Just Finished my Build...opinions?

Trems

Trems

Trems

Associate
Joined
19 Feb 2007
Posts
50
Location
At Jedi school
Hi guys,

I've never built an entire system before, had an £800 budget and wanted something that was fairly upgradeable in the future.

Spec is as follows:

Lian Li PC7
ASUS D5W DH
Seasonic M12 700W
2x Seagate 7200.10 250Gb 16Mb SATA Drives
BFG 8800 320Mb GTS OC
CellShock 2Gb 6400 DDR2
Intel C2D E6320
Samsung Dual layer DVD Rewriter (with lightscribe)
Lian-Li 3.5" Multi Cardreader

Just finished putting it together last night will get it all up and running and set up this weekend.

My questions are:

-What OS?

-What CPU cooler? (ready for overclocking), was thinking this: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-011-AS&groupid=701&catid=57&subcat=821

-Keyboard/Mouse? , was thinking the enermax aurora and microsoft intellipoint.

-Second HD? , was thinking another of the same and running RAID 1 for data security? but have considered running RAID 0 and then putting a third 200Gb IDE disk that i have lying around and just run scheduled backup onto that for data security, is RAID 0 worth it?

-More RAM? Another 2Gb of Cellshock..worth it?


-Do you rate the system so far, spent around £700?...would you have done anything drastically different (obviously everyone has preferences but i'm talking major changes)


Any help greatly appreciated, thanks in advance guys.

-Paul
 
Consider the Noctua for cooling.

If you add more RAM then get a 64 bit OS. I went for Vista and I've had no problems with apps and games except for CIV 3 which refuses to work.
 
Get a second hard drive to keep your data and your swap file off your boot/program drive.

Tuniq Tower, any scythe or the Noctua to cool that CPU.
 
Thanks for the quick replies chaps...few more queries (excuse my lack of knowledge!)

GPU: Do you think the 640mb card will make much difference?
(i currently play on a 22" WS 1680x1050 native panel)

OS: 64 Bit OS - I've heard a lot about 64 bits vista with DX10, What are the benfits of this?

HDD: How do you move the swap file across?
 
Trems said:
GPU: Do you think the 640mb card will make much difference?
(i currently play on a 22" WS 1680x1050 native panel)
Click to expand...

Yes, the 320mb might struggle at that res but depends on games, quality settings etc

Trems said:
OS: 64 Bit OS - I've heard a lot about 64 bits vista with DX10, What are the benefits of this?
Click to expand...

Able to detect and handle more RAM, DX10 = more eye candy
 
Trems said:
HDD: How do you move the swap file across?
Click to expand...

Start-> Control Panel->System->Advanced->Performance (settings)->Advanced->Virtual Memory (change)-> Set c: no paging file,<SET> d: (or whatever your non-boot drive is called) 4096MB minimum and maximum, <SET>
 
Thanks guys, so...

Everything thing cleared up except one thing.

Looking at Vista (64bit) it appears there are 3 options:

Home
Premium
Ultimate

Ranging from ~£60-£120.

Are there any significant differences between the three and is ultimate worth £50 more than premium?

Thanks again guys
 
It depends on what you will use if for. I found premium to be more than enough for my needs i.e. surfing, gaming and web development.
 
Sounds pretty similar to me, seems like premium is the way forward as you get all the visual toys, the media centre and apparently scheduled backup which arent present in basic (according to msv website)
 
Premium, unless you realy need the bitlocker stuff..

Nice spec there, - What did you make of the Lian-li card reader? Worth the money? Any pics of this installed?
 
I've just fired it up, seems to work....just trying to work out how to update the BIOS and configure the HDD's!... :eek:

yeah the card reader is very slick looking, i'll take some pics tomorrow for you mate. I'm very pleased with the appearance of the whole setup, i'm a bit of a tart and spent ages tidying the wires inside, the black case looks the nuts, esp with the polished copper ASUS heatsinks and Cellshock RAM.

Think i'm going to order a second HDD and Vista Premium 64 tomorrow.


Does anyone else have an ASUS board that may be able to offer some advice on the HDD setup with the EZRAID?
 
Trems said:
Think i'm going to order a second HDD and Vista Premium 64 tomorrow.

Does anyone else have an ASUS board that may be able to offer some advice on the HDD setup with the EZRAID?
Click to expand...

What problems are you having?
 
Getting the 1 beep on POST, i'm assuming this is cos i nee dto have my primary HDD plugged into SATA 1 (north) but if i want to run 2 drives in RAID 1/0 i was going to put them into the EZRAID connectors? (south)
 
It may be worth noting i dont have an OS installed yet, ordering Vista today but wanted to get the BIOS up and running before hand.
 
Trems said:
Getting the 1 beep on POST, i'm assuming this is cos i nee dto have my primary HDD plugged into SATA 1 (north) but if i want to run 2 drives in RAID 1/0 i was going to put them into the EZRAID connectors? (south)
Click to expand...

Don't do that. Its a lot of hassle. I'm off to work now but I'll find and post some links for you to read later.
 
Ok mate cheers, just ordered Vista Premium and a Second Barracuda.

I'll start them off in the SATA1/2 connections and install Vista when it arrives, then look into RAID later on.

From what i've read 32 Bit vista runs DX10 (all versions as far as i am aware) but only supports 4GB of total memory (inc graphics etc) so will not utlise all of your RAM if you have 4Gb installed.

Whereas 64 bit Vista can support over 16GB of total memory but on the flipside many 32 appilcations (most current software is 32 bit) can give you grief.

The way i look at it is i am looking at running 4Gb of RAM and my C2D is 64 bit therefore you might as well have an OS that is capable of exploiting your hardware...even if as yet not many programs are written in 64bit.
 
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