First Build proposed spec - recommendations please

hufggfg

hufggfg

hufggfg

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Hi Guys,

I told myself when at Uni a few years ago whilst replacing a graphics card and hard drive that when the time came to replace my PC I would build it myself. So here goes. I think I'm generally ok on the actual build, though will I'm sure I’ll be back here countless times for help.

I use my PC for a bit of everything, loads of music and movies, some gaming (hoping to do more once I have a competent PC!) and sometimes some pretty intensive excel stuff (Monte Carlo simulations etc). Although I’m sure I could get by with a much lower spec than I have started to put together, I don’t really mind spending the money and would much rather have something great (and relatively future proof!). I have not yet overclocked a PC so am certainly not planning on doing it initially, maybe in the future but not certain.

I run 2 monitors btw and don’t want to change this (may add another 2 in the future).

So, from looking around I have put together the below as an idea:

Antec P182
Antec Quattro 850W PSU
Asus P5E X38
Intel Core 2 Duo E8500
HIS ATI Radeon HD 3870XT ICEQ3 TURBO 512MB GDDR4
Crucial Ballistix Tracer (2x1GB) 8500C5
3x Seagate Barracuda ES.2 500GB SATA-II – in a RAID5 array
2x Asus DRW-2014L1T SATA Dual Layer Lightscribe
- planning on using a USB wireless network adapter i already have as i don't see the point in upgrading

I’m really looking for any suggestions where there might be bottlenecks or things it looks like I could do better with different components.

In future I would probably chuck in a second graphics card to utilise Crossfire. I believe that with Crossfire switched on I can only run 1 monitor, so I’ll either only switch on Crossfire for gaming, or install a cheap PCI graphics card to run the second monitor. I will probably upgrade the sound card at some point in time too (fairly average speakers at moment really means there is no point).

I have a few additional specific questions I was hoping someone might be able to answer-

1) Should I upgrade the CPU cooling from the standard Intel piece in the retail box, or will this likely be sufficient?
2) Is there any reason not to use SATA optical drives (particularly as the motherboard has loads of SATA ports)?
3) Looking through the manual for the motherboard (downloaded it) it seems that I have to adjust some settings to use 1066MHz RAM, this has me questioning whether I should just use 800MHz – thoughts?
4) RAID – is RAID5 a good idea? I realise that hard drives are much more reliable nowadays but I would absolutely hate to lose any of my data. So it seems that this way 1 drive can fail and I’m still ok. (Real newbie question here, what will happen if one fails? Does it just ask you to insert a new one of same spec and away you go?) Once I have this RAID running with 3 drives, what do I do if I want to add another? I’m guessing another one can’t be added into the RAID array easily so would stand alone and be relatively unprotected.
5) How noisy is this set-up really going to be? I know it’s difficult to quantify but the PC is in our lounge, so if it’s too noisy it gets pretty annoying. Is there anything I should do to keep it quieter?


I realise this is a pretty high spec PC for a first build, but what can I say, money burns a hole in my pocket ;)

Any suggestions about any of the above any of you would make would be very much appreciated. I’m not really tied to anything in my set-up and as I’m very novice may have made some stupid mistakes (also on that note… please explain any suggestions in layman’s terms).

Thanks very much for any help you can give me!

Hufggfg
 
Oh - a couple of additional things. I'm planning on running Windows Vista Ultimate 64 bit.

I'm planning on leaving out the floppy drive, i assume there is nothing i could possibly need it for it this day and age.
 
Hi,

I have the P180 case, physically the same. A standard size PSU is a tight fit, I think you'll struggle to get the Antec 850 in there and the Corsair 620W will provide plenty of power for 2 graphics cards and a quad core cpu....

If you're not overclocking then get 800Mhz ram, the Ballistics is twice the price and offers only a minor performance gain.

1) if you want to overclock significantly then get a better cooler. Otherwise stock is fine.
2) SATA optical is fine if you have enough ports
3) Not a huge performance gain from faster ram, helps with overclocking though
4) Raid 5 is useful. If a disk dies you can simply replace it and rebuild the array. If Two die though you still loose everything. There are some CPU overheads in writing to a raid 5 array using the onboard controller so you might want to consider a fast single system drive which you back up regular to the raid array. All other content downloads etc are stored on the array.
5) Buy a case designed for low noise ... Antec P180 / 182. With the fans on low and a corsair 620w psu it's near silent, a low rumble. A different CPU cooler ... think heatpipes and a large slow fan help here.

AD
 
If you want a quiet system then replace the cooler.

if you're not looking to overclock too much i'd get 4gb of pc6400 memory over the tracer.

swap the psu for the corsair 620w as mentioned by decto, more than enough to run that system and quiet.

if budget is tight maybe drop the 8500 to the 8400 wolfdale.
 
Great, thanks for the help guys.

Stupidly I already bought the Antec PSU, do you think there's no way it will fit, so i should return before i open the box?

Do you think all the other bits ok? Is there anything additional i need to think about which i probably don't realise? I've read a few places that people often find cables too short with a P182 case, is this likely to be the case?

thanks,

Hufggfg
 
I'd get a seperate single boot drive (Raptor as it seems to be a high performance rig, although any sata drive from samsung, seagate or wd should do) as if you have any problems with that array, you won't be able to get into windows.
 
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