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Building after procrastinating 4 years

S

Sgt Rock

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 1, 2004
Messages
190
OK after some great input and some research this is what I have now: I am open on everything still especially the H70 and the MB as they are what I am most unsure about.

Corair Obsidian Series 800D

Intel 510 Series (Elm Crest) SSDSC2MH120A2K5 2.5" 120GB SATA III

Seagate Barracuda XT ST32000641AS 2TB

2 x MSI R6970 Lightning Radeon HD

CORSAIR HX Series CMPSU-1000HX 1000W

4 x CORSAIR Vengeance 4GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3

GIGABYTE GA-Z68X-UD7-B3

Intel Core i7-2600K

CORSAIR Hydro H70

SAMSUNG Black Blu-ray Drive SATA Model SH-B123L/RSBP


I have put off building a new system for 4 years now, so I am about to jump in with what you see below, any improvements or comments please let me know. As I only do this every 3 or 4 years after research and running it by the community.

This is what I have put in my cart at the egg:

SILVERSTONE RAVEN RV02B-EW
Intel 320 Series SSDSA2CW160G3K5 2.5" 160GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
Seagate Barracuda XT ST32000641AS 2TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
CORSAIR HX Series CMPSU-1000HX 1000W
SAPPHIRE 100311SR Radeon HD 6970
SAPPHIRE 100311SR Radeon HD 6970
CORSAIR Vengeance 16GB (4 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600
GIGABYTE GA-Z68X-UD7-B3
Intel Core i7-2600K
SAMSUNG 22X DVD±R
CORSAIR Hydro H70
XIGMATEK PTI-G4512 XIGMATEK PTI-G4512 thermal grease
SAMSUNG Black Blu-ray Drive SATA Model SH-B123L/RSBP LightScribe Support

Also going to get a Thecus N7700 PRO 21TB (7x3TB) for storage and serving, anyone have any experience with these? As I did have a Qnap and had some issues with it.

Thanks for all your help!
 
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I would rather go for a single 6990 or a 590 than to crossfire/sli two physical cards together.
 
Go with the Intel 510 or Crucial C300/m4 instead of the Intel 320. The 320 is a SATA 3Gb/s SSD and is outperformed by the aforementioned drives.

Sapphire isn't the best choice when it comes to video cards. Consider spending a little bit more for XFX cards.

You don't need additional thermal grease for the H70. IIRC, Shin-Etsu makes the TIM that the H70 uses.

You can buy the RAM cheaper by selecting four 4GB sticks individually or two 2x4GB sets. Also, grab DDR3 1333 RAM; you'll see no performance or overclocking boost with DDR3 1600.

Why the UD7? That's normally Gigabyte's high-end model line. What motherboard features are must-have for you?
 
Thanks for the input so far:

As for the 2 6970's they seem to drive better than a single 6990 and I will be running 3 U2410's so if I need more umph I will drop one 6970 (give it to my daughter) and put in a 6990 for Tri-fire.

The information on the SSD's is well taken, thanks!

Sapphire is not the only option but a good reference place filler for now, thanks for the XFX suggestion.

I'll drop the Thermal

You are right about the RAM I will look deeper into single solutions.

What I like about the UD7, which others may weigh in on please, is:
Dual RTL8111E Chips for Teaming the NIC's
2 x PCI x16 slots with the NF200 chip
2 x Marvell 88SE9128 chips for extra 6Gb's connections
2 x Renesas D720200 chips and 2 x VLI VL810 hubs for USB 3.0 connections (future proof as I only do this every 4 years or so)

Thanks for the helpful feedback please keep it coming.

Regards
 
Sgt Rock said:
What I like about the UD7, which others may weigh in on please, is:
Dual RTL8111E Chips for Teaming the NIC's
Click to expand...
NIC Teaming isn't that useful for a home environment unless you're transferring data between high-speed RAID arrays or SSDs quite often. Not to mention that the Realtek NICs are rather cheap and relatively slow compared to Intel NICs that are normally used for teaming in the first place. In fact, you could easily grab any cheap mobo with two PCI-E x1 slots, get two Intel PCI-E x1 NICs for $30 to $40 each, team them and get significantly greater reliability and performance.

So in other words, the extra cash for the two Realtek NICs on that mobo isn't worth the cost considering that there are faster and cheaper solutions out there. Even then those solutions are more than likely overkill for your needs.
Sgt Rock said:
2 x PCI x16 slots with the NF200 chip
Click to expand...
The extra PCI-E lanes aren't really useful unless you're planning on using 3 or more video cards or two video cards + one or more true hardware RAID controllers. Right now, there's little to no difference between PCI-E x4 and PCI-E x16 speeds when it comes to video cards.
Sgt Rock said:
2 x Marvell 88SE9128 chips for extra 6Gb's connections
Click to expand...
There are quite a few other and cheaper motherboards out there that have extra 6Gb/s connections provided by Marvel controllers.
Sgt Rock said:
2 x Renesas D720200 chips and 2 x VLI VL810 hubs for USB 3.0 connections (future proof as I only do this every 4 years or so)
Click to expand...
Fair enough.

All in all, that mobo isn't worth it's $360 shipped price outside of a very specific configurations. Before I start recommending other motherboards to you, I have to ask: What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? USB 3.0? SATA 6Gb/s? eSATA? Onboard video? etc.
 
Danny,
You bring up some great arguments and I thank you.

The teaming is important as I will use this Client to work with the Thecus 7700pro. In working with my media collection of which some files are up to 60GB is size I need all the BW I can get and was looking for a way to do that without cluttering the PCI slots that will be full of video cards. My 10Gb switch can handle the Thecus with the(X520-T2) but the client will need to bond to make use of it.
But point well taken and will look at the solution you advised on.

What I do need is full Crossfire/SLI support as I will start with 2x6970's and possibly move to 6990 + 6970 (or Nvidia solution for both) if I can't get 5760x1200 at good enough rates.

Quick local storage for file/media manipulation (SATA 6Gb's) as well as USB 3.0 for external addition's (storage, camera, client transfers, etc.)

On-board video is not a necessity, but a quality built in sound is as I will be using it for the media manipulation and testing as well as using it to cycle a few games to relax with.

Again let me emphasize the appreciation I have of everyone that has taken the time from their schedule to advise on this, I truly appreciate it and considering the time tables for builds, I do I want to make sure this will let me be comfortable with small upgrades for the next 3 years.
 
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As I will be ordering today, any other ideas on the Mother Board from any of the educated masses? I understand that the current board choice is pricy and not worth the extra money spent so I would defiantly entertain an alternative if anyone has one.

Thanks and have a good day.
 
The only other thing I can think of is the Asus P8P67 WS Revolution ($260 at Newegg.) I suggest this for two reasons:
1) You're not taking advantage of Z68 specific features, near as I can tell, and will save about $90 by going with the P67.
2) This offers dual Intel NICs on board (compared to the Gigabytes RealTek)

With both motherboards you get 4 SATA6 ports (though IMO they really only help with SSDs) and 4 PCIe x16 physical slots with the NF200 chip. On both you'll have a lot of flexibility with Crossfire and SLI, and the ability to install a 10Gb PCIe x8 or x16 NIC with your GPUs. 10Gb NICs are about $500 right now, but the fact that you have a 10Gb switch and you deal with very large files makes me think this might be worth it to you.

If money were no object I probably would go with the Z68 board because it has more USB3 ports, eSATA, and a few other ports. But in your usage scenario I'd also ditch the integrated NICs and buy a 10Gb NIC (again, assuming money is not a limiting factor.) I have to deal with working with geophysical databases over a gigabit network that are only about 500MB in size and it gets painful. I can't imagine doing it with a 60GB one.
 
I concur with Tony's recommendation.

Also post a final build list before you buy so that you can get some last minute advice
 
Thanks for the replies, I did make some changes to the order as you will see below, but have not decided on the MB yet. As I am still looking at pro's and con's. Cost is a concern but not a major object as long as I get value for the dollar. I can get a really good deal on the ASUS Maximus IV Extreme-Z through one of our vendor partners ($255) but have not had a lot of experience with ASUS, mostly MSI and Gigabyte.

Current setup, will be ordered today if I can get a good match with a Mother Board.
Corsair Obsidian Series 800D CC800DW
Intel 510 Series (Elm Crest) SSDSC2MH120A2K5 2.5" 120GB
Western Digital Caviar Black WD2002FAEX 2TB
Thermaltake Toughpower Grand TPG-1200M
2x XFX HD-697A-CNFC Radeon HD 6970
4 x CORSAIR Vengeance 4GB
MotherBoard?
Intel Core i7-2600K
CORSAIR Hydro H70
SAMSUNG Black Blu-ray Drive SATA Model SH-B123L/RSBP

Thanks for your time.
 
I liked the Corsair HX Series CMPSU-1000HX you linked to more than the Thermaltake Toughpower Grand TPG-1200M. See reviews of the Corsair and the Thermaltake to see why.

Asus is usually at the top of people's lists for motherboards. They're certainly up there with MSI and Gigabyte. As for if the Asus Extreme is worth it, I'm skeptical. Look at the PCIe slot layout. Despite having four x16 slots, I can't see getting more than three dual slot cards in there (so no trifire or tri-SLI with an x16 NIC for example, unless you got a 6990.)
 
Yeah, Jonnyguru is one of the best PSU review sites. If you want 1200 watts Corsair makes the AX1200 as well, but 1000 should cover two 6970s without breaking a sweat. Some other good PSU companies in this power range are Seasonic, Silverstone, and Antec. But Corsair is consistently good, especially their HX and AX lines.
 
First, thanks for the input and education, it really made this an easier decision with no buyer remorse.

Second, I will be getting with everyone again in about 3 years to go through this exercise once more and to learn some more tidbits again.

Now the final build:

Corsair Obsidian Series 800D CC800DW
Intel 510 Series (Elm Crest) SSDSC2MH120A2K5 2.5" 120GB
Western Digital Caviar Black WD2002FAEX 2TB
CORSAIR HX Series CMPSU-1000HX
2x XFX HD-697A-CNFC Radeon HD 6970
4 x CORSAIR Vengeance 4GB
ASUS Maximus IV Extreme-Z
Intel Core i7-2600K
CORSAIR Hydro H70
SAMSUNG Black Blu-ray Drive SATA Model SH-B123L/RSBP

The ASUS MB is quite the issue as I know most are thinking now, but with the price I could get it at and the additional facilities it had it was hard to say no.

The PCI slots are pretty close but I will only have 2 Video card at a time and one 10Gb nic so it will be tight but there will be plenty of bandwidth to go around.

So well done to all that chimed in and see you down the road and on the forums.
 
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Sgt Rock said:
First, thanks for the input and education, it really made this an easier decision with no buyer remorse.

Second, I will be getting with everyone again in about 3 years to go through this exercise once more and to learn some more tidbits again.

Now the final build:

Corsair Obsidian Series 800D CC800DW
Intel 510 Series (Elm Crest) SSDSC2MH120A2K5 2.5" 120GB
Western Digital Caviar Black WD2002FAEX 2TB
CORSAIR HX Series CMPSU-1000HX
2x XFX HD-697A-CNFC Radeon HD 6970
4 x CORSAIR Vengeance 4GB
ASUS Maximus IV Extreme-Z
Intel Core i7-2600K
CORSAIR Hydro H70
SAMSUNG Black Blu-ray Drive SATA Model SH-B123L/RSBP

The ASUS MB is quite the issue as I know most are thinking now, but with the price I could get it at and the additional facilities it had it was hard to say no.

The PCI slots are pretty close but I will only have 2 Video card as a time and one 10Gb nic so it will be tight but there will be plenty of bandwidth to go around.

So well done to all that chimed in and see you down the road and on the forums.
Click to expand...

Looks good, let us know how it turns out.
 
OK Update!!

After my H70 blew a connection and spewed all over my mother board I had to wait a few weeks for the RMA and replacements to arrive. I asked for a refund of the H70 and got an Antec 920 (much happier now).

So now the system is up and running very quietly.

I must say the 800d makes cable management a breeze. It is so clean in there with no cables that it looks like everything is running wirelessly (well almost) but I cannot say enough about the case.

Anyway with all 16GB of memory and 2 6970's and the CPU running at a brisk 5001Ghz 49x 102.1 at 1.4 volts the case temp is 27C.

Very happy even though with the catastrophic failure causing a major delay I think the wait was worth it.

And thanks to all of you for the help!
 
Sorry to hear that about the H70. Glad to see it's up and running now though - looks like you got a great CPU too - not all of them will hit 5 GHz.
 
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