Performance Build - Core2 X6800 System

Idontcare

Elite Member
Oct 10, 1999
21,110
59
91
OK - so I have been biding my time waiting for the right hardware to become available to plunk down some easy-come/easy-go cash on a half-way decent performing computer.

Primary use is single-threaded number crunching, forex backtesting in meta-trader (single-threaded app) to be specific. It is lucrative and I am time-to-result limited, so spending an extra $1k to make the setup faster is worth it, no question. Current back-test runs are taking me approximately 14hrs on a P4 NW at 2.6GHz which is seriously hampering my timeline to being able to maximum my profitability.

I am a very light gamer time-wise, but when I do get the luxury of having time to game I prefer to indulge myself in an hour or two of Oblivion with as much of the eye-candies turned on as I can.

Personal Hardware Biases - I prefer to avoid SCSI, yes I know 15k rpm RAID SCSI would be the bomb, but I'd rather skip SCSI and go straight to ram-disk for maximum impact to my latency-limited calculations.

Credit/Props -
  • 1. Much of my hardware choices surrounding CPU/MB/Cooling were motivated by Yoxxy's Overclocking Guide and PM's, thanks Yoxxy
    2. Thanks goes to westihockey09 for convincing me to step-up on the video card, thanks westihockey09
    3. Shout out to CurseTheSky for giving me some inspiration to upgrade the sound card and for making changes to my mouse selection (G7 vs MX1000), thanks CurseTheSky
Purpose of this Thread - 2 purposes, first as an organizational assistant to help me keep all the hardware straight as I start making orders, and second purpose is to draw upon the feedback and experience of the folks at the AT forum to help me avoid making any truly stupid or ignorant mistakes. Please give me constructive feedback, am not necessarily looking for price versus performance help here, more just looking for performance help.

Thanks in advance for your feedback and your time you spend reading this thread.


Proposed System Build:

Processor: Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 Conroe 2.93GHz ($949.50)
  • ...intend to overclock to 4+ GHz with Vapochill LS, see below...
Motherboard: ASUS P5W64 WS Professional Socket T ($294.99)
  • ...only 2 PCI slots, could be restrictive, see below...
Ram: OCZ Titanium Alpha VX2 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2 1000 4-4-4-15 (2 x $430.99 = $861.98)
  • ...total of 4GB, intend to set aside 2 GB as ram-drive, comments from anyone regarding overclockability of having all 4 DIMMS fully-loaded?
Video Card: ATI Radeon X1950XTX 512MB 256-bit GDDR4 CrossFire ($449.99)
  • ...intend to upgrade in 6 months or so when DX10 cards have been out for a bit, this card is just a stop-gap to hold me over until then
RAM Disks: GIGABYTE GC-RAMDISK PCI SATA RAM Drive aka i-RAM (2 x $114.99 = $229.98)
  • ...plan to raid-0 both of these ram-disks on the areca ARC-1280ML for total of 8GB, would buy four of them if the mobo had more than just 2 PCI slots
RAM Disk's RAM: Kingston ValueRAM 1GB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (8 x $104.99 = 839.92)
  • ...recommended by Gigabyte for their i-RAM boards
RAID Card: Areca ARC-1280ML 12-port PCIe to SATA ll RAID Adapter (~$1328 ETA mid-Nov)
  • ...am holding out for the 1280ML with the Intel 800MHz 81341 I/O processor
RAID Card RAM Upgrade: Mushkin eXtreme Performance 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 ($144.99)
  • ...Areca specifies the 1280ML uses DDR2-533, am assuming low-latency DDR2-667 will be backwards compatible
Hard Drives: Western Digital Raptor X WD1500AHFD 150GB 10,000 RPM 16MB Cache (2 x $229.99 = $459.98)
  • ...plan to raid-0 these on the areca ARC-1280ML, both the 2GB ram-drive and 8GB ram-disk array will have intra-day scheduled backups made to this raid-0 raptor array
Hard Drives: Western Digital Caviar RE2 WD5000YS 500GB 7,200 RPM 16MB Cache (2 x $184.99 = $369.98)
  • ...plan to raid-0 these on the areca ARC-1280ML, daily scheduled backups of the Raptor X array will be made to this 1TB raid-0 array
Power Supply: SeaSonic M12 SS-700HM ATX12V/ EPS12V 700W ($209.99)
  • ...have personal reservations about going with a modular PSU for a high-performance system, comments from anyone regarding signal quality for modular PSU?
LCD Displays: Dell UltraSharp 2407FP 24" LCD w/5yr warranty (2 x $679.15 + $49 warranty = $1456.30)
  • ...already own these LCD's, pretty sweet, setup in dual-view on current rig, will migrate to the new system
Case: Vapochill LightSpeed Ready Lian-Li PC-65B ($199.99)
  • ...recently purchased this case, I know it was money not well spent but I really didn't feel like hassling with cutting holes in another case, maybe in a few months time I'll get the energy and time
CPU Cooler: VapoChill LightSpeed - Pentium 4 Socket 775 (Black) 04-L-1152 ($869.99)
  • ...recently purchased this vapochill unit, will be used to O/C this new system
Back Up Power Supply: Tripp Lite 2200VA/1600W (SU2200RTXL2UA) SMARTONLINE (double conversion) ($826.18 w/shipping)
Back Up Power Supply (Expansion): Tripp Lite 3U Modular 48V (BP48V60RT3U) Extended Run Battery Pack ($656.63 w/shipping)

DVD/CD Burner: LITE-ON 18X DVD±R & 8X DL DVD±R Burner Black IDE Model LH-18A1P-185 (2 x $30.99 = $61.98)
  • ...one for source and the other for target so I can walk away and not have to swap discs during a burn
Sound Card: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer Fatal1ty Professional Series 7.1 Channels 24-bit 192KHz ($145.99)
...like the idea of offloading CPU cycles that would have gone to audio processing, but I need a 3-PCI slot mobo to have sound card + ram-disk raid-0 array...

Speakers 5.1: Logitech X-540 70 watts 5.1 Speakers ($88.99)

Keyboard: Logitech G15 2-Tone 104 Normal Keys USB Wired Standard Keyboard ($71.99)
...have a thing for back-lighted keys, comments from anyone regarding alternative back-lighted keyboards?

Mouse: Logitech G7 USB RF Laser Mouse ($61.99)

Misc:
  • Gel Keyboard Pad: BELKIN WaveRest F8E263-BLK Keyboard Wrist Support (Black) ($7.39)
    Gel Mouse Pad: BELKIN WaveRest F8E262-BLK Gel Mouse Pad (Black) ($7.99)
    CPU Paste: Arctic Silver Ceramique Thermal Compound ($4.99)
    Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP Professional With SP2B 1 Pack - OEM ($139.99)

Total system price will probably be around $10k or so with shipping.

- Phil
 
Oct 19, 2000
17,860
4
81
Holy crap what a system!! I find it interesting that you feel the need to state your intentions for your build, then you bust out a $10k budget with every high-end part available right now. Intentions are moot when you have the absolute best.....it'll do anything you want it to.
 

dBTelos

Golden Member
Apr 17, 2006
1,858
0
0
What were you planning on doing for a videocard in the future? Highend DX10? SLi? Both?
 

Idontcare

Elite Member
Oct 10, 1999
21,110
59
91
Originally posted by: dBTelos
What were you planning on doing for a videocard in the future? Highend DX10? SLi? Both?

Likely SLi DX10, will set aside $1.4k or so for that upgrade along with another $1.2k or so for a decent quad-core at the time, probably looking at a system refresh in 6 months or so.
 

dBTelos

Golden Member
Apr 17, 2006
1,858
0
0
I recommend a Corsair HX520W. Then a Fortron X3 Booster 300W when you upgrade to DX10 SLi.
 

pkme2

Diamond Member
Sep 30, 2005
3,896
0
0
What men will spend on their toys will always keep me intriqued. I never saw a 10K gaming computer.
 

dev0lution

Senior member
Dec 23, 2004
472
0
0
Are you intentionally trying to make us all jealous????! :shocked:

Since the business end of things is what's critical, have you looked at perhaps building a workstation for the forex backtesting and a general use/gaming machine?
 

SithSolo1

Diamond Member
Mar 19, 2001
7,740
11
81
If you like to play oblivion wouldn't you be better off getting this?

As far as I can tell that card is faster than a 7950GT in basicly every game out there. People also tend to say ATi's image quality is superior though I've never tested it side by side.
 

Idontcare

Elite Member
Oct 10, 1999
21,110
59
91
Originally posted by: SithSolo1
If you like to play oblivion wouldn't you be better off getting this?

As far as I can tell that card is faster than a 7950GT in basicly every game out there. People also tend to say ATi's image quality is superior though I've never tested it side by side.

SithSolo1,

That does seem like a pretty sweet vid-card. :thumbsup:

I have zero preference for ATI vs NV, but I do need a vid-card that supports dual-displays as I am running dual-24" LCD's (DELL 2407's).

Does the card you directed me towards work with dual display setups? (not a facetious question, I really can't tell, will investigate thru ATI website though)

I prefer DVI-out for my displays, and honestly that is about the only reason I down-selected my choices to the XFX listed in my planned build.

If ATI = killer for Oblivion then I'd be all for tracking down a decent dual-DVI ATI card (I really should know this, no excuse really as I have read a mind-numbing number of video reviews, maybe too many I guess as it is all running together into a blur now, heh :eek:)

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

- Phil
 

SithSolo1

Diamond Member
Mar 19, 2001
7,740
11
81
No, I don't believe it supports two monitors. I guess I should have looked further down your list.
 

CurseTheSky

Diamond Member
Oct 21, 2006
5,401
2
0
As far as I know, ATI does dominate the market for Oblivion.

Keep this in mind though:

If you buy an eVGA card now, such as a 7950GT / 7900GTX / 7950GX2, you can trade it in within 3 months, and count the full purchase price towards another card. You're limited to only eVGA (nVidia) cards (which could be a good or bad thing, I've had only great experiences with the company), but it saves you from having paperweights or selling things to other consumers for lower prices.

I have the G15 keyboard, and it's awesome. It's very handy for even simple tasks. Ever had to write out the same thing fifty times in a document? Copy/paste comes in handy... but what if you have to write ten different things fifty times each? With this keyboard, you can set each of the G keys to a different macro, and allow you to do exactly that. The backlighting is nice (just the right brightness), and the LCD is actually worth the money, not just a gimmick. The LCD can show you your CPU utilization / RAM usage, various things in games, people talking in Ventrilo, the time / date, and various other things. The keyboard also has a toggle switch to turn off the Windows buttons for "gaming mode," so you don't accidently boot yourself to the desktop. I'm glad I got one.

The MX1000 is a great mouse, has tons of buttons, but the DPI and weight make me glad that I upgraded to the G7. Yes the battery life does suck... but you get two batteries, and the mouse does not need to be docked to recharge. By the time one battery is dead, my other has long since been charge. Swapping takes about 10 seconds or less. The responsiveness of the mouse is excellent, and the pads on the bottom are much smoother than the MX1000. If you have no use for DPI changing, the buttons can be reprogrammed for keystrokes or various other tasks. Both are great mice, but I do like the G7 a bit more.

Finally, I suggest going with a slightly better sound card. I don't own that card myself, but I make the mistake of buying an Audigy 2 Value about a year ago. It was a cheaper, smaller sized card than the Audigy 2 ZS, and as I found out (purchase the ZS about 6 months later), the sound quality was definately worse. I would spend an extra $10-40, and get the full-sized XtremeMusic(~$110) or Fatal1ty FPS(~$140) personally. I mean, with a $10k build, I just can't see going for a value card. :p

Hope this helps.
 

Idontcare

Elite Member
Oct 10, 1999
21,110
59
91
Originally posted by: SithSolo1
No, I don't believe it supports two monitors. I guess I should have looked further down your list.

That's OK, you inspired me to dig a little deeper into my vid-card selection. What do you think of this connect3D X1950 XTX card?

The card supports 2 DVI out per the specs, but is this card and manufacturer recommended?
 

Idontcare

Elite Member
Oct 10, 1999
21,110
59
91
Originally posted by: CurseTheSky
Hope this helps.

CurseTheSky,

Great feedback, exactly the kind of insights I was hoping the AT crowd would provide.

The comment on the vid-card is primo, will investigate further.

Glad to hear the G15 has postive reviews from you, builds my confidence on this selection.

Glad you took the time to provide feedback on the MX1000, I do not want a heavy mouse, thanks for saving me from re-learning this, I will investigate the G7 option you suggested.

Ah, audio card = sorta sucky, am not surprised as I mostly just picked that one without much investigation. I am not sure I will end up getting any audio card at this time only because the mobo I am looking at only has 2 PCI slots and both of those will be occupied by my i-RAM ram-disks.

I know it is a waste of PCIe real-estate, but are there any PCI Express compatible audio cards out there?
 

westihockey09

Member
Aug 3, 2006
94
0
0
1. I wish I had your budget.
2. That CPU cooling is AMAZING!
3. If your going to spend that much money on a vid card, buy it straight from the horses mouth. In other words, get this

It is more expensive, but the rebate drops the price. The quality of GPU's that you are in, you won't be disappointed in whatever you purchase.

Great system build!

Westi
 

Idontcare

Elite Member
Oct 10, 1999
21,110
59
91
Originally posted by: westihockey09
1. I wish I had your budget.
2. That CPU cooling is AMAZING!
3. If your going to spend that much money on a vid card, buy it straight from the horses mouth. In other words, get this

It is more expensive, but the rebate drops the price. The quality of GPU's that you are in, you won't be disappointed in whatever you purchase.

Great system build!

Westi


Great feedback, done and done, I like the logic too. I edited the OP too, thanks - Phil
 

Mr Fox

Senior member
Sep 24, 2006
876
0
76
Originally posted by: Idontcare
OK - so I have been biding my time waiting for the right hardware to become available to plunk down some easy-come/easy-go cash on a half-way decent performing computer.

Primary use is single-threaded number crunching, forex backtesting in meta-trader (single-threaded app) to be specific. It is lucrative and I am time-to-result limited, so spending an extra $1k to make the setup faster is worth it, no question. Current back-test runs are taking me approximately 14hrs on a P4 NW at 2.6GHz which is seriously hampering my timeline to being able to maximum my profitability.

I am a very light gamer time-wise, but when I do get the luxury of having time to game I prefer to indulge myself in an hour or two of Oblivion with as much of the eye-candies turned on as I can.

Personal Hardware Biases - I prefer to avoid SCSI, yes I know 15k rpm RAID SCSI would be the bomb, but I'd rather skip SCSI and go straight to ram-disk for maximum impact to my latency-limited calculations.

Credit/Props -
  • 1. Much of my hardware choices surrounding CPU/MB/Cooling were motivated by Yoxxy's Overclocking Guide and PM's, thanks Yoxxy
    2. Thanks goes to westihockey09 for convincing me to step-up on the video card, thanks westihockey09
    3. Shout out to CurseTheSky for giving me some inspiration to upgrade the sound card and for making changes to my mouse selection (G7 vs MX1000), thanks CurseTheSky
Purpose of this Thread - 2 purposes, first as an organizational assistant to help me keep all the hardware straight as I start making orders, and second purpose is to draw upon the feedback and experience of the folks at the AT forum to help me avoid making any truly stupid or ignorant mistakes. Please give me constructive feedback, am not necessarily looking for price versus performance help here, more just looking for performance help.

Thanks in advance for your feedback and your time you spend reading this thread.


Proposed System Build:

Processor: Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 Conroe 2.93GHz ($949.50)
  • ...intend to overclock to 4+ GHz with Vapochill LS, see below...

Buy Xeon 3060 at 325.00 you can Torch Two of them and still be Ahead.... They have The High End Core Achitecture, and Scale well .

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819117104


Motherboard: ASUS P5W64 WS Professional Socket T ($294.99)
  • ...only 2 PCI slots, could be restrictive, see below...

This is a Better Board for your Needs Has 8 SATA Ports and 3 PCI along With Two PCI-E x16 Any Of The ASUS 975x MOBOs are good Overclockers. Plan on adding a few fans.

Asus P5WD2-E Premium 975X P4/Celeron 1066FSB LGA775 DDR2 ATX Motherboard : http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=247059-OP



Ram: OCZ Titanium Alpha VX2 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2 1000 4-4-4-15 (2 x $430.99 = $861.98)
  • ...total of 4GB, intend to set aside 2 GB as ram-drive, comments from anyone regarding overclockability of having all 4 DIMMS fully-loaded?


This memory has Better timings, and Overhead. (Out Of Stock)

G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1000 (PC2 8000) Dual Channel Kit : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820231077


Video Card: ATI Radeon X1950XTX 512MB 256-bit GDDR4 CrossFire ($449.99)
  • ...intend to upgrade in 6 months or so when DX10 cards have been out for a bit, this card is just a stop-gap to hold me over until then


RAM Disks: GIGABYTE GC-RAMDISK PCI SATA RAM Drive aka i-RAM (2 x $114.99 = $229.98)

These are a slick technology... but the initial versions have Issues... They Transfer No Faster than a SATA 1 drive. 150.00 mbs theo. Max.. The Interface is a Bottleneck all around....They are Supposed to be coming out with a Ver. 2 soon. I would Wait. At this point it would be Throwing Money away.


Hexus review : http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=6200&page=1
Planet 64x : http://www.planetx64.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=106&Itemid=14


  • ...plan to raid-0 both of these ram-disks on the areca ARC-1231ML for total of 8GB, would buy four of them if the mobo had more than just 2 PCI slots
RAM Disk's RAM: Kingston ValueRAM 1GB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (8 x $104.99 = 839.92)
  • ...recommended by Gigabyte for their i-RAM boards
RAID Card: Areca ARC-1231ML 12-port PCIe to SATA ll RAID Adapter (~$966 ETA mid-Nov)
  • ...am holding out for the 1231ML with the Intel 800MHz 81341 I/O processor
RAID Card RAM Upgrade: Mushkin eXtreme Performance 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 ($144.99)
  • ...Areca specifies the 1231ML uses DDR2-533, am assuming low-latency DDR2-667 will be backwards compatible

The RAID Sub-System Makes No Sense....It is designed for retrofitting a network server, and Not anything that would actually gain anything.

The SATA Controllers on the MOBO Won't Be Anywhere Near Saturation. Save $ 600.00+ and Buy 2 more Raptor X's and run RAID 5 You will get Data Security Combined With Performance. A Typical SATA Hard Drive has Usually been 66 - 75 % of Max Theoretical. Bandwidth.



Hard Drives: Western Digital Raptor X WD1500AHFD 150GB 10,000 RPM 16MB Cache (2 x $229.99 = $459.98)
  • ...plan to raid-0 these on the areca ARC-1231ML, both the 2GB ram-drive and 8GB ram-disk array will have intra-day scheduled backups made to this raid-0 raptor array
Hard Drives: Western Digital Caviar RE2 WD5000YS 500GB 7,200 RPM 16MB Cache (2 x $184.99 = $369.98)
  • ...plan to raid-0 these on the areca ARC-1231ML, daily scheduled backups of the Raptor X array will be made to this 1TB raid-0 array
Power Supply: SeaSonic M12 SS-700HM ATX12V/ EPS12V 700W ($209.99)
  • ...have personal reservations about going with a modular PSU for a high-performance system, comments from anyone regarding signal quality for modular PSU?


A Good Supply.. Modular is Nice.. you only use what you need and with sleeved Cables you don't get cracked/broken wires as easy.


LCD Displays: Dell UltraSharp 2407FP 24" LCD w/5yr warranty (2 x $679.15 + $49 warranty = $1456.30)
  • ...already own these LCD's, pretty sweet, setup in dual-view on current rig, will migrate to the new system
[

U]Case:[/u] Vapochill LightSpeed Ready Lian-Li PC-65B ($199.99)
  • ...recently purchased this case, I know it was money not well spent but I really didn't feel like hassling with cutting holes in another case, maybe in a few months time I'll get the energy and time

You will find that This Case is Very Tight It is Only 19" Deep.... that leaves about 1" between drives and Cards.... It will be a Nightmare even without RAMDISKS and SATA Controller.
Good cases are 24" Deep and make it easy because you have some space.


CPU Cooler: VapoChill LightSpeed - Pentium 4 Socket 775 (Black) 04-L-1152 ($869.99)
  • ...recently purchased this vapochill unit, will be used to O/C this new system
Back Up Power Supply: APC SUA2200 2200 VA 1980 Watts 10 Outlets Smart-UPS ($761.78)
  • ...1980W with 2200VA should keep this desktop computer running long enough for the ram-drive backups to complete during APC controlled & automated shutdown
    ...comments from anyone regarding alternative UPS for this system?
DVD/CD Burner: LITE-ON 18X DVD±R & 8X DL DVD±R Burner Black IDE Model LH-18A1P-185 (2 x $30.99 = $61.98)
  • ...one for source and the other for target so I can walk away and not have to swap discs during a burn
Sound Card: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer Fatal1ty Professional Series 7.1 Channels 24-bit 192KHz ($145.99)
...like the idea of offloading CPU cycles that would have gone to audio processing, but I need a 3-PCI slot mobo to have sound card + ram-disk raid-0 array...

Speakers 5.1: Logitech X-540 70 watts 5.1 Speakers ($88.99)

Keyboard: Logitech G15 2-Tone 104 Normal Keys USB Wired Standard Keyboard ($71.99)
...have a thing for back-lighted keys, comments from anyone regarding alternative back-lighted keyboards?

Mouse: Logitech G7 USB RF Laser Mouse ($61.99)

Misc:
  • Gel Keyboard Pad: BELKIN WaveRest F8E263-BLK Keyboard Wrist Support (Black) ($7.39)
    Gel Mouse Pad: BELKIN WaveRest F8E262-BLK Gel Mouse Pad (Black) ($7.99)
    CPU Paste: Arctic Silver Ceramique Thermal Compound ($4.99)
    Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP Professional With SP2B 1 Pack - OEM ($139.99)

Total system price will probably be around $10k or so with shipping.

- Phil








 

Idontcare

Elite Member
Oct 10, 1999
21,110
59
91
I think I may have just solved my PCI slot problem with the i-RAM disks.

I realized this morning that since the i-RAM devices only need PCI for a source of power and not for signalling, the signal quality from daisy-chained PCI expansion cards would not be as much of an issue.

Sweetness = PCI flex-riser and expansion card

I figure I can get 3 of these flex daisy chain cards, couple them together to spawn of just one PCI slot on the mobo and double my i-RAM disk array from 2 to 4 (to have 4 x 4GB = 16GB ram-disk array).

To reduce my exposure to the SATA vs. SATA-II my plan is to raid-0 these on the Areca, which will definitely handle 4X fully-saturated SATA ram-disks.

Anyone have good or bad experiences with these PCI flex-riser/expansion cards?

Anyone know of rumors (of any quality) of when SATA-II i-RAM hardware might become available if ever?
 

Smartazz

Diamond Member
Dec 29, 2005
6,128
0
76
I find it interesting that you're spending so much on this computer, but you're getting Logitech X-540 70 watts 5.1 Speakers. You could probobly break 4GHZ with a vapochill and an X6800 btw.
 

Chaotic42

Lifer
Jun 15, 2001
34,568
1,730
126
Originally posted by: Smartazz
I find it interesting that you're spending so much on this computer, but you're getting Logitech X-540 70 watts 5.1 Speakers. You could probobly break 4GHZ with a vapochill and an X6800 btw.

Given the need, I'd rather put all of my money to the actual use of the computer. Higher quality speakers aren't that important for work and light gaming.
 

Idontcare

Elite Member
Oct 10, 1999
21,110
59
91
Originally posted by: Chaotic42
Originally posted by: Smartazz
I find it interesting that you're spending so much on this computer, but you're getting Logitech X-540 70 watts 5.1 Speakers. You could probobly break 4GHZ with a vapochill and an X6800 btw.

Given the need, I'd rather put all of my money to the actual use of the computer. Higher quality speakers aren't that important for work and light gaming.

Exactly, that and I figured I'd wait to see just how loud and annoying this system turns out to be before I worry about trying to make $350 worth of quality speakers try and compete with 50dB of background noise.

Figure I stand much higher likelihood of ending up using the decent quality sound card to drive a set of high-quality noise-cancellation headphones so I can whistle while I work ;)
 

Smartazz

Diamond Member
Dec 29, 2005
6,128
0
76
Originally posted by: Idontcare
Originally posted by: Chaotic42
Originally posted by: Smartazz
I find it interesting that you're spending so much on this computer, but you're getting Logitech X-540 70 watts 5.1 Speakers. You could probobly break 4GHZ with a vapochill and an X6800 btw.

Given the need, I'd rather put all of my money to the actual use of the computer. Higher quality speakers aren't that important for work and light gaming.

Exactly, that and I figured I'd wait to see just how loud and annoying this system turns out to be before I worry about trying to make $350 worth of quality speakers try and compete with 50dB of background noise.

Figure I stand much higher likelihood of ending up using the decent quality sound card to drive a set of high-quality noise-cancellation headphones so I can whistle while I work ;)

Sounds like a good plan.
 

Sniper82

Lifer
Feb 6, 2000
16,517
0
76
will be a killer system but I feel for you a year down the road(or maybe even 6 months). System will probably be worth half of what you got in it or less. Some of it is just a bit much ;)

Either way once/if it gets build post some pics :D.
 

JAG87

Diamond Member
Jan 3, 2006
3,921
3
76
You are using Raid0 arrays to backup your data... that doesnt make any sense.

And btw you are spending way too much money on storage. iRam is nice, but you dont REALLY dont need to raid 2 of them in raid 0.
 

Idontcare

Elite Member
Oct 10, 1999
21,110
59
91
Originally posted by: Sniper82
will be a killer system but I feel for you a year down the road(or maybe even 6 months). System will probably be worth half of what you got in it or less. Some of it is just a bit much ;)

Either way once/if it gets build post some pics :D.

;) don't feel sorry for me, this is not just a hobby computer (well maybe 50% of it is the enthusiast inside me just itching to play with some cool hardware)...in 6 months time I will have well earned back my easy-come/easy-go cash from the work this system will be doing for me in the meantime.

I'll probably be back again in 6months looking to upgrade my then diminished system. :beer:

There will be plenty of pics if folks want to see them. Would be a new experience for me too.