$2k Purchase

G

greymatter42

n00b
Joined
Oct 12, 2007
Messages
10
Ok first post so be gentle. I'm jumping ship from shacknews for a bit to get deeper insight into my $2000 build. Now this is my first build in 6 years and also my first one by myself. I'm a loyal Mac user but I'd really like to play my games at or near max settings. Since I've been using Macs, I've really lagged behind the hardware curve and have lost touch but hopefully this should work.

This is what I want to run on the rig: Vista for DX10, all Source games, Crysis, Supreme Commander, Stalker, and UT III. I'm sure crysis will be the watermark. I also know that no one has done benchmarks on an optimized version of Crysis but I'm sure the Geforce 8 family will fit the spec just fine. Lastly, I'm curious as to how good these games will look on at 60" DLP because thats what I'm planning on hooking it up to. It can run at 1080p and it has DVI/HDMI/component hookups.


I've done the NewEgg wishlist dance with help from Shackers and here it is.


Case: LIAN LI PC-V1000APlus II Silver Aluminum ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
(I dig the design and it looks spacious.)

Motherboard: Intel BOXD975XBX2KR LGA 775 Intel 975X ATX
(should I wait for the new X38 chipsets?)

GPU: EVGA 768-P2-N831-AR GeForce 8800GTX 768MB 384-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card
(Figured I'd go with them and use the stepup program for Geforce9 if I felt compelled to.)

PSU: CORSAIR CMPSU-620HX ATX12V v2.2 and EPS12V 2.91 620W Power Supply
(My knowledge on power supplies is limited. This should handle everything on the list right??)

CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz LGA 775 Processor Model BX80562Q6600
(I might jump to Duo for overclocking ability)

Memory: TWO Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model BL2KIT12864AA804
(4GB was in the budget so why not?)

Sound Card: bluegears b-Enspirer 7.1 Channels 24-bit 192KHz PCI Interface Sound Card
(It's 7.1 and has optical ports which I can connect to my receiver.)

Card Reader: Koutech IO-RCM620 USB 2.0 3.5"/5.25" Card Reader
(It's kinda crappy looking but it should work alright. Any suggestions?)

HDD: TWO Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3500630AS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
(I'm hoping to run these drives in Raid0 for redundancy and whatever slight speed boost. Does the motherboard support it?)

DVD: SAMSUNG 20X DVD±R DVD Burner Black SATA Model SH-S203B

CPU Heatsink: Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme CPU Cooler
(This thing is a beast. Might be too much heatsink for me. Secondly, I hook the stock fan on the side of this right?)


Around $2100 with tax.
All in all, I would like to have this pieced together by mid to late November (Crysis Time!).
Also, There are little things I almost forgot to get like thermal paste and mobo risers. Anything else I need?
Your time is greatly appreciated. Now back to POrtal :cool:.
 
"Be gentle"? At the [H]ARD|FORUM?!? Ha!

Your rig looks fine, but here are a few things that I would suggest/change....

MOBO: The 975-based mobo is outdated, and the X38 boards have arrived, but are very expensive. Go with a P35-based board such as the Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L ($110) or another board that allows you some overclocking headroom. Intel boards are okay for stability, but they tend to be a bit overpriced compared to other boards with similar features. (Plus, this is the [H]ardForum... someone will be "encouraging" you to OC that Q6600 right out the box... speaking of which....)

CPU HEATSINK: The Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme is an excellent choice... there are other good choices, such as the Scythe SCNJ-1100P Ninja Plus Rev.B ($35) or the Tuniq Tower 120 ($45). If you need/want a fan you can either get a cheap Yate Loon fan ($4) or one of the Scythe S-FLEX fans ($15) (which are very good... and I can speak from personal experience). And here are the installation instructions for the Thermalright. And as for thermal paste... say it with me now: Arctic Silver ($6).

MEMORY: If you're going to go 4GB, it may be better to go with two 2GB sticks than four 1GB sticks. (Some boards can't handle four RAM DIMMs very well, but I'm not certain on that fact.) G.SKILL ($165) is a popular choice, and RAM prices are so low enough right now that paying for anything above $90 for 2GB is ludicrous. Make sure that you get a 64-bit OS -- such as the 64-bit version of Vista Home Premium ($112) -- that way, you can use the full 4GB. Then again, you really only need 2GB. Again, G.SKILL ($66) is a good choice, but the "best of the best" are the Crucial Ballistix (they're $99, but come with a $38 MIR), which use the same type of RAM (the Micron D9 chips) as more expensive/higher-clocked memory.

SOUND CARD: Unless you define yourself as an audiophile, you may be better off with just onboard sound. The "best" sound cards, especially for Vista, are based off the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi chipset, but the drivers are spotty at best. (For some people, they work, and for others, they're useless... it's a crapshoot.) If you want a sound card (and if you're planning on using Vista, either now or at some time in the future), look for either an X-Fi XtremeMusic (discontinued, but is often on sale in the FS forum) or the X-Fi XtremeGamer Fata1ity ($136). There are supposed to be new sound cards out now, based on the X-Fi chipset, but I really don't know much about those.

CARD READER: Generally, any card reader (for the most part) will do, but make sure that it supports the new SDHC format (for SD cards that are 4GB or larger, which have really become popular over the last year or so). So far, though, the only internal card reader that I've found to support SDHC natively has been the Atech Flash PRO-Gear XM-4U ($22).

HDD: First, the bad news: RAID is overrated. Sure it can offer you faster speeds and a larger "drive," but the risks outweigh the benefits and, for the average home user, you may not even notice the benefits. If you really want a fast OS drive, you could get a Raptor, but it's really not necessary. That said, you really can't go wrong with two Seagate 7200.10s.

I have two more things to tell you. First, your intial setup would work for the most part (though I'm not sure how well the Q6600 would get along with the 975-based mobo...). At this point, any "guidance" here would be nitpicking based on individuals' personal tastes. (That said, I have to give credit to the gurus, enginurd and Danny Bui -- among others -- who often recommend much of the same stuff in other "build my rig" posts.) And finally, comparision shop. NewEgg is great for wish list building, but it's not the cheapest place to find parts (nor, contrary to popular belief, does it have everything).
 
Believe me I wasn't going to buy just from New Egg. Just a good place to get my shit in order. I thought I had x2 2gig sticks of that memory so that will get changed. I'll go with the suggested card reader. About the hard drives. I meant to have them in Raid 1. I've got tons of precious data that needs to be backed up and I figured raid1 would be the best choice here. No hassle as I am lazy and also the benefit of an ever so slight speed increase.

Moving onto the motherboard. I had looked at the one you suggested before, but I wasn't too sure it supported raid1. Plus, is it compatible with my case? I know it's ATX, but the dimensions are different. 12.0" x 8.3" & 12" x 9.6".

Lastly that sound card, I can't fucking believe it's branded under Fata1ity's name. I'll be sticking with the one I had chosen because optical ports will really make my life easier.

Thanks for the input. This is pretty exciting stuff. I'd like to buy all this now but I'm going to be gone for two weeks : /
 
If you are gonna play Supreme Commander on this, you will benefit a bit from having a Quad Core.

It's also futureproof.;)
 
Many onboard sound solutions have digital over coax support, or in some cases even optical over fiber. Ones and zeros are ones and zeros -- you really won't need a soundcard if you aren't using the integrated amp.

RAID 5 is probably better for what you're doing -- slower writes but faster reads and integrated failsafes against data loss. You use 3 drives and get the space equivalent of 2 of them, so 3 500GBs will give you 1TB of space that appears as a single drive within the OS and the third drive is used to store parity information for data recovery should one of the other two drives fail. No matter which if the three drives fails you can replace it and rebuild the array with no fear of data loss so long as 2 don't fail at the same time.

With that budget you should be able to run GTXs in SLI -- don't know where you managed to spend all the extra cash really.
 
case : is nice

mobo : its out of date but i wouldn't get it. i proably think abuot a gigabyte mobo or abit IP35 series?

gpu : is nice

RAM : y get 4x1gig?. if u want to go for 2x2gig sticks. and crucail are nice ram but something cheaper like g.skills? but if your getting the tracer series that would be sick :p

HSF : thats a nice heatsink .

everything else is fine

but i would get a 64-bit vista for that 4 gig ram

have fun~~
 
Since you are planning to buy the after market heatsink with everything maybe an OEM processor would work out nicely.
 
I'm really not too knowledgeable about 64-bit Vista. What is the compatibility like with it? Is it really a wise decision?
 
greymatter42 said:
I'm really not too knowledgeable about 64-bit Vista. What is the compatibility like with it? Is it really a wise decision?
Click to expand...

No major compatibility issues with current hardware (which you'd obviously have, with an all-new build) aside from the X-Fi, and that's due to Creative's horrible drivers and support rather than the hardware, really -- it's just as much of a problem with Vista 32bit. Also, if you only need optical ports there's a $25 Chaintech card that'll do jut as well as your $100 bluegears card, and it works just fine in Vista.

It's noticeably quicker, for me -- I've run 32 and 64bit Vista Ultimate, and I much prefer 64bit over all. Comparatively little things, like Firefox starting a good bit faster, make the difference.

With your budget why not a 680i SLI board (EVGA 122-CK-NF68-A1 being the best of the bunch according to most around here, myself included) and 2 GTXs in SLI?
 
silent-circuit said:
RAID 5 is probably better for what you're doing -- slower writes but faster reads and integrated failsafes against data loss. You use 3 drives and get the space equivalent of 2 of them, so 3 500GBs will give you 1TB of space that appears as a single drive within the OS and the third drive is used to store parity information for data recovery should one of the other two drives fail. No matter which if the three drives fails you can replace it and rebuild the array with no fear of data loss so long as 2 don't fail at the same time.
Click to expand...

He didn't mention it, but he should have.

RAID is NOT a backup solution. RAID protects uptime against physical drive failure, with the exception of RAID0 which protects nothing and increases risk of data loss (2 500gb drives in RAID0 is 1TB of data with two points of catastrophic failure), however can offer faster transfer rates especially on long sequential transfers (overrated for normal desktop use and gaming, imo).
 
silent-circuit said:
No major compatibility issues with current hardware (which you'd obviously have, with an all-new build) aside from the X-Fi, and that's due to Creative's horrible drivers and support rather than the hardware, really -- it's just as much of a problem with Vista 32bit. Also, if you only need optical ports there's a $25 Chaintech card that'll do jut as well as your $100 bluegears card, and it works just fine in Vista.

It's noticeably quicker, for me -- I've run 32 and 64bit Vista Ultimate, and I much prefer 64bit over all. Comparatively little things, like Firefox starting a good bit faster, make the difference.

With your budget why not a 680i SLI board (EVGA 122-CK-NF68-A1 being the best of the bunch according to most around here, myself included) and 2 GTXs in SLI?
Click to expand...

Hey silent-circuit, do you have a suggestion for getting 2 GTXs in a 2k budget on a full rig? I was in a similar situation to the OP, and just pulled the the trigger personally on my build, but I couldn't for the life of me get two GTXs into my build and still have a full rig. Here's the best I could come up with around ~2000, which is something I considered on my own build:

Motherboard: EVGA 122-CK-NF68-A1 ~220
CPU: Intel Q6600 ~280
Case: I guess go budget here with a Coolermaster RC-690 ~80 (I think this will fit the rig, else maybe jump to a p180 for 100ish)
Memory: 2x1gb I guess to save money ~75
Video: 2x 8800 GTX (cheapest versions are I think 500) ~1000
HDD: 1x 500GB Hard Drive ~100
PSU: Corsair HX620W: ~110
DVD Burner: ~30
HSF: Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme ~55 + 5 for a fan = ~60

This comes out to about 1955 preshipping and tax, and is with a much cheaper case, short one of his harddrives, and 2gb of ram. Also doesn't include the 100 dollar sound card he wanted or the card reader, although those are pretty cheap. I'd guess the extra 2gb of memory, 2nd HDD, nicer case, sound card and card reader is where he is preferring to spend his money rather than the 2nd GTX. I suppose he could also go with a non quad like the E6750 and save a bit more, but again that's up to him I guess. There's also the possibility he just didn't want to bother with SLI also.
 
greymatter42 said:
Seriously is SLI even worth it. Is the performance boost that great to warrant the price?
Click to expand...

If you're running any resolution above, say, 1080p (1920x1080) then it's very beneficial. So, a HDTV or 24"+ LCD, or a high end 21"+ CRT. Below that it probably isn't worthwhile.

It's not so much beneficial due to higher framerates as more consistent framerates. 80 FPS with drops to 72 is a lot nicer to deal with than 75FPS with drops to 55 if you want to, say, run VSYNC on an LCD (usually 60 Hertz vertical refresh, so the cap is set at 60FPS and drops below it cause problems) to avoid tearing.
 
silent-circuit said:
If you're running any resolution above, say, 1080p (1920x1080) then it's very beneficial. So, a HDTV or 24"+ LCD, or a high end 21"+ CRT. Below that it probably isn't worthwhile.
Click to expand...

This could benifit me since I am going to be running at 1080p. I might hold off on a second card when I get the funds. Does the second card have to be an 8800GTX or can it be one in the Geforce8 family that is SLI ready? So far this is what I have. Seriously, thanks for this help you guys. You have made my life less worrisome.
 
I agree with everything thats been said so far, lol.

silent-circuit said:
...the third drive is used to store parity information for data recovery...

With that budget you should be able to run GTXs in SLI -- don't know where you managed to spend all the extra cash really.
Click to expand...

If you were'nt speaking metaphorically... Just to be clear, in RAID5, parity is distributed, not all stored on one drive.

All the extra cash went to the case. :p

Its nice to keep SLI as an option with that resolution in mind. However, a single Ultra should be OK, you'd just have to turn down some settings. Ultra's are around $80+ than a GTX, IIRC.

greymatter42 said:
This could benifit me since I am going to be running at 1080p. I might hold off on a second card when I get the funds. Does the second card have to be an 8800GTX or can it be one in the Geforce8 family that is SLI ready? So far this is what I have. Seriously, thanks for this help you guys. You have made my life less worrisome.
Click to expand...

Yes, it has to be the same model.

You're not getting it all from newegg, right? cuz I swear I read that somewhere up there, lol, but I just want to be sure.
 
Just for clarity's sake, you must have a SLI-capable motherboard for SLI... that seems a 'duh' sort of thing but I'd hate to see you spend $150 on a P35 chipset board and then have to throw down another $200 on top of the $500 for a second card should you ever decide to go that route. And yes, as enginurd pointed out, it has to be another GTX. It can be from a different distributor (EVGA and XFX or BFG and MSI for example) but has to be the same model card. Clock speed differences rarely cause trouble and are dealt with (in most cases) by the drivers. Worst case, you have to underclock one of the cards to make it play nice with the other, which is minor.
 
Oh shit. I didn't notice that the motherboard had an optical out. Sorry to confuse you guys. Screw the sound card. I'm hooking the motherboard right into my receiver, so I need no amp. I think everything is set now. Thanks again everyone. Now hopefully I can put this all together adequitly. Is there a good stickied page or a guide on piecing things together. I would really like to not screw this up :p.
 
greymatter42 said:
Thanks again everyone. Now hopefully I can put this all together adequitly. Is there a good stickied page or a guide on piecing things together. I would really like to not screw this up :p.
Click to expand...

Here's a sticky with lots of links on how to put everything together. As for your wish list... why are you getting an extra set of 120mm fan clips? Are you going to mount another fan to the Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme? If so, besides the Yate Loon and the Scythe S-FLEX that I've mentioned earlier, you can also use the 38mm-wide Panaflo/NMB-MAT L1A fans. The extra width of the fans (the average 120mm case fan is 25mm wide) enables them to run slightly cooler at the same speed as other fans.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top