Help With My First Build

miniman

miniman

miniman

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Joined
30 Sep 2007
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3
Hi first post so please be nice:D I have been looking for speks for a new machine on these forums and have so far came up with the following

Antec P180B Black Aluminium Super midi case

2x 500GB Samsung SATA II 300 Hard Disk Drive 16MB cache 7200rpm oem

22" Samsung SM226BW Widescreen LCD Monitor

Gigabyte motherboard GA-P35-DS3R P35

Crucial 2GB Kit (2x1GB) Ballistix Memory DDR2 PC2-8500 5-5-5-15

Intel CPU Core 2 Duo E6750 2.66GHz 1333FSB LGA775

XFX 8600GTS 730M 256MB XXX PCIE

The machine will be used for mainly photo editing using cs2/3, watching some HD material and for a spot of basic video editing(no plan on gaming yet as I have no time).
Can people tell me if I am heading in the right direction. Main points are should I go with this processor or pay the extra for a quad and should I go for the pc-8500 or go for 4gb of cheaper ram(I have seen that there are some suggestions on here for using pc6400, but am at a loss as to why the 8500 would not be better).
I plan to clock this machine a bit, but nothing too extreme. Any help and guidance would be gratefully received as I would rather get it right first time is poss. Thanks Mark
 
hi and welcome to the forums.

i would say , def go for a quad..

also you dont need 8500, 6500 or even 5300 should be fine and allow quite a nice overclock.

4 gig would be worth it as well.

it all depends on how often you upgrade and your budget, but assuming you dont upgrade every other week, spend a bit more and get something that should last you longer.
 
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As Paulus said, PC2-6400 would be a good choice since they are so cheap at the moment. You need to bear in mind though, that at stock they'll only run at 677MHz and not the full 800MHz, but some tweaking around will enable you to get the most from your RAM.

Again 4Gb is recomended but only consider this if you are going for a 64-Bit OS like Vista -64. Otherwise only around 3.3Gb is seen by the system.

Are you planning on putting the drives into a RAID array?

PSU?

And again as Paulus says, go for quad.. it's a no brainner at the moment.
 
Hi and theank you both for the replies. The quad does seem to be well thought of so I will pay the extra and have that.

I was also planning to put the drives into raid array, but a friend will have to do this as Its a bit beyond me. As for a psu I have a 550w it colours one already, but will go with a better one if it will be worth while (I suppose it will be daft using a £30 psu on this system?)
Any suggestions on a specific band/model ram I would want? also Should I get 4x1gb or 2x2gb?
 
As said in my previous post, 4Gb if you are using Vista 64 or Xp-64 otherwise 2GB fpor normal 32 bit OSs.

If your friend is building you a RAID, bear in mind he could be doing one of two things. Either 1. He's building you a redundancy array (RAID1 - Mirrored) which is best for HDD failures but you'll only see 500GB not 1TB.. or 2. He's building you a performance array (RAID0-Stripped). In which case you'll see 1TB but should one disk fail, you'll have no system because the data is spread accross the two drives.

Personally, I've never found RAID for home system much benefit. As long as your system is backed up then you'll be fine. The money on the second drive is best off spent in other areas of performance such as a 8800GTS ;)

PSU.. You can't go wrong with the Corsair 520w which is a snip for under £70 or the Corsair 620W for under a ton.. Both are modular too.
 
as the admiral says, the corsair 520 is the one to go for

and i agree that raid is not worth the hassle..

just have two seperate drives...
 
Paulus said:
as the admiral says, the corsair 520 is the one to go for

and i agree that raid is not worth the hassle..

just have two seperate drives...
Click to expand...

I find a significiant boost in have a RAID Array (Stripped) with no hassel setting it up at all.

Just turn the system on, enter the RAID menu, choose your RAID array type, name it then choose your stripe size, reboot and then just install your operating system. Takes around a minute to do.
 
what comparisons can you give for noticing the difference ?

and not benchmarks..

in using photoshop (like the op) can you say that you notice the difference?
 
@stickroad.. RAID0 is of course no hassle (until you experience a drive failure.. then you loose everthing and have to eliminate the drive that failed) .. but i've not ever seen any evidence that RAID0 is worth the investment for a significant performance boost. Not one that is noticable. The money is best off spend on an extra 2GB of RAM or a decent motherboard which you can achieve some decent OCs on. Personal preference mind you :)
 
Thanks for the help have decided to go with the quad and am pushing the boat out on 4gb of 8500. Graphics will stay as is as I don't really play games, so this should be more than enough (no need for 8800). I have also bought a third drive and will post on performance when built. I have also upgraded the PSU
 
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