Friend is looking for high performing PC that will last for the next 5 years

[UMfanatic]

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=27&threadid=1976879&enterthread=y

 

[leglez]

Ok my friend is coming over right now to order it and I was wanting to check one last time that everything is correct. Will he need to order any fans or anything else besides what is listed on it right now? Thanks for all the help.

 

[UMfanatic]

you are good to go

 

[leglez]

Ok he decided on a different case but he is about to order it. We were wondering how we should do shipping, should I go USPS, UPS, or FedEx? Also if he orders it tonight everything is 3 day shipping and he will be out of town on Friday and so it should arrive on Friday, will they hold it since it is such a big order and have him just go pick it up or what? Also my friend wants to be able to track it.

 

[leglez]

Ok he would like to thank everyone, he just ordered all his parts, the total came to $1,670. I will let everyone know how the build goes.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: zephyrprime
Nothing lasts for 5 years. Just deal with it.

A "high-end" PC five years ago was somewhere around a P3 1GHz or P4 1.7GHz with RAMBus memory. While those are wtill "usable" computers in my mind, they certainly wouldn't be suitable for today's games. and you probably wouldn't want to be doing video editing on them if you could afford something newer.

 

[leglez]

Oh also he changed the HDD minutes before ordering, he got a 500GB Seagate, with a free 250GB Seagate, is there any reason that these should be ran in RAID? I have never used RAID before but I wasn't sure if there was an option for these two to make a speed difference or something. He will also have a 300GB and a 250GB IDE HDD In there.

 

[jim1976]

Originally posted by: zephyrprime
Nothing lasts for 5 years. Just deal with it.

Exactly.. This has no meaning right now, since he ordered but I'd like to share my opinion..

IF you have to buy something that can last you a little bit more you have to spend some serious bucks..

A quad core for example is much more futureproof than a dual core, especially if he's gonna use it for video editing like you mentioned..
If he wants to play you need the very best gpu right now to hold you as long as possible..
Buy MORE ram.. Quantity in this case is more essential than quality..
An X-FI Value for soundcard
A good powerful PSU with good A in the 12V..
A full tower case for anything he might need...

All the other stuff are not of such importance..

I know someone has to pay $$$, but if something has the slightest hope to last THAT LONG this is probably something like what I mentioned.. Only an overkill for todays standards pc MIGHT have the change to be decnt in five years..

 

[leglez]

He plans to upgrade some components, by lasting 5 years I meant he wants to keep it in the same case, with the same mobo and most of the same components, and just upgrade, ram, CPU, and some other smaller components

 

[Fast Fingers]

Originally posted by: leglez
Well he said he doesnt want to overclock right out of the gate because he doesnt want to ruin warranties but he said he probably will a few years down the road. So I guess I wouldn't need a CPU cooler yet.

Yeah, most CPU's come with a stock cooler. I'd recommend getting coolers if 1) You want a quieter rig, or 2) You plan on OC'ing. It's fine to wait then.

What exactly is Raid 0? I know Raid 1 is an exact mirror of data, I don't think he wants this I'll ask him tonight. He is just wanting as much storage space as possible.

It's called data striping, which distributes data evenly between multiple drives, both using all available disk space and speeding things up. The catch, though, is that there is no fault protection, so I can't recommend this route.

The reason I was going to go with NewEgg is because he is planning on ordering everything by Tuesday night, and wants me to build it for him before he goes back to college so I was just going to have it all ship at once so I get it faster. Also should I just get one 500GB drive now and then wait a month or two for prices to drop then get another?

Sounds like a good idea. Perpendicular recording's just getting started, so soon 500GB will be the new 250GB.

I like the new rig, I say you are go. I don't know why you have an IDE card though...your drives will be SATA, and most modern mobos will have the ability to do RAID.

Edit: Ah. Well, this will be a weird situation with four drives all doing their own thing. I think that the 250GB drive (maybe SATA for speed's sake) should be a system drive, and the rest could be distributed...maybe the 500's can form a RAID 1 and contain his movies, while the 250GB IDE is for miscellaneous stuff. It'll take a bit of experimenting...worse comes to worse you can just get an external hard drive and dedicate one of them as a backup.

 

[Fast Fingers]

(accidental duplicate)

 

[ForumMaster]

$1500 isn't considered high-end. anyway, no PC will last 5 years. technology evolves to fast.

 

[dakels]

I just want to stress that 5 years is really a long time especially for the demands of video and audio editing. Will the computer still be very usuable in 5 years? Of course, but it might be 1/4 the performance of medium priced computers in 2012. Often times the best route for price/performance over that much time is buying new equipment. Like instead of $1500 now for 5 years, a $750 system now and a new $750 system 2.5 years from now will give you better performance. Often times you hit a performance plateau where you get only get a marginal difference in performance for significantly more money. That top 10% in performance can cost you 200% cost.

The biggest points of investment for audio/video editing is memory and hard drive. You want to have enough ram to be able to hold your cache and undo's, which can be significant. For example, if you have enough ram to hold your undo for a 600mb audo file, that simple undo command might take 10 seconds. If you don't have enough space it will be cached in the HD and that single undo might take 40 seconds. This also means you want a fast, reliable HD. HD technology hasnt progressed that much in the last 5 years. Not like CPU, RAM, Video cards, etc. You really have to weigh the benefit to cost ratio's. Is a RAID 0 Raptor setup worth the possible 20% more speed then a 7200rpm drive set for $200 difference in cost? Is a RAID 0 possible 20-30% transfer speed increase worth a higher risk of drive failure and loss of data? Would making it a RAID 5 safety net worth $150-250?

These questions are answered by the usage requirements and personal opinion.

If it was me, I'd try to get a system around $1000 saving $500 for future upgrades. $1000 can get a very decent system for those needs. The one thing that can throw your budget is the RAM. Again as mentioned before, more RAM (and like jim1976 said, in quantity not necessarily quality) is important. 4gigs of higher CL, lower speed RAM can be much more valuable in this case then 2 gigs of high performance RAM for the same price range. Storage is also a large concern. 500gb might get used up in a video editing environment very quickly, especially if there isnt a good archiving strategy. Also, planning the usage can be important. I keep my system/application data on a seperate drive then my video/audio storage, and a seperate drive/partition for my cache/temp working storage. Cache/temp work storage should be on the fastest drive(s) and due to high fragmentation, should be put on a seperate drive/partition structure. Another point is that if you are doing alot of processing/rendering of video/audio work, it will really give your CPU/RAM a work out. High CPU speed and in this case high speed RAM is important.

There's alot to think about and depends on the needs. This is also why I would setup a system around $1000 on a very scalable setup leaving a $500 budget for upgrades. See where your deficiencies are and move from there. Make sure you pick a good case considering that you might want alot of drives in there with cooling enough to handle the excessive heat, solid motherboard for scalability, solid CPU. Ram quantity, HD quantity is easily scalable. Your case/PSU cost is way too overbudget for that price range IMO. Almost $300 for case and PSU for a $1500 system is a bit much. I'd try to keep it around $150 as that is a very reasonable range to get something effective for your needs. You could also cut costs on the 6600 processor to the 6400 for a 5-10% difference in performance for a $90 price difference. Also that motherboard is a bit much too IMO. Could save $100 there too.

I'd recommend cutting costs where you can to reduce the initial cost and leave some room for upgrading.

 

[Aikouka]

Originally posted by: leglez
He plans to upgrade some components, by lasting 5 years I meant he wants to keep it in the same case, with the same mobo and most of the same components, and just upgrade, ram, CPU, and some other smaller components

Won't Intel's next core (coming out in 2007 if I remember correctly) be on a new socket anyway?

Upgrading components after years becomes a hard thing as usually a socket's maximum lifetime is about 2 years. I don't recall too many ever lasting longer than that before they were pretty much out-of-the-scene and their "replacement" was already well entreanched.

More than likely, the only thing that will last 5 years is the case and opticals if he wants to keep abreast on technology (not necessarily bleeding edge, but not in the black hole). This may keep getting "worse" as Intel and AMD realize they cannot squeeze more performance out of standard tasks with just more cores and heat bariers will arise once more if they just try to push the Megahertz envelope. DDR3 for system use is expected in 2007 (most likely Intel's new core again).

Technology is expensive in almost any area with as many components as a computer, especially when the most expensive parts receive refreshes every 1 to 2 years (depending on part).

EDIT: Fixed a "later this year" issue... I'm already ahead of myself and thinking it's 2007!

 

[Syran]

I guess I have the dumb question of why the IDE controller?

 

[leglez]

Ok everything has already been ordered it is suppose to arrive tomorrow. But as far as the IDE Controller, he already has a 300GB IDE HDD and a 250GB IDE HDD so he wanted to throw those in there for less important stuff.

 

[leglez]

Ok thanks for the help everyone. Everything came in today that was ordered from newegg, still waiting on roundcables and stuff from coolerguys. Got the computer all put together in about an hour. Booted up got the bios all setup and ended up having problems on the mobo, called eVGA and was on the phone for 30 minutes and had to come back to town to get an external floppy to re-flash the mobo. Finally got it to read the install disc, and got XP MCE up and running and told him to play with that and I am going to go back over tomorrow and install Vista and OpenSUSE 10.2 for him.

This is the first computer I have ever custom built from the ground up. So what all should I do to show to him how fast it runs. I planned on doing some SuperPI tests or whatever it is in the morning and getting CPU-Z on it. But what else should I do. I am getting on the Anti-Virus and firewall software on it tomorrow also.

Also my friend wanted to know since we are installing XP MCE and Vista if it would be possible to access programs that are stored on the XP Partition while running Vista or Music or Pictures or whatever

Thanks again everyone

Oh and here are pictures for anyone that wants to see. TEXT

 

[leglez]

bump

 

[ShawnD1]

Originally posted by: Bill Kunert
Any thing you build today, especially with a $1500 budget, will be below low end in 5 years. Just think about what you had 5 years ago and what it would be capable of today.

That's only true for games though. I still have a 350MHz Pentium II (8 years old) that runs like a champ. As long as this guy builds a computer capable of having lots of ram and lots of hard drives, the computer should last quite a while. The only exceptions I can see are when new things come out, like PCI-e, and old things disappear, like AGP.

The important thing to keep in mind is that CPU and GPU speed only seem to make a big difference in games or other intense processes. If things like Firefox and Microsoft Word are lagging out, it probably has more to do with your ram and hard drive than anything else. My Pentium II is pretty damn slow, but the CPU rarely reaches 100%. It's the brutal 6gb hard drive and old school 100MHz ram that kill the performance (it has 4 other hard drives in it, but I don't feel like moving the OS to another drive)