Comments on Ultimate office based machine?
Ultimate PC for video/photo editing? Graphics card is of reasonable quality and since it will be used for photoshop etc, isn't hugely important?
That said, if we're spending 2k on a PC is seems a bit odd to do so and not go all out on the GC as well but there we are! Would appreciate comments on this build :).
CPU - Intel i7 965 Extreme Edition 2 x 3.2 GHz
GPU - 512MB XFX GTS 250
Motherboard - Asus Rampage II Extreme
Memory - 12GB Corsair Dominator Ram
Hard Drive - 2TB Samsung Spinpoint
Optical Drive - Pioneer BDR Blu-Ray/DVD Writer
Case - Antec 300 Black
PSU - 1000W Be Quiet Dark Power Pro
Re: Comments on Ultimate office based machine?
Shouldn't that be 4 x 3.2Ghz.. and the chip seems an awful waste of money tbh, you could get a normal 2.6GHz i7 and overclock to 3.0GHz without issue I'm sure.
1000W is way way over the top, you barely need 400W.
Case is a bit pants for such an expensive build but will do the job. I would get something nice like an antec P182 for noise or Silverstone Fortress for looks and noise :)
Re: Comments on Ultimate office based machine?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
staffsMike
Shouldn't that be 4 x 3.2Ghz.. and the chip seems an awful waste of money tbh, you could get a normal 2.6GHz i7 and overclock to 3.0GHz without issue I'm sure.
1000W is way way over the top, you barely need 400W.
Case is a bit pants for such an expensive build but will do the job. I would get something nice like an antec P182 for noise or Silverstone Fortress for looks and noise :)
Of course it should, silly me.
I had thought it was overkill, the 650W Be Quiet would knock £90 off of the build price and would comfortably cover the power needs.
Overclocking... I don't know. It's just not my bag but for £400 perhaps it's worth a go! Would the Akasa Nero keep up with it?
And the case was just first one I saw really. the P180 was the case I used on my last build and I love it. No reason why I should stray from that theme!
Thanks for the comments :)
Re: Comments on Ultimate office based machine?
I would get a GTX260 or HD4870 as they cost only slightly more than the GTS250 and are much faster.
Re: Comments on Ultimate office based machine?
If there's one thing that reading up on Mini-ITX builds has taught me, it's that nobody needs a 1000W PSU. Some of the rigs people are running on a 120W Pico PSU are phenomenal! Even a 650W is way, way more than that system can draw.
I've also seen a feature over at Tom's Hardware that compares 3GB, 6GB and 12GB DDR3. I'm not sure if they benchmarked any programs that you're going to be running, but their conclusion was that 3GB is the sweet spot, 6 and 12 make a very minimal (if any) improvement.
Re: Comments on Ultimate office based machine?
As before, there is no point throwing money at an i7 965, you'd be far better off with a 920 instead - if you want to overclock, it will do it easily, and in most cases just as well as the 965 would do.
Definitely think about the software you're going to be using when you quote 12GB RAM - make sure it will actually be used, since a typical office/gaming PC probably won't benefit from having more than 6GB. Also, in all likelihood it isn't worth spending a lot of extra money on faster modules, as it's very challenging to spot the difference.
What do you mean by 2TB Spinpoint by the way? Is that 2 x 1TB? Were you intending to RAID it or not? With the money you've saved from the processor and PSU downgrades, I would highly recommend looking at an OCZ Vertex SSD drive to complement your spindle hard drives, they would be fantastic for video editing and to put the operating system onto. Your call, but it would be my first choice when upgrading my PC to improve overall performance.
As stated previously, if you're gaming then contemplate a faster graphics card, and 1000W is massive overkill.
Re: Comments on Ultimate office based machine?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
AshMcD
Ultimate PC for video/photo editing? Graphics card is of reasonable quality and since it will be used for photoshop etc, isn't hugely important?
That said, if we're spending 2k on a PC is seems a bit odd to do so and not go all out on the GC as well but there we are! Would appreciate comments on this build :).
CPU - Intel i7 965 Extreme Edition 2 x 3.2 GHz
GPU - 512MB XFX GTS 250
Motherboard - Asus Rampage II Extreme
Memory - 12GB Corsair Dominator Ram
Hard Drive - 2TB Samsung Spinpoint
Optical Drive - Pioneer BDR Blu-Ray/DVD Writer
Case - Antec 300 Black
PSU - 1000W Be Quiet Dark Power Pro
Get yourself a 920 and the extra money that you were going to spend on the 965, spend some of it on a decent sized SSD for your O/S.
You also mention Photoshop, if it's CS4, you can make use of the GPU for a number of things which will give you a good bump in speed.
Rampage II, Dominators and a 1000w PSU are all a waste of cash on an office machine. Virtually any i7 board with 6 slots will handle the 12GB of memory so you can probably save over £100 on the motherboard alone, a good, branded 600w ish PSU will give you enough power and plenty of overhead.
Re: Comments on Ultimate office based machine?
A 920 can hit 4Ghz easily, and save money to go with the 965 (My 965 I got for half price so it was a good deal ^^ )
6Gb memory will be more than enough, and no faster than 1600Mhz is needed.
1000W may be too much for that gpu. Also I would get a GTX285/270 or HD4870/4890 if you game, doesn't seem worth buying a core i7 to me without buying a decent graphics card. Just made my friend with a 8800gtx and core i7 920 get a GTX285 :P
If you want to save on the motherboard, I recently had a Gigabyte UD4P and it clocked a 940 ES to 4.3Ghz on air cooling, and a 920 to 4Ghz so that will be cheaper and even handle any overclock you pretty much want. As for overclocking, it is probably recommended on the core i7 due to the amazing overclockability where you can get 50% extra performance from the 920 :O
Re: Comments on Ultimate office based machine?
Instead of getting one ultra-high end machine, depends on if your video/photo editing steps can be distributed, you could get a couple of less powerful machines for more overall performance.
I recently setup my home network for video editing over GbE and running pre-processing (avisynth) and x264 encoding. (Couldn't afford to buy an i7 rig but I have plenty of old machines available)
With a C2Q as master and two C2D laptops and one CD laptop as slave. Running 12 separate instances (12 cores, some use the GPU as well) it drains about 450W of power altogether.
I effectively have 11GB of ram running across the whole network and the GbE is only loaded to about 300Mbps.
Certainly this kind of setup is not for everyone. Purely in terms of GFLOPS value given by Intel, my setup is equivalent to i7 965@ 5.94Ghz.
Re: Comments on Ultimate office based machine?
As pretty much everyone else has said, the sensible thing to do here would be to get the i7 920, overclock it and pick up an OCZ Vertex 120GB which should greatly improve video editing and improve the system performance in general by plenty, if you're still wanting to spend then get 2 and raid0 them :)
Re: Comments on Ultimate office based machine?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
McPhee
If there's one thing that reading up on Mini-ITX builds has taught me, it's that nobody needs a 1000W PSU. Some of the rigs people are running on a 120W Pico PSU are phenomenal! Even a 650W is way, way more than that system can draw.
I completely agree, even with a power hungry HD2900 and a highly overclocked Q6600 water cooling pump, 4 fans, 6gb of ram, 2 optical, 3 HDD's, dual tv tuner, audigy 2, a few usb things and a partridge in a pear tree my system at load would theoreticly run on a 300w psu, of course it prob wouldn't be able to supply the amps on the 12V rail unless it was a very very good 300w one, but it really dosn't need the 700w psu I have in it.
The good thing about having the psu I do though is it isn't very strained, and because of that the fan stays pretty damned quiet, and I can rest easy knowing that it is unlikely to blow due to being near the limit.
Re: Comments on Ultimate office based machine?
But the bigger PSU can save money, it only draws what it needs and every PSU is the most efficient at 50% load, which will save money in the long run if you buy a 1kw PSU for a pc that loads around 500W than a 600W would do. Especially ones such as the Enermax Revolution which is about 88% efficient at this type of load.
Re: Comments on Ultimate office based machine?
Point being that most PC's dont pull anywhere near 500W.. not even close.
Re: Comments on Ultimate office based machine?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
McPhee
I've also seen a feature over at Tom's Hardware that compares 3GB, 6GB and 12GB DDR3. I'm not sure if they benchmarked any programs that you're going to be running, but their conclusion was that 3GB is the sweet spot, 6 and 12 make a very minimal (if any) improvement.
There's a BIG difference between 3GB and 6GB in terms of use on a day-to-day system though. 3GB won't slow things down much, but 6GB will speed things up. SuperFetch will just gobble that extra RAM up and things will whiz along for fun. It's one of the reasons I've got 12GB (though if I was buying it, I'd have been quite happy with 6GB!).
As to 6GB or 12GB that depends entirely on what you're doing and how big the files are that you'll be playing with. If you're working with ultra-high res scans or something then you might want that extra, but it's very rare that there is a need for that much.
If you've no intention of overclocking, just get the i7 920 or 940. The 940 isn't that much quicker than the 920, but it's a lot less expensive than the 965. It's not worth the extra over the 920, but if the CPU is important, then consider it. Most would just get the 920 and overclock it though. :)
As for everything else... just what others have said. 1000W overkill, consider a decent SSD or 2, etc.
Re: Comments on Ultimate office based machine?
A quick google lead me to this silentpcreview article - the article itself is a correction of previously published material, and yes it's a few years old, but it provides a fantastic overview of PSU efficiency at different power draw levels. The noticable thing (to me, anyway!) is how poorly all the PSUs perform at low draw, and how evenly most PSUs perform in the 20% - 80% draw range: some perform well up to 100% draw, some drop off.
Given that modern PCs spend a lot of time idling, and are particularly effective at reducing their power draw when idling, utilising a 1000W PSU is likely to result in it spending most of its time running at < 10% load, when the computer is idling - and being incredibly inefficient about it! It's a far safer bet to have a PSU rated as little above the peak draw of your components as possible, which will then be much more efficient when the computer is idling.
Re: Comments on Ultimate office based machine?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
this_is_gav
There's a BIG difference between 3GB and 6GB in terms of use on a day-to-day system though. 3GB won't slow things down much, but 6GB will speed things up. SuperFetch will just gobble that extra RAM up and things will whiz along for fun. It's one of the reasons I've got 12GB (though if I was buying it, I'd have been quite happy with 6GB!).
As to 6GB or 12GB that depends entirely on what you're doing and how big the files are that you'll be playing with. If you're working with ultra-high res scans or something then you might want that extra, but it's very rare that there is a need for that much.
If you've no intention of overclocking, just get the i7 920 or 940. The 940 isn't that much quicker than the 920, but it's a lot less expensive than the 965. It's not worth the extra over the 920, but if the CPU is important, then consider it. Most would just get the 920 and overclock it though. :)
As for everything else... just what others have said. 1000W overkill, consider a decent SSD or 2, etc.
I think it is more like how Windows (64 bit in particular) handles cache. SuperFetch might seems like a good idea but then if you're using 200MB/s SSD (or a multiples of them) the advantage of SuperFetch is minimal.
I used to struggle with 4GB (and a certain extend 8GB) of ram because of Windows caching my lossless files (a couple of GBs in size and I open half a dozen at the same time). Forcing Windows to use a smaller cache (from 8TB default to 512MB) I perceive no performance penalty (actually significantly more performance due to more free ram).
Once you manage to get Windows to unload those useless cache (Its not caching programs which takes 5MB each but large files thats GBs in size and I'm only accessing them at 4MB/s) you'll realize 12GB = Faster is just a false sense.