I built my current rig in 2008. I'm ready to upgrade. I want to make sure that the money I am spending on this rig is well spent and that my timing is not bad.
I'm a software developer and my rig runs Gentoo Linux AMD64. That means I compile software A LOT. When working (or developing open-source) I am frequently compiling my code. I also compile huge amounts of code for great lengths of time when updating my system as Gentoo is a rolling release where all packages are built from source code. So it is worth it to me to get a fast processor. While I have read a lot about the jump from certain i5 CPU's to i7 CPU's not being enough of a performance boost to budget adjustment ratio, every bit of CPU performance will count when my machine is crunching away on a compile of X, KDE, or OpenOffice.
I intend to game on the machine under Linux as I have been doing for more than the past decade. I will need more gaming power than I did in the past though as Steam is rapidly deploying on Linux and with it they are bringing the source engine and Half-Life 3 when it gets released. I want to be able to play the current source games maxed and I will want to play HL3 maxed. I would also like to be able to max out Guild Wars 2 running in Wine. That requires a little more juice than maxing it out in Windows. Right now I can play with the settings on medium. So it is going to be worth it to me to get a good GPU. Due to the fact that my machine runs Linux my options are limited to Nvidia as it is beyond dispute that their Linux support, through their proprietary driver, is the best. I'm not interested in arguing about that. That's just the way it is.
So let me list the hardware I am interested in buying:
$194.99 - ASRock Z77 Professional LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
$319.99 - Intel Core i7-3770K Ivy Bridge 3.5GHz (3.9GHz Turbo) LGA 1155 77W Quad-Core Desktop Processor
$144.99 - G.SKILL Ripjaws Z Series 16GB (4 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2400 (PC3 19200) Desktop Memory
$559.99 - EVGA 04G-P4-3687-KR GeForce GTX 680 FTW+ w/Backplate 4GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16
$159.99 - CORSAIR HX Series HX850 850W ATX12V 2.3 / EPS12V 2.91 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply
$169.99 - COOLER MASTER HAF X Blue Edition RC-942-KKN3 Black Steel / Plastic ATX Full Tower Computer Case
$229.99 (x4 RAID10) = $919.96 - Western Digital WD VelociRaptor WD1000DHTZ 1TB 10000 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive
$99.99 - Pioneer 15X BD-R 2X BD-RE 16X DVD+R 5X DVD-RAM 12X BD-ROM 4MB Cache SATA Blu-ray Burner
Total: $2,569.89
I have already purchased the case. I have wanted the blue LED version for a long time and there was a great sell so I jumped on it.
The reason for choosing that motherboard is that it is the best board at that price point that meets all my requirements. Those would be:
- It has enough 6mb/s SATA ports for my RAID10. They do not have to be on a RAID controller as I will use mdraid (Linux software RAID) but they all need to be the right speed.
- It has at least one legacy PCI slot. I have a Sound Blaster Audigy 4 that I want to put in the system. That is still one of the best cards for Linux because it supports hardware mixing which means I have the ability to use pure ALSA with no PulseAudio or dmix. It also supports hardware driven MIDI with the ability to load in soundfonts which is something I use. So PCI is a must for me.
- It has eSATA on the back. I use eSATA so I need this feature.
I have never used an ASRock board before. Traditionally I always built using ASUS boards. I am relying on the reviews I have read that the ASRock board is a solid and well constructed board.
The reason for choosing the VelociRaptor driven RAID10 is that I would like to get speeds close to SSD's but I need a large amount of space. SSD's just aren't there yet. I know I could use SSD for root and a traditional drive for /home but I am just not interested in that solution. I have been running RAID0 for a long long time. I have been very lucky over the years and I have never lost a RAID0 in a way that I couldn't recover my data. Part of that is using mdraid instead of depending on a proprietary RAID controller. That means my RAID can be constructed on any machine with SATA ports and I can recover data as long as the drives can be accessed even if only intermittently. Still it is a big risk and I'm ready for some redundancy. I am not comfortable with depending on a RAID + parity solution. There are just too many things that can go wrong there. RAID10 seems to be the best solution when both redundancy and performance are considered. Using the VelociRaptor drives boosts the performance measure even more. Obviously I am willing to dump a lot of money into my data storage solution. I would prefer to do it one time as opposed to paying a fee for online backup.
So here are my main questions to you guys. It has been quite a while since I have built a new system and I have been too busy to pay close attention to the market. I appreciate your help.
1) Do you see any flaws in this rig or areas where a different solution would be better?
2) Is this a good time to build this rig? I don't know when new hardware is supposed to come out. I am ready to go ahead and buy this hardware now but I can wait for maybe 3 months or so if something big is going to happen in that timeframe.
3) Is there anything else I should be thinking about or aware of?
EDIT: The final build is here.
Final thoughts and pictures here.
I'm a software developer and my rig runs Gentoo Linux AMD64. That means I compile software A LOT. When working (or developing open-source) I am frequently compiling my code. I also compile huge amounts of code for great lengths of time when updating my system as Gentoo is a rolling release where all packages are built from source code. So it is worth it to me to get a fast processor. While I have read a lot about the jump from certain i5 CPU's to i7 CPU's not being enough of a performance boost to budget adjustment ratio, every bit of CPU performance will count when my machine is crunching away on a compile of X, KDE, or OpenOffice.
I intend to game on the machine under Linux as I have been doing for more than the past decade. I will need more gaming power than I did in the past though as Steam is rapidly deploying on Linux and with it they are bringing the source engine and Half-Life 3 when it gets released. I want to be able to play the current source games maxed and I will want to play HL3 maxed. I would also like to be able to max out Guild Wars 2 running in Wine. That requires a little more juice than maxing it out in Windows. Right now I can play with the settings on medium. So it is going to be worth it to me to get a good GPU. Due to the fact that my machine runs Linux my options are limited to Nvidia as it is beyond dispute that their Linux support, through their proprietary driver, is the best. I'm not interested in arguing about that. That's just the way it is.
So let me list the hardware I am interested in buying:
$194.99 - ASRock Z77 Professional LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
$319.99 - Intel Core i7-3770K Ivy Bridge 3.5GHz (3.9GHz Turbo) LGA 1155 77W Quad-Core Desktop Processor
$144.99 - G.SKILL Ripjaws Z Series 16GB (4 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2400 (PC3 19200) Desktop Memory
$559.99 - EVGA 04G-P4-3687-KR GeForce GTX 680 FTW+ w/Backplate 4GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16
$159.99 - CORSAIR HX Series HX850 850W ATX12V 2.3 / EPS12V 2.91 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply
$169.99 - COOLER MASTER HAF X Blue Edition RC-942-KKN3 Black Steel / Plastic ATX Full Tower Computer Case
$229.99 (x4 RAID10) = $919.96 - Western Digital WD VelociRaptor WD1000DHTZ 1TB 10000 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive
$99.99 - Pioneer 15X BD-R 2X BD-RE 16X DVD+R 5X DVD-RAM 12X BD-ROM 4MB Cache SATA Blu-ray Burner
Total: $2,569.89
I have already purchased the case. I have wanted the blue LED version for a long time and there was a great sell so I jumped on it.
The reason for choosing that motherboard is that it is the best board at that price point that meets all my requirements. Those would be:
- It has enough 6mb/s SATA ports for my RAID10. They do not have to be on a RAID controller as I will use mdraid (Linux software RAID) but they all need to be the right speed.
- It has at least one legacy PCI slot. I have a Sound Blaster Audigy 4 that I want to put in the system. That is still one of the best cards for Linux because it supports hardware mixing which means I have the ability to use pure ALSA with no PulseAudio or dmix. It also supports hardware driven MIDI with the ability to load in soundfonts which is something I use. So PCI is a must for me.
- It has eSATA on the back. I use eSATA so I need this feature.
I have never used an ASRock board before. Traditionally I always built using ASUS boards. I am relying on the reviews I have read that the ASRock board is a solid and well constructed board.
The reason for choosing the VelociRaptor driven RAID10 is that I would like to get speeds close to SSD's but I need a large amount of space. SSD's just aren't there yet. I know I could use SSD for root and a traditional drive for /home but I am just not interested in that solution. I have been running RAID0 for a long long time. I have been very lucky over the years and I have never lost a RAID0 in a way that I couldn't recover my data. Part of that is using mdraid instead of depending on a proprietary RAID controller. That means my RAID can be constructed on any machine with SATA ports and I can recover data as long as the drives can be accessed even if only intermittently. Still it is a big risk and I'm ready for some redundancy. I am not comfortable with depending on a RAID + parity solution. There are just too many things that can go wrong there. RAID10 seems to be the best solution when both redundancy and performance are considered. Using the VelociRaptor drives boosts the performance measure even more. Obviously I am willing to dump a lot of money into my data storage solution. I would prefer to do it one time as opposed to paying a fee for online backup.
So here are my main questions to you guys. It has been quite a while since I have built a new system and I have been too busy to pay close attention to the market. I appreciate your help.
1) Do you see any flaws in this rig or areas where a different solution would be better?
2) Is this a good time to build this rig? I don't know when new hardware is supposed to come out. I am ready to go ahead and buy this hardware now but I can wait for maybe 3 months or so if something big is going to happen in that timeframe.
3) Is there anything else I should be thinking about or aware of?
EDIT: The final build is here.
Final thoughts and pictures here.
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