Planning for SB in April

[betasub]

^ Nice response, darkwaffle. At least you've acknowledged the advice given, and thought things through - it just seems you are approaching this mainly from a SPCR perspective. As with so many of these things, it comes down to personal priorities where you throw the extra $ in your build.

 

[darkware]

it just seems you are approaching this mainly from a SPCR perspective.

I'm trying to come at it from two different perspectives. SPCR is where I go to get advice on keeping builds quiet. AnandTech is where I go to get advice on getting good performance from a build.

Hence my balancing act. SPCR pointed out that the Kama Flow/Flex fans were better than the previous set I'd selected. AnandTech generally doesn't care about those things (it only lowers the noise by 2-3 dB), but people here did point out that I should look at Sandforce SSDs (while SPCR isn't as concerned about the better performance).

Here mfenn's advice (which I appreciate and was hoping to receive) is to use the S12II and the F3. When you suggest that to people at SPCR, they tell you to use something from the X-Series and the Green/EcoGreen lines. It's not really possible to make both groups happy (except on the CPU: both suggested downgrading to the 2500K), and I always have someone who's telling me I'm spending my time/money/effort on the wrong things.

However, this is the third build I've made by balancing advice from multiple sources, and I recognize that there aren't many people who are going to agree with everything in the build. It's unfortunate when people like mfenn feel that their advice is being ignored, and I know that can be discouraging. The advice isn't ignored, its very much appreciated, it just occasionally gets outweighed by other advice.

 

[mfenn]

I'd say you did a pretty good job. Thank you for your time.

You're welcome! No hard feelings. 🙂

^ Nice response, darkwaffle. At least you've acknowledged the advice given, and thought things through - it just seems you are approaching this mainly from a SPCR perspective. As with so many of these things, it comes down to personal priorities where you throw the extra $ in your build.

Yeah, the SPCR guys are really serious about the S!

 

[darkware]

More updates:

Motherboard: I've added the MSI P67A-GD55 as an alternative to the ASUS board. The P8067 EVO has sort of dropped off the market, so I'm left without a favorite now. The base P8P67 is fine, but people are having issues with all the ASUS P67 boards. The MSI is good, but doesn't have the fan controls I wanted. Of course, if the Z68's finally get themselves onto the market, I'm going to have to think about this all over again.

Video: The MSI Twin Frozr II is now the favored board. The MSI software is a big plus. It has nearly identical performance, but I should be able to reduce the speed of the fans more than the DirectCU.

Storage Drive: Though it may not be a popular decision, I'll be using a Greed drive for storage. Any application which is adversely affected will get shifted to the SSD. This becomes something of a manual SSD cache. If I run out of space on the SSD in a year, I'll get a new one.

I'm still a bit lost on the case. My favorite candidate still hasn't appeared in North America. The CM 690 II Advanced is looking more and more likely.