means bit and 'B' means byte, 8b makes up 1B

so Samsung is 3Gb/s or 375MB/s (doesn't really work like this because manufacturers change the meaning of things to make their products look faster so it's more like 285MB/s) and the WD is 6Gb/s or 750MB/s, realistically being about 550MB/s
 
A71 is good case. No nonsense, cool, light, spacious, easy to work with. For me, it would be a toss up between the B10 or the A71FB. Anything over is OTT imo. Then it comes down if you want a tower or a full tower. The A71B is really big, and possibly a bit overspecced. But if you want a full tower and you have lots of room, it's great. And you will not run into problems with extra long video cards!
 
Last edited:
Well OCUK is out of stock of the A71s at the moment, and I'm not happy about the effect the B10 will have on my airflow so I think it might be the X500 at this point. If they come in stock when I'm ready to buy I'll probably get the A71 though.
 
Last edited:
Oo another thing that's been bugging me, I want a nice black, slot loading DVD drive (as oppose to tray loading) but am struggling to find any. Did they suddenly become unpopular so everybody stopped making them? There seem to be a few that are meant for laptops which you can convert to fit into a desktop system, but that doesn't seem like an ideal solution. What gives?
 
what kind of design work do you do?

i ask only because that monitor is not really outstanding for picture quality (i own it!). I would say it is an excellent budget gaming monitor, but for much better colour representation you should be looking at an ips panel (and almost double your monitor budget)

Also get the 1GB 560, it is a pointless part to scrimp on.
 
HW91 said:
so Samsung is 3Gb/s or 375MB/s (doesn't really work like this because manufacturers change the meaning of things to make their products look faster so it's more like 285MB/s) and the WD is 6Gb/s or 750MB/s, realistically being about 550MB/s
Click to expand...

Whilst that is true, remember that we're just talking about the bus speed. No mechanical hard drive is going to hit 285 MB/s, let alone 550. You need SSDs to reach those kinds of speeds. A standard mechanical disk might reach 150 at the beginning of the platter. So there's not really any disadvantage to having the 3Gbps interface rather than the 6 in this case.
 
EdwardTeach said:
what kind of design work do you do?

i ask only because that monitor is not really outstanding for picture quality (i own it!). I would say it is an excellent budget gaming monitor, but for much better colour representation you should be looking at an ips panel (and almost double your monitor budget)

Also get the 1GB 560, it is a pointless part to scrimp on.
Click to expand...

Web design mostly. I realise an IPS panel would be the best option for me but at nearly £400 for the lowest price unit, its a bit too much. Also, IPS panels suffer from much higher response times so there's a chance of ghosting when playing games. Which would be a bit annoying.

Basically I'm after a decent quality TN panel, and after reading all the reviews for the BenQ I thought that would be a good option because of the LED backlight!

Also,

I've swapped out the Asus GFX card for a 1GB Gainward card. Also changed the Caviar Black for a Samsung F3 too, although I have my reservations - I've never lost a Western Digital HDD in the last 8 years of owning one and I'm not sure the Samsung will be of the same quality!
 
Mattus said:
Whilst that is true, remember that we're just talking about the bus speed. No mechanical hard drive is going to hit 285 MB/s, let alone 550. You need SSDs to reach those kinds of speeds. A standard mechanical disk might reach 150 at the beginning of the platter. So there's not really any disadvantage to having the 3Gbps interface rather than the 6 in this case.
Click to expand...

it works a lot better if you don't cut out the first paragraph which explains it all
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom