i7 build - couple of bits of advice please

[Bharat]

Current setup is as below :

AMD Opteron 165 CPU
ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe nForce x16 Motherboard
XFX GeForce 7900GTX PCI-E 512MB 665MHz card -> currently replaced by a Gigabyte HD4850 1GB GDDR3
Tagan EasyCon TG530-U15 530W Modular PSU
Corsair TwinX2048-3200C2 DDR4000 (2x1GB kit)
Zalman CNPS 9500
Creative X-Fi Gamer Edition
Eclipse - 62 black case
74GB WD Raptor, 500GB Samsung Spinpoint
Windows XP Pro.

I do play the occassional games, but because I do various other testing of software, browsing, usual Office applications, etc., this PC stays on 24/7 as I need to be able to go back to exactly the point I stopped doing what I was doing a couple of hours ago, for example.

Wife's PC is falling apart, so decided to give this setup to her to keep her happy, minus the new Gigabyte card, the Creative sound card, and the Eclipse case.

I intend to set it up as it was originally, using the GeForce card (changed a couple of months ago as I was getting a lot of chopping of frames in games for some reason), on-board sound, and buy a new, decent case (use the Tagan PSU in that) to put this setup into, so I can use the Eclipse for my new i7 build.

Moving to an i7 920 D0 stepping (more for cooling reasons that OC), ASUS P6T Deluxe (not sure if I should go for the Deluxe V2), 6GB RAM, probably a 1TB HD. Will be using VMWare for virtual machine testing (all sorts, from Windows 7 to Server 2008, Sharepoint, etc, <- one of the reasons I decided to go for a new setup).

Now, what I cannot figure out is what PSU to use. The machine will pretty much stay on 24/7 as mentioned above. Concerned about the energy use, and bills, what with the current financial mess.

I will 'probably' OC a little bit, doubt I will push it to the extreme, as I don't want to then run more/louder fans, so will be sticking to air-cooling. Haven't been in touch with the happenings in OC, so would not know where to start with water-cooling, and whether the Eclipse will be a good case for it.

Also not sure whether I should bother looking at a SSD as the boot drive or not. Read about the issues with the JMicron and the fact that I cannot afford to go OTT with the budget.

Would like to point out - sticking with Intel platform partly for work-related reasons, as much as AMD is a cheaper alternative.


Advice/suggestions/criticisms welcome. Thank you

[Bharat]

No replies ? Hmmm. Anyway, been doing some reading around the Net.

How about this PSU ?

Anyone used this brand before ? Seems to be a popular one in the US.

Other one could be this, though I don't know if it will have enough power to run the system or not.

[Disturbedguy]

I would personally go for a Corsair PSU.

[Infinite]

The Corsair will be more than enough. It is just extremely over priced and therefore not worth its current value. If your looking for most energy efficient PSUs, I think the Enermax Revolution 85+ are the best. IIRC on a review those PSU had on average over 90&#37; efficiency and with some tests +94%.

Dont forget, there is actually a sleep function that comes with Windows.

[staffsMike]

Why i7, doesn't sound like youwill really benefit from the extra performance it gives.

Check out AM2+ or AM3 based Phenom II's. An 720 black edition X3 sounds like it would be more than enough (good for power consumption) but the new quad cores are hitting the shelves now

Shouldn't need an awful lot of PSU, corsair, enermax, or be quiet! 500W will be enough.

[Bharat]

Well, as I mentioned above Mike, partially for work-related reasons, I am staying with Intel platform for this build. Yes, would be nice to be able to get better bang for my buck with AMD, but it's an option I am bypassing

The mutliple cores will certainly help with testing/VM, and maybe even get me into putting the system through its paces, which I kind of stopped doing since this current PC started showing signs of ageing !

Think I won't bother with the SSD for now, stick to a couple of SATA drives, have a couple of DVD-DL drives and that should be me sorted for a few months at least.

Just cannot make up my mind about what PSU wattage is OK for this setup. Don't see the point in buying a mega-powerful one that will simply sit and waste energy and give the missus ammo to fire at me with when the bills arrive

[cmndr_andi]

That PC Power & Cooling PSU is great, I have one in my system at it runs nice and quiet, I believe its nice and efficient too. Thought the 750W probably isn't required for that setup. 550W should be sufficient (as long as you don't plan on getting a second graphics card).

If you want to keep it cool and quiet I recommend getting a nice CPU cooler such as this one.

The price of SSDs is still quite high, if you want some nice HDD performance get 2 WD 640GB caviars in RAID 0. They are nice fast drives and at a very good price.

[ed^chigliak]

I can't see you needing more than 500W PSU. It doesn't sound like you a multiple GPU kind of guy so I'd be surprised if it even pulls 300W from the wall.

[Bharat]

You guys are probably hitting the nail on the head of the hammer

I don't intend to use dual-graphics cards. Hopefully, the 4850 I bought a couple of months ago and intend to use in the new system will last 3-4 years without issues. That should be enough for me.

Browsing around a bit more, I've come across this now, which could be ideal, as it's not over-priced like some of the other ones.

Now, the plan I had was to use a smaller sized, quick SATA drive for Windows and applications, and have a larger capacity 2nd SATA drive, partitioned for data storage and installing a few specific applications.

That is what I did with my current setup, although I must say the 2 seperate WD Raptors I tried as the boot drive have been quite noisy, so I am re-considering that approach.

Since I am getting the P6T Deluxe, and it has SAS, I'm tempted to get a SAS SATA drive as the boot drive....

[Infinite]

Might be an obvious point that I am making but, using a 1000W PSU doesnt mean that it constantly draws 1000W of power. If the components in your system only draw a total of 500W then that 1000W PSU will only be drawing 500W.

[Clunk]

Good choice of board and CPU, I've been tinkering with one here.

[Bharat]

Good choice of board and CPU, I've been tinkering with one here.

Yes, I have had a read of your post. Nice setup

What RAM are you using ? I'm tempted to get the 6GB Corsair 1600MHz Dominator. Will that be an overkill ?

[MrChimpy]

Current setup is as below :

AMD Opteron 165 CPU
ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe nForce x16 Motherboard
XFX GeForce 7900GTX PCI-E 512MB 665MHz card -> currently replaced by a Gigabyte HD4850 1GB GDDR3
Tagan EasyCon TG530-U15 530W Modular PSU
Corsair TwinX2048-3200C2 DDR4000 (2x1GB kit)
Zalman CNPS 9500
Creative X-Fi Gamer Edition
Eclipse - 62 black case
74GB WD Raptor, 500GB Samsung Spinpoint
Windows XP Pro.

I do play the occassional games, but because I do various other testing of software, browsing, usual Office applications, etc., this PC stays on 24/7 as I need to be able to go back to exactly the point I stopped doing what I was doing a couple of hours ago, for example.

Wife's PC is falling apart, so decided to give this setup to her to keep her happy, minus the new Gigabyte card, the Creative sound card, and the Eclipse case.

I intend to set it up as it was originally, using the GeForce card (changed a couple of months ago as I was getting a lot of chopping of frames in games for some reason), on-board sound, and buy a new, decent case (use the Tagan PSU in that) to put this setup into, so I can use the Eclipse for my new i7 build.

Moving to an i7 920 D0 stepping (more for cooling reasons that OC), ASUS P6T Deluxe (not sure if I should go for the Deluxe V2), 6GB RAM, probably a 1TB HD. Will be using VMWare for virtual machine testing (all sorts, from Windows 7 to Server 2008, Sharepoint, etc, <- one of the reasons I decided to go for a new setup).

Now, what I cannot figure out is what PSU to use. The machine will pretty much stay on 24/7 as mentioned above. Concerned about the energy use, and bills, what with the current financial mess.

I will 'probably' OC a little bit, doubt I will push it to the extreme, as I don't want to then run more/louder fans, so will be sticking to air-cooling. Haven't been in touch with the happenings in OC, so would not know where to start with water-cooling, and whether the Eclipse will be a good case for it.

Also not sure whether I should bother looking at a SSD as the boot drive or not. Read about the issues with the JMicron and the fact that I cannot afford to go OTT with the budget.

Would like to point out - sticking with Intel platform partly for work-related reasons, as much as AMD is a cheaper alternative.


Advice/suggestions/criticisms welcome. Thank you

Seems odd that cost is an issue and you state occasional gaming yet you're after an i7! Why not get one of the recent energy efficient Intel quads and through that save on motherboard and other bits? Sure, vmware can benefit from virtualisation support - that's on the Q9550S and Q9400S.

Admit it, it's techno lust

[kalniel]

Seems odd that cost is an issue and you state occasional gaming yet you're after an i7!

I believe there's some middle ground between 'skint' and 'more money than sense', otherwise those concerned with cost would just buy a secondhand AM2 and everyone else would by an extreme edition i7 965..

[Clunk]

Yes, I have had a read of your post. Nice setup

What RAM are you using ? I'm tempted to get the 6GB Corsair 1600MHz Dominator. Will that be an overkill ?

I've used Dominator 1600Mhz 6GB, G.skill 1333MHz, Ballistix 1333MHz 3x1GB @ 2000MHz, Patriot 1600MHz 6GB, Kingston HyperX 2000Mhz 3x1GB and OCZ Blade 6GB 2000MHz 7-8-7.

The Dominator is a great kit, but unless you plan on overclocking the CPU, you probably won't see much difference between those and a standard 1333MHz kit.

If you plan on getting a D0 920, then a 4GHz/1600MHz setup is probably the sweet spot.