Thoughts ...

[Novocaine]

Would appriciate your thoughts on a rig i'm planning to build at the end of the month.

The plan is to have 2x74GB in Raid 0 as the System Partition and 4 x 500GB in Raid 0+1 for Data.

I've got a £4K price limit so I'm trying to get the absolute best performace possible.

 

[Novocaine]

My thoughts are
WHAT A WASTE OF MONEY!!

Get a Q6600, no need for SLI or Ultra's, £800 on 4GB RAM? get a 4GB (2x2GB) Kit for just under £200... 1K W PSU!, Corsair 620W will do for half the price.



You dont even need half of that to have a beast of a machine.

I understand what your saying but I'm trying looking to get performance not savings. Q6600 is an awesome chip but i'm interested in the QX6850 as it is the fastest CPU on the market.

 

[Novocaine]

What size monitor have you got?

Your rig is an overkill period.

You dont need to spend 4K to get a good system.

2 x SM-245T 24

 

[Novocaine]

what monitor do you use? what are you gonna use this PC for?

2 x SM-245T 24

PC used for Gaming mostly, Supreme Commander, Company of Heroes etc..
Also used for 3DS Max and Video Recode.

 

[Novocaine]

Before we move on are you actually going to take any of our advice?

Wouldn't have posted if I didnt want to hear your comments good or bad.

 

[Novocaine]

What so your willing to spend almost £400 extra on it ... the Q6600 will easily OC to ~3GHz and beyond.

Ok fair comment, with a target of 3Ghz is the Zalman up to the task?

 

[Novocaine]

You can spend around 1.5K - 2K and still get a brilliant system.

Interested, Example?

 

[Novocaine]

Ok what do you think of this:

Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64-Bit Edition DVD - OEM - 1Pk
Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "Energy Efficient 95W Edition" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail
Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme Heatsink (Socket AM2/LGA775)
Noctua NF-S12 1200RPM 120mm Silent Case Fan - 3 Pin
Abit IP35 Pro (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
G.Skill 4GB DDR2 PQ PC2-6400C5 (2x2GB) CAS5 Dual Channel Kit
BFG GeForce 8800 GTX OC 768MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail
Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB 5000AAKS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM X2
Creative X-Fi Xtreme Gamer Fatal1ty Professional 7.1 Soundcard - Retail
Asus DRW-1814BLT 18x18 DVD±RW Serial ATA Dual Layer Lightscribe ReWriter (Black) - Retail
Corsair HX 620W ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU
Akasa Eclipse 62 Aluminium Case - No PSU

Total : £1,425.06

Ok, you should be able to overclock the Quad to 3GHZ+ and with good temps. Dont worry about if you havent ovclocked before, its fairly stright forward, just read a few guides before hand. Their are also people on here that are willing to help you if you get stuck.

The Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme Heatsink is one of the best air coolers around and at the price that it is going for now, it is a steel. Since it dosent come with a fan i have just added the Noctua NF-S12 which will do the job perfectly.

The Abit IP35 Pro is a fantastic P35 chipset board, very reliable, solid and great overclocking potinal. It also fully supports Intels upcoming 45nm processors (Penryn).

The G.Skill 4GB DDR2 is very reliable memory and you wont have any problems with it.

The 8800GTX is a fantastic card, very powerful and pretty quite too. No need to go for SLI since many games out their are not optimized for a SLI configuration.

The Western Digital Hard Drives are very reliable and quite. Raptors are a waste of money to be honest. When they first came out they were quite a head of the standard 7200RPM drives. Now that the standard 7200RPM drives have advanced they are not far behind the Raptors.

If your spending that amount of money a Soundcard is a must. The diffrence between hearing sound from the onboard sound controller and a deicated sound card is huge. So the Creative X-Fi Xtreme Gamer Fatal1ty Professional 7.1 will be fantastic.

The ASUS DVD Drive connectos to your motherboard via SATA connection, this means you can cancel the onboard IDE controllerwhich will help with boot times. Also you can get rid of them ugly IDE cables.

The Corsair PSU is one of the best power supplys around, very reliable and very quite.

The Akasa case is amazing, brilliant build quality and cooling is of a very high standard too.

Now i have also added Vista Home Premium for you, i know that you may not want to move to Vista now but i highly recomend dual booting along with XP, its a great way to experinace Vista fully but if you do come across any problems you can still use XP. You will also be able to ultlize all 4GB of Memory that i have put in for you.

Thats a nice system. I will take on board what your suggestion and thanks a lot for taking the time to create a config. I will stick with the stacker case as I really do like to the case and have been happy with stackers in past. Vista's not a problem, I have a 64bit version ready to install from my technet subscription.
The soundcard I have already installed in this machine, same as the one you have listed.

In regards to the Mobo, I must admit after using the Nvidia chipset I still lean towards the Intel's but with the P35 chipset, is that not Crossfire only? I know at the moment Sli is not across the board but would but nice to be able to use it when it becomes more standard.

 

[Novocaine]

Get the sub-£2k rig and donate the other £2k to charity. You're obviously loaded!

Nope not loaded, just saved. Already donate enough to charity, its called income tax

 

[Novocaine]

for they price why don't you get water cooling lol

Had watercooling before, bought a Koolermaster case and all the trimmings even had the hard disks watercooled but its a pain in the arse. Maybe it was just that brand and the components used but I found it to be not worth the agro. Plus I had a leak from a dodgy pump connection that was factory fitted which really p!ssed me off.

 

[Novocaine]

By then though, their will be much better boards out.

lol v true. No point looking ahead I suppose, things move to fast.

 

[Novocaine]

where on earth were you going to put 9 fans? you'll want some ear plugs too.

Case takes 9 fans, running them all around 60% should be quiet enough.

 

[Novocaine]

100 quid on fans.... if you get a cheaper case because you dont need all those fans and the nvida logo and take off the heatsink you could buy water cooling for that.

Its not the case with the Nvidia logo, thats the 830 and I don't really have any interest in Water cooling as I said above.

 

[Novocaine]

SLI will never become standard or become near standard.


This is what I would buy.

The PC

I know you said you wouldnt like watercooling but it will be much easier to do yourself really. You set up the components so you dont have to worry about 'a leak from a dodgy pump connection' 'cos you can fit everything yourself and make sure its all leak proof. Dont have to worry about crappy watercooling parts. Just buy the best you can.


The watercooling kit.


Swiftech Apogee GTX Extreme CPU block
EK-FC8800 8800 GTX - Acrylic
EK-NB/SB ASUS 1 x 2
ThermoChill PA120.3
Thermochill PA120.2
Swiftech MCP655-B™ 12 VDC Pump (No speed controller) x 2
XSPC Bay Reservoir (Black) x 2
XSPC 1/2" tubing x 20ft (just to be sure, if you make a hash at measurements etc)
12mm Hoseclips Pack of 10 x 2
YATE LOON 120mm fan x 5
Feser One - F1 - Cooling Fluid x 2 (et 2 litres of each just to be sure)


£473.27 inc delivery.


£2362.49 inc delivery for the lot.

Jobs a good en.

Thanks for your feed back, You make some valid points and I really like the system you listed. Perhaps I could give water cooling another go, but you know what they say once bitten twice shy and all that.

 

[Novocaine]

I wouldnt recommend buying the Ultra ... theirs a £94 difference between the OCuK GTX & Ultra and no way are you getting an extra £94 worth performance increase, The Ultra's a waste of money.

Been reading up on that and I agree the ultra is not worth the extra, next steps down are just and good.