First PC build in 5 years

[Yonkers]

Hi all,

So I started a similar thread nearly a year ago but never got around to buying/building it. Now my machine died this past weekend so it's come up again in an urgent way.
I haven't built a machine in a long time. The last time I did I also relied on this site for help and built a monster machine (for the time) but that was over 5 years ago.
This is what I have now:

Mobo: Tyan S2885 Mobo
CPU: 2 x Opteron 248 2.2 Ghz
Memory: 2 x Corsair TWINX2048RE-3200 2GB Kit DDR400
Case: Lian-Li PC-V2000A Silver Full Tower
Video card: Radeon x800 XT Platinum Edition
Sound card: Audigy 2 ZS
Hard drive: 3Ware Escalade 9500S-8 SATA RAID-5 card, WD Raptor 150GB 10k RPM (boot disk), 5xMaxtor DiamondMax 10 300GB SATA drive (for RAID)
Power Supply: PC Power & Cooling Turbo-Cool 510AG

The only thing I think I can salvage is the case, the RAID card, and hard drives.
The machine will be mainly for gaming with some Photoshop/VMWare, etc. But mainly gaming. I play mainly WoW but that's also because my current system can't play any of the newer games.
Only thing I've got my eye on so far is Intel I7 950 and Radeon 6870. And I'd like SSD. But that's only from a cursory look through the forums. I'm open to other options.
My budget is about $1500, flexible for a couple hundred more if needed.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Thanks.


1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
Mainly gaming. Yes for Photoshop. VMWare but not intensely.
2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
$1500 for brand new system. Flexible to a couple hundred dollars.
3) Where do you live?
Texas
4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. Please be very specific.
Nearly everything.
5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.
Hopefully I have some reuseable.
6) Will you be overclocking?
Not likely.
7) What size monitor do you have and/or plan to have?
24" Dell at 1920x1200. Thought about buying another 24" to make it dual but not needed now.
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
Building ASAP
9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? etc.
None of the above are must haves
10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license?
Yes

 

[Dangman]

Do you live near a Microcenter?

 

[Yonkers]

Do you live near a Microcenter?

Yes. Also a Fry's. I usually buy online due to savings for tax but if you think I can get a better deal/service through Microcenter I'm open to buying from there too.

 

[Dangman]

Hmm, what kind of RAID were those 300GB drives in? RAID 5? Did you want to reuse that RAID array with the new setup?

 

[E4g1e]

Actually, that RAID card can work on newer motherboards, but since most of them lack 64-bit PCI-X (not to be confused with PCI-e) slots, that card will become bottlenecked by the 32-bit/33MHz PCI bus.

 

[Dangman]

Actually, that RAID card can work on newer motherboards, but since most of them lack 64-bit PCI-X (not to be confused with PCI-e) slots, that card will become bottlenecked by the 32-bit/33MHz PCI bus.

Really? I thought that card only worked with PCI-X slots.

 

[E4g1e]

Really? I thought that card only worked with PCI-X slots.

Hence my conclusion that "the RAID card will work in a standard PCI slot, but why would you want to do such a thing?" In such an installation, you'll never see more than about 106 MB/s out of that entire array when a PCI slot is used.

 

[Dangman]

Hence my conclusion that "the RAID card will work in a standard PCI slot, but why would you want to do such a thing?" In such an installation, you'll never see more than about 106 MB/s out of that entire array when a PCI slot is used.

Yah. But if the OP has valuable data on the RAID arrays setup by that card, that's sufficient cause to reuse that card. At least for a little while though.

 

[Yonkers]

Yah. But if the OP has valuable data on the RAID arrays setup by that card, that's sufficient cause to reuse that card. At least for a little while though.

That would be the exact reason. I have all my pictures, etc on those drives.
They are configured in a RAID 5 setup. At that time, 1.2TB was huge for home use. Now it's nothing. I wouldn't mind buying all new drives to get more storage and then just moving everything off that RAID. It's a shame a $500 RAID card is pretty useless a few years later but I guess that goes for CPU, vid card, etc too. My tower has room for more drives so I could just keep the old RAID in there and add more drives.

 

[Dangman]

Ok then. Well Microcenter does have the Core i7 950 for $220. So assuming that you're going for that:

$220 - Core i7 950 from Microcenter
$200 - ASUS Sabertooth X58 Intel X58 ATX Motherboard
$134 - 2 x G.Skill Ripjaw Series F3-10666CL9S-4GBRL 4GB DDR3 1333 RAM
$480 - 2 x Asus EAH6870/2DI2S/1GD5 Radeon HD 6870 1GB PCI-E Video Card
$240 - OCZ Vertex 2 OCZSSD2-2VTXE120G 2.5" 120GB SSD
$140 - Samsung Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
$130 - Corsair 850TX 850W PSU
---
Total: $1544 plus tax and shipping

Reuse the case. Try the onboard sound first and then add in the sound card if necessary. Now here's what you should do once you get the setup:
- Only use one video card and place it in the second PCI-E x16 slot.
- Place the RAID card in the only PCI slot on that motherboard
- Setup a RAID 1 array with the motherboard's onboard RAID controller, not the 3Ware controller.
- Proceed with normal OS and driver installation.
- Once your 3Ware RAID array is fully up and running, move ALL the data stored on that 3Ware RAID array onto the 1TB RAID 1 array you created earlier.
- Once the data is fully transferred, power down the system, remove the 3Ware controller and the 320GB drives from your PC.
- Then place the second HD 6870 into the first PCI-E x16 slot
- Now you have a dual-GPU setup for increased gaming performance, a sperate backed up copy of your data (the 3Ware controller + the 320GB drives), and updated storage (the RAID 1 array)

While a little labor intensive, it's the most cost effective and fastest route.

The main issue was trying to find a motherboard that would fit two PCI-E dual slot cards as well as that RAID card. I basically couldn't find one that was a reasonable price. Hence the above route.

With that said, when all the SATA cables and such are installed, does that 3Ware card take up one or two slots?

 

[Yonkers]

With that said, when all the SATA cables and such are installed, does that 3Ware card take up one or two slots?

Thanks a bunch, Danny. I also appreciate the step by step breakdown.
The 3Ware card takes up just one slot. The SATA cables connect at the end of the card, so doesn't interfere with the card slot above or below.
Can you also recommend a cooling solution? I think part of the reason my current system died is it just got too hot. The Zalman fans I had in there kept dying. And they were really loud. I'd like something quiet and am not opposed to water cool if needed, but I've never done it so not sure if I should start now (especially if I'm not overclocking).

 

[Dangman]

Well another option is this:
$170 - Intel Core i5 760 from Microcenter
$140 - Asus P7P55D-E Intel P55 ATX Motherboard
---
Total: $310 plus tax and shipping

$110 cheaper than the planned setup I have above. That motherboard will let you fit both HD 6870 cards and the 3Ware card if you still want to reuse it. Just place the 3Ware card in between the two HD 6870 cards in the PCI slot on that motherboard.

In addition, the Core i5 760 will provide roughly the same performance as the Core i7 950 in games: The 2.8Ghz Core i7 930 only provides about a 2 to 5FPS difference over the Core i5 750 as shown in this review:
http://www.legionhardware.com/articles_pages/gaming_the_core_debate,1.html

Additional proof: The $1040 3.3Ghz Core i7 975 Extreme Edition CPU is only 15% to 30% faster than the Core i5 750 with only a specific set of games and video cards:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/cpus-and-games-2010.html

So considering the the i7 975 is faster than the i7 930 and i7 950 and yet only provides 15% to 30% under the most ideal conditions, the Core i7 930/950 is definitely not gonna be that much faster than the i5 750 or i5 760. At least fast enough to justify the higher costs anyway. In addition, there's very little real world difference between triple channel and dual channel RAM in real world apps and games.

However going with the Core i7 950 setup will allow you to use SLI should you want that route later on and better video encoding performance. Decide for yourself if that $110 as well as the loss of the 3Ware card is worth it for the i7 950.

As for cooling, I recommend the following HSF and fans:
$30 - Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus HSF for LGA 1366 and LGA 1156
$9 - Scythe SY1225SL12L 120mm "Slipstream" Case Fan

The Coolermaster Hypwer 212+ is one of the best bang for the buck HSF out there. It's very quiet yet provides pretty good cooling. Not bad for $30. To get something that noticeably surpasses the Hyper 212+ both in cooling and noise level, you're gonna have to spend $70 to $90+. So yeah, the Coolermaster is a good deal.

The Slipstream fans are some of the quietest 120mm fans out there.

 

[Yonkers]

Could I not do SLI with the i5? Is it a CPU limitation or a mobo one? I don't mind the extra $110 but being able to use the old 3ware care would be nice. It's only 1.2TB of drive space which I could replace with just one new drive, but I have 12 drive slots in that tower and 6 free right now. Might as well make use of it.

 

[Dangman]

Could I not do SLI with the i5? Is it a CPU limitation or a mobo one? I don't mind the extra $110 but being able to use the old 3ware care would be nice. It's only 1.2TB of drive space which I could replace with just one new drive, but I have 12 drive slots in that tower and 6 free right now. Might as well make use of it.

It's an artificial mobo limitation. Asus is pretty much charging you an extra $40 if you want SLI and i5:
$180 - Asus P7P55D-E Pro Intel P55 ATX Motherboard

Same motherboard but just has SLI enabled. That's it.

Considering that you live near a Microcenter where you can get a Core i7 950 for cheap and the fact that a X58 mobo isn't that much more in cost, IMO, the above mobo would be a bad choice for the money at its current price.

 

[Yonkers]

OK. Then I'll just go with your original advice. And then I'll buy a few extra of the Spinpoints for 3-4 TB of space. Is that a bad idea to put all of those drives in a single RAID 1? Should I make them all separate RAID 1s?

 

[Dangman]

OK. Then I'll just go with your original advice. And then I'll buy a few extra of the Spinpoints for 3-4 TB of space. Is that a bad idea to put all of those drives in a single RAID 1? Should I make them all separate RAID 1s?

Ehh, considering that a RAID 5 array using the motherboard's onboard RAID controller is gonna impact performance, in this case, I recommend two RAID 1 arrays with two 1TB drives each. Yes you do lose out on 1TB of space but at least there won't be an overall performance hit.

Also remember this: RAID of any kind is NOT backup.

 

[Yonkers]

Ehh, considering that a RAID 5 array using the motherboard's onboard RAID controller is gonna impact performance, in this case, I recommend two RAID 1 arrays with two 1TB drives each. Yes you do lose out on 1TB of space but at least there won't be an overall performance hit.

Also remember this: RAID of any kind is NOT backup.

I'd be losing out on 2TB, right? 1TB per RAID1 array? Anyway, I see what you mean.
Thanks very much for all the help. Off the spend some money.

 

[Dangman]

I'd be losing out on 2TB, right? 1TB per RAID1 array? Anyway, I see what you mean.
Thanks very much for all the help. Off the spend some money.

Oh yeah, 2TB, my mistake.

 

[Yonkers]

BTW, if I click on a link from your post to Newegg, this forum gets credit right? Will it get credit for the entire order or will I have to go and click on each item separately?

 

[Dangman]

BTW, if I click on a link from your post to Newegg, this forum gets credit right? Will it get credit for the entire order or will I have to go and click on each item separately?

I think so but not 100% sure on that. But just to make 100% sure, click this link:
http://www.newegg.com/?nm_mc=AFC-C8...-na-_-na&AID=10521304&PID=3891137&SID=194Kyle

Then search for the parts I recommended, add to your cart, checkout, and this site should get credit.

Oh and thanks for doing your part to help this forum

 

[Yonkers]

You guys on this forum have always done right by me. I'm more than happy to help as you have done.