Seeking Advice on Mid-Range Case & PSU (Near Future Bulldozer/Sandy Bridge Rig)

[Total Ignorance]

Hi guys,

I'm looking for a suitable new case & PSU unit for a new mid-to-high end build. Main uses are going to be After Effects rendering, video editing & encoding and not gaming (maybe check out Battlefield 3) but no plans to SLI/XFire.

Currently, I'm holding out on 2nd gen i5/i7s in order to see what bulldozer brings to the table. But for now, I want to get my case & PSU out of the way, along with other components that are not reliant upon the platform (HDDs etc).

Here's what I'm planning to include and need to sufficiently power & cool:
6 x 1TB Samsung F3 (2 x RAID 0 Arrays + 1 Boot + Extra Content)
2 x 4GB DDR3 RAM (1600Mhz?) + Add another 8GB Later
1 x Nvidia GTS 450
1 x Bluray Re-writer
4 x Case fans at least


Here's a case I looked at:
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/xclio...-black-w-o-psu
£47.99 on Today Only offer

And PSU:
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/550w-...-12v-120mm-fan
£46.79 Today Only

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/550w-...12v-version-22
£49.19 Today Only

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/800w-...ail-atx12v-v22
£37.80 Today Only

Or case + psu combos here:
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/220861
£74.99 (£25 off sale) + free shipping

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/220862
£99.99 + free shipping

The combos seems a good bargain, but not to my taste (and maybe spec?). I really like the first Xclio Blackhawk case, but I'm I was hoping to spend a maximum of £100 - 110 for case & modular psu but there's no super saver saver option on scan, so post is another £17 on top. Plus that Basiq modular psu looks like maybe it cant handle an i5/i7 system, so it probably cant handle bulldozer also.

Need some help/advice guys, would be dearly appreciated, preferably before these today only offers run out (or you can maybe point me to alternatives?). And sorry for the long post, tried to give as much info as I could. Thanks in advance.

[FatalSaviour]

Just wondering why the 2x RAID 0 arrays? Don't get me wrong - I can think of a few uses where they would be useful, but I'm just interested in your intentions for them. If you don't need *masses* of storage, an SSD and 1x RAID 0 array might be viable?

Also, I'm not sure whether any of this production work is mission critical - but I don't see any backup solution (or would you use one of the 1TB drives for this)?

[Zak33]

case I have used and like

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/silve...r-case-w-o-psu £32

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/xigma...0mm-fan-no-psu £28

both worth it.

[dfour]

A bit more expensive than the previous ones is the nzxt tempest evo as it will hold and cool 8 hard drives easily. Mine only has 4 in now .

http://www.nzxt.com/new/products/cra...es/tempest_evo

I would have thought you would have been looking for full tower cases to house all your hard drives.

[Total Ignorance]

Just wondering why the 2x RAID 0 arrays? Don't get me wrong - I can think of a few uses where they would be useful, but I'm just interested in your intentions for them. If you don't need *masses* of storage, an SSD and 1x RAID 0 array might be viable?

Also, I'm not sure whether any of this production work is mission critical - but I don't see any backup solution (or would you use one of the 1TB drives for this)?

Sorry for my limited explanations, but I'll try. The reason I want to use 2 RAID arrays is because, during editing I have 1 array with source media (high bit rate/uncompressed video footage) and 1 array for the renders (of said footage after applying effects). Having your source and renders separate is common practice amongst video editors and in most cases is a necessary step. Having them RAID(ed) removes some bottlenecks especially for uncompressed HD, which otherwise would cause playback to stutter on single drives. So that's 4 drives done, and I already own and use these drives so I'm not exactly buying new drives to RAID. Hope that makes sense!

[DavidM]

Hi guys,
psu but there's no super saver saver option on scan, so post is another £17 on top.

http://forums.hexus.net/scan-care-he...0-07-08-a.html

And as for SuperSavers

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I would change the PSU TBH.

If the budget is tight I would get the following one:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/550w-...l-power-supply

[Total Ignorance]

Just wondering why the 2x RAID 0 arrays? Don't get me wrong - I can think of a few uses where they would be useful, but I'm just interested in your intentions for them. If you don't need *masses* of storage, an SSD and 1x RAID 0 array might be viable?

Oh and forgot to mention that, for Backup, yes you are right, one of the other drives is for current project backups and necessary exports, but generally speaking, my backups are on external devices as it is now (I also already have these already), so backup is not really a problem for me. Also I can afford to lose the data on the render array or even the source array as these are actually taken from the original source camera formats which are backed up.

However, you have raised an interesting point with the SSD Drive; which I think will definitely help for Boot/OS/Application start-up. The only issue I see is the cost per GB, and I plan on dual booting Windows, one partition only for production work/apps and nothing more, and will be kept offline, whereas another partition for general use and go online, and I don't want those to mix. The only way I see that I can achieve this on SSDs is, with at least a 128GB+ drive, and they are not as cheap as traditional drives although they do seem to have gone down in price considerably since I last checked, so will definitely give SSDs a second thought.

Thanks for your input FatalSaviour, helped me remember what I actually had planned but got confused over, much appreciated.

[Total Ignorance]

http://forums.hexus.net/scan-care-he...0-07-08-a.html

And as for SuperSavers

My bad bad about SuperSavers, I did see those. But seriously, FREE POST?? Is this for life, as in, once in and never out?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

There is also the Scan Shop Offers webpage:

http://www.scan.co.uk/shopoffers/index.aspx

If you buying a dedicated graphics card for gaming I would look at one which is faster.

[no_numb]

My bad bad about SuperSavers, I did see those. But seriously, FREE POST?? Is this for life, as in, once in and never out?

Free postage is for life, well as long as they keep doing the deal. Its been running q a few years now!

[Total Ignorance]

I would change the PSU TBH.

If the budget is tight I would get the following one:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/550w-...l-power-supply

Looks good, but I'm thinking if 550w is enough for all the components mentioned. Will it leave any headroom for something else I may add in future (nothing too taxing gfx, but maybe a couple more drives)?

[melon]

A bit more expensive than the previous ones is the nzxt tempest evo as it will hold and cool 8 hard drives easily. Mine only has 4 in now .

http://www.nzxt.com/new/products/cra...es/tempest_evo

I would have thought you would have been looking for full tower cases to house all your hard drives.

Does the water cooling make a big difference ?

[planet436]

Does the water cooling make a big difference ?

For high end SLI yes, for all other purposes it will make a large difference to your wallet without much benefit. If your worried about keeping your HD cool make sure you choose a case that has fans which blow directly over them.

That NZXT case looks fine for this purpose, dual front intakes with decent fans will be plenty cooling for the system.