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proposed new build - any problems here?

B

Blefuscu

Junior Member
my old p4 system is a bit sluggish. the new system will be used for a bit of everything. office work, games, scientific computing. i'm trying to make it as quiet as possible. aside from the fact that the cpu isn't available yet, are there any red flags here i should know about before i buy? the heatsink is huge (16cm high). i hope it fits. i'm not sure if i'm going to overclock or not. if so, it'd be just 10% or so (don't want to have to crank up the fans too much). i might use the dynamic overclock on the asus moboard. from the manual it seems to temporarily crank up the system bus when the load gets pegged. has anyone used this feature before?

intel E6750
Thermalright U-120 xtreme http://www.sidewindercomputers.com/thulex.html
2xNoctua 120mm fan http://www.sidewindercomputers.com/no12nf34cfm.html
1xNexus real silent 92mm fan http://www.endpcnoise.com/cgi-bin/e/std/sku=nexus92mm
Antec Solo case http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16811129018
Asus p5k deluxe http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16813131182
CORSAIR CMPSU-520HX http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16817139001
Gskill 2x2GB DDR2 800 http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16820231121
asus 8600GTS silent http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814121077
2xWD3200AAKS in RAID0 http://www.wdc.com/en/products...riveid=299&language=en
Samsung DVD burner http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16827151141




 
I like the component choices buy theres a couple things to consider:

Do you REALLY need to spend over $200 on a mobo? Why not the P35 chipset board made by gigabyte?

4 gigs is a bit excessive. Do you need it for anything in particular?

Raid 0 is a waste. It yields almost no improvement in a non-server environment.

8600GTS is a bit weak of gfx card. Maybe save some money on the issues above and get a 8800GTS 320MB
 
If you are thinking about gaming on that PC, I'd recommend against getting the 8600GTS as this 7950GT will outperform it for about the same amount of money. The one I linked is passively cooled so noise won't be an issue.

Also: If you are getting 4GB of RAM, I assume you are getting Vista 64 bit, right?

 
<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: PurdueRy
I like the component choices buy theres a couple things to consider:

Do you REALLY need to spend over $200 on a mobo? Why not the P35 chipset board made by gigabyte?

4 gigs is a bit excessive. Do you need it for anything in particular?

Raid 0 is a waste. It yields almost no improvement in a non-server environment.

8600GTS is a bit weak of gfx card. Maybe save some money on the issues above and get a 8800GTS 320MB</end quote></div>

yeah you are right, that board is pretty expensive. i was surprised at the price. i picked it mainly because it had the ICH9R southbridge thingy. the gigabyte board with the same chip is expensive too. there are much cheaper ICH9 boards but they have some add-on non-intel chip that has raid for external sata drives only?

i was hoping raid0 would reduce some of the disk thrash during my weekly virus scans (they take 5 hours now on my IDE drive, mainly because i scan inside all archives. it seems to be disk-limited because the cpu does not max out.). also i was hoping game levels would load faster. (i hate waiting for that "loading...." bar to move!) i am a backup freak, so i am not so concerned about the higher failure rate.

i was thinking about 4GB ram because i will goto vista64 eventually? (maybe after SP1?) i also sometimes use Photoshop to edit large photos. will the extra 2GB help for that? RAM seems pretty cheap now.

yeah you are right the video card is weak.
 
Originally posted by: Noema
If you are thinking about gaming on that PC, I'd recommend against getting the 8600GTS as this 7950GT will outperform it for about the same amount of money. The one I linked is passively cooled so noise won't be an issue.

Also: If you are getting 4GB of RAM, I assume you are getting Vista 64 bit, right?
Click to expand...

cool, i did not know there was a passive version of the 7950GT!
 
Originally posted by: Blefuscu
<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: PurdueRy
I like the component choices buy theres a couple things to consider:

Do you REALLY need to spend over $200 on a mobo? Why not the P35 chipset board made by gigabyte?

4 gigs is a bit excessive. Do you need it for anything in particular?

Raid 0 is a waste. It yields almost no improvement in a non-server environment.

8600GTS is a bit weak of gfx card. Maybe save some money on the issues above and get a 8800GTS 320MB</end quote></div>

yeah you are right, that board is pretty expensive. i was surprised at the price. i picked it mainly because it had the ICH9R southbridge thingy. the gigabyte board with the same chip is expensive too. there are much cheaper ICH9 boards but they have some add-on non-intel chip that has raid for external sata drives only?

i was hoping raid0 would reduce some of the disk thrash during my weekly virus scans (they take 5 hours now on my IDE drive, mainly because i scan inside all archives. it seems to be disk-limited because the cpu does not max out.). also i was hoping game levels would load faster. (i hate waiting for that "loading...." bar to move!) i am a backup freak, so i am not so concerned about the higher failure rate.

i was thinking about 4GB ram because i will goto vista64 eventually? (maybe after SP1?) i also sometimes use Photoshop to edit large photos. will the extra 2GB help for that? RAM seems pretty cheap now.

yeah you are right the video card is weak.
Click to expand...

http://www.anandtech.com/stora...howdoc.aspx?i=2969&p=8

Prepare to be underwhelmed....

2GB may help but you would have to be a pretty serious photoshop user to use over 2GB of ram in photoshop.

I would recommend cutting it to 2GB if it means you are able to purchase a better video card.
 
Originally posted by: Blefuscu
<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: Noema
If you are thinking about gaming on that PC, I'd recommend against getting the 8600GTS as this 7950GT will outperform it for about the same amount of money. The one I linked is passively cooled so noise won't be an issue.

Also: If you are getting 4GB of RAM, I assume you are getting Vista 64 bit, right?

</end quote></div>

cool, i did not know there was a passive version of the 7950GT!
Click to expand...

It won't have DX10 support
 
<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: PurdueRy

http://www.anandtech.com/stora...howdoc.aspx?i=2969&p=8

Prepare to be underwhelmed....

2GB may help but you would have to be a pretty serious photoshop user to use over 2GB of ram in photoshop.

I would recommend cutting it to 2GB if it means you are able to purchase a better video card.</end quote></div>

hmmm... thanks for the link. i also checked out another review where things aren't as CPU and GPU limited: http://www.anandtech.com/stora...howdoc.aspx?i=2974&p=7
but raid0 still doesn't seem to help much somehow, you are right. it's weird how the synthetic benchmarks show a huge difference. it's even weirder that noone seems to know where the real bottleneck is for the real-world tests. i guess i can get a cheaper moboard and lower the noise some by eliminating a drive.

or maybe i can do raid1 instead? right now i just manually copy files from the main drive to the backup. it has the advantage that i can have windows automatically turn off the backup drive completely to lower noise, but it is a pain and there is a risk of deleting stuff accidentally. when using raid1 is the backup drive visible as a separate volume? or is it just an invisible shadow drive. if the main drive smokes completely can i just mount the backup as a single drive (no array) and boot up from it? what happens if the backup smokes completely? can i remount the main drive as a single drive?

my vid card decision has more to do with noise than money. my Ti:4400 had a bad fan and was hella loud. then one day the fan broke completely and the card kept working 😀 i was in heaven.
 
Originally posted by: PurdueRy
<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: Blefuscu
<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: Noema
If you are thinking about gaming on that PC, I'd recommend against getting the 8600GTS as this 7950GT will outperform it for about the same amount of money. The one I linked is passively cooled so noise won't be an issue.

Also: If you are getting 4GB of RAM, I assume you are getting Vista 64 bit, right?

</end quote></div>

cool, i did not know there was a passive version of the 7950GT!</end quote></div>

It won't have DX10 support
Click to expand...

yes, this is the dilemma. i also understand the 8600GTS can offload a lot of video decode cycles (including HD) from the CPU? but Noema is probably right about the 7950GT in games.
 
Originally posted by: Blefuscu
<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: PurdueRy
<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: Blefuscu
<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: PurdueRy
I like the component choices buy theres a couple things to consider:

Do you REALLY need to spend over $200 on a mobo? Why not the P35 chipset board made by gigabyte?

4 gigs is a bit excessive. Do you need it for anything in particular?

Raid 0 is a waste. It yields almost no improvement in a non-server environment.

8600GTS is a bit weak of gfx card. Maybe save some money on the issues above and get a 8800GTS 320MB</end quote></div>

yeah you are right, that board is pretty expensive. i was surprised at the price. i picked it mainly because it had the ICH9R southbridge thingy. the gigabyte board with the same chip is expensive too. there are much cheaper ICH9 boards but they have some add-on non-intel chip that has raid for external sata drives only?

i was hoping raid0 would reduce some of the disk thrash during my weekly virus scans (they take 5 hours now on my IDE drive, mainly because i scan inside all archives. it seems to be disk-limited because the cpu does not max out.). also i was hoping game levels would load faster. (i hate waiting for that "loading...." bar to move!) i am a backup freak, so i am not so concerned about the higher failure rate.

i was thinking about 4GB ram because i will goto vista64 eventually? (maybe after SP1?) i also sometimes use Photoshop to edit large photos. will the extra 2GB help for that? RAM seems pretty cheap now.

yeah you are right the video card is weak.</end quote></div>

http://www.anandtech.com/stora...howdoc.aspx?i=2969&p=8

Prepare to be underwhelmed....

2GB may help but you would have to be a pretty serious photoshop user to use over 2GB of ram in photoshop.

I would recommend cutting it to 2GB if it means you are able to purchase a better video card.</end quote></div>

hmmm... thanks for the link. i also checked out another review where things aren't as CPU and GPU limited: http://www.anandtech.com/stora...howdoc.aspx?i=2974&p=7
but raid0 still doesn't seem to help much somehow, you are right. it's weird how the synthetic benchmarks show a huge difference. it's even weirder that noone seems to know where the real bottleneck is for the real-world tests. i guess i can get a cheaper moboard and lower the noise some by eliminating a drive.

my vid card decision has more to do with noise than money. my Ti:4400 had a bad fan and was hella loud. then one day the fan broke completely and the card kept working 😀 i was in heaven.
Click to expand...

I have installed a 8800GTS before. It is rather quiet. I think you will be pleasantly surprised.
 
The problem is that the 8600GTS is not good for games. The 7950GT is a good deal faster in DX9.

As for DX10, yeah, the 8600GTS supports it but, how many DX10 games are out there? Call of Juarez, Company of Heroes (with patch) and Lost Planet.

All of them have horrendous DX10 performance, and they look barely better than in DX9 mode. Those games will be unplayable on a 8600GTS in DX10 mode, unless you play them at 800x600 with low detail...and what is the point of DX10 then if the game will run faster and look better on a 7950GT in DX9?. If you want DX10, get a 8800GTS / GTX or a HD2900XT. Anything else will be useless. And by the time most games ship with DX10 only, either card will be hopelessly obsolete anyway.

For now, the most important thing to consider is DX9 and the 7950GT delivers. The 8600GTS doesn't. It has a 128-bit memory bandwidth, and it doesn't have enough shaders.

Its saving grace is its built-in h.264 decoder. But unless you plan to watch HD movies while doing 10 other things on the computer at the same time, it's not worth it, because the E6750 will be able to handle the HD content just as easily.
 
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