Looking for advice on a potential new rig

[Stakhanov]

once I get a job with a mid to long term contract I'm gonna get a new rig. This should be in the next couple months. This was what I was looking at:


SAMSUNG DVD+/-RW 18x6x18x8 DUAL LAYER BLACK
Cooling Fans SPEEZE - Heatsink/Fan - Silent
Power Supplies OCZ GAMEXSTREAM OCZ850GXSSLI 850W A/PFC

CPU - INTEL CORE 2 EXTREME QUAD CORE QX6700
Memory - DDR2 2GB DDR2 PC-5400 667 MHZ
Hard Drives - SATA 160 GB SATA HDD UDMA 300 7200 8MB
Graphics Cards -ASUS 640MB GeF 8800GTS 2xDVI PCI-E SLI
Motherboards - ASUS SKT-775 P5N32-SLI PREM S/L 1066
Floppy Drives - Silver Floppy Drive 1.44 MB
Computer Cases - ThermalTake CASE ECLIPSE DV VC6000SWA SIL WIN
Operating Systems - WINDOWS VISTA HOME PREMIUM 64-BIT
Anti Virus - NORTON INTERNET SECURITY 2007
Sound Cards - CREATIVE SB AUDIGY SE 7.1
USB Ports - 4 X USB 2.0 PORTS
Networking- FAST 10/100 LAN (BROADBAND READY)

This'll set me back £1513, plus 20" TFT (£270) plus keyboard, mouse, headphones, bf2. All in for £1900 ish.
So, technically competent citizens of Pause, am I wasting money? Is this going to explode? have I missed anything vital and embarassingly obvious?

[Captain_Caveman]

First you need to increase the size of HDD, 160Gb not gonna cut it these days. Go for 250Gb at least. Just put a spinpoint in mine and it's sweet.

Dunno about the heat sink, never heard of it.

Board and chip are nice. Get yourself some better ram for that obscene processor. Prefereably at least pc6400 ie 800Mhz

Case is a case is a case. If you like it go with it.

WHY with the Norton of evildom. Get something that does not require a re-install when you, inevitably, want to get rid of it.

Vista is mince but if you really want it I suggest bigger drive (or 2) and upping the ram to 4Gb, its supposedly the sweet spot for vista. Also dual booting to XP to run games at sensible frame rates (60 down to 30 fps for oblivion has been reported).

Networking and usb fine but you may want to consider a 10/100/1000 NIC just cos they are about the same price as 10/100 these days and eventually the lans may get a full 1000 switch to all machines (me dreams).

[GingerPrinz]

Yah deffo don't get teh Vista... HD is fine, Norton is indeed bollocks, you don't need to fulfil Caveman's dreams :P

[Stakhanov]

First you need to increase the size of HDD, 160Gb not gonna cut it these days. Go for 250Gb at least. Just put a spinpoint in mine and it's sweet.

Dunno about the heat sink, never heard of it.

WHY with the Norton of evildom. Get something that does not require a re-install when you, inevitably, want to get rid of it.

Vista is mince but if you really want it I suggest bigger drive (or 2) and upping the ram to 4Gb, its supposedly the sweet spot for vista. Also dual booting to XP to run games at sensible frame rates (60 down to 30 fps for oblivion has been reported).

Networking and usb fine but you may want to consider a 10/100/1000 NIC just cos they are about the same price as 10/100 these days and eventually the lans may get a full 1000 switch to all machines (me dreams).

Well firstly, cheers for the response.
I was thinking that 250 GB would make sense, that's fair enough.
I've never heard of the heat sink either, hence my comment about the machine exploding.
Norton? Gotta have something.
I'm gonna keep looking at RAM. I don't think the site i'm buying from offers great value so might have to put in extra myself. This is a potential disaster area.
Twin OS's? Didn't even know that was possible. Sounds awkward.
as to the networking provisions and NIC, no clue what's going on there. Don't recognise the terms so I'm just hoping it'll work, let me use broadband and LAN at respectable speeds.

[CaNNoN_FoDDa]

Gotta have something

AVG Free (http://free.grisoft.com/doc/5390/lng/us/tpl/v5)

Ram is probably the easiest hardware to install - it just slots in. Honestly about as hard as Lego. As long as you have the right stuff, it's pretty hard to get wrong.

PS.
I'm sure someone will correct me if i'm wrong, but doesn't that motherboard come with gigabit LAN onboard? (Asus product page (http://www.asus.com/products4.aspx?modelmenu=2&model=1325&l1=3&l2=11&l3=337), Scan product page (http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=459994))

PPS.
Heatsink is probably a generic, if it's a prebuild, since they're cheaper. But that doesn't mean it won't work. The company is apparently well established and does seem to produce some quality products (http://www.speeze.com/main/products_coolers.asp?socket=7+12) as well as cheap generics. You're probably getting this one (http://www.speeze.com/main/fcc_v2.asp?ProdID=226).

[LastChanceHotel]

Depending on your budget, you may want to consider dropping the quad-core and just get a really fast dual-core, and get an 8800GTX instead of the GTS.

Regarding antivirus, use AVG, use AVG, use AVG. There is no reason on earth you should be considering Norton.

I agree that holding off on Vista for now (Just use a... ahem, "used" copy of XP) is a good idea, at least until everyone decides that it's not entirely evil. Although, if you're not looking for buying until your contract's finished, all of these specs will be vastly out of date in a couple of months... particularly once AMDs new directX10 cards come out.

Regarding your monitor, you may want to have a dig around for a Fujitsu-Siemens "WBZA" 23" TFT or something similarly huge. I got one at PC world by complete coincidence, for £250. 4ms response time, something ridiculous like 800:1 contrast ratio, DVI/VGA... Again, have a dig around. Quite often you'll find obscene monitors in the most unusual of places.

Heatsink wise, horses for courses... I've heard good things about a "Ninja" heatsink, I currently have a "SI-120" heatsink in my machine which takes a 120mm fan face down, and it works really well with an expensive Panaflo fan.

edit: Why not go the whole hog and get 1TB for £180? You can get two 500GB Western Digital 16MB cache SATA drives cheap these days, with something ridiculous like a 1.2 million hour mean-time-before-failure. I have two, and can push 127MB/sec in raid 0. You seem to be futureproofing most other things, why omit the one bit that -will- be a bottleneck?

Good luck with your endeavors!

Jan

[YegaDoyai]

SAMSUNG DVD+/-RW 18x6x18x8 DUAL LAYER BLACK

K, A drive is a drive is a drive

Cooling Fans SPEEZE - Heatsink/Fan - Silent

Smells like a pre built!

Power Supplies OCZ GAMEXSTREAM OCZ850GXSSLI 850W A/PFC

Their PSUs are getting better but there are more established and trusted available, I wouldn't be buying one anytime soon.

CPU - INTEL CORE 2 EXTREME QUAD CORE QX6700

Nice, but quad core? Do Photoshop/Play with movie creator? For gaming dual core is only just being used.

Memory - DDR2 2GB DDR2 PC-5400 667 MHZ

Needs to be 800Mhz, does not need to be faster. If you are going quad core or if you are going vista you should look to have 4GB, that's right folks, 4GB!

Hard Drives - SATA 160 GB SATA HDD UDMA 300 7200 8MB

HDDs are cheap as chips, I suggest spending about £100 on an HDD that should get you about 500gb either in 1 drive or 2 250s depending on if you want to RAID them up or not (i suggest not - they can be faster but losing 50% space for 4-5% performance is a no brainer)

Graphics Cards -ASUS 640MB GeF 8800GTS 2xDVI PCI-E SLI

Nice, but wait for the ATi/AMD answer to knock this down in price.

Motherboards - ASUS SKT-775 P5N32-SLI PREM S/L 1066

Nice

Floppy Drives - Silver Floppy Drive 1.44 MB

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Computer Cases - ThermalTake CASE ECLIPSE DV VC6000SWA SIL WIN

A case is not a case is not a case. Spending 1/5th of my budget on my case was probably the best investment I made. Do some research and buy a case that says things like, Quiet, Will not cut yourself while installing, a pleasure to use, etc etc The Antec P180 is the benchmark for £90 cases.

Operating Systems - WINDOWS VISTA HOME PREMIUM 64-BIT
Anti Virus - NORTON INTERNET SECURITY 2007

Whatever, don't care

Sound Cards - CREATIVE SB AUDIGY SE 7.1

GTFO, your onboard sound is better quality than this shite, get an X-Fi or nowt.

USB Ports - 4 X USB 2.0 PORTS
Networking- FAST 10/100 LAN (BROADBAND READY)

The guys writting this don't even know that the mobo has a 1Gb/s network adapter, in fact it might be one of the ones that has 2! anyhoo

The 20" monitor for just shy of £300 will be baws compared to the Viewsonic 922 @ £200, If you are going for a 20" then I heartily reccomend the Dell 2007 model, my dad just got one and while the refresh rate is slow compared to the 922 it is more than capable of putting some of the older 19" models to shame and it is HUGE!

My strong suggestion is buy all this kit and build it yourself. Chat with Kustom PCs or froogle your equipment. If you want a hand building it then I am more than happy to help. Either at the lan or in the comfort of your domicile.

Pre builts look nice and generaly are competitive nowadays but they always balls certain things up, the big eyebrow raisers in this build are the HSF, PSU, Memory, Floppy drive and Case. I have never seen a prebuilt that hasn't had at least one part that makes the entire thing a bit of a dissapointment.

So to recap, in 2 months time, search the review sites tomshardware.co.uk and anandtech.com to see what is what in the world of processors/graphics cards/coolers and pretty much everything else. Then find a shop that sells all those things (probably OCuk) and buy them. Buy a couple of beers and invite me/some other techno savvy person round to build it for you. Crack open the beers and watch your computer come to life. Finally, hand the builder a beer and say 'cheers, that's a sweet rig'. And we will all concur.

[CaNNoN_FoDDa]

in fact it might be one of the ones that has 2!

Pretty sure it is.

[YegaDoyai]

This is what your rig 'should' look like.

Intel Core 2 Quadro Extreme Edition QX6700 "LGA775 Kentsfield" 2.66GHz (1066FSB) £559.99
(£657.99)
2 * GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC6400C4 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX22GB6400UDC) £199.98
(£234.98 )
BFG GeForce 8800 GTS OC 640MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) £234.99
(£276.11)
EVGA nForce 680 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £144.99
(£170.36)
Samsung SpinPoint T HD501LJ 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM £74.99
(£88.11)
Samsung SH-W183 18x18 DVD±RW Serial ATA Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) £17.99
(£21.14)
Tuniq Tower 120 CPU Cooler £29.99
(£35.24)
Creative X-Fi Xtreme Gamer Fatal1ty Professional 7.1 Soundcard - Retail £75.99
(£89.29)
Antec P180 Advanced Super Midi Tower Case - No PSU (Black) £68.99
(£81.06)
Tagan TG700-U25 700W ATX2.0 Dual Engine Silent SLi Compliant Silent PSU £91.99
(£108.09)
Viewsonic VX922 19" LCD Monitor - Black/Silver £159.99
(£187.99)
Cherry G83-6105 PS2 Keyboard - Black £11.99
(£14.09)
Logitech G5 Gaming-Grade Laser Mouse - Retail £37.99
(£44.64)

Sub Total : £1,709.86
Vat : £308.84
Total : £2,073.65

Please note that it costs more because it has better memory/PSU/Case/HSF/MOBO/Sound Card/HDD, so pretty much everything really.

Personally I'd suggest dropping the Quad core and 4gb memory. Get an E6600 and 2GB of the memory specced above, get the Tuniq Tower cooler (best on the market) and overclock its little balls off. Should save about £300 on the build cost

[LastChanceHotel]

HDDs are cheap as chips, I suggest spending about £100 on an HDD that should get you about 500gb either in 1 drive or 2 250s depending on if you want to RAID them up or not (i suggest not - they can be faster but losing 50% space for 4-5% performance is a no brainer)


With raid 0 (which is performance raid to you and me, using two or more drives) you DON'T lose 50% space. If you raid 0 two 250gb drives together, you'll still get 500GB. You'll also get double the speed of a single drive, minus 4-5%.

Raid 5 (3 drives or more, with redundancy so if one dies, you're safe) is an entirely different ballgame altogether, but you won't be using it.

so to summarise:

RAID 0 -

195% performance
50% reliability (one drive pops, both are gone)
100% cost per gig (same as single drives, you will have a built in RAID controller whatever motherboard you get)

Single drive -
100% performance
100% reliability
100% cost per gig.

So, if you want fast and don't have business critical stuff on your machine (or do backups, or don't drop your computer regularly, or don't cheap out on the power supply!!), go for raid 0. All you need to do is buy two of your chosen drive :)

[YegaDoyai]

Jan, numbers are fun. Try looking at real world benchmarks. Windows/Games/Other programs load about 5% quicker using RAID. If you are not using it for data security it is pointless for anything other than serving. Tomshardware have a nice piece on raid vs raptors right now. Go check it out.

[GingerPrinz]

<3 Peter and Jan, you guys are so awesome.

[Tiberio]

Definetely listen to Yega and Jan, they both know their stuff.
It's adviseable NOT to get Vista untill the SP1 has been released, although we're a couple of months into Vista (updates have certainly helped my Vista run considerably smoother) driver support is still an issue.
If you want 5.1 sound with your pc, DONT go Vista, even though official drivers for X-fi have just been released, there is no 5.1 support.
I'd argue that you would be better served with a 320mb gts, although its not that powerful it does the job and I don't see a point in investing in a high-end card as long as AMD/ATI haven't released a card.
The new ATI series are rumoured to be even more powerful than what Nvidia has on the market, and they're most likely out in april.
Going quadcore is insane if you're not going to use the rig for other things than gaming, dual core will suit you fine, get a 6600 and OC it.
I'd personally get a Lian Li case but I might be a bit biased since I have one.
If money is not an issue, get something along the A10 or V1000/2000 range, great cases.

[YegaDoyai]

+1 for the Lian Li call.

[Thanatos]

im puttin a pc together for my mums friend, she uses it basically for word processing and downloading itunes. Hers has died and she wants one asap so is it worth gettin vista? XP home and vista home basic are pretty much the same price (~£5 difference OEM). It should run what she wants right?

I know it was said just before to not get vista but she doesnt want any of the serious features, just something to get on the net and use office, so would it be better to get vista now, or just get xp?

[LastChanceHotel]

I'd personally recommend XP Home for consistency, but Vista Home could be interesting to try. If you chuck Office 2007 on it it'll do everything she needs.

Go for Vista, the license is worth more when you sell it on.

Jan

[LastChanceHotel]

Jan, numbers are fun. Try looking at real world benchmarks. Windows/Games/Other programs load about 5% quicker using RAID. If you are not using it for data security it is pointless for anything other than serving.

Yes, 5% quicker in real-life benchmarks. However -

- if you do warez, you'll like it (extracting a 25GB blu-ray rip is much, much faster)
- if you do "real work", ie photoshop, tmpegenc, premiere, rendering etc you'll like it.

But as Yega said, if you're not looking at doing any of these things, there's not really much point.

Jan

[GingerPrinz]

im puttin a pc together for my mums friend, she uses it basically for word processing and downloading itunes. Hers has died and she wants one asap so is it worth gettin vista? XP home and vista home basic are pretty much the same price (~£5 difference OEM). It should run what she wants right?

I know it was said just before to not get vista but she doesnt want any of the serious features, just something to get on the net and use office, so would it be better to get vista now, or just get xp?

As far as I'm aware Itunes is unsupported in Vista, so it's a case of "use it at your own risk. http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=305042 details the exisitng issues.

[DAve]

is the 64-bit version of windows any better than normal 32 bit version?

i.e. do the games run, driver compatability etc.

[Sideshow]

Most things work, but there are some problems. Haven't hit a driver incompatibility, but anything which hooks into explorer won't work (for example, winrar context menus - you can't right-drag "Extract Here" any more). It does have some fixes in it which make it better than 32-bit, like the undeletetable-movie bug isn't there. It seems to run snappier too, though that might just be subjective. If you've got xp normal I wouldn't advise upgrading to x64 just for the sake of it. I wouldn't feel scared to go to vista though.

[saladin]

See, I didn't get why everyone was so anti-Vista before I bought it, and to be honest, I still don't.

A couple of driver issues aside (most of which were installed by Dell by a 'clerical error'), I haven't had much problems. I'm only running the 32-bit version, because I'm cheap.

[Tiberio]

couldn't agree more saladin, Vista is actually quite good.
Driver support aside, the OS is really stable, I have only had 1 chrash since I installed it and that was because of creative's crappy drivers.
I still think that ppl should wait for the SP1 because most problems will be fixed in this I think, but as of now, most drivers have been sorted out and Vista runs even better than it did in january (at least for me).
I also have had my Vista-running PC to 2 lans so far, and not ONCE had I have any problems with it, other than finding out where the different sections were.

[Captain_Caveman]

Vista home basic even more pointless than ordinary Vista. No Aero, pretty much the big selling point of vista!

[saladin]

Vista home basic even more pointless than ordinary Vista. No Aero, pretty much the big selling point of vista!

I don't know if Aero really adds that much functionality to Vista, but the visual effects it give are quite nice. I love the transparency effects on the start bar and the edges of windows. It's really quite pretty :)

[Captain_Caveman]

Aero really doesn't do much at all but it WAS one of Micro$ofts big selling points of their new OS.

[Stakhanov]

So, to sum up, the collective advice is to up the HDD, go to OCed dual core with huage RAM and wait two months before shopping for bits and then get one of you technically minded folks to build it in exchange for hard liquor?

I'm getting Vista btw. DX10? Surely enough by itself.

[YegaDoyai]

Yeah, if you are going to invest in a DX10 card you might aswell get the only OS that will allow you to flex its muscle

[Hex]

See, I didn't get why everyone was so anti-Vista before I bought it, and to be honest, I still don't.

People are anti-vista because it costs money and does nothing new. Asides from the new interface, it really adds absolutely nothing to the OS. Until such time as games start requiring DX10, theres essentially no reason to upgrade to Vista. Plus it takes up about 8 Gig of your hard drive, which is bloatware even by Microsoft's usual standards.

[Muppet]

Plus it takes up about 8 Gig of your hard drive, which is bloatware even by Microsoft's usual standards.

You could say that, but with the average hard disk now leaning towards the 200-500gb range, its nothing - especially for the advances in the DX End-User Runtime and SDK alone. BUT, although it's rather pointless upgrading to vista right now, its best having it out now and getting it sorted as much as possible in SP1 so games such and Crysis and other full DX10 games will receive the full benefit from a more mature OS.

Plus i'm sure hardcore gamers will run multiple hard disks with some close to 1TB total. So 8gb for an OS - i wouldn't mind.