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First Build, $1500 Budget, Completed.

M

mudshark405

n00b
Joined
Apr 7, 2008
Messages
6
Though I’ve never posted before, I’ve been a longtime lurker here and appreciate (and hopefully learned from) the vast amount of knowledge/advice/encouragement available on this forum.

I do not build often. The last time was a number of years ago, with a Pentium 4 processor and 1GB RAM (which was a definite upgrade from my old Pentium Pro 200MHz, 512MB RDRAM, etc.). I did get a lot of mileage out of this system but after reading many posts over a long period of time, I was finally hit with the urge to build and began planning to rid myself of spare funds.

I am not a hardcore user by any means. Light gaming, video and photo editing, and some work related stuff (Matlab simulations, MS Office apps). I set my budget to $1500, which is likely overkill for my purposes. However I rationalized that away by knowing that I would not be doing another build for quite some time. I am reusing my monitor (NEC 20WMGX2), mouse, keyboard and already have a copy of Windows 7. Here’s what I came up with:

ASUS P6X58D Motherboard
Intel i7 920 Processor
6GB Gskill Ripjaws F3-12800CL8T RAM
XFX Radeon HD 5770 Video card
Intel X25-M 80GB SSD for OS and programs
Samsung F3 1TB Disk Drive for data
Liteon iHAS424-08 24x DVD burner
Seasonic X750 Gold Power Supply
Cooler Master HAF-922 case
Prolimatech Megahalems Shadow heatsink
(2) Noctua NF-P12 fans in push/pull configuration

The Intel SSD and Seasonic supply are the main causes of me going over budget by a couple hundred bucks. I wasn’t aware of all the advantages of an SSD before I started reading and once informed, spent the money for it. The Seasonic supply I read a glowing review on – which resulted in me spending $70 more than I had intended on a PS. Rationalization is a wonderful thing…

The system has been built and is running great. Overclocked to 4 GHz without much trouble at all (CPU-V at 1.256V) running prime95 overnight. I will try and see how much higher it’ll go when I have more time. For now I just leave it at 3.6GHz with CPU-V set to 1.15V. Very stable system, runs cool, and I’m very happy with the build.

Thanks again to everyone for taking the time to post questions and answers and provide advice and assistance. I’m sure there are many more like me who rarely, or even never, post yet use this forum as a knowledge base to put together their own systems. My build was easy and painless (except in the wallet) and I can attribute that to all the posters here, novices and gurus alike, whose experiences and willingness to share enabled me to put this system together.

Keith
 
Something you might want to consider is getting another 1TB drive to use in a RAID 1 for your data drive. Never hurts to have a backup, especially of 1TB of data. I've used the Samsung F1 drives and they are pretty nice. Never had a problem with them.
 
Sorry, it took me awhile to figure the picture posting stuff out. Anyway, some pics of the recent build:

Installing MB/CPU/heatsink in HAF-922 case:
comp1.jpg


Beginning the backside wiring. What a mess.
comp2.jpg


Finally done. Not great but outta sight, outta mind...
comp3.jpg


Finished. Couple of views of the 'final product':
comp4.jpg


comp5.jpg



Regarding RAID, correct me if I'm wrong but I thought that RAID was more a way to speed up hard drive access by using two drives to store data. If either one of the two drives goes south, all data is lost, making a RAID array not suitable for backup purposes, correct? In any case, I will definitely consider a RAID option for user data, along with a separate backup drive. Thanks.

K.
 
What you're describing is a RAID 0 array. A RAID 1 array is a mirror image of your data, so if one drive goes bad you still have another copy of your data. Both require 2 drives.
 
mudshark405 said:
Ah, okay. Thanks for the clarification.
Click to expand...

Like I said...just something to think about. I haven't had too many HDD's go bad on me over the years, but I got to the point that I have 10 years worth of random stuff on my 1TB drive. If it went bad, I'd have no way to get it back. So I decided to do a RAID 1. Should be within your budget also...$85 or so for a 2nd one.
 
mudshark405 said:
Ah, okay. Thanks for the clarification.
Click to expand...
If you were looking for more performance with that Samsung HD with a combination of data security, you could try a RAID 0+1 setup. Exactly how it sounds. 2 Hard drives running as a raid 0 with two other HD's set as a RAID 0 mirroring the first set of drives. It's still less secure than a regular RAID 1 set-up but definitely more secure than a standard RAID 0 setup. Plus, it is pretty costly (you need 4 drives if you haven't been following what I've been saying) especially considering you'd need three more Samung F3 1TB HDs which would cost around another $250 or so new (total for all three). Just a thought, a COSTLY thought. You already have the SSD though, I don't see why you'd need increased performance on the drives you're just going to store standard data on.
 
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