Features - HEXUS Christmas Gift Guide 2010: Components for an Extreme PC

[HEXUS]

Core i7 processing, SLI graphics and solid-state storage? It's all here in our pick of components for an Extreme PC.

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[kalniel]

If you get another 3 sticks of ram later on you'll go above what Win 7 Home Premium can handle. I'd go with Pro on this build.

[PC4Free]

Heck it's an extreme build! Just go Ultimate

[miniyazz]

Please swap the darned blu-ray burner for a proper CPU heatsink

What sort of res/quality settings would you be needing for SLI GTX570s?

Realistically I'd be looking at ditching the gtx570s for 6850s, scrapping the second SSD and losing 6GB RAM to get a decent HSF with £500 to spend on a 28" monitor, decent peripherals and a nice speaker set, but that's obviously not what this guide is trying to achieve.

[Tunnah]

the graphics is insane overkill; its a £2000 build but you'd need to spend another £1000 on a monitor to put those graphics cards to good use, they are absolutely pointless unless you're going for 2560x1600, a pair of 460s will let pretty much all games run at max settings at 1920x1200

[keithwalton]

I have been wondering about the lack of monitors in these builds.

Personally i'd skimp on the case in order to either increase the cpu, gpu's or since this is an extreme system water cooling.

I do have a small correction for the article though.

For a 2TB (2000GB) hard drive to cost less than a penny per gig it must cost less than £20 since that is 2000 pennies. when in fact the drive costs more than 3x this amount.

[miniyazz]

At around 30p-per-gigabyte

Just under 3.5p/GB

[Tattysnuc]

... as sponsored by Scan....

You can get cheaper if you are willing to shop around, but that does make a mighty fine machine.

[scaryjim]

the graphics is insane overkill; its a £2000 build but you'd need to spend another £1000 on a monitor to put those graphics cards to good use ...

3 monitors @ 1680x1050 == 5040 x 1050 (or 3150 x 1680, if you prefer ) for < £300. At those sorts of resolutions I'd back SLI GTX570s over SLI GTX460s any day (although I might personally go for CrossFire 6950s, personally ).

And of course you could do the same with standard 1080p monitors for very little extra outlay.

[c.ruel]

Do those two SSDs in RAID 0 support TRIM?

[Jace007]

With Sandy Bridge cpus around the 1Q might wanna save those pennies

[Tattysnuc]

Do those two SSDs in RAID 0 support TRIM?

I don;t believe that they do.

Shame that it's only a 4 core 8 thread spec. It's high spec, but with Sandy Bridge coming out in Jan I'm sure it'll be superceded failry quickly, unlike a hex-a-core machine.

Someone trying to clear some stock me thinks.... Shame they don't drop the prices low enough. I've bought away from Scan for the first time in ages for an i7 970. At £250 cheaper INCLUDING international shipping, that's somewhat overpriced here i blighty. I reckon they'll price crash soon, but I'm not going to wait any longer for Scan to do it...

[Tunnah]

3 monitors @ 1680x1050 == 5040 x 1050 (or 3150 x 1680, if you prefer ) for < £300. At those sorts of resolutions I'd back SLI GTX570s over SLI GTX460s any day (although I might personally go for CrossFire 6950s, personally ).

And of course you could do the same with standard 1080p monitors for very little extra outlay.

i don't go for all this spread resolution stuff, you want the pixel density and ultra high quality of a 2560x1600 display, i never see it as more than 3xwhatever rather than the real figure
also, bezels!

Do those two SSDs in RAID 0 support TRIM?

no, TRIM and RAID aren't compatible

I don;t believe that they do.

Shame that it's only a 4 core 8 thread spec. It's high spec, but with Sandy Bridge coming out in Jan I'm sure it'll be superceded failry quickly, unlike a hex-a-core machine.

Someone trying to clear some stock me thinks.... Shame they don't drop the prices low enough. I've bought away from Scan for the first time in ages for an i7 970. At £250 cheaper INCLUDING international shipping, that's somewhat overpriced here i blighty. I reckon they'll price crash soon, but I'm not going to wait any longer for Scan to do it...

think it was more aimed at being awesome without being silly...barely anything chokes a CPU anymore so spending a large amount more on an under-utilized component would just be for OCers

[ehhhhhhh]

Do those two SSDs in RAID 0 support TRIM?

it doesn't really matter...I'm using my raid0 array for quite a while now without any performance degradation issues.

I install all my games and applications to it and also it's around 85% full all the time.