Looking to spend some money on a system, but have a few questions

[Terrace]

Few questions from a prospective buyer:

1. Is it possible to buy a system that has the latest bios and the latest windows updates before overclocking and testing begins?
2. Can a computor be brought with the OS installed on a non solid state drive and Intel Rapid Storage setup so that the solid state drive is boosting the OS drive as a cache?
3. is a 850w TX capable of powering a system with 7970 in Crossfire (only one to be brought with the system) a SSD, three other HD's (Tottaling 4) and many of the USB ports used? (In theory all of them at once to be safe)
4. Do you disable hyperthreading to get your 4.6ghz Overlocks on systems that can hyperthread? I know of one company that does this and its not what I'm looking for.
5. Is it possible to get the required cables pre routed for me to connect my own added Sata drive from home? A samsung spinpoint F1
6. Adding a Hard Drive from home and a second graphics card later on (fitted correctly and not the cause of any problems) Will or will not affect the warranty?
7. Silverstone Raven RV02B-EW has 'USB 3.0' in the title on the individual buying page but USB 3.0 is not listed in the description, is it or isnt it USB 3.0 capable on the front panel?
8. I already have a Hard Drive with Windows 7 Home premium on it (the one i'd like to connect from home, the Spinpoint F1) will connecting it to one of the later SATA slots avoid it booting with the windows 7 that is on the "from home" hard drive? Idealy i'd pre format it but its currently the OS drive of the system i'm already using.
9. Will the Corsair H100 fit in the Silverstone Raven RV02B-EW comfortably without working against the airflow design or all hot air up? Would any of the air CPU cooler options be cheaper whilst more effective or quieter?
10. Could I please have a price check on all of the bellow, I've got a guess but I bet i've added it up a little wrong and it would be better to check than assume

The computer will be used for Eyefinity gaming, game recording for youtube @ 1280x720 and Rendering of recorded game footage. I currently have a 6970 crossfire system with a 4.6ghz OC'd i7 2600k thats going back to the crooked company I brought it from (for reasons I could go on for pages about) that already does all of these things very nicely hopefully the one card will be good enough until I have the spare money to go Multi GPU again. I much prefer a written reply so I have something to refer back to rather than do anything by phone call where everything must be remembered correctly.

The system specifications i'm looking for is something like the 3XS Vengeance Z77 SLI - Custom Series - Updated June 2012 with the following changes that were available on the sheet in underlined italics and completely unlisted customizations in bold italics

Silverstone Raven RV02B-EW Black Full Tower Case
Asus P8Z77-V, Intel Z77 Chipset
Intel Core i7 3770K, Ivy Bridge, 3.5GHz, Quad Core + Hyperthreading, 8MB Cache
Corsair H100 Hydro Series Extreme Performance CPU cooler
Extreme Overclock - 4.6Ghz - Tuned to absolute safe maximum - Performance prioritised over acoustics
8Gb (2x4Gb) Corsair Vengeance LP, DDR3, 1600Mhz
ScanFX Radeon HD 7970 X-Edition AMD/ATI Graphic Card - 3GB
Corsair Enthusiast TX V2 850w
60GB OCZ Agility 3 SSD
Seagate 1TB SATA 3 ST1000DM003 Performance Hard Drive OEM
(second) Seagate 1TB SATA 3 ST1000DM003 Performance Hard Drive OEM
24x DVD Writer Sony AD-5280S-0B
sound card removed (onboard used)
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit

Standard 3XS System Warranty - 2 Years (1st Year Onsite / 2nd Year Return to Base)
3XS System Delivery & Setup - Same as above plus all protective packaging removed from within the system, keyboard, mouse and monitor connected and powered on to the desktop.

[cactusjack]

Hi Terrace - if you email their sales team, you will get a detailed response within a working day or two. I would log a query using their online system.

[cactusjack]

Some very interesting questions though!

[Terrace]

Hi Terrace - if you email their sales team, you will get a detailed response within a working day or two. I would log a query using their online system.

Thanks for the suggestion, unfortunately I can't seem to find their sales teams email. on the page 3xs.scan.co.uk at the bottom left there is a Telephone number and Address, but the email says 'click here' but when I do I get a loading bar for 60 seconds and then a "page could not be displayed" If you happen to know the Sales team email I would be very grateful if you could post it.

[cactusjack]

Best place is here:

https://secure.scan.co.uk/aspnet/sup...px?QueryType=S

I used this contact form, and they got back to me swiftly.

[Terrace]

Best place is here:

I used this contact form, and they got back to me swiftly.

I saw this a few minutes after you had posted it, and went to fill out the form with the intention of thanking you later. I then got to thinking and researching graphics cards again just to double check that is what I wanted, and here I am a day later at 23:34 only just filling the form out. Thank you for the help

[cactusjack]

I saw this a few minutes after you had posted it, and went to fill out the form with the intention of thanking you later. I then got to thinking and researching graphics cards again just to double check that is what I wanted, and here I am a day later at 23:34 only just filling the form out. Thank you for the help

No worries - hopefully someone from Scan got back to you and answered your questions.

What graphics card did you choose in the end?

[Terrace]

No worries - hopefully someone from Scan got back to you and answered your questions.

What graphics card did you choose in the end?

Yes they did, and almost every answer was beyond positive, I was able to gain multiple quotes on price as one component was misinterprated as another and I had the next fixed quote in minutes, and I was able to think some more about other changes I could make and easyly substitute one price for another as I was thinking and keeping my budget in mind.

Problems have only arrisen that the price of alot of the core components have gone up since I was deciding. Just with these changes themselves they make the exact same computer cost £30 more.
That and that the previous people I brought my last PC from have seemingly ran off with my money once I returned the defective computer to them. Thankfully I brought it on a Credit Card which will mean I will have the money back garenteed even if I have to wait a little longer.

Graphics Card I decided on in the end was the ScanFX Radeon HD 7970 X-Edition which went up over £27 by itself since I last looked at it on the same page! I went for this instead of the the 4gb Nvidia 670 because of the bitrate speed of the Ram is just as/more important than how much Ram is on the Graphics Card when spanning the games across more than one monitor. Although when reading some others peoples benchmarks and opinions the 670 dispite having the slower ram and FPS on a multimonitor game gives a smoother experience when in SLI. As having two graphics cards is my later goal it makes deciding very difficult.

Hopefully over the next few days while I wait for the weekend to pass and the money to come back in the prices will drop a little and the internet will make me a little wiser about which Graphics Card will be the right one for my system, with future multi-graphics card setup and all.

[cactusjack]

Hi Terrace - I went from considering a high end ATI card, to considering a GTX670 and then to a GTX680.

I don't like ATI given the driver issues I had with my old 4850 card, and so from then on I was Nvidia for life

I wont be running a multimonitor setup, so have gone with a fast 2GB 680 card.

[Terrace]

Snap! I have a 4850 in the machine that I am writing to you on right now, It has really been a stable beauty with no problems at all, There was one time that I had two games that both Only ran fine on specific (but diffrent) drivers but i remember it being fixed the month after.
I've brough no less than two modern computers since then from companies where I thought the price was good, but the goods apparently must have fallen off of a truck and we're as dodgy as the traders themselves, but i'm hoping third time is the charm, and as long as I use a Credit Card i'm safe from the crooks.

I've used a inherited laptop that has a Nvidia 550m in it (so quite recent) and I really did like the nvidia driver suite. Still my main goal is to get the best price for the money for the setup i'm using, but everyone is telling me conflicting stories with their benchmarks

[cactusjack]

What monitor(s) will you be using for gaming?

[Terrace]

What monitor(s) will you be using for gaming?

I have 3 BenQ G2222HDL monitors running each at 1920x1080 for 5760x1080 that I was using for my last system and soon the next one. With my Ati 4850 machine though I can only have two of them plugged in (and that doesn't give good results!)

[cactusjack]

ooooh 3 monitors! Shiny!

When you do a multimonitor setup, do they have to be the same type of monitor for all?

And is it possible to have work documents viewed on one and games on the other?

[Terrace]

ooooh 3 monitors! Shiny!

When you do a multimonitor setup, do they have to be the same type of monitor for all?

And is it possible to have work documents viewed on one and games on the other?

Used to be that you needed three identical ones (or edit some files so that the PC thought so), now you no longer need to with later driver updates.

Its very possible to work with anything on one and game on the other ones, the best games are ones with a option called "Fullscreen windowed mode" so that you don't need to alt-tab to get out of the game window, but regular windowed mode works too, infact doing things on a extra monitor is such a selling point thats what nvidia mostly mention in there 600 series website

http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/art...rce-gtx-680/#1

Here is a snippet:

Three Monitor Surround & Accessory Display

Over a hundred games support multi-monitor configurations, allowing players to see enemies outside of a single monitor’s field of view in first-person shooters, or take superior control of their troops in real-time strategy games, for example. Using the GeForce GTX 680's four connectors we’re taking that one step further, enabling a forth monitor; what we call an Accessory Display.

[Scarletsboy]

Hi Terrance, I looked at the raven case myself and the only place to put the rad was at the bottom as per the manual http://www.silverstonetek.com.tw/dow...2-E-Manual.pdf
The gap from the rad to the card will be tight, you can fit a 12" card in that case, but that is not with a H100. Most 680's are 10" long and the H100 is 1.5" High so that only leaves you 0.5" to play with if you are using the fans on the case to cool the rad. So as I said it be a tight fit, but it will fit just. Hope this helps

[Terrace]

Hi Terrance, I looked at the raven case myself and the only place to put the rad was at the bottom as per the manual http://www.silverstonetek.com.tw/dow...2-E-Manual.pdf
The gap from the rad to the card will be tight, you can fit a 12" card in that case, but that is not with a H100. Most 680's are 10" long and the H100 is 1.5" High so that only leaves you 0.5" to play with if you are using the fans on the case to cool the rad. So as I said it be a tight fit, but it will fit just. Hope this helps

Lee from scan also linked me to a internet forum topic where people were fitting corsair H100's into there machines and it looked like in the Raven 2 case it could fit far enough over on the CPU side that it wasnt underneath either of the graphics cards which looked good, and then I took a look around on the net and found and place where people were even managing to fit them in the more compact Raven 3 cases! The three pictures the the bottom of this page and the two on page 2 are best http://www.overclock.net/t/1138236/c...one-raven-rv03