My first new build in a LONG time; critique + help me decide?

[DreamWarrior666]

Hey ladies and gents! First, since this is my first post, let me say hello. I saw a few other build threads in here and figured since you all were so helpful in those that maybe you could extend me the same courtesy. So...if you'll excuse the long post, I'd really appreciate the assistance. If you want to skip down to the parts list then I've bolded the start of that section, lol, but I figure if I tell you what I plan to do with the machine then you all can better assist me to make my selections.

First, a little back-story. I used to build computers when I was younger, for myself and friends, but have been away from it for a while. I've been purchasing either pre-built systems (HP Pavilion was the last) or relying on laptops. The most I've done to those is install upgrades. To give you an idea, the last system I put together was a 1.2 Ghz Athlon Thunderbird on an Asus board, lol. So, I suppose things have changed a little since, but at least I'm not completely clueless. I do remember there being tons of compatibility problems way back then like, "don't use memory a with board b", "video card c doesn't play nicely with x," and certainly, "don't use this sound card with that south-bridge," lol. Is it still like that?

Anyway, having said all that, I am planning my first build in a long time. The HP is dated and I don't want another pre-built. Wanting to breathe a little life back into this hobby, I figure it's time to build again. Besides, I am due to lose a little more hair, lol.

My plans:

To run Win 7 Pro 64 bit and either dual-boot or use VMware for Ubuntu 11.04. It'd be absolutely splendid if I could run Leopard too, but that may be asking too much, lol.

My workload:

Mostly Visual Studio and a little Flash/Java development. A smattering of Photoshop and video editing use. But, I'll also be doing a lot of ripping and transcoding of BD titles for streaming to my home network. I also plan to rip and encode my growing CD collection as well. Dabbling in a little gaming may not be unheard of, but I haven't PC gamed in a while because I've neither had a system that could keep up nor the desire to play. So, while I've clutched my console and the few games I bothered to pick up for that, I could get the itch with a moderately capable system.

My Ubuntu workload will be mostly development, but I also do most of my web browsing and torrent stuff there because I feel safer than on that gaping hole of a Microsoft platform (I kid...a little, lol). But, since have Ubuntu on my laptop, its use on the desktop will be rare. That said, like I mentioned, I am considering either dual-booting it or running VMware. While I'm not entirely sure yet, I certainly want the machine to be capable of either. I can see it both ways: dual-boot because I rarely use it, so why run it when it's not being used; and VMware because I rarely use it, so why shut down my Win 7 session to pop into Ubuntu and then pop back into Win 7. Either way, that's another thread, and by now you're probably thinking "ok newbie, get to the parts list." So I shall.....

Planned parts:

Here is the hardware I plan to purchase. If you would be so kind, I'd like any suggestions on what to change and where to save / skimp / upgrade. I'll rationalize the parts as much as I can this way you see where I'm coming from and can debunk me where appropriate; but first, a quick summary:

PSU: Corsair Professional Series AX850
CPU: Intel i7-2600k
MB: ASRock Fatal1ty P67 PROFESSIONAL (B3)
RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws X + Turbulence II Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2133
Video: EVGA 01G-P3-1372-TR GeForce GTX 460 (Fermi)
Win 7 Boot drive: OCZ Vertex 3 V3LT-25SAT3-240G
BD-RW: Lite-on iHBS112 (SATA)
DVD-RW: Lite-on iHAP422-98 (PATA) (also, digital audio extraction (DAE) drive if project SCSI fails, lol)
Case: Antec Sonata Elite

Additional hardware (already have): 250 GB WD SATA HD (Ubuntu), 750 GB WD SATA HD (storage)

I also have this hardware for "project SCSI" whose goal is to get me a nice DAE setup: Adaptec 19160 PCI SCSI Controller Card and a Plextor PX-40TSi.

Rationale:

PSU: Corsair Professional Series AX850. I want a modular supply and this is the "most modular" of the units I looked at. It also reviewed well, and everyone says not to skimp on the power supply. I certainly wonder if 850W is overkill for this build, especially considering I'm not running SLI and not planning on it. However, what I may wind up with is a lot of drives so I'll need power for those. Either way, I don't know what's overkill and 750W is the lowest they have in this line. I can also step down to the HX series, but I'm not sure entirely what I lose besides what appears to be a little modularity and a longer warranty, whose usefulness is debatable.

CPU: Intel i7-2600k; why not...I don't want to build another for a while. I suppose I could go with the i7 970 if I saw myself running massive parallel VM's, but I don't. So I'll take the clock-for-clock boost and power efficiency over the few cores I lose. I allow the VM concession by going with the i7-2600k over the i5-2500k to gain the four hyper threads. Worth it?

MB: ASRock Fatal1ty P67 PROFESSIONAL (B3); I hate to buy the Fatal1ty board and have his face plastered on my BIOS...but...marketing aside, it has reviewed well and it's one of few P67 boards with PATA on board. I want PATA for two reasons: 1) I still have a few PATA HD's that I'll want to have the ability to pop in and read data from, but more importantly 2) the Lite-on DVD writer is PATA only, the SATA version has a different chipset that isn't as good with DAE. I suppose I could get a different board and buy a PCI-e IDE adapter, but that seems dumb. Of course, I could just lose the PATA drive, but if the SCSI thing doesn't work out then I want a good DAE fall back. Unfortunately, I have not found a good drive for DAE in the SATA world, in fact there doesn't seem to be many drives at all for that matter that can read both lead-in and lead-out, don't cache audio, and have good C2 support -- all pluses for DAE. Long story short; I have it in my head that P67 + PATA is something I want and, in that domain, my options seem limited.

RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws X + Turbulence II Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2133; I'm picking this because it's bundled with the CPU at a discount and I figured it should be faster than DDR3 1600. I checked the MB and it'll support it. I considered the slower speed 16 GB kit (of similar cost) due to my development workload, but I don't think I'll need it and quite possibly the other workload requirements would benefit from the faster RAM. But, what if I decided to run VMWare? I wonder if a 4/4 or 6/2 divide would be ok? It's really only here that I could figure the extra RAM would help...but I dunno if it's worth it. I've heard people on here say that Sandybridge doesn't benefit much from better RAM...so should I just go 1600/1333 and save the money? Also, I see that when four sticks are installed often memory bandwith goes down, when it seems like it should go up intuitively (but I suppose it's a drive thing?). So...16 GB of slower RAM is both slower because it's...well...slower, lol, and slower because it's four sticks. Difference? Dunno....teach me?

Video: EVGA 01G-P3-1372-TR GeForce GTX 460 (Fermi); reasonably priced and the GTX 460 chipset seems to have Ubuntu support. Since I don't game heavily, I don't want to spend more than $200 on a card, and this fits that bill. All I want is better than the performance I'd get if I went the Z68 chipset route and took the integrated graphics, lol. Otherwise, there's no use spending the money (oh with the exception that, again, there are no Z68 boards with PATA.) In fact, were there a Z68 board with PATA I'd probably have stuck to built in and just further attached myself to my (few) console games, lol. Alas, I wanted to take advantage of the higher clocks and the H67 won't do it...so...P67 + "cheap" video card it is. Seems I won't be gaming crazy with this board, but I won't be lacking either. True?

Win 7 Boot drive: OCZ Vertex 3 V3LT-25SAT3-240G; Worth it over the Vertex 2? Seems faster...considering the Corsair or Crucial but worried about TRIM requirements if I read/write to it from Ubuntu.

Case: Antec Sonata Elite; this was the biggest PITA to pick out. My last build wound up in a Sonata eventually and I liked it. However, the real reason I picked this is because there are very few cases that will fit in my desk. I can't comfortably squeeze anything higher than 18.5" in there. At that height, I saw a few cases (Lian Li) with power buttons and USB ports on top and they would both be useless and hard to get to. So...I'm pretty limited in cases that will fit my desk and all the junk, so I keep coming back to this one. Do you think it will provide sufficient cooling and cable management ability? More worrisome, will it fit my stuffing three drives up top with the power supply up there and how much of the mobo do I make impossible to reach, lol. Ugh! My ideal case would: be < 18.5" tall, have 3 external 5.25" bays, have 1 3.5" external bay (for a memory card reader that I had to skip b/c I don't have a place for it in this case), have at least 4 internal 3.5" bays, mount the power supply to the bottom, allow me good cable management, have buttons on front within reach with USB (preferably 3.0) on top. I can't find one. The NZXT H2 H2-001-BK comes a little closer, but people seem to be complaining about it on the egg and it still leaves very little room to reach the power button on top and USB clocking in at 18.3", plus I'd probably never use the e-sata thing on top.

Heatsink/Fan: Should I bother to upgrade the heatsink/fan or is the stock unit good enough? Seems many say its fine, but others recommend the CM Hyper 212...for the little upgrade price, I suppose its worth it, but do I need it? No sense to toss the stock heatsink for nothing.

If you've made it this far, THANKS! Sorry for a really long first post....I over-think things, and building a computer for the first time in years is something I can very easily over think and worry that I've got everything "just right." I don't want to find out I messed up and cost myself a pretty penny.

 

[mnewsham]

Well first let me welcome you to the AnandTech forum! And WOW that was a LOOOONNNNG read, you seem to have an idea of what you would like and how you are going to get there, some of your component choices however don't quite hit the mark.

First off, your PSU, while you should never skimp on a PSU is a very real thing, it doesnt not mean you should over do it. Get a quality PSU not a LARGE PSU. That being said this seasonic unit is much better quality and will fit your total system power draw much better.

Next, the motherboard, now i know you want PATA, however with that motherboard you can only over clock (P67 Chipset) If you are going to be doing encoding and video work then you will want to use the integrated graphics processor (IGP) because it is VERY good at that kind of work. However it can only be used with the H67 chipset. BOTH of these features can be used on the Z68 chipset, however there are currently no PATA Z68 motherboards. You have the choice of staying with P67 and PATA, going with H67 and PATA, or Z68 but no PATA. I would personally choose Z68. If you were to choose P67 however i would recommend this motherboard combo. If you would like to go H67 then i would recommend this.

Now about RAM, with older CPU's RAM could affect a few things, However in the current CPU's the memory controller is integrated on the CPU so the memory speeds dont really effect much. You will barley notice a (practical) difference between 1333Mhz and 2133Mhz. That being said it makes a LOT more sense to just get 8-16GB of DDR3 1333Mhz CL9 RAM.

Video card, this is dependent on the motherboard selection in part, because H67 uses integrated graphics, P67 uses a dedicated GPU, and Z68 can use either (or both), That being said i would not spend any real money on a GPU as you wont really be using it for games, the GTX 550 TI will have linux support and will be low(er) power draw.

SSD, 240GB seems a bit much for a boot drive but if you will have network storage and other HDD's in the system itself then it might be fine, however I would go with a 120GB SSD and 1 or 2 1TB Samsung F3 HDD's.

If you are getting Z68 then i would recommend getting a smaller SSD for SSD caching instead of a large SSD for the boot drive, SSD caching gives SSD like performance with regular mechanical HDD's and a single Cache SSD.

For the HSF, i dont think you will "need" the extra cooling if you aren't going to OC. However i find the stock cooler to be garbage and it is worth the money on a cheap no frills cooler.

 

[DreamWarrior666]

Well first let me welcome you to the AnandTech forum! And WOW that was a LOOOONNNNG read, you seem to have an idea of what you would like and how you are going to get there, some of your component choices however don't quite hit the mark.

Thanks for reading it, and thanks for the warm welcome.

First off, your PSU, while you should never skimp on a PSU is a very real thing, it doesnt not mean you should over do it. Get a quality PSU not a LARGE PSU. That being said this seasonic unit is much better quality and will fit your total system power draw much better.

One thing I liked about the Corsair unit was the 24 pin was an entirely separate connector so I didn't have to stuff extra cables away. What's the additional 8-pin (? looks like two 4-pin connectors offset by a little in the pic) strapped to the 24 pin coming off the Seasonic? I believe the other 8 pin is 12v. for the voltage regulators, and that is separate, but it seems the other one I'd just be taping off somewhere.... I know it's a nit, but I'll be in a small case and the less wiring the better.

Next, the motherboard, now i know you want PATA, however with that motherboard you can only over clock (P67 Chipset) If you are going to be doing encoding and video work then you will want to use the integrated graphics processor (IGP) because it is VERY good at that kind of work. However it can only be used with the H67 chipset. BOTH of these features can be used on the Z68 chipset, however there are currently no PATA Z68 motherboards. You have the choice of staying with P67 and PATA, going with H67 and PATA, or Z68 but no PATA. I would personally choose Z68. If you were to choose P67 however i would recommend this motherboard combo. If you would like to go H67 then i would recommend this.

Saw that Asus P67 board, the reviews scared me away. It is cheaper for sure, but the one in particular that said "don't buy this if you're just doing it for PATA, it doesn't work" made me drop it. My last Asus board was good to me...though it never quite worked right as I always seemed to wind up with some data corruption every six months or so on my OS drive, but that could have been bad memory (though it Memtested fine...) who knows.... Either way...that taste plus the reviews scared me. Although, I suppose the word is Asrock is just an offshoot of Asus.

Now about RAM, with older CPU's RAM could affect a few things, However in the current CPU's the memory controller is integrated on the CPU so the memory speeds dont really effect much. You will barley notice a (practical) difference between 1333Mhz and 2133Mhz. That being said it makes a LOT more sense to just get 8-16GB of DDR3 1333Mhz CL9 RAM.

I was really curious if the faster RAM was going to do me any good. Would you recommend 16 GB in my case? I doubt I'd notice any drop in performance (assuming there is one) with four sticks installed...but if I ever start running VMware I may miss those 8 gigs? Ya think?

Video card, this is dependent on the motherboard selection in part, because H67 uses integrated graphics, P67 uses a dedicated GPU, and Z68 can use either (or both), That being said i would not spend any real money on a GPU as you wont really be using it for games, the GTX 550 TI will have linux support and will be low(er) power draw.

Will check it out. Thanks. I think I'll stick with P67, I did read that the integral graphics on the chip was good at accelerating encodes...pity...I would use it if I could just get over the PATA hump. Maybe I'll just get a stupid PATA card for $20 a call it a day, lol.

SSD, 240GB seems a bit much for a boot drive but if you will have network storage and other HDD's in the system itself then it might be fine, however I would go with a 120GB SSD and 1 or 2 1TB Samsung F3 HDD's.

If you are getting Z68 then i would recommend getting a smaller SSD for SSD caching instead of a large SSD for the boot drive, SSD caching gives SSD like performance with regular mechanical HDD's and a single Cache SSD.

I obtained the number by looking at HD usage on all my current boot drives, having their applications installed they usually hover around 140 GB. So, I wanted some extra room on there for other applications and scratch space during encoding, etc. I'm between that mark where 128 GB is too little, but 256 GB is too much, and somewhere in between isn't worth the money. So...I just said eff it and decided to spend it if I could.

I did read that about the Z68 boards though...and that's another consideration, but I also read about the caching mechanisms and how the performance isn't as good unless you take a hit with less write-through and possibly lose data more easily. It's a neat concept, though.

For the HSF, i dont think you will "need" the extra cooling if you aren't going to OC. However i find the stock cooler to be garbage and it is worth the money on a cheap no frills cooler.

Sounds like a plan, what about thermal compound, is Arctic Silver still "the bomb" lol? Do the heat sinks come with something these days?

Thanks again for taking the time to comment!

 

[DreamWarrior666]

Oh, and here's a quick "off-topic" but do the "OEM" versions of Win 7 Pro on Newegg have any additional limitations other than not having official support? For example, if I build a PC and put it on there then radically change components, will it stop me from installing it again on the new set of components (I assume mostly the new board)? I suppose another way of asking is, is the O/S locked to any particular piece of hardware once installed.

 

[mnewsham]

AFAIK the motherboard will be locked to the OS but if you re-install with a new motherboard it would probably be fine M$ might just get pissy.

Well for the PSU, 850w is more then 2 times what your system will use, EVER. you will be idling around 80w (If that) and will spike up to maybe 200w-300w

With the problems being reported with on board PATA i would get an Add in card and then get Z68.

If you are doing some heavy VM stuff then 16GB would probably help but if you arent running very many VM's then 8GB should be fine.

Most HSF come with a thermal compound that is just fine, i just avoid the thermal pads.

Finally are you sure you need W7 Pro?

 

[Cerb]

One thing I liked about the Corsair unit was the 24 pin was an entirely separate connector so I didn't have to stuff extra cables away. What's the additional 8-pin (? looks like two 4-pin connectors offset by a little in the pic) strapped to the 24 pin coming off the Seasonic? I believe the other 8 pin is 12v. for the voltage regulators, and that is separate, but it seems the other one I'd just be taping off somewhere.... I know it's a nit, but I'll be in a small case and the less wiring the better.

The Seasonic might give you one cable to tie off, somewhere, the 8-pin PCI-e. The 24-pin and 8-pin you will use, though 4 of the split 8-pin are useless to you (if the mobo has room, you can keep them snapped together).

ATX main power used to be 20-pin. 4 pins were added for extra power, mainly for PCI-e. Any new board needs all 24 pins. An old board won't, and may have components in the way of the extra 4 pins, so it can be moved out of the way.

Workstation and server boards, with multiple CPUs, needed double the 4-pin +12V connectors, and 8-pin became the standard, literally two +12V 4-pin connectors. The double 4-pin makes the PSU compatible with those, while allowing you to move one set out of the way, for using only one set of 4.

The extra 8-pin connector is only used for high-power video cards.

I was really curious if the faster RAM was going to do me any good.

If it's only a couple bucks more, CAS 7 1333, or CAS 7-8 1600 could provide a couple percent improvements here and there. Don't pay much more, because even in corner cases, the benefits are very small. Bumping your base CPU speed up by 100Mhz would get you back all the gains.

Would you recommend 16 GB in my case? I doubt I'd notice any drop in performance (assuming there is one) with four sticks installed...but if I ever start running VMware I may miss those 8 gigs? Ya think?

Depends on how much RAM you give each VM, and how many you have running concurrently. If it fits in your budget, do it. Maxing out the sticks often limits peak OC, but S1155 "solved" this problem by pretty much requiring multiplier-only OC. With 16GB, you could give 2+GB to VMs that could use it, and still have RAM to spare. You could have a 4GB Ubuntu desktop, FI, and still only be using the page file as a backing cache.

Will check it out. Thanks. I think I'll stick with P67, I did read that the integral graphics on the chip was good at accelerating encodes...pity...I would use it if I could just get over the PATA hump. Maybe I'll just get a stupid PATA card for $20 a call it a day, lol.

Intel boards with PATA are using add-on chips, so you lose an expansion slot with an add-on card, but are basically doing the same thing as the mobo maker is, other than that. I'm partial to Silicon Image, for add-on controller chips.

Sounds like a plan, what about thermal compound, is Arctic Silver still "the bomb" lol? Do the heat sinks come with something these days?

They came with something back in the day, too. Yes, AS n is still the standard, but us lazy folk use AS Ceramique.

Oh, and here's a quick "off-topic" but do the "OEM" versions of Win 7 Pro on Newegg have any additional limitations other than not having official support? For example, if I build a PC and put it on there then radically change components, will it stop me from installing it again on the new set of components (I assume mostly the new board)? I suppose another way of asking is, is the O/S locked to any particular piece of hardware once installed.

Changing too many components, it may complain, and you'll have to call MS to get a code. Obviously moving to a different computer, I don't know what happens, but you're not supposed to be able to to do that with OEM (I've always had success calling and getting a code, for XP and Vista, when core components have gone TU, and a mobo+CPU+RAM upgrade was a no-brainer, so I don't know how they'd know the difference, but I'm not going to test my luck ).

 

[mfenn]

Cerb and Mnewsham have given you great advice so far, and I agree with all that they've said. I'd like to add a few points as well:
- If you don't already have a license for VMWare, you might want to look into VirtualBox as an open-source alternative. It doesn't have as large of a featureset as VMWare Workstation, but it supports pretty much everything that you'd normally need to do.
- This Koutech card has the Silicon Image chip that Cerb recommended.
- Things are much better today when it comes to compatibility. You'll likely find this machine to be a breeze compared to your past experiences.
- The Sonata Elite is a nice case. You're actually better off with a short power supply like mnewsham recommended because your SCSI DVD drive is likely to be pretty long. The motherboard mounts below the horizontal support bar, so pretty much all of it should be accessible.

 

[DreamWarrior666]

Hey guys! Thanks for all the advice. I think I'll look at some other mother boards with Z68 and grab an IDE card. This way I can drop the video card from my budget until/unless it becomes necessary. Plus I can probably get a better value motherboard that way. Since I'm not limited to just using the "on-board" video with Z68, I suppose I can always upgrade later if I feel its necessary. Only thing I suppose I need to watch for is where the IDE card would fit into the MB, as it seems many of them would have it going into a slot that would be blocked by a video card. Wouldn't be a problem if I didn't need to fit the SCSI card too and if I only have 2 PCI slots, I need to make sure they are both accessible (or go with a PCI-e 1x IDE card).

Also, before I give Z68 more thought, does anyone know the current state of support for the on-board video in Ubuntu? Because lacking that would be a deal breaker. The only thing I could find mentioned was general instability in Ubuntu with a Z68 Gigabyte mainboard, but they were using external video card that was supported. Of course, it still doesn't bode well for Ubuntu on a Z68 chipset board.

Regarding the power supply, is the Seasonic really up to the same level as the Corsair unit? What if the game bug starts to bite and I upgrade to a more powerful video card in the future? Then I'd need something a little more beefy, no? How much more? The Corsair may be overkill now, but what about then? Maybe I'll step down to the 750W version? I just don't want to limit where the system can go and I don't want to run out of stable power as that can certainly kill a build quick. I realize HD only draw maybe 4W and the SDD and WD Green drives even less...so I guess HD aren't the enemy here...it's the CPU and video card.

Thanks mfenn about mentioning the potential case/power supply conflict with the SCSI drive. I'll measure, but honestly, I'd love a recommendation for a case with bottom mount power supply. I can't find one that meets my other requirements . It is hard to search on Newegg because height isn't something they filter by, so I bring up every case just to be disappointed that its too big, it got frustrating fast.

Also, thanks for the VirtualBox reco, I'll take a look because VMware is expensive and I don't have a license.

Oh and back to that quick aside, do the "retail" versions of the OS work that way? Do they perform the same checking, or can I more easily move them from one system to another? I ask because I am considering waiting a bit on the build and just buying the OS to replace XP on my ever dating HP (it has 2 GB so it should be fine). This way I can test the waters with the "SCSI solution" in Win 7 and, if it works, I can drop PATA and maybe even drop down to two optical drives. This will open up more possibilities. Of course I suppose if I wanted to be a pirate, I could grab Win 7 and "try before I buy", but I'd rather just stay legit).

 

[tynopik]

what's your monitor?

 

[DreamWarrior666]

what's your monitor?

Haven't picked one yet. I have an older 15" LCD, but it won't be staying. I'd really like it to be 16:10, but I can't drop the coin on a 2560x1600 display, so I'll probably stick to 1920x1200. I really don't want a 16:9 monitor...I'm too used to 16:10 on my laptops and that little extra is useful to me.

Oh and thanks mnewsham for making me think about W7 Pro, because maybe I'll save some money and go back to Home Premium. It doesn't look like Pro adds anything I can't get with freeware and I was hoping SUA was supported with Pro and it's not supported until Ultimate (and I'm not paying for that). So, I'll live without it and just drop to Home Premium and save the cash.

 

[tynopik]

if you want to run Ubuntu and Win7 at the same time, maybe you need 2 (or 3) monitors

 

[mnewsham]

The corsair unit truth be told is probably of SeaSonic design, SeaSonic is THE company for PSU's they are really top notch.
As for power draw the CPU draws at MAX 95w. (and usually less) while the GPU will use NOTHING as you are going to be using the IGP. Even if you switch to a dedicated GPU you can fit a lot of GPU into 400w the second best GPU from Nvidia (the GTX 570) only uses 361w at full load! and that is full system draw of an i7 OC'd and RAM, that is not just the GPU. so a 500w PSU or a 400w PSU is more then enough.

 

[Cerb]

Also, before I give Z68 more thought, does anyone know the current state of support for the on-board video in Ubuntu? Because lacking that would be a deal breaker. The only thing I could find mentioned was general instability in Ubuntu with a Z68 Gigabyte mainboard, but they were using external video card that was supported. Of course, it still doesn't bode well for Ubuntu on a Z68 chipset board.

At this moment, that is a very good question. Intel tends to iron out major driver bugs fairly quickly, but with Ubuntu, that could still mean waiting until the next release, or having your own custom Xorg build. It's so new, that there's very little user feedback in general.

Regarding the power supply, is the Seasonic really up to the same level as the Corsair unit?

The question should be the other way around. Seasonic is generally second only to server PSU makers, like Zippy, when it comes to their own branded supplies. A ~500W or so until will handle anything but 300W+ of video cards (multiple midrange cards in SLI/CF, or single very high end cards). Chances are very good that you will not break past 300W, without having both your CPU and a midrange gaming video card under load. With IGP, you may never hit 200W.

I can't find one that meets my other requirements . It is hard to search on Newegg because height isn't something they filter by, so I bring up every case just to be disappointed that its too big, it got frustrating fast.

What are your other requirements? I wonder if some of the stranger cases, like Fractal Design and Silversotne have, would be a good fit?

Oh and back to that quick aside, do the "retail" versions of the OS work that way? Do they perform the same checking, or can I more easily move them from one system to another? I ask because I am considering waiting a bit on the build and just buying the OS to replace XP on my ever dating HP (it has 2 GB so it should be fine). This way I can test the waters with the "SCSI solution" in Win 7 and, if it works, I can drop PATA and maybe even drop down to two optical drives. This will open up more possibilities. Of course I suppose if I wanted to be a pirate, I could grab Win 7 and "try before I buy", but I'd rather just stay legit).

You can just run Windows for awhile without activating it, to make sure all of it works. You lose out on optional updates and software that requires a genuine check, and you get nagged. I don't recall if 7 ever bricks itself, but you definitely have at least 30 days before any worries (get a non-MS AV, like Avast, since MSE requires the check). If you know someone with a non-OEM Win7 install disc, you could change some HW around on your XP box, temporarily (if it's got SATA, go ahead and get your HDD/SSD), and test the SCSI.

 

[DreamWarrior666]

if you want to run Ubuntu and Win7 at the same time, maybe you need 2 (or 3) monitors

Was thinking about it. Right now I have two laptops sitting on my desk (work & play), my wife has hers downstairs, and I will have this new build and quite possibly keep around the older HP it's replacing. So...I'll probably look at getting two/three monitors. I will also pick up a KVM to switch them between all the computers.

Thanks said...any recommendations from y'all for a good KVM with at least 4 DVI outputs. Dual-monitor support would be nice. Also nice would be the ability to keep the monitors "active" on the systems so they don't get confused when the go in/out.

Also, dual monitor support would only matter IF I could independently switch them. Because I'll most likely leave the work laptop on one monitor all the time and then switch the "play" laptop and new PC between the other. But, when I'm working on something that I'd like a little more room for, it'd be nice to send the other monitor over to the computer that needs it. I've seen some 4-port dual monitor switches, but it didn't really say whether they could do this...made it sound like both monitors went together but keyboard+mouse/monitor could go separate.

The corsair unit truth be told is probably of SeaSonic design, SeaSonic is THE company for PSU's they are really top notch.
As for power draw the CPU draws at MAX 95w. (and usually less) while the GPU will use NOTHING as you are going to be using the IGP. Even if you switch to a dedicated GPU you can fit a lot of GPU into 400w the second best GPU from Nvidia (the GTX 570) only uses 361w at full load! and that is full system draw of an i7 OC'd and RAM, that is not just the GPU. so a 500w PSU or a 400w PSU is more then enough.

Good to know...I'll take a harder look at those SeaSonic's.

 

[DreamWarrior666]

At this moment, that is a very good question. Intel tends to iron out major driver bugs fairly quickly, but with Ubuntu, that could still mean waiting until the next release, or having your own custom Xorg build. It's so new, that there's very little user feedback in general.

Yeah...I see that...maybe I'll just stick with the P67 boards and grab a PATA IFF my SCSI project doesn't work out. Of course, that probably pushes the build out a little while, but unfortunately probably not long enough for the Z68 chipset and integrated gfx to be supported well. I like messing with Ubuntu and I like tinkering with C development in *nix systems, but I'm not going to go hardcore and start tweaking Xorg because then it becomes a project in and of itself, and I don't have time for that (unfortunately).

The question should be the other way around. Seasonic is generally second only to server PSU makers, like Zippy, when it comes to their own branded supplies. A ~500W or so until will handle anything but 300W+ of video cards (multiple midrange cards in SLI/CF, or single very high end cards). Chances are very good that you will not break past 300W, without having both your CPU and a midrange gaming video card under load. With IGP, you may never hit 200W.

Gotcha...I'll take a look at them hard and probably go with 500-ish just to make sure I have a viable upgrade path with the supply. Given how far behind the tech I am now, I don't see myself going SLI or extremely GPU crazy any time soon, lol.

What are your other requirements? I wonder if some of the stranger cases, like Fractal Design and Silversotne have, would be a good fit?

3 5.25" external drive bays at least, under 18.5" tall, not hideous (lol, and even that's optional at this point it'll be hidden), power button & USB on the front (because its going in an enclosed area under my desk whose WxHxD is 19x19x26, so on the top makes them hard to access or useless to plug in USB sticks).

Seems REALLY easy, huh...I thought so too. Either Newegg has a crap selection, or I'm just missing something. The Fractal Design cases all have 2 5.25 bays (the ones on Newegg, I'll check their page and see if they make others) and most with 3 external 5.25 bays have tons of internal bays that push it over 18.5" in height.

I'd really like bottom mount power supply and a 3.5" external bay for a memory card reader, too.

You can just run Windows for awhile without activating it, to make sure all of it works. You lose out on optional updates and software that requires a genuine check, and you get nagged. I don't recall if 7 ever bricks itself, but you definitely have at least 30 days before any worries (get a non-MS AV, like Avast, since MSE requires the check). If you know someone with a non-OEM Win7 install disc, you could change some HW around on your XP box, temporarily (if it's got SATA, go ahead and get your HDD/SSD), and test the SCSI.

Good to know...I'll probably do that. I want the SDD anyway, so I'll waste a few write-cycles to install twice lol. I suppose I should "quick format" the drive to waste even fewer? I have SATA on that system (though I don't see an AHCI "switch" in the BIOS, but that shouldn't matter, just make it slower right?).

 

[DreamWarrior666]

Ugh...I think I may have found a case that works and has bottom mount power supply. I didn't find it the first go around because Newegg lists the dimensions wrong, but when I looked at the picture it listed them differently. Anyone know anything about this Rosewill GEAR X3 case?

Worse, since Newegg messed it up this time...how many others am I excluding because they can't get the dimensions right. I've seen two cases where they got them wrong and the picture had the listed differently, so I'm sure there are more.

 

[Cerb]

Good to know...I'll probably do that. I want the SDD anyway, so I'll waste a few write-cycles to install twice lol. I suppose I should "quick format" the drive to waste even fewer? I have SATA on that system (though I don't see an AHCI "switch" in the BIOS, but that shouldn't matter, just make it slower right?).

Yes, on both. There's no reason not to do a quick format, unless you suspect the drive has bad sectors, which is transparently taken care of, today, until it gets bad enough that you need to replace the drive, at which point you should be using some diagnostic tools, instead.

AHCI is not a big deal, for testing out hardware compatibility. It will enhance performance with NCQ and TRIM, and give you hot-swap, but that's about it (this applies only to Windows 7 default configurations; Linux supports all this stuff on a feature by feature basis, and 3rd-party Windows drivers typically will, too).

P.S. Cases: that Rosewill looks good. The 18.5" height limit and a bottom PSU mount really narrows the choices down. I would get that Roseiwll over an Antec 300, just for the HDD mounts. Replace the LED fan, and all bling is gone.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811146071
That NZXT could work, but you'd have to either use the door, or accept the looks with an open hinge (there is a black version, too). For $100, though, I would heed the reviews mentioning cheapness. Other cases like that are typically $130 or more. IoW, it looks good, but more middle-of-the-road Cooler Master good, rather than Antec P183 or Silverstone Fortress good.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811235026
A matter of taste, but that looks to be a decent case.

 

[mfenn]

Yeah...I see that...maybe I'll just stick with the P67 boards and grab a PATA IFF my SCSI project doesn't work out. Of course, that probably pushes the build out a little while, but unfortunately probably not long enough for the Z68 chipset and integrated gfx to be supported well. I like messing with Ubuntu and I like tinkering with C development in *nix systems, but I'm not going to go hardcore and start tweaking Xorg because then it becomes a project in and of itself, and I don't have time for that (unfortunately).

The Sandy Bridge IGP works great in Linux in my experience. Remember that with Sandy Bridge, the IGP is on the CPU, not the mobo, so there is no difference between Z68 graphics and H67 graphics.

 

[DreamWarrior666]

Thanks for that case suggestion...I think it may work well. It has everything I wanted. I think I'll wait out a lot of the build, though. I'm going to pick up the SDD and Win 7, install on my current machine and make sure the SCSI drive and card will do what I want. If they do, I'll keep 'em, ditch the PATA drive and go with two SATA opticals to give myself more MB choices and not have to smash an IDE card in the machine when I already will have a SCSI card.

I did just test the SCSI card and drive today (finally got them in the mail) and they work. There is one little odd "problem" though. The stupid card pops up with a warning that there is "too much termination" on the Fast SCSI ports. There is only one device on the ports, that's the Plextor drive. If I pull its termination jumper then it says "insufficient termination detected." The card's termination is set to auto...so I don't understand why it complains in both cases, lol. Don't know if it's a big deal...just annoying to see it pop up. Maybe I'll toy with the card's termination, but was just curious if y'all ever saw something like that.

Thanks again for helping me think through this, I'm sure I'll have more.

 

[mfenn]

Ah parallel SCSI, how I (don't) miss it. It if it works with the "too much termination" message, I wouldn't worry about it. It's certainly better than having too little and the signals reflecting up and down the cable.

 

[theAnimal]

That being said this seasonic unit is much better quality and will fit your total system power draw much better.

No, the Corsair is based off a newer & better Seasonic design.

Edit: Though I do agree about the wattage.

 

[SolMiester]

Was thinking about it. Right now I have two laptops sitting on my desk (work & play), my wife has hers downstairs, and I will have this new build and quite possibly keep around the older HP it's replacing. So...I'll probably look at getting two/three monitors. I will also pick up a KVM to switch them between all the computers.

Thanks said...any recommendations from y'all for a good KVM with at least 4 DVI outputs. Dual-monitor support would be nice. Also nice would be the ability to keep the monitors "active" on the systems so they don't get confused when the go in/out.

snip.

With a PC with 16Gb RAM, I wonder why you would need the other odd HP and laptop and a KVM...
Im quite sure H67 supports 2 monitors and a cheap PCIe will give you 3...you can then have a VM in the otherside monitors and use a big middle LCD for the host\W7 PC, saving on the need for an expensive KVM

 

[DreamWarrior666]

With a PC with 16Gb RAM, I wonder why you would need the other odd HP and laptop and a KVM...
Im quite sure H67 supports 2 monitors and a cheap PCIe will give you 3...you can then have a VM in the otherside monitors and use a big middle LCD for the host\W7 PC, saving on the need for an expensive KVM

I could get rid of the Ubuntu laptop if I wanted, but the other laptop is for work and I have to keep that. I'm not allowed to access their networks with anything but their approved hardware.

Ah parallel SCSI, how I (don't) miss it. It if it works with the "too much termination" message, I wouldn't worry about it. It's certainly better than having too little and the signals reflecting up and down the cable.

Haha , it's funny to be going back in time...but if that drive proves to be as steady a DAE candidate as they say, I'll be happy. I'll ignore the error, it seems to work. Thanks.