Need Opinions on New Build Hardware

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Fire488

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 14, 2007
Messages
438
I am just looking for casual opinions here, but if I missed something please point it out.
[H] has the best info and advice on the web and it is very appreciated.
I already have a Case and Monitor.


1 of ASUS Rampage III Formula LGA 1366 Intel X58 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
Model #:Rampage III Formula
Item #:N82E16813131666

1 of EVGA 015-P3-1482-AR GeForce GTX 480 (Fermi) SuperClocked FTW 1536MB 384-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support ...
Model #:015-P3-1482-AR
Item #:N82E16814130551

1 of CORSAIR Professional Series AX1200 1200W ATX12V v2.31 / EPS12V v2.92 SLI Certified 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Modular Active ...
Model #:CMPSU-1200AX
Item #:N82E16817139014

1 of Intel Core i7-950 Bloomfield 3.06GHz LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor BX80601950
Model #:BX80601950
Item #:N82E16819115211

2 of G.SKILL PIS Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2200 (PC3 17600) Desktop Memory Model F3-17600CL7D-4GBPIS
Model #:F3-17600CL7D-4GBPIS

2 of Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
Model #:WD1002FAEX

2 of Western Digital VelociRaptor WD6000HLHX 600GB 10000 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

1 of Logitech G19 Black USB Wired Standard Gaming Keyboard
Model #:920-000969

1 of Logitech G9x Black Two modes scroll USB Wired Laser Gaming Mouse
Model #:910-001152

1 of SENNHEISER PC350 3.5mm Connector Circumaural Headset
Model #:pC350

1 of Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound - OEM
Model #:AS5-3.5G
Item #:N82E16835100007
 
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It would help if you answer these questions:
1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
3) Where do you live?
6) Will you be overclocking?
7) What size monitor do you have and/or plan to have?
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? etc.
10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If yes, what OS? 32bit or 64bit?

Additional questions:
- What case do you have?
 
Danny Bui said:
It would help if you answer these questions:
1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
3) Where do you live?
6) Will you be overclocking?
7) What size monitor do you have and/or plan to have?
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? etc.
10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If yes, what OS? 32bit or 64bit?

Additional questions:
- What case do you have?
Click to expand...

1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
Gaming

2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
around $3500.00 Max, but this falls considerably less. Tax/Sip free for some

3) Where do you live?
New Jersey. LOL I will be waiting for it to arrive fully armed, locked and loaded...

6) Will you be overclocking?
Absolutely

7) What size monitor do you have and/or plan to have?
27" Samsung

8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
So far Newegg

9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? etc.
I will RAID 0 the Velocerapters, No SLI (yet)

10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If yes, what OS? 32bit or 64bit?
Windows 7 Pro 64Bit (its licensed)

What case do you have?
Cooler Master Cosmos 1000 (modded for ventilation)
 
Question 8 is asking WHEN, not where. So please reanswer that question please.

Also, I wouldn't bother with RAID 0 Velociraptors. Horrible choice for the money. I would go for a single Intel 160GB SSD

What's the max resolution of your monitor?

Also, do you want advice that'll maintain that "performance at all costs" setup you have now? Or advice for a better bang for the buck PC that'll provide 95% of the performance as your planned setup but for significantly less?

Thogh quick note: Ditch the DDR3 2200 RAM. Unless you're trying to aim for 5Ghz+, DDR3 1600 RAM will allow you to hit 4.2Ghz, the average OC for the Core i7 CPUs while being significantly cheaper:
$140 - G.Skill F3-12800CL8T-6GBRM 3 x 2GB DDR3 1600 RAM
 
Danny Bui said:
Question 8 is asking WHEN, not where. So please reanswer that question please.

Also, I wouldn't bother with RAID 0 Velociraptors. Horrible choice for the money. I would go for a single Intel 160GB SSD

What's the max resolution of your monitor?

Also, do you want advice that'll maintain that "performance at all costs" setup you have now? Or advice for a better bang for the buck PC that'll provide 95% of the performance as your planned setup but for significantly less?

Thogh quick note: Ditch the DDR3 2200 RAM. Unless you're trying to aim for 5Ghz+, DDR3 1600 RAM will allow you to hit 4.2Ghz, the average OC for the Core i7 CPUs while being significantly cheaper:
$140 - G.Skill F3-12800CL8T-6GBRM 3 x 2GB DDR3 1600 RAM
Click to expand...

"Also, I wouldn't bother with RAID 0 Velociraptors. Horrible choice for the money. I would go for a single Intel 160GB SSD"
I would love to use the SSD drive, but recently I read an article in (I Believe) Maximum PC that stated that most games showed marginal performance gains with the SSD drives and that more/ better RAM paid off better on the gains. Right now I have well over 160Gb's of games to install and SSD is still way over priced in my opinion.

"What's the max resolution of your monitor?"
1920 x 1080

"Also, do you want advice that'll maintain that "performance at all costs" setup you have now? Or advice for a better bang for the buck PC that'll provide 95% of the performance as your planned setup but for significantly less?"
I am always looking for advice and learn new things everyday. I learned how to overclock from this site thanks to graysky and his great post. If there is a cheaper way to achieve the same results I'm all ears (or eyes in this case)

"Thogh quick note: Ditch the DDR3 2200 RAM. Unless you're trying to aim for 5Ghz+, DDR3 1600 RAM will allow you to hit 4.2Ghz, the average OC for the Core i7 CPUs while being significantly cheaper:
$140 - G.Skill F3-12800CL8T-6GBRM 3 x 2GB DDR3 1600 RAM"
I have never been comfortable with RAM and how to spec it. Any advice here is greatly appreciated.

I want to thank you for the time you are putting into my post and I want you to know that I really appreciate it.
 
AGAIN, please answer question 8 correctly.

Fire488 said:
"Also, I wouldn't bother with RAID 0 Velociraptors. Horrible choice for the money. I would go for a single Intel 160GB SSD"
I would love to use the SSD drive, but recently I read an article in (I Believe) Maximum PC that stated that most games showed marginal performance gains with the SSD drives and that more/ better RAM paid off better on the gains. Right now I have well over 160Gb's of games to install and SSD is still way over priced in my opinion.
Click to expand...
Yes SSDs won't increase the FPS of a game. But what it will do is decrease the load times as well as make your OS significantly snappier. In addition, most people don't actually install their games on the SSD. The most common format is one SSD large enough for the OS and critical apps and a fast hard drive for the games. That setup has been shown time and time again to be far more effective than a RAID 0 array of normal hard drives.

But even if you want to avoid SSDs altogether, those Velociraptor drives are still ridiculously overpriced. Many consumer grade drives provide 90% of the performance of a VRaptor but at a fraction of the cost. Like these drives:
$55 - Western Digital WD5000AAKS 500GB 7200RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
$55 - Samsung Spinpoint F3 HD502HJ 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
$75 - Samsung Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive

All of the above drives will provide at least 90% of the performance of a VRaptor while being 4-5 times cheaper. So yeah, ditch the VRaptors and go with either the SSD + F3 1TB drive setup or the a 500GB RAID 0 array + 1TB drive setup. Either of those route would be a more intelligent use of your money. That's easily $460 in savings if you switch to a 500GB RAID 0.

In fact, ditch that WD Black drive as well for the Samsung F33 1TB drive above. The SATA 6Gb/s connection of the WD Black drive doesn't offer ANY performance increase over SATA 3Gb/s. So in other words, you're paying more money for that WD Black drive just for the SATA 6Gb/s title. That's it.

As for your planned setup, the i5 750/760 is just as fast as the Core i7 950 in gaming as shown here:

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.

So platform wise, you can save around $150 to $200 if you switch to the Core i7 760 route and still get very similar performance in games. Dunno about you but $150 to $200 is too high for minimal gains in gaming. It'll only extend the life of your PC by 2 months at most.
$195 - Intel Core i5 750 CPU
$140 - Asus P7P55D Pro Intel P55 ATX Motherboard
$87 - G.Skill Ripjaw Series F3-12800CL9D-4GBRL 2 x 2GB DDR3 1600 RAM
--
Total: $422 plus tax and shipping.

That's $317 in savings over your planned CPU + mobo setup + the RAM I recommended earlier. With that $317 in savings as well the additional savings from earlier, you can now afford two GTX 470 in SLI that would outperform a single GTX 480.
 
Danny Bui said:
AGAIN, please answer question 8 correctly.


Yes SSDs won't increase the FPS of a game. But what it will do is decrease the load times as well as make your OS significantly snappier. In addition, most people don't actually install their games on the SSD. The most common format is one SSD large enough for the OS and critical apps and a fast hard drive for the games. That setup has been shown time and time again to be far more effective than a RAID 0 array of normal hard drives.

But even if you want to avoid SSDs altogether, those Velociraptor drives are still ridiculously overpriced. Many consumer grade drives provide 90% of the performance of a VRaptor but at a fraction of the cost. Like these drives:
$55 - Western Digital WD5000AAKS 500GB 7200RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
$55 - Samsung Spinpoint F3 HD502HJ 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
$75 - Samsung Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive

All of the above drives will provide at least 90% of the performance of a VRaptor while being 4-5 times cheaper. So yeah, ditch the VRaptors and go with either the SSD + F3 1TB drive setup or the a 500GB RAID 0 array + 1TB drive setup. Either of those route would be a more intelligent use of your money. That's easily $460 in savings if you switch to a 500GB RAID 0.

In fact, ditch that WD Black drive as well for the Samsung F33 1TB drive above. The SATA 6Gb/s connection of the WD Black drive doesn't offer ANY performance increase over SATA 3Gb/s. So in other words, you're paying more money for that WD Black drive just for the SATA 6Gb/s title. That's it.

As for your planned setup, the i5 750/760 is just as fast as the Core i7 950 in gaming as shown here:

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.

So platform wise, you can save around $150 to $200 if you switch to the Core i7 760 route and still get very similar performance in games. Dunno about you but $150 to $200 is too high for minimal gains in gaming. It'll only extend the life of your PC by 2 months at most.
$195 - Intel Core i5 750 CPU
$140 - Asus P7P55D Pro Intel P55 ATX Motherboard
$87 - G.Skill Ripjaw Series F3-12800CL9D-4GBRL 2 x 2GB DDR3 1600 RAM
--
Total: $422 plus tax and shipping.

That's $317 in savings over your planned CPU + mobo setup + the RAM I recommended earlier. With that $317 in savings as well the additional savings from earlier, you can now afford two GTX 470 in SLI that would outperform a single GTX 480.
Click to expand...

Wow! Nice info here. I will read it thoroughly when i get home. (business trip).
Question #8= Immediately!
 
Danny Bui said:
AGAIN, please answer question 8 correctly.


Yes SSDs won't increase the FPS of a game. But what it will do is decrease the load times as well as make your OS significantly snappier. In addition, most people don't actually install their games on the SSD. The most common format is one SSD large enough for the OS and critical apps and a fast hard drive for the games. That setup has been shown time and time again to be far more effective than a RAID 0 array of normal hard drives.

But even if you want to avoid SSDs altogether, those Velociraptor drives are still ridiculously overpriced. Many consumer grade drives provide 90% of the performance of a VRaptor but at a fraction of the cost. Like these drives:
$55 - Western Digital WD5000AAKS 500GB 7200RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
$55 - Samsung Spinpoint F3 HD502HJ 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
$75 - Samsung Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive

All of the above drives will provide at least 90% of the performance of a VRaptor while being 4-5 times cheaper. So yeah, ditch the VRaptors and go with either the SSD + F3 1TB drive setup or the a 500GB RAID 0 array + 1TB drive setup. Either of those route would be a more intelligent use of your money. That's easily $460 in savings if you switch to a 500GB RAID 0.

In fact, ditch that WD Black drive as well for the Samsung F33 1TB drive above. The SATA 6Gb/s connection of the WD Black drive doesn't offer ANY performance increase over SATA 3Gb/s. So in other words, you're paying more money for that WD Black drive just for the SATA 6Gb/s title. That's it.

As for your planned setup, the i5 750/760 is just as fast as the Core i7 950 in gaming as shown here:

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.

So platform wise, you can save around $150 to $200 if you switch to the Core i7 760 route and still get very similar performance in games. Dunno about you but $150 to $200 is too high for minimal gains in gaming. It'll only extend the life of your PC by 2 months at most.
$195 - Intel Core i5 750 CPU
$140 - Asus P7P55D Pro Intel P55 ATX Motherboard
$87 - G.Skill Ripjaw Series F3-12800CL9D-4GBRL 2 x 2GB DDR3 1600 RAM
--
Total: $422 plus tax and shipping.

That's $317 in savings over your planned CPU + mobo setup + the RAM I recommended earlier. With that $317 in savings as well the additional savings from earlier, you can now afford two GTX 470 in SLI that would outperform a single GTX 480.
Click to expand...

I totally understand the "snapier" feeling concept in Windows that a SSD drive would render. My problem has more to do with hard drive space more than anything else. I currently have 2 150gb Raptors in a RAID 0 config. Nets me about 280gb of space of which approximately 240 gb are my games and Windows. (Win 7 Pro 64Bit) All of my other programs are stored on my second drive (1 Tb WD ). I play all the games installed and have many. many more not installed. The cost of buying the 300gb SSD drive would be just too significant t this time.
The processor info is great. I will take your great advice here.

I ran a test on HD Tach against my RAID 0 setup and my single second drive. The Raptors in RAID 0 destroyed the other drive. Agreed though that the way to go is SSD, but at this time they are still way overpriced. I will ditch the Veloceraptors and go for what you suggest.

I was hoping to "future proof" my next build. for the money 5 years would be nice.
I built my last gaming rig at the end of 2007 and it was a "dinosaur" by mid 2008. I upgraded the vid card and the RAM since, but it is not able to run games like ArmA2 and BF BC2 the way I would like. Both are very choppy.

My current rig:

- Windows 7 Pro 64bit

- Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 Conroe 3.0GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor BX80557E6850 (overclocked to 3.6 ghz and stable)

-2 x CORSAIR DOMINATOR 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model TWIN2X4096-8500C5DF

- Asus Striker II Formula mobo

- 2 Western Digital Raptor X WD1500AHFD 150GB 10000 RPM SATA 1.5Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive

- Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive (second drive)

- COOLER MASTER Real Power Pro RS-850-EMBAD1-US 850W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Power Supply

- PNY GTX 260 Vid Card.

This is the "meat and potatoes" of my current rig and it should run better than it does, but it does not almost 3 years later. The cost was about $3600.00 then and I have upgraded the RAM and Vid card and then we go over $4,000.00.
This is why I am nervous about not spending a little more to get the most bang for the buck and hopefully be able to run this thing for atleast as long as my current machine is running now. Just a little retrospective.

Thanks so much for that advice.
 
Fire488 said:
I was hoping to "future proof" my next build. for the money 5 years would be nice.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's gonna be impossible dude. For a gaming PC, no matter how much you spend, it's not gonna stay that competitive for 3 years let alone 5. It's significantly more cost effective to just build a gaming PC, have it last 2-3 years and then build a new one rather than spend $4000 on a gaming PC hoping it'll last as long aas 5 years.

Not to mention, I'm more than willing to bet that back in 2007, I could have made that build for at least $1000 less and still get the same exact performance.
 
Fire488 said:
I totally understand the "snapier" feeling concept in Windows that a SSD drive would render. My problem has more to do with hard drive space more than anything else. I currently have 2 150gb Raptors in a RAID 0 config. Nets me about 280gb of space of which approximately 240 gb are my games and Windows. (Win 7 Pro 64Bit) All of my other programs are stored on my second drive (1 Tb WD ). I play all the games installed and have many. many more not installed. The cost of buying the 300gb SSD drive would be just too significant t this time.
Click to expand...

Another question:

Are you going to install those games on a separate hard drive volume from your system/boot drive? Or must all of the games that you currently play be installed on the same hard drive volume as your boot/system drive?

If it is the first question, then you can get away with a small-capacity SSD as your boot/system drive and a larger-capacity hard drive for your game installs, plus a third hard drive for storage.

But if it is really the second question (because your particular games only work when installed onto the C: drive or boot/system drive), then you're stuck with a large but relatively slow hard drive. But the 600GB Velociraptor is a relatively poor compromise between an HDD and an SSD: Its maximum sequential transfer speed barely surpasses that of the fastest 7200 RPM hard drives on the market while its random access speed (while very quick for an HDD) is still much, much slower than that of an SSD - at a price that's more than six times higher than those of the regular 7200 RPM hard drives on a per GB basis (47 cents per GB for the Velociraptor versus 7.5 cents per GB for the regular 1TB 7200 RPM drives).

As for the WD1002FAEX that you originally considered for storage, it is a bit overpriced right now because it is slightly slower in sequential transfer speed than the Samsung F3 1TB HD103SJ drive despite its SATA 6Gbps interface. That WD Black 6Gbps drive would have been very competitive with the other 1TB drives on the market if it were priced $15 less than its current going price. As it stands now, the WD1002FAEX costs $15 more and does not outperform the cheaper 1TB WD Blue WD10EALS. That is what makes that WD1002FAEX a mediocre buy right now.
 
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Danny Bui said:
Yeah, that's gonna be impossible dude. For a gaming PC, no matter how much you spend, it's not gonna stay that competitive for 3 years let alone 5. It's significantly more cost effective to just build a gaming PC, have it last 2-3 years and then build a new one rather than spend $4000 on a gaming PC hoping it'll last as long aas 5 years.

Not to mention, I'm more than willing to bet that back in 2007, I could have made that build for at least $1000 less and still get the same exact performance.
Click to expand...

Well it just so happens that all of those parts that i used on my current build were recommended by [H].

I mean no disrespect to you, but there were nowhere near as many choices for hardware back then as there is today. The top processor back then was the one I purchased.Quad core did not exist yet. The top vid card was the nVidia 8800 Ultra which I had. I really don't think that anything less could have touched the performance I was getting at the time.

I was only kidding about the 5 year thing...LOL.couldn't you see the sarcasm dripping off the words?:)

Kinda makes those $300 consoles look good doesn't it now? LOL
 
E4g1e said:
Another question:

Are you going to install those games on a separate hard drive volume from your system/boot drive? Or must all of the games that you currently play be installed on the same hard drive volume as your boot/system drive?

If it is the first question, then you can get away with a small-capacity SSD as your boot/system drive and a larger-capacity hard drive for your game installs, plus a third hard drive for storage.

But if it is really the second question (because your particular games only work when installed onto the C: drive or boot/system drive), then you're stuck with a large but relatively slow hard drive. But the 600GB Velociraptor is a relatively poor compromise between an HDD and an SSD: Its maximum sequential transfer speed barely surpasses that of the fastest 7200 RPM hard drives on the market while its random access speed (while very quick for an HDD) is still much, much slower than that of an SSD - at a price that's more than six times higher than those of the regular 7200 RPM hard drives on a per GB basis (47 cents per GB for the Velociraptor versus 7.5 cents per GB for the regular 1TB 7200 RPM drives).

As for the WD1002FAEX that you originally considered for storage, it is a bit overpriced right now because it is slightly slower in sequential transfer speed than the Samsung F3 1TB HD103SJ drive despite its SATA 6Gbps interface. That WD Black 6Gbps drive would have been very competitive with the other 1TB drives on the market if it were priced $15 less than its current going price. As it stands now, the WD1002FAEX costs $15 more and does not outperform the cheaper 1TB WD Blue WD10EALS. That is what makes that WD1002FAEX a mediocre buy right now.
Click to expand...

"Are you going to install those games on a separate hard drive volume from your system/boot drive?"
The whole point of even having an SSD drive would be the benefits of running your op sys and games on it. Right now I have way too many that i play regularly and I would fill one up. I am a gameserver provider and need to be in touch with what is out there and I am. I damn near have em all

The second point you brought up is not an option anymore as I said that I am not purchasing the V-Rap's anymore.

The third point is one that is a matter of how far you are willing to go to save a few bucks and on my last build I bought from whoever had the best price at the time. I'm sure I will do the same thing again. gotta watch that shipping though. LOL

Thanks for the help man its appreciated.
 
Fire488 said:
Well it just so happens that all of those parts that i used on my current build were recommended by [H].
Click to expand...
Never said those parts were bad. But not good buys for the money.

Fire488 said:
I mean no disrespect to you, but there were nowhere near as many choices for hardware back then as there is today. The top processor back then was the one I purchased.Quad core did not exist yet. The top vid card was the nVidia 8800 Ultra which I had. I really don't think that anything less could have touched the performance I was getting at the time.
Click to expand...
You are right that there was nowhere near as many choices but there were still enough choices out there back then for alternative parts choices. Most of my current PC was built back in 2007 and, with the exception of the GPU, is somewhat close to your current setup.

Fire488 said:
I was only kidding about the 5 year thing...LOL.couldn't you see the sarcasm dripping off the words?:)
Click to expand...

Sadly, there are actually people here in this part of the forum that actually do want five years of service out of a gaming. Hence why I couldn't see the "sarcasm" in your post.

Anyway, before you buy the parts, post a final build list so that we can give the final seal of approval.
 
Danny Bui said:
Never said those parts were bad. But not good buys for the money.


You are right that there was nowhere near as many choices but there were still enough choices out there back then for alternative parts choices. Most of my current PC was built back in 2007 and, with the exception of the GPU, is somewhat close to your current setup.



Sadly, there are actually people here in this part of the forum that actually do want five years of service out of a gaming. Hence why I couldn't see the "sarcasm" in your post.

Anyway, before you buy the parts, post a final build list so that we can give the final seal of approval.
Click to expand...

Will do...Thanks!
 
If you can wait for sandybridge next year, then that would be better. Also, please consider an SSD.
 
Maybe think about dropping the RAID raptors and pick up some SSDs. I RAID'ed 3 raptors (300gb) and got some great performance, but it wasn't nearly as fast as an SSD can be.
 
My plan here has changed and since I had some issues come up that prevented me from building the machine in my start post I have made some changes based on much info that I have read.
I plan on using the SSD drive for my Windows 7 Pro 64Bit op sys. I will also install the games that could use a boost from an SSD drive on it.
The V-Raptor will be used to hold and run all my less played games.
The 2 tb drive will be used to hold my library folder which contains docs, pics, music, and vids.
Overkill? I’m not sure, but the test results I have read about on the individual pieces of hardware don’t lie. I mean major differences.

What do you think? (I'm really confused here)

Thanks guys [H] rules!

EVGA SuperClocked 015-P3-1582-AR GeForce GTX 580 (Fermi) 1536MB 384-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support ...
Model #:015-P3-1582-AR
Item #:N82E16814130590

COOLER MASTER Silent Pro Gold Series RSC00-80GAD3-US 1200W ATX 12V v2.3 / EPS 12V v2.92 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS ...
Model #:RSC00-80GAD3-US
Item #:N82E16817171055

CORSAIR DOMINATOR 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Triple Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model TR3X6G1600C8D
Model #:TR3X6G1600C8D
Item #:N82E16820145224

ASUS Rampage III Formula LGA 1366 Intel X58 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
Model #:Rampage III Formula
Item #:N82E16813131666

Intel Core i7-950 Bloomfield 3.06GHz LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor BX80601950
Model #:BX80601950
Item #:N82E16819115211

OCZ Agility 2 OCZSSD3-2AGT180G 3.5" 180GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
Model #:OCZSSD3-2AGT180G
Item #:N82E16820227605

Western Digital VelociRaptor WD6000HLHX 600GB 10000 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
Model #:WD6000HLHX
Item #:N82E16822136555

Arctic Silver 5 Large Size 12 gram tube - Arctic Silver

Scythe ULTRA KAZE series DFS123812H-3000 120x120 x 38 mm Case Fan SKU: DFS123812H- 3000 - SCYTHE USA

Thermalright Venomous-X RT CPU Heatsink w/ Fan / Bracket (Socket LGA 775 / 1156 / 1366 / AM2 / AM3) - Thermalright

Seagate Barracuda XT 2 TB 7200RPM SATA 6 Gb/s 64MB Cache 3.5 Inch Internal Bare Drive ST32000641AS - Seagate
 
Ditch the Dominator RAM: They're never worth the money. The lower timings don't help that much in real world apps and games. You can get 8GB of RAM for less than the cost of that Dominator:
$140 - 2 x G.Skill F3-12800CL9D-4GBNQ 2 x 2GB DDR3 1600 RAM

The VRaptor drive is overpriced. Like I mentioned earlier, that VRaptor drive is only 5% to 10% faster than the latest consumer grade drives like the following:
$55 - Samsung Spinpoint F3 HD502HJ 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
$55 - Western Digital WD5000AAKS 500GB 7200RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
$75 - Samsung Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive

Note huge price disparity. $205 to 225 for a mere 5% to 10% performance increase? Does that sound like a intelligent buy?

Oh and ditch the AS5 as well. The following thermal paste do not have a curing time at all and performs just as well if not better than AS5:
$10 - Arctic Cooling MX-2 Thermal Compound
$10 - Noctua NT-H1 Thermal Compound

PSU wise, spend the extra cash for the Corsair AX1200 if you're gonna go for a 1200W PSU:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139014
 
Danny, My mobo is triple channel and that RAM is dual channel will that make a difference?
 
Fire488 said:
Danny, My mobo is triple channel and that RAM is dual channel will that make a difference?
Click to expand...

Nope. It's been shown that triple channel offers very little real world performance increase over dual-channel RAM. In addition, many X58 motherboards work just fine with dual channel RAM.
 
I read the customer reviews on the RAM you suggested and it received poor reviews for the most art by people that tried to overclock it. (Which I will be most certainly doing). They claimed for the most part that it does not even reach its advertised specs.
Is that a problem?

I guess I have been using the RAM I picked only because I am loyal to that company. I have never had a problem that was RAM related in the last 10 years of my gaming rigs. Plus, that RAM always meets or exceeds the advertised specs.
I am using Dominator RAM (DDR2) in my gaming rig now and it is overclocked to the max for over 1 year now. No problems with it to speak of.

I think its the same reason people over pay for EVGA video cards, they have by far the best warranty that you will never use because the build quality is far superior to any other companies' card out there.

The components that I will not compromise on are the core components. ie. mobo, processor.

I just feel that after reading the reviews and test bench score on all of the components tested that the i5 is a great processor, but in the end it cannot match the i7 in performance both before overclocking and stock.

The nVidia 580 card appears to be overkill to some extent, but it is not much more that the 480 in price. The cheapest price I found was on the EVGA site itself!
Cheaper than NewEgg and all the others.

One other piece of hardware that I did not mention yet is the sound. I am thinking about going with a sound card and not using the mobo sound anymore. Reason being is that my mobo PCI E x1 card that came with my mobo (Asus Striker 2 Formula) finally died. I temporarily replaced it with an older X-FI Creative card that I had and I could not believe the difference in sound. It sounds awesome now. I need a new headset too since my Medusa 5.1 Home Edition Headset is broke and is no longer being made. That is what I have been told by the company anyway.

Check this out: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829132018

Thanks [H] and special thanks to Danny. You guys are the best!
 
Fire488 said:
I read the customer reviews on the RAM you suggested and it received poor reviews for the most art by people that tried to overclock it. (Which I will be most certainly doing). They claimed for the most part that it does not even reach its advertised specs.
Is that a problem?
Click to expand...

IMO, not a problem. However, I recommended the wrong RAM. My mistake. I meant to recommend this G.Skill set:
$79 - G.Skill Ripjaw Series F3-12800CL9S-4GBRL 4GB DDR3 1600 RAM

Fire488 said:
I guess I have been using the RAM I picked only because I am loyal to that company. I have never had a problem that was RAM related in the last 10 years of my gaming rigs. Plus, that RAM always meets or exceeds the advertised specs.
I am using Dominator RAM (DDR2) in my gaming rig now and it is overclocked to the max for over 1 year now. No problems with it to speak of.
Click to expand...
Yeah, the problem is that there are significantly better RAM buys that can meet their advertised specs for the money.

Fire488 said:
I think its the same reason people over pay for EVGA video cards, they have by far the best warranty that you will never use because the build quality is far superior to any other companies' card out there.
Click to expand...
That actually depends on whether or not the card is a non-reference model or not. If it's a reference model, it's actually gonna be the same in build quality from any other GPU manufacturer that uses a reference model. So a ECS or Palit Nvidia reference card will be same in quality as a eVGA reference card.

Sorry, sound cards are not something I look at a lot.
 
Danny i had some unforeseen events come up that forced me to hold off on my build. I guess considering that SandyBridge is about to come out it may have been a blessing in disguise..
Thank you for all your past help.
Happy New Year!
 
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