Potential New Setup - Opinions

[cprowe]

Ok so I'm holding off on a laptop for the time being and instead upgrading current PC. Was tempted to go for a Mac Pro / iMac but I think the price for them is without even a monitor is crazy.

I'm a graphic designer so it's primary use with be Photoshop and other similar programs, I'll be doing little if any gaming on it. So far i've got the following spec (from Scan):

BX80601920 - Intel i7 920, D0 SLBEJ S1366, Bloomfield, 2.66 GHz, QPI 4.8GT/s, 8MB Cache, 20x Ratio, 130W, Retail
£211.80 Inc VAT

Asus P6TD Deluxe, Intel X58, Sok 1366, PCI-E 2.0(x16), DDR3 2000/1800/1600, SATA 3Gb/s RAID, ATX
£201.45 Inc VAT

CMFSSD-32D1 - 32GB Corsair, Extreme Series X32, MLC-Flash, 2.5", SATA II, Read 220MB/s, Write 135MB/s, Retail
£102.32 Inc VAT

1TB Seagate ST31000528AS Barracuda 7200.12, SATA 3Gb/s, 7200rpm, 32MB Cache, 8.5 ms, NCQ
£64.37 Inc VAT

2 x TR3X6G1866C9DF - 6GB (3x2GB) Corsair Dominator, Triple DDR3 PC3- (1866), 240 Pin, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 9, DHX, XMP
2 x £181.91 Inc VAT

896MB XFX GTX 260 Black 55nm, 2000MHz GDDR3, GPU 680MHz, Shader 1440 MHz, 216 Cores, + Batman
£154.40 Inc VAT

GFC-00599 - Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit, Single, - OEM
£78.28 Inc VAT

Samsung SH-S223B/RSMN 22x DVD±R, 8x DVD±DL, DVD+RW x8/-RW x6, x12 RAM SATA Retail (3xBezels)
£19.77 Inc VAT

1000W Corsair CMPSU-1000HXUK, ATX, EPS12V, PS/2, Modular Power Supply, UK Version, 5 Year Warranty
£171.47 Inc VAT

Lian-Li PC-7 YCF B Plus II Aluminium Black Midi Tower Case With Side Window & Fan, Without PSU
£87.27 Inc VAT

LS24MYKABC - 24" Samsung SM2443BW Black Widescreen LCD, 1920x1200, 1000:1, 300 cd/m², 5 ms, VESA (New Version)
£246.41 Inc VAT

Total Price: £1701.36

Looking for peoples thoughts on the above and whether an alternative for anything would be better. I've had help from a friend to choose everything as I've pretty much no idea what's good and what's not at the moment.

Thanks!

[Growkin]

Depends when ya buying but for future proof maybe get a DX11 card, but thats only really for gaming. The rest seems good personally

[kungpo]

Very similar to my setup, apart from the SSD. All I will say is that it will be goddam fast. I would question the virtue of a 32GB SSD though and say you'll get decent performance with a pair of disks in RAID0. Unless you have a specific thought around the use of the SSD.

[scaryjim]

If you're not gaming is the GTX260 perhaps overkill?

If you're after hardware acceleration via Cuda, you might be better off with something like the new GT240, which should give decent cuda performance (it has 96 cuda cores) and will use a lot less power (like, over 50W less!)... I also believe that much of Adobe's software can also be accelerated via ATI GPUs, so the 4730 / 4770 / 4870 would come into the reckoning and possibly be better value for money...

I'd also question the real world value of 12GB of RAM personally.

Otherwise it looks like a stonkingly nice build

[cprowe]

Thanks for the replies , SSD is basically for the system drive for quick booting times etc which I don't mind paying extra for.

Any chance Scan would offer free delivery with spending so much?

[cprowe]

Thanks scaryjim, I'll take a look at the ATI cards.

The idea behind 12GB is the fact that i'll be running under 64 bit therefore be able to make use of it all? Although it'll take a lot to use that much there will be times when I'll have multiple programs open along with Photoshop and plenty of big PSD files therefore if it offers that bit of extra performance I don't mind paying that bit extra for it. Not 100% sure if i'm right about this though?

[scaryjim]

If the files aren't in the working set they'll get farmed out to swap, and pulling them back into physical memory would probably cause some latency, but with 6GB of RAM I doubt it'd happen that often. Personally, I'd buy 6GB now, then if I found there were situations where switching between applications or having several large files open slowed down the computer I'd add another 6 later - particularly as the price of RAM is projected to fall a little over the next year or so...

[kungpo]

Will Win 7 x64 even fit on a 32GB SSD....also, it'll want 2.5x the size of ram for pagefile...

I have a mixed view of 6gb or 12gb. I lobbed in 12gb just to be done with it. The only bit I ever really change is the GPU and the HDDs.

I agree about the power of a 260GTX, but it really is more a mid-range card now and not really expensive (if you're not concerned about the electric bill). Just make sure it will fit in the case...!

[GheeTsar]

Do you really need a 1000W power supply too? You could save yourself £70+ with a 600W supply, which would be enough with only a single GTX260.

[kmac]

Do you really want to go down the Socket 1366 route?

I though Intel was moving away from that so there may not be many upgrade options in the future

You may also want to wait for a Scan special on "today" only as they usually package that CPU with memmory and even that m/board

With regard to delivery, if you have twenty posts on here you can get free Scan delivery. Do a search on "Scan free delivery"

[cprowe]

Will Win 7 x64 even fit on a 32GB SSD....also, it'll want 2.5x the size of ram for pagefile...

I believe x64 is 20GB so should be sufficient. When you say about 2.5x the size of the ram for pagefile, what do you mean exactly? Would it be better to change something to take care of this better or...?

I agree about the power of a 260GTX, but it really is more a mid-range card now and not really expensive (if you're not concerned about the electric bill). Just make sure it will fit in the case...!

I'm guessing the extra power will not make any difference at all so I might as well just use a 600w instead?

@kmac - I've no idea, I won't be upgrading anytime soon after this. Do you think it'd be worthwhile looking at alternatives then? Seem to be so many different types of CPU available nowadays.

Once again thanks for all the replies!

[kungpo]

Actually, I take that back - the pagefile on mine is set at 12gb and recommended at 18gb.

The pagfile is Virtual memory - even though you'd have thought you wouldn't need it much with 12gb ram...! But the 32GB SSD will not really be big enough I think. Add some apps - Office, Skype, itunes etc and you'll wish you had a 64GB or better.

600w should be ample for power requirements.

My understanding is 1366 is the better long term investment as the next gen will also use 1366. I guess that only really matters if you can see yourself changing the CPU only at some point in the future. Seeing as an i7 920 is likely to have plenty performance for the forseeable future I'd imagine the entire box would be changed wen the time comes.

[ajones]

I'm probably going to reiterate everything above, but here's my 2-penneth. Alternatively, you could wait for "Cat's system of the week", which are usually pretty darned good!

Don't many big graphics platforms like Photoshop go to town on temporary files? In that case, you may find that your 32GB SSD won't cut the mustard.

Whilst 12GB does look overkill, again I'm thinking that running lots of big graphics tools would probably love all that space in which to roam free. If you've got the dosh then go for it

The PSU looks like overkill. I'd guess that 600W would suffice.

If you don't need nVidia than but can't wait, have a shufty at Ati 5xxx series. If you can wait, it may be prudent to do so what with nVidias next gen is just around the corner (which may be as good as some folks hope). In any case, one would expect an impact on card prices in general.

You may as well add an aftermarket CPU cooler as well. Would be better than the stock and quieter too. Splash out on a Corsair H50 or a big tower

[arthurleung]

X58 does seems a bit pointless here unless you're planning to go 6-cores in the very near future.

For the SSD, even if the working set get stuffed to the pagefile, perhaps you should buy 3x500G 7200RPM drive for the same price? The access should be pretty much linear and hence 3 of Samsung F3 should give you a peak speed of 390MB/s, compared to 220MB/s out of the SSD.

Are you looking to overclock? If not there is not much reason for getting a very expensive motherboard, when a cheaper one will do the same for less.

For the PSU, I don't see how the whole system would take more than 400W so I'm sure a 550W will be enough. Lower wattage also comes with less cables so you wouldn't even need it to be modular

And, you sure you want a Samsung gaming monitor with a TN panel for graphics design?

[cprowe]

Ok so I'm thinking I'm going to do the following;

- Keep the same CPU but downgrade the motherboard if it's not going to make that much difference?
- Change from a 1000w to 600w PSU
- Possibly look at switching to a ATi GPU
- Add a Corsair H50
- Add a bigger SSD drive
- Switch from one 24" monitor to two 22".

@arthurleung - I didn't realise it was a gaming monitor, I was actually looking at getting two 22" screens but my friend pointed me towards the Samsung one. May look at reverting back to the original idea of two 22" monitors instead. Do you think I should be looking at any sort of specific monitor for doing designing on?

[kungpo]

The P6SE is ok - doesn't support SLi but does support X-Fire. Seems to OC quite well too. Although the motherboard is not something I would scrimp on generally.