Another build - need advice please!

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vanishingson2k

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Sep 9, 2007
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Good day all,

I am looking to build my second system, time to put the 8 year old to rest! I was originally going to save all the money for all the components and blow it all in one shot, but starting to see that that is not going to work(i have a few moths to feed at home!) so I'm going to be doing this one at a time. The finishsed product will be quad core intel and 8800 gtx's in SLI.

First off - case

It was a toss up between the Gigabyte 3D Aurora 570 and the Antec 900, but the Aurora lacked the stock ventilation power, and the 900 is a virtual wind tunnel. Now i know I'm already opening a can of worms when i say antec 900 and SLI together. It's a bit of a sticky spot with having to remove the middle drive bays to get those 8800 gtx's in there, but I'm okay with that. I would just like to know if any of you have been able to pull this SLI configuration off and what motherboards you are working with.

Thanks!
 
The best mobo for SLI is the eVGA 122-CK-NF68-A1 680i SLI board.

What size monitor do you have or plan on getting? Because SLI is only needed for high resolution 3D rendering. So, if you plan on getting a 1920x1080 LCD or higher, and want to game on it, then keep SLI as an option. Otherwise, theres no need for it. A single GTX is still fine for a 1920x1080 (or 1920x1200) LCD screen, and more cost effective than an 8800GTS SLI setup. SLI as an upgrade path isn't worth it unless, again, a large LCD is in the future plans. There should always be a better single card solution, and you could sell your old card to help offset the cost.

NVIDIA's GTX/Ultra replacements are due out in Q1'08, and the GTS replacement is due out in November, the 8700GTS for around $250, rumor has it.

For such a high end system, why not a high end case like a Lian-Li V series (V1000BPlus) or Silverstone Temjin series (TJ-09) ???

What is your overall budget, and what is included in that budget?
 
I currently have a 21" CRT Viewsonic monitor. I like the CRTs for the fact that they last longer and they can handle multiple resolutions. Only downside is its weighs a ton! I have heard that LCDs have a much shorter life span then CRT's and that is not so appealing. Yet if an LCD is a necessary evil, we can do that. I also have an 52" HD TV and thought that I could hook this rig up to it once in a while.

My Budget is in the $3000 range, and includes everything in the case. I recently got new keys (Eclipse II) and Logitech MX518 mouse.

Reason why i chose the 900 is IMHO, it has the best air-cool system on the market and I really don't want to do liquid cooling.
 
Honestly, for a 21 inch CRT, SLI is going to be a waste of money unless you're gaming at a res well and beyond 1600x1200. You'll be much better off buying a holdover card now which will provide more than enough power for high res gaming (such as a GTS 640,) then replacing it with a top of the line G90/G92 card when they come out. You'll be spending less on a simpler, faster, more powerful system in the end.

Keep in mind that GTX SLI only becomes beneficial when gaming at a resolution of 1920x1200. At lesser resolutions, the second card's horsepower will sit idle, twiddling its thumbs.

I also agree that an high end Lian-Li or the Silverstone TJ-09/10 are much better options than the Antec 900, but case choice is always subjective.

Mark.
 
vanishingson2k said:
Yet if an LCD is a necessary evil, we can do that. I also have an 52" HD TV and thought that I could hook this rig up to it once in a while.
Click to expand...

Do you want to give up your CRT? Running out and dumping money into a 24" or bigger LCD doesn't make much sense just so you can justify building an SLI setup.
 
I third or fourth that, the Silverstone cases are way better choices, so is the CoolerMaster Stacker 832. The 900 has pretty bad (in other words, none) cable management, and not much space. $3000 will get you top of the line parts for basically everything, so you might as well lower your budget, or keep the budget the same and get a new display.
 
Okay, i will take a look into some higher end cases, I have heard already about the sketchy wiring situation and the problems fitting the 8800 vid cards into it, but working with a case with more room would be better for symantics and airflow, I like what i have seen so far from Silverstone, I'll look into that further tonight.

As far as the SLI bit is concerned, i can crank my crt to 2043x1536. Can that justify SLI? One of the reasons of getting the SLI was to increase the longevity of the system.

Again, if an LCD display is necessary to get the most out of it, then so be it.
 
crashthenet44 said:
Do you want to give up your CRT? Running out and dumping money into a 24" or bigger LCD doesn't make much sense just so you can justify building an SLI setup.
Click to expand...

Of course it makes sense... if you have the money and the balls.
 
antec 900 for ur case for sure man that thing has the awesome cooling and looks awesome at the same time ! Im mowing lawns right now just to save up =) any idea when the price will drop on the case?
 
brahim said:
antec 900 for ur case for sure man that thing has the awesome cooling and looks awesome at the same time ! Im mowing lawns right now just to save up =) any idea when the price will drop on the case?
Click to expand...

The Nine Hundred was on sale a few weeks ago for $80. It goes on sale every so often, so just wait around for it. Its not worth more than $80, IMO. I checked it out at Fry's... it has this cheap fealing to it, and not as much room as I expected.
 
Okay, I have REdecided on a case, based on your recommendations, something bigger with the same type of ventilation that I wanted with the antec 900. SILVERSTONE TJ06 ALUMINUM ATX CASE - BLACK

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811163039

I could only find the silver one here, but i assume that the black model holds the same features. I prefer the black finish, easier to color match optical drive bezels.

Also, I'm looking at reworking the budget for a new display.
 
Well i finally got the case, Its the Silverstone TJ-06 with the windtunnel action on it. Reviewers state that this case keeps components "crispy cool."

Wow this thing is huge! This is my first full tower. It's made of a steel/aluminum alloy so its kinda heavy, yet really solid! My last mid tower i swear was made of tin. I ended up stripping at least 2 of the hard drive mounts on that one. here's a couple of pics.





I was going to go with the silver one listed on newegg, but i figured it would be easier to color match bezels with the black.

So next is the motherboard -

enginurd was kind enough to suggest the eVGA 122-CK-NF68-A1 680i SLI board.

After trolling for about a week on the internet for reviews, I have to agree with him.

Thanks for noting the part #, seeing that there are 5 versions of this board, then the "LT" line on top of that. Best to make sure which one you are getting as I was speaking with the store manager and he said theres at least 1 version that does not support front side USB.(anybody confirm this?)

Also, the eVGA 122-CK-NF69-A1 is out now, as to my understanding is the same board, as the NF-68-A1 board, only watercooled.

So that should be coming in the next week or so, then next up is RAM.
 
All you need is DDR2-800 if you plan on getting the Q6600. I guess the question is, how much of it. Since your budget is $3K, I'm assuming you're going with a 64-bit OS and 4GB? If so, go for a 2x2GB config, because the nForce boards sometimes have a problem powering all 4 sticks in a 4x1GB config. You won't notice much between CL4 and CL5, so don't pay a huge price premium for lower latency. Stick with CL5 or lower sticks, though. Here's an egghunt:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...cription=2gb+4gb+ddr2+800&name=Desktop+Memory

I'd go for the G.Skill PQ or Patriot ELK kit. The A-Data is probably a safe bet as well.
 
thanks for the input, because RAM is the one thing that eludes my understanding with computers.

processor is going to be the 6850 quad core, and yes, the 2x2gb config. sounds best. My budget still has quite a bit of breathing space.

i would like to go with the vista 64 bit, but the recent reports and what i have heard from one "vista certified" tech is that the 64 bit version is rather buggy still. We'll see what happens when the first round of vista fixes....*ahem*..."updates" come November.

I appreciate the RAM suggestion, I have a few weeks to research that.

Does the difference between 4 and 5 CAS latency really all that significant? I saw the Mushkin RAM sets, identical save the CAS latency and the price difference is $360!:eek:
 
vanishingson2k said:
Does the difference between 4 and 5 CAS latency really all that significant?
Click to expand...

Difference as far as performance goes? no. As far as price goes? yup! The sheer speed of DDR2 is enough to overcome the high latency issues.

Why do people pay such high premiums for such little performance gain? Because they're either uneducated or don't believe the advice of people like me. Or they think the price difference is NOT a huge premium, hehe. You have time, so do the research and see for yourself.

Theres even a thread in the memory section, IIRC, that shows the performance difference between CL3, 4, and 5 at a given speed. The performance jump from 5 to 3 is nice, but you'll be hard pressed to find DDR2-800 at CL3.
 
OP, have you ordered the QX6850 yet? If not, please don't. If you have, and can, return it. Because to put it bluntly... you're getting shafted.

The QX6850 has very little OC headroom improvement over the Q6600 that you can get for around $280 now for a G0 from clubit.com. Don't make that mistake. $60-70 worth of heatsink and fan on a $280 Q6600 G0 will get you to QX6850 speeds or better. That's saving a ton of cash. Just make sure you order from clubit.com or somewhere similar that will guarantee a G0 stepping chip, not from Newegg, as they're still shipping the older, less OC-friendly B3 stepping chips.

No major issues with 64bit Vista. In my experience it is more stable than the 32bit version (I've run both) though they're both more stable than XP... which I rarely had real issues with. So it's difficult to say. Your certified source sounds pretty questionable, considering they general consensus around here of Vista 64 being the better OS, or at very least, lesser of two evils.
 
vanishingson2k said:
As far as the SLI bit is concerned, i can crank my crt to 2043x1536. Can that justify SLI? One of the reasons of getting the SLI was to increase the longevity of the system.

Again, if an LCD display is necessary to get the most out of it, then so be it.
Click to expand...

21" CRT resolutions are more than enough to justify SLI. GTXs or Ultras even. (granted, anything below that is a poor plan anyway) If you like it, no reason not to stick with it.

That said, if and when you decide to go with an LCD don't worry about the burning out bit. I've had fairly nice monitors for many years now, and the CRTs tend to give up the ghost after a while the same as anything. I had an HP that didn't even make it 3 years, not sure what the story was there. My Samsung 204B LCD is still going strong after 3+ years, looks the same as the day I bought it... and it's a lot easier to take somewhere than the CRTs. ;)

As for your questions about the EVGA 680i boards, no, all of them have the necessary headers onboard to support front panel USB. The only major difference is warranty length and support for overclocking Quad cores. The NF63-AR/TR boards do not support quad core OCing due to a timing bug in the earlier revisions of the 680i chipset they use. EVGA initially let people swap for a newer revision board if they wanted to or were running a quad, but now sells these boards rebranded as "SE" boards. The NF68-A1/T1 boards support quad core OCing. "A" boards have a lifetime warranty. "T" boards have a 2 or 3 year warranty, can't remember which. "A" boards also tend to come with a few more SATA cables and such... that in all honestly very few people are going to need.
 
Thanks for the advice s-c, I'll definitely be getting the "A" board.

as far as the display is concerned, I've already started looking into a 24" LCD by Samsung. Seems to be a steal at $500. But i won't be getting that for a bit yet.

As far as the CPU is concerned, no , i haven't ordered it yet. I have been taking this system piece by piece, and the final piece was going to be the processor. I'm going to leave that to last, see that the price drops as much as possible, and let it get some time in the market to see what reviews it gets, or maybe some revisions.

It won't be until at least November until i get the processor, so I'll be keeping an eye on that for now.
 
I seriously doubt the Q6600 is going to drop more than $30 or so by November, max. Nothing new coming out save for the super-high end (Extreme edition chips, total rip-off) until some time mid to late Q1 2008. If you're building in November of December the Q6600 is it.
 
First off, got the new Mobo in...mmmmm...Shiny!



I like how this windtunnel sleeve flows most of the air over the CPU and the Ram slots....



The plastic sleeve comes right over the ram slots, but there is a replacement piece for the windtunnel to accommodate the extra ram slots on the Mobo, nice intelligent design!

As far as the Ram is concerned, Its a toss up from the gskill or the patriot set (2x2 GB) leaning toward gskill just for price sakes.

i have decided on the CPU, I'm going to take the advice of s-c and go with the q6600. I'm just calling around to the local shops to see if they can guarantee me the G0 stepping, either that or go with Club-it. seems to be the only place i can find with the G0 stepping guarantee. Also seeing how well our canadian currency is right now....

I am only really interested in pushing the CPU to the 3.0Ghz mark. So if anybody can either give me the "overclocking for dummies" version or point me in the right direction as how to do this that would be greatly appreciated.

I'm also looking at the zalman line of CPU heat sinks, having to take into account the restricting plastic windtunnel sleeve.

Trying to have all this hardware in order for the weekend. Then all that's left is Power supply, HD's, monitor, OS, and video cards.

what do you think?
 
Zalman CPU HSFs are kind of... blah. Especially for the price. They're also not that much smaller than the competitors (if you think you're getting away with anything less than a 9500 or 9700Cu you're not taking in to account how much heat a quad puts off). If you're sure you don't want to go much higher than 3.0Ghz the Scythe Ninja Plus Rev B. for $35 or so is a good choice, but you may have to mod your tunnel thingies... or just take them out. I seriously doubt they do much of anything.
 
Did nobody catch he was getting a board with heatpipes and an inverted case? Or does that not matter anymore?
 
enginurd said:
Did nobody catch he was getting a board with heatpipes and an inverted case? Or does that not matter anymore?
Click to expand...

Nope. Older heatpipes used a wick. Newer heatpipes use a fluid only system (or something -- I honestly don't remember right now, but they changed how they work) so they work fine inverted. The only exception I know to this on the market right now is the Striker Extreme... and if you pay that much for a board you deserve what you get.
 
BIOSTAR TFORCE TF520-A2 AM2 NVIDIA nForce 520

Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD3200AAKS 320GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s

XCLIO STABLEPOWER 500W ATX 500W Power Supply

EVGA 640-P2-N821-AR GeForce 8800GTS 640MB 320-bit

AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ Windsor 3.0GHz Socket AM2 Processor

G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800

120mm fan + coolmaster 532

that whole build costed me 881 i would consider that
 
Hey,

No, it's not done yet, still trying to get the q6600 G0 stepping locally. All else fails, will Clubit . Also will be getting the ram this week. Still on the fence as far as patriot or Gskill. Will make a decision today or tomorrow.

The remaining components I need to get are cpu heat sink, power sys, Hard drives(2x1TB), vid cards(dual 88000gtx), Optical drives(1 cd wrter/dvd reader, 1 dvd writer), LCD(24"), OS(Vista Premium), and maybe a new mouse.

Alot of this I have not decided on which brands to buy yet. I'm becoming a bit of a research nut.:D

I think this will be done by the end of November, latest by Christmas.



can anybody remember the website as to how to calculate how much power you will need for a system based on the components?

Thanks again!
 
vanishingson2k said:
Hey,

No, it's not done yet, still trying to get the q6600 G0 stepping locally. All else fails, will Clubit . Also will be getting the ram this week. Still on the fence as far as patriot or Gskill. Will make a decision today or tomorrow.

The remaining components I need to get are cpu heat sink, power sys, Hard drives(2x1TB), vid cards(dual 88000gtx), Optical drives(1 cd wrter/dvd reader, 1 dvd writer), LCD(24"), OS(Vista Premium), and maybe a new mouse.

Alot of this I have not decided on which brands to buy yet. I'm becoming a bit of a research nut.:D

I think this will be done by the end of November, latest by Christmas.

can anybody remember the website as to how to calculate how much power you will need for a system based on the components?

Thanks again!
Click to expand...
With a quad core any DDR2-800 is as good as the next. Get whatever is least expensive, CAS 5 if you're gettin 2x2GB sticks, CAS 4 if you're getting 1GB sticks 2GB sticks would be ideal, as that leaves room for expansion and most of the current boards seem to 'like' 2x2GB better than 4x1GB. The CAS latency difference is minimal, as I think we're already said.

I'm selling my GTX at the moment (and the watercooling loop, which could easily be modified to handle 2 cards) if you'd be interested. It has a lifetime warranty, so in this case being used just means you know what clocks it will happily run. :) I'll take $500 for the card with stock cooler, $150 for the water loop, or $625 for both together.

You're going to want a 750+ watt PSU with that load-out to keep things within the ideal efficiency range. I went through all that when I built my current rig. Sadly didn't have the cash for a quad... and I'm now realizing I don't have the cash for what I /have/, hence wanting to sell the card.
 
I was able to find a q6600 G0 stepping, I had attempted to get one through clubit, but i have a confession, I'm Canadian, and neither newegg nor clubit ship outside the US. I ended up going down to a local shop here and digging through their box of processors and finding 1 out of about 18 that were G0 stepping. Next i was a heatsink. I thought that the windtunnel sleeve was going to come out but taking some preliminary measurements it looked like it would fit okay. I ended up getting the Asus Silent Knight. I impressed me was it was lighter than other models (622 grams) also the amount of air it pushed(2200rpm, 52.25CFM airflow).





If you do get this product using a 775 socket, make sure you use the revised backplate as the other is not aligned for the screwholes by half a screw.

The whole apparatus sticks up about 6 inches above the motherboard, and I started to wonder if the windtunnel sleeve would still fit.

Nope.:(

It was tall enough, but not wide enough. So before i just removed the sleeve, i thought i would try to modify it.

With a jigsaw.:eek:

After measuring, much cursing, and using a blade specially for plastic, i made the necessary cuts.

before sleeve:


after sleeve


also note that there is lees than 1/4 inch clearance from the fan to the bottom of the case. I do not see any problems with this yet, but something to watch for.

My bathroom exploded last week so I haven't been able to get the RAM I wanted to this week, will try to cover that and the PS by next week, otherwise in 2.

ps - thanks for the referrals for the thread for the PS, it was a great help in seperating the wheat from the chaff.

Vanishingson2k - "The Canadian Jigsaw Massacrist"
 
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