Bye Dell! Back in the swing of building my own.

[Technocrat]

1. What YOUR PC will be used for. That means what types of tasks you'll be performing.
Tons of photo editing and DVD Ripping and encoding

2. What YOUR budget is. A price range is acceptable as long as it's not more than a 20 percent spread
Really I don't have a budget however I'm trying to go for fast and inexpensive however I demand quality and longevity

3. What country YOU will be buying YOUR parts from.
USA

4. IF YOU have a brand preference. That means, are you an Intel-Fanboy, AMD-Fanboy, ATI-Fanboy, nVidia-Fanboy, Seagate-Fanboy, WD-Fanboy, etc.
Intel & ATI

5. If YOU intend on using any of YOUR current parts, and if so, what those parts are.
Dual 19" Monitors
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 SATA 1.5TB drive for storage
Samsung SH-203N DVD/CDRW

6. IF YOU have searched and/or read similar threads.
Yup been reading a ton on SSD's and i7 930 builds

7. IF YOU plan on overclocking or run the system at default speeds.
I'd like to stay at stock speeds mainly because I want the noise and heat kept to a minimum

8. What resolution YOU plan on gaming with.
I don't really game.

9. WHEN do you plan to build it?
I have everything purchased minus the CPU and Motherboard

10. Don't ask for a build configuration critique or rating if you are thin skinned.
I welcome advice from everyone!


Hi guys, I used to be a very active member on here but I've sold my sports sedan and am back on the computer kick. Well after buying a great deal on a Dell Optiplex and doing minor upgrades on it, it's getting passed on to my wife. I have been building computers since 1992 however I took a 2 year break when I bought this Dell. No issues with the Dell, I just wanted faster and more customizable so I'm back to building!

Here's what I'm planning:

Motherboard:
My wants are that the motherboard is stable, has USB 3.0 and also has SATA 6GB. I'm torn between the two of these boards:

Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R Motherboard
OR
Asus P6X58D-Premium

Processor:
Seems as this is the best price vs. performance as well as for being on the 1366 socket
Intel i7 930 Bloomfield 2.8Ghz

Case:
I wanted something that was very basic that wasn't too flashy and that didn't look like I was hosting a LAN party in my house.
Antec 300 Illusion

Power Supply:
Here again I wanted something powerful for the future but also modular
Corsair CMPSU-850ATX

Hard Drive:
I wanted something screaming fast! So I decided to bite the bullet and use a SSD along with my 1.5 TB Barracuda drive for storage.
Intel X25-M G2 160GB SSD

Video Card:
Well I wanted something that was better than the ATI HD 3650 PCIe card that I had but gave me some future expansion. I run dual 19" monitors and hope to replace them with 3 - 24" monitors soon for work.
MSI R5770 Hawk Radeon 1GB GDDR5

Memory:
I'm not an overclocker so I just wanted something that was stable and solid
Corsair TR3X6G1600C8 G - PC3-12800 - DDR3 1600 XMP

CPU Cooler:
I thought about staying stock but heard such good reviews for this budget cooler I decided to go for it.
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus

Future Wants:
LG WH10LS30 Blu-ray Burner
3 - 24" LCD or LED Monitors

So as you can see I haven't went overboard but would welcome your suggestions!

 

[darkewaffle]

You went for a Hawk but don't game?

And yea, bit overkill on the PSU and the GPU but still should be a great system.

Since you've bought nearly everything do you want advice on the cpu/mobo or just looking for confirmation?

 

[Technocrat]

Darkewaffle,

Is the Hawk overkill? I honestly don't game except maybe some basic games on Facebook or watch videos. What I really wanted was something that just didn't fit now but will get me down the road. Maybe I should have went for something less powerful? My biggest concern is that I run dual monitors and wanted to have enough power to run both of them.

As for the PSU, I wanted something that was super energy efficient and that didn't generate a lot of heat. My office gets a bit hot sometimes as my wife and I work from home. Also the modular PSU was a plus for me.

For advice I'd love advice on anything that I purchased especially my CPU/Mobo combo.

 

[VirtualLarry]

If you are planning on sticking with a single GPU, then an 850W PSU is pure overkill. I think that you could get by with your build on a 650W PSU (a quality one). But if you plan to SLI or Crossfire in the future, then by all means, buy an 850W (or higher) PSU now.

If you're not planning on overclocking the CPU, you could even get by with a 500W unit, like an Antec 520W NeoEco or whatever their new line is.

 

[mfenn]

Unfortunately for you, power supply efficiency is dependent on percent load. Basically, from 0% to 100% looks roughly like a bell curve, peaking in the 40%-60% range. The upshot of this is that since you're not overclocking or interested in a powerful GPU, that 850W will be operating at a very low percent load and probably not reaching its rated efficiency, especially at idle.

As for the GPU, pretty much anything with the appropriate physical connectors can drive 2 monitors at whatever resolution you want (with some caveats for 30" panels). The Hawk is gear towards overclocking, and as such is unnecessarily expensive, even when compared to other 5770's.

As for CPU and mobo, what you've picked out will work, but is again more expensive that it needs to be (compared to an i5 760 + P55 mobo).

 

[darkewaffle]

It is, yea. If you were doing 3d rendering you'd have a case for a substantial GPU, but photo editing and encoding are far more cpu dependent. It's an excellent card, just more power than you're going to use. Watching videos and those casual style games can be accomplished by much smaller cards; but the 5770 is still a fairly cool and quiet unit and the Hawk is one of the best choices for it. Pretty much any modern/recent GPU can handle office/recreational dual monitor use.

PSU is more juice than you'll ever use, but if you're just looking for efficiency and quality then you made a good choice.

My own prefence would give the advantage to the Gigabyte board, but that's basically on name alone haha. Looking more closely, they seem to have about the same features with notable exceptions being that the Gigabyte has eSata while the ASUS has Dual LAN. The gigabyte also costs about $100 less. The newegg reviews of it aren't quite as good, but I always take them with a grain of salt anyway. You cant go wrong either way, my own vote is for Gigabyte.

 

[Technocrat]

Well I looked at the Corsair AX750 and also the Seasonic x750's however there wasn't much but $20 difference between them and the AX850. So I figured might as well, as I don't know what the future holds.

Again when looking at the SATA6 and USB 3.0 for 1156 socket MB's there wasn't a ton of price difference between those and what I am planning thus I just decided to go all out.

What are your thoughts regarding the ASUS or Gigabyte boards I mentioned?

 

[darkewaffle]

Mfenn, I see you mention that bellcurve efficiency on PSUs often, do you have a link explaining/supporting this? I'm interested in how/why that is. Seems good to know.

 

[Technocrat]

Out of curiousity what's the advantage of having dual ethernet ports?

 

[darkewaffle]

For internet access, pretty much jack since you'll run into bottlenecks beyond your modem that you cant account for. Strictly on a LAN though, you can bond them which basically is a 1+1=2 situation allowing for faster transfer rates over your network. Really only useful if you're transferring a ton of data though and have a pretty robust LAN.

Also would allow your PC to share internet more easily I suppose, it's an extra hole.

 

[mfenn]

Mfenn, I see you mention that bellcurve efficiency on PSUs often, do you have a link explaining/supporting this? I'm interested in how/why that is. Seems good to know.

Here's a graph from one of AT's old PSU reviews (shame that they don't do them anymore ). You can clearly see that the efficiency drops off drastically at low loads and that the lower-wattage parts keep their efficiency at lower loads. This is a very typical result, you can peruse the PSU section on the main site (or jonnyguru.com!) for many similar findings.

As for why it's like this? I dunno, ask an EE.

 

[piasabird]

Main thing is support for multiple monitors on the video card. Any efficiency rating above 85% efficiency is pretty good for a power supply. If all you have is a Quad, some RAM and a couple of hard drives, and a minimalistic video card then how much power you plan on using? These new quads have turbo boost and they also back off when they are not doing much. In a case like that you dont want to overclock. Typically the quads dont have the integrated video either because who needs it with a quad with an 8 meg cache.