Your thoughts about this i7 set up for work

mr_jmm

mr_jmm

mr_jmm

Associate
Joined
20 Aug 2008
Posts
68
Location
Essex, UK
Hi,

Usual request: Colleague at work needs a new PC for use with 3D animations plus photoshop and flash. We're looking for something fast running 2x 1440x900 monitors.

Budget is £1,600 or near as.

oc_basket_pam_pc.gif


Hard drives - Planning on Raiding these for speed.
Memory - Gone for spec over timings.
Graphics - Planning on linking them.
Might overclock it all.

Please do make suggestions, criticise etc.

Cheers,
 
I like lots of room. I would consider the Antec 902 if people think theat it's big enough for everything and coolers etc. but I'm just thinking about the future, overclocking, cooling, more drives etc. The office is very warm.

Also, I do just like the case. At present we have this horrible Dell T7500(?) thing and it's no bigger than that.

Cheers
 
The antec 902 would be big enough, as it is the same depth as the 1200, just not as tall i beleive.

at least, the 1200 isn't an E-ATX case, and i'm sure when i built my mates PC using a antec 1200, the graphics card (GTX280) came right up the harddrive cage the same is does in my 900 (9800gtx, same length as gtx280)
 
Cool. If you're all sure that the 902 will take graphics cards, coolers and lots of HDD's then consider it done.

Can someone confirm my choice of graphics cards and memory? Need to make sure it's all going to run smoothly.

Sorry, also, are there any odds and ends I'll need to order for this lot such as clips, cables etc or will they be supplied?

Thanks again.
 
mr_jmm said:
Hard drives - Planning on Raiding these for speed.
Click to expand...

RAID 0 or 1? The onboard intel RAID is generally pretty rubbish and you will need some sort of redundancy if you're planning to stripe the drives, especially if it will have important work on it. I'm presuming work will be stored on a network drive?
 
Raid 0 for hopefully a bit of speed advantage. All work is backed up to network drives both on-site and off. I did have a thought about raid 1+0 especially as the drives don't cost much. 900-2 case means I could squeeze a 640GB in there to help with software backups... or...
Any recommended Raid cards?
 
No need for such a mahoosive PSU.
750W Corsair will do that rig just fine.

If you're not overclocking the CPU then you can save on the motherboard.
 
i would change the antec 1200 to the antec 902

i would change the PSU to the 700w modular true power

and i would lastly buy 2x 260's for your gfx as its gfx orientated
 
I'd cut down on the graphics - although newer photoshop versions can use graphics accelleration, it won't use 2x 4870's worth.

I suppose since you're building to a budget it doesn't matter too much, but there's no sense in wasting money.
 
PSU: As pointed out, not worth it. Bang for buck it's spot on and somewhat future proof. Ish.

Lightwave, Photoshop and assorted browsers, M$ products etc. can get the RAM running at 10GB+ so do not want any bottlenecks at the graphics cards. Or at least avaoid as much as possible.

Motherboards - All the ones I'd considered are only £20 here or there. Again, bang for buck and I might want to OC.

Memory - Am I right to go for higher spec over timings for this application? I've read a fair few forum threads on the subject and think I'm happy with the decision.
 
Hi, going to order this lot then but just need to know a couple of bits:

Will I need to order SATA cables, clips for graphics cards, cpu cooler etc.?

Is this a good CPU Cooler?

Cheers
 
By the way, would it be better to choose a card from the green side? Since it supports CUDA and products regarding to animations will probably support it also in the future.
 
I'm sorry what? What is "the green side" (and please, no references to the dark side)?

Someone else mentioned the NVidia GFX260's - I know very little about nvidia cards other than personal experience has not been good. Always seemed to end up having to download some patch to avoid conflicts.

Am still open to thoughts / recommendations though. If you all agree to NVidia then I'll go with it.
 
mr_jmm said:
I'm sorry what? What is "the green side" (and please, no references to the dark side)?

Someone else mentioned the NVidia GFX260's - I know very little about nvidia cards other than personal experience has not been good. Always seemed to end up having to download some patch to avoid conflicts.

Am still open to thoughts / recommendations though. If you all agree to NVidia then I'll go with it.
Click to expand...

The "green side" is nVidia
images

As opposed to the ATI "red side"
images

And unfortunately yes, it's a Star Wars reference :-P

LoveCZ raises a good point about CUDA - it allows for software to run directly on the graphics card and would be especially useful for your uses. It may be worth thinking about nVidia :-)
 
Ah. Ok. Should have guessed.

I like the idea of the CUDA software but will this still have the same advantage with this system bearing in mind it'll have 12GB RAM?

Just looking at the NVidia website now but it's a bit over my head. Couldn't see any references to the applications that will be running.

Sorry, I'm not trying to be awkward, it's just that this is about being "converted" to NVidia. I need to be 100% sure it's the right decision for this purpose.
 
Last edited:
You generally find that nVidia's drivers at the moment are more stable than ATIs. Although it seems to have cleared up lately I saw a fair few reports about problematic 4850/4870 drivers.

At the moment CUDA isn't used by very much, but it's more the fact that the next version(s) of adobe's suite may well support it and it can make a drastic difference in multimedia apps.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom