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New general purpose home+work build

R

Ronco

[H]ard|Gawd
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Joined
Oct 6, 2005
Messages
1,308
Hi

I need a build recommendation on a general purpose PC, which can work for some element of my work needs and also for entertainment stuff - basically a main PC for home office use.

I'm currently running an HP Z400 at home but I've quickly figured out that given what I'm looking now to stuff into even a home machine, it's not quite what I'm looking for and it is not capable of adapting to the requirement, and neither is the Z6/800 - in some ways they're overkill and in others they don't actually quite offer what I want. I can find another use for the Z400 and I think for the two-faced system I want, I'll need to build after all.

Requirements:
- I’ll be fitting a ZDrive R2 P88 (1 or 2Tb). So I’m going to need a PCI-E x8 slot. Boot drive will most likely be a Vertex. There will be no HDD's on the system.
- I’ll also be fitting a Tesla C1060. I'll need a second x16 slot.
- Both of the above *can* have compatibility issues. Ideally I'd like not to find out things don't work when I start to assemble.
- I'd like an upper-end general purpose GPU. I'm thinking something like an EVGA GTX 580 (1.5Gb).
- The above needs mean a 1KW PSU.
- I need two NICs.
- Two DVD+-RW drives. No Bluray required
- CPU - for the projected usage, I think I'd be pretty happy with an i7-2600. There will be no OCing of either GPU or CPU.
- Quiet, stable system desired - but still air-cooled.
- I like big cases for ease of working / and also for heat dispersion / compartmentalisation.

The main thing I'm unsure about is the mobo. I've chosen the Maximus IV mainly on the basis of the flexibility of PCI-E usage, and obviously the rest of the features for OCing etc will be largely redundant. I game using a Logi G35 and will have an external soundcard hooked up for 'proper' music, so chi-chi onboard audio is largely unimportant. I would like a large number of USB 2.0/3.0 ports which this appears to deliver, and the mobo also has the two NICs I need. But if there's a smarter choice I'd definitely like to hear it. I would also like a firewire socket and OK, it's not a big deal to add (especially as I'd like 800) but if it's built in, nice - it is not, as far as I can see, the case on the Maximus. I would also like to be sure that the ZDrive for one, and the GP/GPU, will not be hobbled by the mobo.

I'm not on a budget, but I'd like to stay south of insane.



So for the mains:

Case: Fractal Design Define XL
PSU: 1KW Silverstone Strider Silent
Mobo: Asus Maximus IV Extreme 3.0
CPU: i7-2600K
Cooler: Not a clue. Noctua NH-D14?
Memory: 2 x 8Gb Corsair Vengeance PC3-12800 kit (I've heard that exceeding this makes not a huge diff, feel free to suggest otherwise)
GPU: EVGA 1.5Gb GTX 580
Boot SSD: OCZ Vertex 3 480Gb (Might pick a 2 however depending on availability - as a general purpose drive a 2 would be fine)


What say you?
 
Since you listed the Fractal Design case, it means that you're not in the U.S. Are you located in Canada or Europe?

Additional questions:
7) What size monitor do you have and/or plan to have?
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?

So far, so good with that list.

SSD wise, I'd avoid the OCZ Vertex 3 until a sufficient amount of time has passed and through testing has been done to show that there aren't any inherent issues with the Vertex 3. I'd avoid the Vertex 2 or any Sandforce SF-1200 based SSD from OCZ due to OCZ's recent change of their SSDs which made their already slow Sandforce SF-1200 based SSD even slower. Personally I wouldn't recommend an OCZ SSD in general due to their customer support issues. I would go with the Crucial C300 or C400 SSDs or Intel's 510 series SSDs.
 
E4g1e said:
The problem is, Newegg actually charges $175, not $150, shipped for that Fractal Design case. That's still less expensive than you-know-who, but not worth $48 more than the R3.
Click to expand...

huh? That case was linked by myself because thats the case the OP said. I never said it was worth more then the r3. But also keep in mind that at least as far as newegg goes its 175 dollars shipped is still cheaper then any other case that holds 10 internal 3.5" bays.. if that kind of thing matters to you anyhow.
 
bastage said:
huh? That case was linked by myself because thats the case the OP said. I never said it was worth more then the r3. But also keep in mind that at least as far as newegg goes its 175 dollars shipped is still cheaper then any other case that holds 10 internal 3.5" bays.. if that kind of thing matters to you anyhow.
Click to expand...

Gotcha.
 
Danny Bui said:
Since you listed the Fractal Design case, it means that you're not in the U.S. Are you located in Canada or Europe?

Additional questions:
7) What size monitor do you have and/or plan to have?
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?

So far, so good with that list.

SSD wise, I'd avoid the OCZ Vertex 3 until a sufficient amount of time has passed and through testing has been done to show that there aren't any inherent issues with the Vertex 3. I'd avoid the Vertex 2 or any Sandforce SF-1200 based SSD from OCZ due to OCZ's recent change of their SSDs which made their already slow Sandforce SF-1200 based SSD even slower. Personally I wouldn't recommend an OCZ SSD in general due to their customer support issues. I would go with the Crucial C300 or C400 SSDs or Intel's 510 series SSDs.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the heads-up regarding the SSD's. I already have a reasonable number of the desktop and 2.5" II's and have to say they hasn't been particularly slow. But yeah - I'm obviously flexible on this as I haven't bought yet and I'm up for trying something new.

I was considering using the bootable Revodrive along with the ZDrive, but the idea is that the OS and the entertainment stuff reside on the boot SSD, and the work stuff on the ZDrive - so you know, it's debatable whether there is any real tangible benefit given the potential incompatibility and also other factors. Given that there's plenty of space in the case, I'd also be open to an array of smaller drives to take it to something along the lines of 500-700Gb. This is something I'll revisit when I'm actually about to buy everything. Suffice it to say that as far as practical usage of SSD's are concerned I'm pretty au fait with these and while I do appreciate advice, I'd appreciate it much more for the rest of the build because I haven't built anything in like 3 years (and even the last one I believe was basically directing someone else to build a couple of Skulltrails for me) so am out of the loop.

Display: Will be using a single 30-inch, possibly two. Not sure. Most likely one.

Build: Planning on building by June at the very latest.

The choice of the Fractal Design is a) because I'm in Europe and b) the aesthetics and obviously the space for an eATX board. Despite becoming an inveterate Apple-hater having suffered the inadequacies of their flagship kit for 5 years while having to use OS X (despite replacing almost everything practically every year in the hope it gets better), one thing I do like is the aesthetics and certainly for home use how it fits into general decor - and while the FD goes a little too much for the 'monolithic slab' tip, I'd like to keep it generally clean and smart so that it doesn't look too out of place beside the Pro. I will point and laugh at the likes of the Antec 1200, Coolermaster HAF X, the Bitfenix Colossus, etc.
 
Last edited:
Unless anyone has any other comments I'm ordering most of the list this week, since some of it has to go on backorder. I've decided to try two 250Gb Elmcrests in RAID0 as the boot drive.
 
Couldn't get the XL, so went for the R3 and P8P67 Deluxe, especially after I did some sums and realised that x8 x8 x4 wouldn't actually be an issue.

Happy with the build - quiet&cool (after quite a few adjustments), very fast-feeling with the all-fast-SSD storage, neat.
 
Oh, and ended up going with an Asus DirectCUII GTX580 and the Noctua NH-D14 as I mooted. I'm pretty glad I did for both in terms of noise. I also did end up going with the Elmcrests for boot.
 
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