Core i7 build 1700 dollar limit

jrdonnaruma

jrdonnaruma

Gawd
Joined
Oct 1, 2008
Messages
687
Ok, It has been a while since I have built a system, but its about time for a new one, and I need a bit of help. Mostly on graphics cards, and any suggestions anyone might have.

My current thought is:
Core i7 920
Corsair XMS3 1333 3x2gb (x2)
2xLite On 22x DVD+-RW
Corsair CMPSU-850TX
WD6400AAKS x3 (Short stroked with 100gb partitions at beginning of each drive in RAID 0, rest of drive in a separate RAID 0 for media storage)
Xigmatek Dark Knight

Im not sure if I want a pair of monitors at 20 or 22" or If i want a single 24 (I am planning on getting a 30" NEC in the next month or two, and I wanted 3 monitors to use when I did that, so I am thinking the pair, instead of a single). The two dont need to be IPS displays, just inexpensive ones that I can possibly use in portrait mode. I dont want to go above 400 with the pair of monitors.

The motherboard I am going to use is a Supermicro X8SAX that I already have. (Got it for really cheap, and this computer is technically a workstation, so I wanted stability.) It does not support SLI (Unfortunately), so anything dual GPU related must be Crossfire.

As for video card, I have been thinking the 4890, so I can upgrade to a pair of them when I get the 30", unless anyone has a suggestion for another card that might be better at the 20 or 22" resolution levels (1680x1050).

Also, as for the monitors, I was thinking the NEC 225WXM-BK, the Asus VW224U, or the Acer V/X 223Wbd. I really like the Acer V223Wbd because of the very thin bezel all the way around, but I am not sure that is the best option right now.
 
I wouldn't personally put three AAKS in RAID0, especially for media storage. Are you planning to use the 300gb array for your boot drive and the rest for storage?

It might not be cheaper, but if you've got the budget I would look at a SSD for your boot drive and put your media on a separate drive. Losing media because your RAID0 array degrades really sucks.

Otherwise the build looks pretty solid so far. You can't really go wrong with the 4890 (w/aftermarket cooler even better). With your monitor setup (assuming you're going from two 20/22" and adding a 30" later) I wouldn't worry about CF as you AFAIK can't run crossfire across multiple monitors.
 
I am planning on the 300 array for boot drive.. as for the rest, I guess I shouldn't have said media. I work in photography and videography, so I work with lots of 15.1MP pictures, and 1080p footage, so I need a place to store that while I work on it. After that, it goes to an offsite backup, as well as an onsite raid array for archival.

I dont really need the high speed of a SSD, and I dont feel that a 300GB SSD is worth the money.

You are definitely right on with the assumption about the move to 30", but I probably will crossfire any second card I get to use the 30" for gaming when I do game on the system, but most of the time, a single card will power the 30" while the other card powers the two 20/22"s. The only other thing that might be on with the 30 is an LCD tv that i would use to preview edited video, but I might use a separate card (like the Matrox RT.X2)
 
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jrdonnaruma said:
I am planning on the 300 array for boot drive.. as for the rest, I guess I shouldn't have said media. I work in photography and videography, so I work with lots of 15.1MP pictures, and 1080p footage, so I need a place to store that while I work on it. After that, it goes to an offsite backup, as well as an onsite raid array for archival.
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Great, then a RAID0 array sounds just fine. Might want to also keep an image of your 300 boot drive stored somewhere, as that can be a pain.

I dont really need the high speed of a SSD, and I dont feel that a 300GB SSD is worth the money.

You are definitely right on with the assumption about the move to 30", but I probably will crossfire any second card I get to use the 30" for gaming when I do game on the system, but most of the time, a single card will power the 30" while the other card powers the two 20/22"s. The only other thing that might be on with the 30 is an LCD tv that i would use to preview edited video, but I might use a separate card (like the Matrox RT.X2)
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In this case, starting with a 4890 and potentially adding another (or that Matrox) down the road sounds plausible. Assuming your mobo isn't included in the 1700 budget, you should have no issues.

Man, I'm totally jealous if you're going to have a 30" NEC...
 
The 850w PSU should work well with the current parts you've listed. Crossfire would require a heftier power requirement. If you are interested in the 4890, Tiger Direct has a current promotion of $207 A/R shipped. As for the 30' LCD, you might want look into getting the GTX 295. Dell recently had a promotion, but the back-log is ridiculous. A workstation would benefit from more ram, as you could dedicate a portion of it to speed up processing. Did you have a case in mind, and what qualities are you looking for: sound dampening, water cooling, or expansion. Also you really don't have to buy a 300GB SSD, you can buy one large enough just for booting and applications. The benefits in speed are noticable only untill you have it taken away from you (paraphrasing from an Anand review).
 
Kyo said:
The 850w PSU should work well with the current parts you've listed. Crossfire would require a heftier power requirement.
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Nope. The Corsair TX850 will provide plenty of power even if he chooses to overclock everything including a second 4890. Even the TX750 would do fine for crossfired 4890s.
Check for yourself here
Unless he gets a different mobo, without 280's or higher in SLI he should be just fine with the TX850.
A workstation would benefit from more ram, as you could dedicate a portion of it to speed up processing.
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He's already got 12gb on his list (2gbx6), and moving to 4gb sticks would be an expensive proposition indeed. Two 4gb sticks go for $400 alone.
 
Kyo said:
The 850w PSU should work well with the current parts you've listed. Crossfire would require a heftier power requirement. If you are interested in the 4890, Tiger Direct has a current promotion of $207 A/R shipped. As for the 30' LCD, you might want look into getting the GTX 295. Dell recently had a promotion, but the back-log is ridiculous. A workstation would benefit from more ram, as you could dedicate a portion of it to speed up processing. Did you have a case in mind, and what qualities are you looking for: sound dampening, water cooling, or expansion. Also you really don't have to buy a 300GB SSD, you can buy one large enough just for booting and applications. The benefits in speed are noticable only untill you have it taken away from you (paraphrasing from an Anand review).
Click to expand...

Thanks for finding that Tiger Direct Promotion, I think I might have to go for that. Save myself a 50. In regards to the 295, the only way i would need a 295 is for gaming, which will not be this monitors full time purpose. Color replication and video production will be. When I do decide to game, I'll just crossfire the 4890s (which i assume are pretty much the same, if not a little faster as one 295), and if it isnt really enough to run the 30", I'll just plug the larger 1080p TV into the cards :)

As for the SSD, I really do need the 300GB of space for my boot/App drive. Figure Windows Vista/ Windows 7 = 8-10GB, 25GB for Adobe CS4 Master Collection + Lightroom, between 2 and 8GB a game, VMWare Workstation + VMs at about 60GB, and 8GB for Office. A small SSD would not be enough space for me, and it is certainly not worth the money when I can spend just over 200 dollars on a very fast 3 Disk RAID 0 at 300gb.

kencheeto said:
Great, then a RAID0 array sounds just fine. Might want to also keep an image of your 300 boot drive stored somewhere, as that can be a pain.

In this case, starting with a 4890 and potentially adding another (or that Matrox) down the road sounds plausible. Assuming your mobo isn't included in the 1700 budget, you should have no issues.

Man, I'm totally jealous if you're going to have a 30" NEC...
Click to expand...

I definitely will have a backup of my boot drive once I get everything installed on it. Done it without a backup a couple times and it didnt turn out well.. Reinstalling all of those applications, as well as redoing all of the VMs is a royal PITA.

I will actually likely be adding another 4890 AND the Matrox, as the Matrox is a Video Capture/Editing card, not a traditional video card, and I can run the TV off of that card without taking up places for my actual monitors (I dont really like running TVs, even LCD TVs as monitors.. they just dont look right to me with the 1080 lines instead of 1200 lines...) The Motherboard is not in my budget.

Drool over me!

PC_User said:
I'd go with this 6GB G.Skill DDR3 1600 kit.
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Thanks for finding that.. I swapped my ram for that one. :)
 
Amazon.com has a couple of deals for OCZ DDR3-1600 6GB kits for ~$50 AR, $100 shipped. I'd take that over the G.skill. No reason to spend more than you have to, just send in the OCZ rebates quick -- they don't give you much of a window, but if you do send them in time you're pretty much certain to get the money back.
 
I looked into those kits, but that rebate is only for kits bought before the end of the march. I was excited when I heard about that kit, but then i read the rebate before i pulled the trigger, just to be sure i could do it.
I'll just have to settle for 180ish for the ram. Not too big a deal, thats not a bad price for 12GB of ram.
 
I dont think i really need the 1333. The extra bandwidth wont make that much difference, and the mainboard I am using, the Supermicro X8SAX only officially supports 1333. . . I think I might go with that corsair set, since it is quite a bit cheaper (Oh, and Newegg has the same deal)
 
Since you do work with big pictures and video's, a raid array makes sense to save you money over SSD's. 2 640GB WD's will give you about 180MB/s maximum read rate if you feel that's enough. You could go 1 more. Make sure you backup (which I know you said you do).
 
why go with the i7 920?! wait for the newer 950 or see if the price of the 965 will lower?
 
ar09 said:
why go with the i7 920?! wait for the newer 950 or see if the price of the 965 will lower?
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The 920 is like $200, the 950 is going to be 300mhz faster but cost $300 more. The 965 cost over $1000 so the price is no way going to be a reasonable price for the performance compared to the 920.
 
you have to ask yourself why they cost $200. i would go with (if i had the money) the 940 or 950 (950 is better imo).
 
ar09 said:
you have to ask yourself why they cost $200. i would go with (if i had the money) the 940 or 950 (950 is better imo).
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There is no major performance, quality, or overclocking difference between the 920 and the 940/950. As such, why you would waste money for a 940/950 for a mere 270 to 300Mhz increase in clock speed? The only real reason to go with the 940/950 is if you have money to waste (in which case I would recommend getting an SSD as you'll notice the performance increase from a SSD better than a slightly faster CPU)
 
ar09 said:
you have to ask yourself why they cost $200. i would go with (if i had the money) the 940 or 950 (950 is better imo).
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I have to agree with Danny. There's no logic to your statement. You're paying upwards of $300 for 300 MHz more (no other differences) which realistically makes NO sense since we can overclock our i7 920s to 3.7+ GHz in most cases.
 
bigdogchris said:
Since you do work with big pictures and video's, a raid array makes sense to save you money over SSD's. 2 640GB WD's will give you about 180MB/s maximum read rate if you feel that's enough. You could go 1 more. Make sure you backup (which I know you said you do).
Click to expand...

I already planned on 3x 640s (Switched them to the AAKL instead of AAKS, the increased Cache for so little more made it a bit of a no-brainer. And I definitely backup. My customers wouldn't be all too happy with me if I lost their pictures when they decided they wanted new prints.


ar09 said:
why go with the i7 920?! wait for the newer 950 or see if the price of the 965 will lower?
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The price of the 920 is $288, the 940/950 is around $600, and the 965 around $1000. Spending double or more than triple for 300Mhz and 500Mhz and an unlocked multi doesnt make it worth it, especially when, like PC_User said, it is easy to hit 3.7 on Air. As for waiting for the 950, Im buying this week, so I dont care what will be coming out next week, the week after, or next month. I'll be pulling the trigger on the build on monday.
 
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I just remembered that I should probably check the memory compatibility on the X8SAX, and at 1600 i cant find either part on Newegg, under 1333 I can find the Crucial 2GB part for $28 a 2gb stick. Ends up being 174ish. If anyone can tell me if those corsair sticks, or the G.Skill sticks are the right chips, that would be great, Im not sure where to look to tell what DRAM chips are being used.
 
DDR3 is DDR3 is DDR3. It should work with any on the market. Period. RAM compatibility is bullshit.
 
So, all of the issues I have read about on Corsair support forums, and on newegg reviews about the motherboard not booting with some DDR3 ram are bogus? I have a rather hard time believing that, chips from different vendors im sure vary at least a little bit.
 
jrdonnaruma said:
So, all of the issues I have read about on Corsair support forums, and on newegg reviews about the motherboard not booting with some DDR3 ram are bogus? I have a rather hard time believing that, chips from different vendors im sure vary at least a little bit.
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All this tells me is that the board is a piece of crap.
 
you know, you really dont need to come in an give advice when all you really want to do is insult. I already have the board, Im using the board, I got it for cheap because a friend of mine didn't want to spend time getting new ram and checking each one until he found one that worked well. 70 dollars for an x58 workstation board is a pretty freaking good deal, even if you have to be picky with ram.
 
jrdonnaruma said:
you know, you really dont need to come in an give advice when all you really want to do is insult. I already have the board, Im using the board, I got it for cheap because a friend of mine didn't want to spend time getting new ram and checking each one until he found one that worked well. 70 dollars for an x58 workstation board is a pretty freaking good deal, even if you have to be picky with ram.
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Wasn't meant as an insult, just a statement of relative quality. I've not heard about many, if any, RAM compatibility issues with X58 boards, so with that in mind it's pretty clear that Supermicro did something "wrong" with that board. Still, can't argue with $70, it's just a shame that you might end up spending what you saved on RAM that's known to work with it specifically.
 
All parts ordered. Overnighted them, so i should have them tomorrow. Ended up halving the RAM, and getting 1 hdd for now, as I ended up getting a wacom tablet and a battery backup instead of the extra ram and hdd. I purchased the AAKS instead of the AALS, and 23.3" acers for 199 (1080p) at staples (hurray! for no shipping). I'll post build pictures in another thread.
 
You can post them here, too, or at least link to the other thread. ;)
 
Wow, I didn't know the Radeon HD 4890 was available in 2006....

Nice, can't wait to see everything in a case.
 
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