Top of the range system build

Aaaah but I do need 12GB RAM for running virtual machines. I work in IT so am continuously testing new software etc. I can easily use of all 4GB on my laptop currently...

Thats the plan re storage...use the SSD for booting and programs. Use the SATA drives for storage of video/music/etc. I can easily fill up 4TB by ripping my DVD/Blu Ray collection to disk. Most Blu Ray movies are in the 30 - 40GB range so thats about 100 movies right there that can fill up a drive of 4TB.
 
As before, the Gigabyte UD5 is the same as the extreme minus the heatsinks (which only are necessary if you watercool). The great results you saw for the extreme will be identical to the UD5's. If you plan on air cooling, it makes no sense going for the extreme - but it's your money I guess.

Everything else makes sense.
 
And if you want, say, six of them? Of what if you want more than 2gb per vm?
I'll be on 12gb in the near future because I like virtual machines and want to be able to run several at once. Is that unimaginable?

Get rid of the link to toms hardware. To say they're unreliable would be putting it really kindly

The koolance psu's have potential to be amazing acidhell, my only objection is the price for one with a 3 year warrnaty. It just suggests limited faith in their product.
 
Thanks cmndr_andi. There about a £25 price difference between the UD5 and Extreme. I guess it depends if I go with watercooling or not.

What if I go for Extreme with air cooling but later on decide on water cooling, will this work out?

I'm pretty confident about the other components. I assume 850W will be good enough to power it all?

Stupid question but if I add a 2nd identical video card to the system can I run 3 monitors? What I'm getting at is, I don't HAVE to run SLI if I have more than one video card? I know the GB can take 3!

The Intel SSD seems to get good reviews. Have to be honest I never thought I'd consider and SSD drive so soon...
 
Then you're just being greedy. :p You're inventing situations which will not happen so that they spend more money. Yeah, i need 64GB RAM because i want to run 16 VMs with 4GB each. Of course... not only is it pointless, it's not going to happen. The CPU would be the bottleneck anyway.

What's wrong with Tom? Many people use the site and find it a very reliable source of information.

PSUs i'd stick with: Antec (sans Basiq), BeQuiet, Corsair, SeaSonic, PC Power & Cooling or OCZ but only on a budget.
 
xy16644 said:
Aaaah but I do need 12GB RAM for running virtual machines. I work in IT so am continuously testing new software etc. I can easily use of all 4GB on my laptop currently...

Thats the plan re storage...use the SSD for booting and programs. Use the SATA drives for storage of video/music/etc. I can easily fill up 4TB by ripping my DVD/Blu Ray collection to disk. Most Blu Ray movies are in the 30 - 40GB range so thats about 100 movies right there that can fill up a drive of 4TB.
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Working in IT.. this explains your budget!
You need lots of storage by the sounds of things.. I can't imagine myself filling up 1TB and you are talking about 4? Looks like you need a good combination of internal, external as well as portable storage :)
 
How much noise does the 850W Corsair PSU generate? Is it loud or a low hum in the background?

I also looked at the 850/1000W Zalman PSUs, they look awesome too (and quiet), can anyone comment?

What does it mean if the PSU is modular?

Will the 850W Corsair PSU fit in the case I have chosen?

Sorry to bombard the forum with so many questions but you guys know your stuff!
 
The corsair is a very efficient, cool and quiet PSU. It uses a 140mm fan to to do its cooling, and I sure can't hear it over my reasonably quiet system.

Modular means that you only need to attach the cables you need, instead of having all the cables you could possibly ever need permanently attached to the PSU. This makes building very simple, improves cable management and generally makes building, maintaining and upgrading a PC much easier.

It will definately fit, that case is massive and the Corsair HX 850 is only slightly longer than the ATX standard.
 
I am not inventing situations which will not happen. I run debian, ubuntu and xp simultaneously on a near daily basis. Generally there is a forth machine with whatever I'm testing at the time in. With 8gb this worked well, now down to six I'm struggling a bit.

OCZ make excellent psus, certainly superior to antec.

Noise is subjective mate, no way to say. My 860W pc p&c is probably quiet by most standards, but as the loudest thing in my (quiet) computer it annoys me no end.

Modular means you can unplug cables. Its 'wow cool awesome' or similar sentiments because it makes the inside of a case less full of wires. The negative is that instead of all the cables comping out neatly at one point they're spread across the entire rear of the psu, they cost more, and introduce another point of failure (oxidation at the contact with the psu) which just doesn't need to be there. Can you tell I'm not a fan...
 
Maybe I missed something but what is being performed that needs even remotely a high end GPU.

Virtual Machines aren't going to use it? DVD/BluRay is that going to use it?

If bothered about the electricity then going to be cheaper to build seperate machines.

1 for media on 24/7
1 for IT work.

Can get a cheap low end machine for media playback, and just use the more expensive and costlier electricity machine when requiring it.

I have the following

1 mac mini and drobo pro with 4Tb for media

1 i7 920 / 12Gb / 9800GT 8 disk RAID system running OSX for Handbraking DVD's etc, photo / video editing when I need the extra power.

It's rare that I turn my power machine on, as can internet and media from my mac mini.
 
I'll definitely use the Blu Ray drive. I have one in my laptop and its great!

Yes, I will use virtual machines.

I want a nice video card that can power two 24" monitors and allow me to play the occassional game.

I'm not that bothered about the electricity now that someone pointed out to me how much it cost per day to run when using it "normally" (ie: surfing the web, email, office type stuff etc). I was more worried about the electricity cost when running more demanding software like games and encryption etc.

I hear what you saying about two machines but I already have a laptop and two lower end desktops at home (and two more hiding under my bed unused) so to build two more machines seems like too much for me...I would like to have a high end machine and my laptop in my room, that would be perfect.
 
I would personally recommend the Seasonic M12D 850w power supply. Made with 100% high quality Japanese capacitors. I'm thinking about getting one for myself for my new rig.
 
JonJ678 said:
I am not inventing situations which will not happen. I run debian, ubuntu and xp simultaneously on a near daily basis. Generally there is a forth machine with whatever I'm testing at the time in. With 8gb this worked well, now down to six I'm struggling a bit.

OCZ make excellent psus, certainly superior to antec.

Noise is subjective mate, no way to say. My 860W pc p&c is probably quiet by most standards, but as the loudest thing in my (quiet) computer it annoys me no end.

Modular means you can unplug cables. Its 'wow cool awesome' or similar sentiments because it makes the inside of a case less full of wires. The negative is that instead of all the cables comping out neatly at one point they're spread across the entire rear of the psu, they cost more, and introduce another point of failure (oxidation at the contact with the psu) which just doesn't need to be there. Can you tell I'm not a fan
Click to expand...

Sorry, but i'm failing to understand why. One of the main reasons that people use Linux is increased performance, and that just completely nulls it. Why don't you just install them and pick one?

OCZ make some good PSUs. I know several people personally who've had there's blow up on them, so while i do suggest them on budget builds i wouldn't risk it with something this expensive. Antec Basiq are brilliant PSUs, since they use SeaSonic as their manufacturer. On their other products they switch manufacturer a lot, so there's no way of knowing.

They do improve airflow in the case though, and are an incredibly useful feature for cable management. I've not heard of anybody complaining of oxidation so i think you're just being paranoid :p
 
"Antec (sans Basiq)" I was reasonably sure sans meant without, but I'm fairly poor at languages.

Sound reasoning, I wouldn't trust one I'd seen spontaneously fail either. And yes, it may well be paranoia. But there will be a voltage drop across the joint, which will increase with time as oxidation occurs. Not many people think this matters, perhaps I'm obsessive

I use linux because it will do things which windows wont. Generally speaking I consider increased performance fairly meaningless in linux, since I don't really care how much faster firefox can run or I can compress files. The processor speed is all for cad, which is written for windows and only really runs under windows.

The virtual machine mess is because I'm fond of some applications in windows, foobar being one of the main ones, but also winrar and a few others. It's also quite capable of playing the few games I actually use since they were around before 64mb graphics cards. So thats linux with windows in one machine. The debian/ubuntu or sometimes ubuntu/ubuntu mix is because I mess around with the operating system and it often responds by breaking. This way the ubuntu I just ruined and don't know how to revive is swiftly and easily replaced by rm -f /mnt/vm/ubuntu && cp /mnt/data/images/ubuntu.

Works for me, I'm very fond of windows on one screen and ubuntu on a second, and this way if I break either it really doesn't matter
 
xy16644 said:
What if I go for Extreme with air cooling but later on decide on water cooling, will this work out?
Click to expand...

I have the UD5 Extreme, bought in a flurry of ooh thats the most expensive it must be the best (which I think you are in).

It looks pretty.

That's it for good points, it costs more, it blocks off expansion slots, it disrupts airflow in the case - and if you decided to watercool the motherboard (which you don't need to anyway) - then you'll have to replace the entire array of heatsinks with ones that actually do the job.

In fact from what I can tell, the flappy heatsink doesn't do anything worth a damn as you can run the board without it anyway.
 
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