Fast Productivity PC build? $2K?

[solmssen]

Hi all,

My vintage 2006 XP machine is showing signs of being tired and ready to be put to pasture. I am planning a build for myself, and would love some comments and suggestions. I really miss the old Ars Technica guides, they were a nice jumping off point. I'm in Los Angeles, so Fry's is a nice place to go look at stuff.

The machine is going to be my primary productivity PC - I'm a computer consultant, I have a lot of windows open all the time, and gaming is not really a priority - speed and stability are. I do watch HD video downloads, and I have an approx. 750GB media library.

My initial thinking was a core i7 (not sure about 1156 vs 1366), 200GBish SSD boot drive, 2 mirrored 2TB SATA drives for data, 8GB RAM (or 12 if I go tri-channel), and enough video card to drive a 30" 2560x1600, two 21" 1600x1200s and occasional output to an HDTV. Power supply and chassis to match motherboard/video card requirements.

I'm ready to spend up to 2K including tax and shipping but if someone makes a cogent argument for more, I'll listen. I have the monitors and OS license already.

I'm mainly looking for suggestions re motherboard and video card(s). I guess my plan is to do two cards non-sli and drive the 30" off one and the two 21"s off the other, with the tv hooked up to the second, so I can pick the TV or the second 21 as need be. I'm not going to overclock. I do value silence, but am not ready to commit to liquid cooling, so big fans running slow are better than little ones running fast. I've been running NVidia cards a long time, but again, if somebody can show me a better ATI solution I'll listen. Motherboard-wise, I've always been Asus, but I see eVGA and MSI boards that make me happy. My priority is stability, then speed, then price. Not too worried about USB3 or SATA3, but eSATA is a must and Firewire would be nice.

Any thoughts appreciated, and any info I can provide that will be helpful please let me know. Look forward to your input.

 

[Dangman]

1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If yes, what OS? 32bit or 64bit?

 

[solmssen]

1) Primary productivity PC - heavy web browsing, QuickBooks, Office apps inc. Outlook, light Photoshop, lots of RDP and VNC sessions. No gaming. Just a lot of apps going all the time - not unusual for me to have 4 RDP windows, Chrome, IE and FF all with many tabs, multiple Outlook windows and spreadsheets, etc. I'm a multi-tasker

5) Not reusing parts except maybe 2 WD RE3 1TB drives for data. I may say to hell with it and get 2 Seagate Barracuda XTs instead.

9) Soon - in the next month

10) I have a Windows 7 Pro 64 bit license to use.

Thanks for any info you can provide...

 

[Dangman]

Hmmm, quick prelim build:

$305 - Intel Core i7 870 CPU + Coolermaster Hyper 212 Plus HSF Combo
$280 - Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3 Intel P55 Motherboard + G.Skill Ripjaws 2 x 4GB DDR3 1333 RAM Combo
$120 - 2 x XFX HD-465X-ZDF2 Radeon HD 4650 1GB PCI-E Video Card
$90 - XFX P1-650X-CAG9 650W Modular PSU
----
Total: $900 plus tax and shipping.

Case wise, choose your own case. I recommend these:
$70 - Lian Li Lancool PC-K56 ATX Case
$70 - Cooler Master RC-590-KKN1-GP ATX Case
$80 - Cooler Master RC-690-KKN1-GP ATX Case
$70 - Cooler Master CM690 II ATX Case
$90 - Cooler Master HAF 922 RC-922M-KKN1-GP ATX Case
$100 - Lian Li PC-7B Plus II ATX Case
$100 - Lian Li Lancool PC-K7B ATX Case
$110 - Lian Li PC-7FN ATX Case
$120 - Velocity Micro GX2-W Silver Classic Aluminum Case with Side Window
$130 - Cooler Master Storm Sniper ATX Case
$130 - Cooler Master HAF 932 RC-932-KKN1-GP ATX Case
$150 - Antec P183 ATX Case
$170 - Cooler Master ATCS 840 RC-840-KKN1-GP Full Tower ATX Case
$170 - Lian Li PC-B25F ATX Case
$180 - Cooler Master Cosmos S 1000 RC-1100-KSN1-GP Full Tower ATX Case
$210 - Silverstone FT01-B ATX Case
$220 - Lian Li PC-A71F Black ATX Case
$270 - Corsair Obsidian Series 800D CC800DW Full Tower ATX Case
$330 - Silverstone Temjin SST-TJ07B Full Tower ATX Case

 

[solmssen]

Danny, thanks for taking the time to reply. What do you like about that Gigabyte board? It seems very well-featured, but there are a lot of complaints at Newegg. I'm willing to spend for stability and quality - the eVGA P55-200 Classified board intrigued me, for example. I recently built a machine to host about 8 VMs around a SuperMicro X8SIL-F, and I love it like a good dog. But for a productivity/media machine, it's not the right choice. Is there a workstation board that might be a good choice? Something based around a Xeon 3400 series CPU?

 

[Dangman]

Danny, thanks for taking the time to reply. What do you like about that Gigabyte board? It seems very well-featured, but there are a lot of complaints at Newegg. I'm willing to spend for stability and quality - the eVGA P55-200 Classified board intrigued me, for example. I recently built a machine to host about 8 VMs around a SuperMicro X8SIL-F, and I love it like a good dog. But for a productivity/media machine, it's not the right choice. Is there a workstation board that might be a good choice? Something based around a Xeon 3400 series CPU?

I'm a bit biased towards Gigabyte motherboards. With Newegg reviews, those that have a complaint will post significantly more than those who've had a good time with an item. So I would take those reviews with a grain of salt.

AS for the eVGA mobo, I think it's waay too expensive. Spending more than $160 on a socket LGA 1156 motherboard is akin to paying $5000 for a tricycle IMO.

For workstation motherboards, gonna have to get back to you on that. That's gonna take a lot more research than time I have to do.

 

[solmssen]

Thanks Danny - if you have time to look at workstation boards, I've love to hear your opinion. I'm looking into it, too. As far as cost - $160 for a motherboard doesn't faze me at all - I hear you, and I can be a cheap bastard myself, but this is my primary work machine we're talking about, and an extra $100 to get the best possible option is of little concern to me - one crash in the middle of the day will cost me a lot more than that. I was seriously looking at the SR-2. The idea of 12 cores and 24GB of RAM gives me the giggles. I know it's an overclocker's board, but still. If I hadn't just gotten my electric bill under $80 a month from $160 (thanks to virtualization!), I'd pull the trigger. I'm not committed to 1156 - if a 1366 board is best, so be it. My current machine is an ASUS P5N32-SLI SE and I've been through three of them now. The first two just died after a few months. This one has been running well for about 2 years now, but it was a mixed experience with ASUS overall. I was looking at their P6T7 WS SuperComputer board - any thoughts?

 

[Dangman]

Thanks Danny - if you have time to look at workstation boards, I've love to hear your opinion. I'm looking into it, too. As far as cost - $160 for a motherboard doesn't faze me at all - I hear you, and I can be a cheap bastard myself, but this is my primary work machine we're talking about, and an extra $100 to get the best possible option is of little concern to me - one crash in the middle of the day will cost me a lot more than that

I should clarify my statement: More than $160 for a P55 or socket LGA 1156 mobo is a waste of money IMO. However, spending $200 for a X58 mobo is justified.

I was looking at their P6T7 WS SuperComputer board - any thoughts?

The WS Supercomputer is definitely a solid motherboard. But not 100% sure if it's worth the costs.

 

[solmssen]

Hey Danny, I built it. I decided I wanted to build a smaller, more focused machine to do what I really wanted - push a LOT of 2D pixels, and run a lot of apps at once. I'm not a gamer, and so the 2 x fast 3d card solution in a big ATX case seemed like overkill, more noise, heat, and power draw than I wanted.

I wound up with this:

Asus Rampage III Gene uATX
Core i7-950
12GB RAM - 3 x 4GB Crucial DDR3 PC3-10666
OCZ Vertex 2 120GB SSD for OS/Apps
2 x Western Digital 1TB RE3 RAID1 for Data
LG BD-R
PNY Quadro NVS 450 driving a Dell 3008WFP-HC, two Samsung 213T, and a Samsung 52" HDTV.

I built it all into a white Antec Mini P180 (matches my black Mini P180 virtual machine host) with a Corsair HX-650 modular P/S, and installed Win7 Pro x64. It's super-quiet, scary fast, and does everything I need. Thanks for helping me refine my thinking and for all your excellent suggestions.

 

[Dangman]

You're welcome! Good luck with that build!

 

[rantanamo]

where did you find drivers for the 213T?

 

[artvscommerce]

deleted

 

[mutantmagnet]

I'm a bit biased towards Gigabyte motherboards. With Newegg reviews, those that have a complaint will post significantly more than those who've had a good time with an item. So I would take those reviews with a grain of salt.

While this is generally the feeling when reading consumer reviews NewEgg isn't that sort of venue.

Satisfied consumers leave behind positive feedback almost as consistently as eBay. Heck I've done it with a couple of purchases.