Help me desgin my PC!

[richieuk]

I made the silly mistake of posting in Graphics etc to help me find a better value and spec PC than a Mesh one i was thinking of buying.

Instead, TAKTAK teh pandii has convinced me to build my own.

Heres my list of options so far, I was hoping you guys can help fill in some blanks and expend where you can, cheers

[GoNz0]

chance is u can get the q6600 to 1333 fsb and 3.2 ghz

i would get a bigger PSU as the 520 is a little on the small side if you want to overclock


you will need a tube of arctic silver (other makes of the same standard exist)


your hard drive is going to hold you back a bit, consider a raptor with the change you get from not buying the q9450 and another £50 to buiild price for the 150gb version

optical drives are not that important so whatever you fancy

heatsink, if you have the room the IFX-14 did a very good job in my pc until i turned to water.

maybe get a better motherboard, im no good at em either so ask the others

cant fault a good hardware audio card like a x-fi on a pcie-x1

ram will do the job well

[TAKTAK]

Following on from the post i made in your other thread...
(reposting the same spec so it's easier for people to tweak...)

CPU: Q6600 G0 stepping HERE £124.42 Inc VAT
MOBO: Abit IP35V HERE £54.51 Inc VAT (i'm a bit out of the loop mobo wise so it's a good idea to wait for someone (such as staffsMike/Blitzen) to tear this spec to pieces )
RAM: 4GB PC2 6400 HERE £54.57 Inc VAT
GFX: 9800GTX HERE £117.48 Inc VAT (may be worth waiting to see what prices do for a little longer/looking into the ATi 4870)
PSU: enermax modu82+ HERE £74.60 Inc VAT
HDD: 640GB AAKS HERE £57.21 Inc VAT
OS: Vista Home premium 64Bit HERE £62.15 Inc VAT
HSF: Xigmatek HDT-S1283 HERE £22.27 Inc VAT (cheaper than the TRUE and performs nearly as well )
Optical drive: HERE £15.51 Inc VAT
Case: Antec 900 HERE £66.85 Inc VAT

which comes to a grand total of *drumroll*...... £651.28 delivered

the motherboard needs work as the ip35's are aging nowadays, i would probably look towards a x38 or something, but the other guys on here will guide you better.

and one thing that i did forget (that GoNzO pointed out) is that you will want some decent thermal paste, something such as Arctic silver 5/ MX2

and also as GoNzO rightly says, an optical drive is an optical drive... you don't really get top and bottom of the range (watch me get proved horendously wrong now )

and also, the 520w will easily power that rig, but if you want alot of headroom for future upgrades then you may want to consider the Corsair HX620w (manufactured by seasonic)

personally, i would go for a newer 320gb single platter or a 640gb double platter, as they are faster drives. (and if i'm honest, i don't trust maxtor drives, i personally have a soft spot for Western Digital) and western digital's AAKS range tend to be nice and quiet aswell

reiterating on the point i made in your other thread... you need to look at some cases to see what you like, as it's all fine and dandy us picking out what we like, but it's you that is gong to be seeing it everyday...

a few justifications if you are not allready aware... a 64bit OS as you seemed to have wanted 4gigglebytes of RAM and a 32bit OS will only be able to "see" approx 3.5gigglebytes....
i went with the Q6600 as it allows you to save even more money (without sacrificing that much) than going for (IIRC) the Q9450, and the Q6600 is well known for (generally) Overclocking quite well to around 3Ghz+, which would come in handy for your studiomax usage.
Quad core, because it allows a wider range of future proofing, as currently there are not many applications that fully utilise the full ability of having four cores, but in the future with the advent of octicore ect the future of computation will be with multiple cores. dual core support is widely supported at the moment, but for future benefits a quad core is where it's at. generally a dual core is better for gaming (ATM) and a quad core is better at everything else...

but all in all, building yourself not only allows you to gain an insite into how your machine works, it also allows you to save money, as your not stuck with what a company thinks is better for you, and if at the end of it you save money (which in this case i'm sureyou will) then thats another plus point

[SiM]

well everything has been covered... except the TAK is wrong, maxtor drives are good now days as they are manufactured by seagate now...

get 600W+ if you want to go SLi... imo the best value PSU at the moment is the Corsair TX650W, costs less that £60

[TAKTAK]

well everything has been covered... except the TAK is wrong, maxtor drives are good now days as they are manufactured by seagate now...

get 600W+ if you want to go SLi... imo the best value PSU at the moment is the Corsair TX650W, costs less that £60

i know that maxtor is now owned by seagate.... one of the reasons i dont buy seagate now theres nothing wrong with them.... but i've never had a WD fail on me, so in my eyes, that makes WD better for my experiences..... (inert logic, as i've never had any drive fail on me.... but oh well , every computer i have and ever build has had a WD drive, be it personally selected or put in by a company/someother random geezer called bob... and none of them have failed...)

and yes, the TX650w is a better value PSU IF you have a decent case to get rid of the cables, but for a first build and for easier tidying modular is a much better. but if your confident in cable tidying (awaits mikes piccy.....) then you might as well go for the TX650w, if not, then HX620w....

[SiM]

i know that maxtor is now owned by seagate.... one of the reasons i dont buy seagate now theres nothing wrong with them.... but i've never had a WD fail on me, so in my eyes, that makes WD better for my experiences..... (inert logic, as i've never had any drive fail on me.... but oh well , every computer i have and ever build has had a WD drive, be it personally selected or put in by a company/someother random geezer called bob... and none of them have failed...)

Never had a seagate fail on me... I have 6... 2x320gb and 4x1tb

and yes, the TX650w is a better value PSU IF you have a decent case to get rid of the cables, but for a first build and for easier tidying modular is a much better. but if your confident in cable tidying (awaits mikes piccy.....) then you might as well go for the TX650w, if not, then HX620w....

IMO modular is well overrated... even if mine was modular, I would only be able to remove 1 cable. I need the rest there... I admit it does have its place in the market, but most people with one probably would do just as well without one...

and you can still have a messy case with a modular PSU...

[TAKTAK]

well modular works out better for me personally as i only have 2 additional cables on my HX620 (a pci-e and a sata power cable powering 2 opticals and 2 HDD's and GFX) so it leaves my case much tidier than having to stash cables somewhere (wouldn't really be a problem in it's new home, but i would hate to have to hide cables in my thermaltake soprano DX ) it's all down to personal usage.
but in this case i thought that the gain in airflow and easier install would be better because he would only need two extra modular cables such as myself...

and i've got 7*WD's in the house ATM (1x640GB 2x500GB 1x250GB 1x160GB 1x120GB 1x40GB) and then theres my grandads PC which has a WD 160 IIRC (also has 1x20GB maxtor thats dieing, and a hitatchi deathstar which i think is dead) and then theres my brother with his IIRC 1x500GB 2x250GB WD's and his GF who has 1xWD, and for none of them to have failed is spectacular in my eyes... (you watch every single one of them implode tomorrow, and if they do i'll buy you 3 gtx280's)

but me having no bad experiences of WD is why i always support them when reccomending things... same as yourself reccomending seagates....


when push comes to shove, they'll both perform the same... but as with most things this day and age your paying for the best HDD, and i for one see WD as the (albeit not by much) leader in the hardrive field, there are those with differing opinions and those with the same opinion, but that is something for you to decide, everyone has their own poison so to speak.....

[SiM]

On my PSU there are 2 sata wires (using both, 1 for the 3 hdds, and 1 for dvd), 2 molex wires (using one for all 6 case fans), 2 pcie (using both on 9800gtx), mobo ones and thats it iirc... there is only 1 molex one that I need to tuck away unused... if you have enough stuff (imo I dont have alot) then you will use all of them more or less anyway... you must be using at least one molex for case fans too. no?

I have 2 WDs and 4 samsungs too... all are fine... for all manufacturers there is some luck involved... I like seagate because they are confident enough to give a longer warranty than the other manufacturers...

I bet you if you do a full chkdsk scan on all of those WDs you will find at least one with bad sectors...

I have 4 maxtors too! damn, I need to sell some of these drives...

[TAKTAK]

On my PSU there are 2 sata wires (using both, 1 for the 3 hdds, and 1 for dvd), 2 molex wires (using one for all 6 case fans), 2 pcie (using both on 9800gtx), mobo ones and thats it iirc... there is only 1 molex one that I need to tuck away unused... if you have enough stuff (imo I dont have alot) then you will use all of them more or less anyway... you must be using at least one molex for case fans too. no?

Nope. All 5 fans are powered by Mobo main power, giving me the ability to easily shut them up, without doing a volt mod.

I have 2 WDs and 4 samsungs too... all are fine... for all manufacturers there is some luck involved... I like seagate because they are confident enough to give a longer warranty than the other manufacturers...

if that is the case, and seagate do offer a longer warraty period than WD then maybe it is better for the OP to go for seagate as he specifically mentioned that he was after warranties as well...

I bet you if you do a full chkdsk scan on all of those WDs you will find at least one with bad sectors...

Yeah.... but that would take years

I have 4 maxtors too! damn, I need to sell some of these drives...

Someones a storage junkie...........



EDIT: i DO still stand by that the OP should think about getting a 320GiB single platter or 640GiB drive though (instead of a 500GiB one)