Help spec'ing a new system...

[54warrior]

First time poster, and I just recently found out about this awesome site from a co-worker (MrExcite) who recently got some excellent advice from you folks on here. I've done some reading and I am impressed with the knowledge that you all possess on here. Hopefully you can help me out?!?!

I have decided that building a new desktop from scratch is the best choice for me. So who wants to help me spec out the parts for the system? It will be used mostly for graphic design work in Photoshop/Corel Draw X3/Dreamweaver, along with a ton of internet time. Might do some gaming on it as well and my roommate just purchased a 55" LCD Samsung and I thought adding a BluRay to my new computer would be a nice bonus for viewing on the new TV--is this even possible (I'm sure that a special video card is probably required?)

Budget: $800-$1000

Apps I will be using:

* Adobe CS3 Il, Ps, Dw, Fl, etc.
* Corel Draw X3
* 3D Studio Max 8

Games I will be using:

* Rfactor

Other items of interest:

* 22" AOC monitor (existing)
* keyboard, mouse, and speakers (existing)
* cable internet connection
* Case location will be in 72 degrees F, located on floor under open desk(aesthetics of case unimportant)

Hardware required(?):

* Processor
* Mother Board
* Video card
* Hard disk drive
* Optical drive - Blu Ray would be nice
* Sound card?
* SD Card reader/Firewire port?
* Cooling?
* Case (more quiet than pretty)
* Power supply (500w ?)
* operating system will be Windows 7 but which version?
* What am i forgetting?


This will be my first time building one, so any advice is appreciated!


What I'm looking for is basically a shopping list from newegg.

Thanks in advance. you can check out some of the stuff I design here: http://flemingdesignsolutions.com/portfolio.html

 

[lt_shiro]

ASUS P7P55 LX LGA 1156 Intel P55 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail $120

Intel Xeon X3440 Lynnfield 2.53GHz 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1156 95W Quad-Core Server Processor - Retail $240

2x G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-4GBRL - Retail $188

Antec NEO ECO 520C 520W Continuous Power ATX12V / EPS12V 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Power Supply - Retail and Antec Three Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail Combo $110

SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD502HJ 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive $55

SAMSUNG CD/DVD Burner Black SATA Model SH-S223C - OEM $27

HIS H577FN1GD Radeon HD 5770 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card - Retail $165

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit 1-Pack for System Builders - OEM $105

Total before S&H $1010

 

[tiraides]

Blu-ray is possible, but if you're buying an OEM drive, you'll also need to buy some media software capable of reading/playing BR discs.

Regardless, lt_shiro's build is good for your needs.

 

[engiNURD]

Congrats on the new website.

The vidcard shiro listed will playback BD just fine.

Get RAMDisk for your PS scratch disk.

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showpost.php?p=442160&postcount=5

... I built a RAID 0 box for a small image studio 2 weeks ago, a new startup here in Vegas that is making waves. They wanted a "demo" workstation to see what's possible for processing as they don't want to create a massive server-type situation in the office, but 3-4 workstations that are equal in performance and then just using simple file sharing as required. Very simple setup in terms of the network, but the workstation I built used 2 300GB Velociraptors (tried to sell 'em on SSD but the amount of data they're dealing with wouldn't be practical - again, a price-to-performance and ROI issue).

The hard part was getting them to spring for 16GB of RAM because of the cost, but a few weeks ago I saw that sale for 4 4GB sticks of RAM for about $450 and made a few phone calls and snagged a similar deal.

I set up Photoshop CS3 for 'em (their legit retail copy) on Vista Business x64. They started messing around with it, loading some rather large TIFF files in excess of 150MB a pop, several at a time, performing some basic scripted actions on 'em, blurs, filters, etc. Using the Velociraptors in RAID 0 meant very snappy and consistent performance, as well as having 16GB of RAM too. Also, it's a Q6600 based machine running rock solid at 3 GHz.

They were very pleased with the performance at that point, but I had a surprise for 'em.

I asked if I could have 20 mins 'alone' with the workstation to "rewire it" as Tim Allen might say. That consisted of grabbing a trial version of SuperSpeed Software's RamDisk Plus 9 and installing it, doing the simple configuration, and then creating a 10GB RAMdisk and told Photoshop "Ok, you want a scratch disk? Here, try this on for size."

After I did some tests of my own using the same scripts they'd done earlier, boy... I tell ya. You haven't lived till you see 225MB TIFF files literally snap onscreen in the blink of an eye, multiple huge TIFFs with resolutions like 5000x5000 and even higher. That's what's possible with RAMdisks, because even Velociraptors in RAID 0 pumping out something like 280MB/s sustained pales to the close to 5GB a second in bandwidth of that RAMdisk.

I told 'em to come back in and rerun their test scripts.

Jaws hit the floor, folks. Well, not quite but figuratively speaking, at least.

They asked what I'd done, I told them I put the scratch disk in RAM where it should be if you have the RAM to make it happen, and they bought 4 licenses of RamDisk Plus 10 mins later, and I got a signed contract to construct 3 more workstations identical to that one top to bottom and also be their "geek" if any issues come up.

It was a very good week...

 

[54warrior]

Well thanks for your help, I ended up going with this setup:

Parts should be here this week and assembly should occur on Saturday.

• AMD Phenom II X4 945 Deneb 3.0GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache Socket AM3 95W Quad-Core Processor
  
• ASUS M4A79XTD EVO AM3 AMD 790X ATX AMD Motherboard
  
• ASUS EAH5750 FORMULA/2DI/1GD5/A Radeon HD 5750 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card
  
• 2 - G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-4GBRL
  
• 2 - Western Digital Caviar Black WD5001AALS 500GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive
  
• Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-bit 1-Pack for System Builders
  
• Rosewill RCR-IC002 74-in-1 USB 2.0 3.5" Internal Card Reader w/ USB port
  
• Antec Nine Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
  
• Antec NEO ECO 620C 620W Continuous Power ATX12V v2.3 / EPS12V 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Power Supply
  
• LG WH08LS20K Black 8X BD-R 2X BD-RE 16X DVD+R 5X DVD-RAM 6X BD-ROM 2MB Cache SATA 8X Blu-ray Burner

Got a Combo Deal on Case/Power Supply, and Processor/MBoard/VidCard

$1200 shipped (includes some other odds/end pieces as well)

 

[Shalafi]

with a budget of 1200 why are you going AMD?

 

[54warrior]

with a budget of 1200 why are you going AMD?

Personal preference basically.

 

[Shalafi]

it's your money

you could go i5 at the very least with that budget and get better performance and overclocking

 

[stateofjermaine]

Personal preference basically.

LOL. Hope you have fun with it! AMD is a fine company, but they have been effectively relegated to gaming systems, as they don't have the processing power to compete with Intel at the moment. Interesting that you ignored most of the advice of lt_shiro and tiraides. They are two of the most knowledgeable members here, and his build was a significantly better value. Anyway, best of luck!