System on a "Budget" ...

Cleverchap

Cleverchap

Cleverchap

Associate
Joined
15 Sep 2008
Posts
7
Location
Potters Bar
Greetings,

Been lurking the forums for a very long time (even longer than my account creation date) - but after a lot of reading, I thought I would actually start to ask a question :-)

I currently use my machine for several things (gaming - read that as WoW, eve-online (too rubbish to play avp/crysis :(, Study (GNS3 - CCIE level stuff), watching movies, browsing etc) and it's grinding to a halt, and i'm bored of it ;-). Would also be interested in folding in the future.

This is what I am after

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Gainward GeForce GTX 580 "GOOD Edition" 1536MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive (CTFDDAC256MAG-1G1)
Gigabyte P67A-UD7 Intel P67 Chipset (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - (Sandybridge)
Intel Core i7-2600K 3.40GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail
Corsair Professional Series™ Gold AX1200 High Performance 1200W Power Supply (CMPSU-1200AXUK)
Corsair Dominator GT 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3 PC3-16000C8 2000MHz Triple Channel Kit (CMT6GX3M3A2000C8)
Plextor PX-LB950SA 12x BluRay RW / 16x DVD±RW Drive - Black (Retail)
Noctua NH-D14 Dual Radiator CPU Cooler (Socket LGA1366/LGA1156/LGA1155/LGA775/AM2/AM2)
Lian Li PC-V1020B, Black Mid Tower Aluminum Case USB 3 Support w/o PSU
Logitech Wireless MX 5500 Revolution Keyboard and Mouse
IC Diamond 24-Carat Thermal Compound (4.8g)
27" Dell U2711 A04 WQHD Widescreen LCD. 2560x1440, HDMI, 2xDVI-D, Display Port, 5 xUSB, 8in1 reader

------

Questions I need to ask:-

Will I be overclocking? Very likely (it all started 15 years ago with my pentium pro 200 overclock to 233 ... amazing) - I am not going to cry if I don't hit 5ghz stable, north of 4ghz should be fine. Ram/GPU's presumably will be overclocked too. I know everyone has been gushing over the Noctua, which is a beast - one day I might have the balls/confidents to watercool the whole thing.

Would I be better off with having the one u2711? Or should I get two u2410 with the view of "one day" getting another "GOOD edition" for SLI (going from an 8800, I know there will be a huge difference in having even one 580)? Don't think I can stretch to two u2711's ;-) Currently run 2 x 22" FlexScan L985EX's, so I know the screen real estate advantage is good, but part of me will always feel a bit "funny" playing games with screen "frames" getting in the way (ie distracting) - the desk is 150 wide by 80 deep, and it's one of those height adjustable ikea jobbies - or perhaps I should shut my cakehole and continue to enjoy the experience of 2 screens ;-)

I know I have gone for Lian Li's v1020b (and I really really wanted to like the Fractal Design Define XL), I really wanted space for expansion so that "one day (common theme going on here)", I may decide to water cool everything (twin gpus, cpu etc etc), Does anyone recommend anything similar? I want understated/sleek looks (I don't want a minger) - I can go for taller if it gives me better expandability in the future - I could always add sound deadening material if I wanted (any experience on this would be great, coming from an antec sonata II ...)

What? No hd's for storage I hear you cry? That's to come (which is why I again really wanted to like the XL, as it looked "tidy") - I don't really trust the onboard serial ata raid rubbish that comes with the motherboards, I will be looking at an adaptec 5805 card (I want to encode all my 300+ dvd's and countless cd's into flac/uncompressed format (which will eventually distribute via fibre round the house ;-)) Raid 6 all the way. That, or buying a Qnap TS-859pro+ and fully populated with 3tbs in raid 6 ... and esata connection to it .... hmmmmm.

As you can see, the "budget" is quite high, but if I can get better for less then great, if I can improve on what I have with the same money also great. (I can spend a bit more on top if need be, I have a separate budget for storage)

Hoping to hear soon :-)

Cheers,
Chris P
 
Super overkill PSU :p Unless you plan to tri-SLi? Change it for this: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-118-AN&groupid=701&catid=123&subcat=

The 2500K is more than enough for your needs, only need the 2600K if you're going to do some video editing/rendering/etc.

Sandybridge is dual channel only so swap the RAM for this stuff: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-105-GL&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1517

You need a storage drive as well if you want to keep a nice long life on your SSD: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-082-SA&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=1279

You can swap out the BD drive for this one: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CD-138-SA&groupid=701&catid=10&subcat=314
But if you want to write BD disks as well then: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CD-107-LG&groupid=701&catid=10&subcat=314

Apart from that, everything else looks good!
 
Many Thanks for the replies, here is the amended spec.

Gainward GeForce GTX 580 "GOOD Edition" 1536MB GDDR5 PCI-Express
Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive
Gigabyte P67A-UD7
Intel Core i7-2600K 3.40GHz
Corsair Professional Series™ Gold AX850 High Performance 850W
Patriot Viper Xtreme 8GB (2x4GB) PC3-16000C9 2000MHz Dual Channel Kit
LG Blu-Ray Writer, BH10LS30.AUAR, SATA, Retail
Noctua NH-D14 Dual Radiator CPU Cooler
Lian Li PC-V1020B, Black Mid Tower Aluminum Case
Logitech Wireless MX 5500 Revolution Keyboard and Mouse
IC Diamond 24-Carat Thermal Compound (4.8g)
Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache
24" Dell U2410

I've kept the 2600k as I also dabble with POV (raytracing) on occasion - I hear the 580 will muller cpus in terms of folding performance (but you know, every little helps ;-))

Good call with the LG (I will as a precauction want to have bluray backups as well, more for offsite storage - so writer ideal.)

With the ram, fat fingers on my behalf with the triple channel - Patriots look tasty (8gb may seem overkill, but with the amount of routers and vm's I will be running, that will get eaten up fairly quickly)

Also gone with the recommendation of 850w vs 1200w, fairly large chunk of saving.

I have also decided that I will go for a u2410 (24" Dell) rather than the 27" - I will want to go down the dual screen route, so would eventually have 2 x 24 as well as 2 x 580 etc - quite likely 4-5 months down the line (birthday treat ;-))

Storage - Never been keen on the spinpoints (WD fanboi, sorry), but I suppose handy to have a generic drive which I could use as a temporary dumping ground, so specced that. I will be looking at having 6-8 drives in raid 6 (separate raid controller) ... and last time I checked, the Velociraptors are a little on the chingy side ;-)

No opinions on the case or extra fan recommendations :)? Cheers for the help everyone, taken a lot on board - and thank you as always :)


Cheers,
Chris P
 
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