Conceptual Build for a person with too much money

[iftiq]

Hi,

Having recently been sacked, I think perhaps it's time to do the responsible thing- blow some serious money and build a new computer. I use my computer for a variety of things and I multi-task extensively. I use Microsoft Excel a lot, and commonly have very very large spreadsheets doing hundreds of calculations. I almost always have several dozen tabs open in Chrome or Firefox and Outlook. I frequently watch videos, listen to music, etc. I also, on occasion do some light Photoshop work and InDesign stuff. A lot of the stuff I do involves having live price feeds open all the time and ticking into excel spreadsheets. I play games occasionally- but mostly old-school games and am not too hung up on raw gaming power. The key priorities are web browsing, office, videos, music.

I'd be very happy if I could build a computer that does all this and is quiet too.

Finally, I have a disproportionate sum of money to spend and very little sense.

With these things in mind; this is what I've thought out in Scan:

Motherboard- Asus P6T WS Revolution iX58
Processor- Intel i7 940, 2.93 GHz
RAM- 4GB Corsair TwinX XMS3 DDR3
PSU- 1000W Corsair HX Series
Graphics- 512MB Sapphire HD 4870 Toxic
HD.1- 500 GB Western Digital Caviar Black
HD.2- 73.5 GB Fujitsu SAS

CPU Cooler- AKASA Nero AK-967
Case- AKASA Omega


From my readings the Asus P6T comes with onboard SAS which obviates the need for a controller.

Has anyone had any experience with the case or cpu cooler? Any glaring errors/omissions/screw ups? Any other advice?

Thanks,
Ifti

[Thorsson]

I think that a 640Gb drive. with the larger 320Gb platters, is worth the small price increase, but I wonder whether two Velocis, in Raid 0, might better suit your usage. The PSU is overkill for this setup IMO.

IIRC DDR3 needs to be in multiples of 3, so you want 6Gb, rather than 4, presuming you're running Vista64. Otherwise use 3Gb.

As I don't see games listed why a 4870 rather than, say a 4850? Indeed, in your shoes, I'd be thinking about a monitor upgrade, even multi-monitor, before spending so much on either HDD or Gfx.

[TheAnimus]

If your building seriously expensive PC, why not use an SSD for the OS drive?

(or better yet two, striped)

[circuitmonkey]

Agreed the power supply is over kill for your needs, I should think that a good brand of power supply (such as corsair) at 500 - 600 Watts should be more than enough for your initial specs.
As for memory, If you are indeed doing some heavy multi tasking the I would lean towards the 6GB (Again, should be on 3 sticks to make the most out of the i7's built in triple channel memory controller.) and as Thorsson pointed out to address over 3.5 ish GB you'll need a 64bit OS such as vista64.
As for graphics card, I would be more tempted to go for a Nvidia card (GTX 260?), only because you mentioned that you where going to be using Photoshop and if memory serves you should be able to use CUDA to shift some of the processing from your cpu to your gpu. You'll need to look into this further as I don't use photoshop myself.
And again, as Thorsson mentioned, if you don't already have so, a multi-monitor setup would be very useful, particularly with multi-tasking.

Enjoy the build!

[Hawker1986]

If your building seriously expensive PC, why not use an SSD for the OS drive?

(or better yet two, striped)

Dude said it right there, if money is no object kick it up with some decent SSDs

Hawker

[directhex]

RAM- 4GB Corsair TwinX XMS3 DDR3

i7 uses tri-channel, not dual channel

[Clunk]

It will happily use dual channel too.

[Maccer101]

Having recently been sacked, I think perhaps it's time to do the responsible thing- blow some serious money and build a new computer.

I'm being a KillJoy, but this is not the best idea at the moment.

Plus its overkill, I'd just build a cheap dual core system (overclock it a bit) with 64bit OS and 4gb RAM a good CPU cooler & something like a passive 9500gt and it'll be quiet. Maybe splash out on a nice case as thats the only bit anyone really sees.

[Fraz]

I'd get the 1GB version of the 4870.

[Pob255]

I'd also look at 2 screens and maybe a new desk to hold them.
reason Have a look at the Hazro monitors, they do a very nice 30" to go with that I'd look at a 2nd smaller wide screen, rotated through 90 degrees to form a desktop extension without making the setup too wide.

I'd agree with the 6gb on the simple grounds of slightly better performance and why get 44 when you can have 6 mentality.

I'd also look into SSD or/and raid array not a single HD esp if this is going to be a work related machine.

However

I'm being a KillJoy, but this is not the best idea at the moment.

Have to find my self agreeing with Maccer here.

[aidanjt]

If it's a money no-holds-barred workstation build. This is what I'd get:

£459.99 - Intel Core i7 940 2.93Ghz (Nehalem) (Socket LGA1366) - Retail
£724.48 - 2 x Intel X25-M Mainstream 80GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive (SSDSA2MH080G1)
£252.99 - Asus P6T Deluxe Intel X58 (Socket 1366) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard
£224.24 - EVGA GeForce GTX 260 "Core 216 55nm" SSC 896MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (896-P3-1258-AR)
£338.08 - 2 x OCZ 6GB DDR3 PC3-10666C7 1333MHz Platinum (3x2GB) Triple Channel DDR3 (OCZ3P1600LV6GK)
£164.44 - LiteOn DH-4B1S-10C 4x Blu Ray Writer SATA Drive - Retail LiteOn DH-4B1S-10C 4x Blu Ray Writer SATA Drive - Retail
£143.74 - Akasa Omega Aluminium Case - Black (No PSU) Akasa Omega Aluminium Case - Black (No PSU)
£131.09 - Tagan PipeRock TG800-BZ 800w Modular BZ Series PSU
£131.09 - Asus Xonar D2X 7.1 PCI-Express Sound Card (90-YAA055-1UAN00Z)
£258.72 - 3 x Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (WD10EADS)

Total - £2,846.08

Silly expensive, also a silly spec. One thing you could do is drop the SSDs and HDD and get 4 or 5 300GB raptors instead, it would probably work out faster, cheaper, and more reliable. But all the kiddies wanna go all SSD, new flanged tech, n all that. That case is also rather water-cooling friendly, but I didn't bother shopping for a kit or components, you can do that.

[iftiq]

Thanks for the suggestions so far. It is of course a ridiculously stupid thing to do in the present climate but I've been promising myself a new computer for about a year now and now that I'm unemployed I find I have the time and some money saved up to build one. So I'm throwing caution to the wind.

It seems that a few things have come up in the suggestions below:

RAM- Seems that three sticks are the way to go, so I've changed to 3 x 2GB Corsair DDR3

Graphics- I am indeed tempted by multi monitor but at the the moment that would mean bigger desk, which means bigger flat, and though property is cheaper now than before, I think it probably has a ways to go. So I'm looking at a 23inch Dell which has a bigger than standard resolution of 2048 x 1152. As for a GPU that can take load off the CPU in Photoshop, I had read that ATI supports this better than nVidia. Is this wrong? Perhaps if the 4870 is overkill then a 4850 is more reasonable?

Storage- Seems to be a question between SSD or SAS, I am intrigued by SSD, I've got a cheapo (MLC) one right now and I am indeed extremely impressed by boot times into Windows but it is a bit of a hassle because of the stuttering problem in Windows. I've managed to alleviate it mostly but I understand that this is an inherent problem in SSD technology at the moment. Do higher end (more expensive) drives alleviate the issue? Any thoughts on what the speed difference will be between SSD and SAS? RAID also seems like an interesting option but my experience with that has been messy and less than stellar boost to how fast the system feels. The Intel SSDs do indeed look very nice, but it does just seem ridiculously expensive (even by the standards of this exercise).

Many thanks for your help so far.

[Hawker1986]

Well to answer some of your SSD questions the stutter problems are annoying and in some cases have been alleviated. The intel drives do not have the problem, but are very expensive for the amount of storage (though there has been a recent price drop).

Hope thats of some help.

Hawker

[magneticman]

if money is no object :

Wait for the i7 975 and overclock that bastard to 5ghz, get a P6T WS revolution, put 3 GTX 295s into tri-sli, 12gb of 2000mhz DD3, couple of SSDs in Raid 0 and then watch Excel seriously fly.

[dbh]

All that for excel hmmm! lol

[Thorsson]

Absolutely "nul point" in SLi if it's not for games. There have always been workstation Gfx cards for serious non-game Gfx, but I know an equal amount of nothing about those.