• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Planning new build

H

hstearns4

n00b
Joined
Dec 6, 2004
Messages
23
I build infrequently and want to get your feedback.

1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
Lots of Photoshop, a small amount of video editing, general office (ie; word, email, etc), no gaming, so mostly 2D applications
2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
Like to stay under $2,000
3) Where do you live?
Colorado
4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. Please be very specific.
Full build needs to fit within budget except monitor.
5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.
N/A
6) Will you be overclocking?
No
7) What size monitor do you have and/or plan to have?
Single 20" 4:3 LCD - Either Dell 2007FP or NEC 2090 UXI
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
Planning on starting to buy this week
9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? etc.
RAID, good sound, lots of USB ports
10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license?
No

OK, here it goes. Objective is to get a good performing PC for photoshop and office applications, decent on-board sound. Want redundancy on data files twice - one via RAID and one via backup which I was planning on doing using the package provided by Vista ultimate. Will also copy to DVD and store offsite but data safety is important.

Current build plans:

1. Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550
2. GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P
3. G.SKILL PI Black 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800
4. XFX HD-485X-ZDFC Radeon HD 4850 1GB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP
5. 1x Western Digital Caviar Blue WD6400AAKS 640GB for OS and programs
6. 2x Western Digital RE3 WD1002FBYS 1TB in a RAID 1 config for data
7. 1x Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB in a eSATA external for data backup
8. CORSAIR CMPSU-650TX 650W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI power supply
9. 2x Plextor PX-880SA DVD burners
10. Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 64-bit for System Builders w/ Tech Guarantee
11. COOLER MASTER RC-690-KKN1-GP ATX case
12. Logitech Z-2300 200 watts RMS 2.1 Speaker System

plus various misc stuff like card readers, keyboard, mouse, etc. Total comes to $1700 before rebates.

Am I making any mistakes? Any other recommendations? Thanks in advance for your help.
 
yes I have, but my research thus far here has led me to believe that buying the i7 would put me on the wrong side of the cost/performance curve for what I am looking to do. I only do a build every year or two so can certainly be working with outdated info. Do you think that I would see a big jump going from the 9550 to an i7 based build? If so, can you recommend one that would be a reasonable balance of cost/performance? Thanks
 
I see where your coming from. However I think LGA 775 would actually put you on the wrong side of the cost/performance.

You can save a bit by going with an AM3 quad with very similar performance and have future overheard room than the EOL LGA 775 socket.

Or you can spend a bit and go i7 which would give more performance. If you live near a Microcenter you can pick up an i7 920 for $200.
 
 
With the combo deals, etc, the difference in price going to the i7 appears to be about $200 when the differential on the memory and MB are considered in addition to the CPU. Sounds like this is a worthy investment.
 
gwarren007 said:
XFX 4870 $145
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150436
Click to expand...

If there is no gaming, then there is no need whatsoever for a HD4870 or HD4850. I recommend dropping down to this card instead so that you still take advantage of CUDA and Photoshop:
$60 - Asus EN9600GSO/DI/512MD3/V2 GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB PCI-E 2.0 Video Card

Also, OP, will you actually use all of the features of Windows Vista Ultimate? In other words, what features does Windows Vista Ultimate has over Windows Vista Home Premium to justify the extra $90?
 
Only additional feature I would use would be the backup and restore program that comes with business and ultimate. way I figure they are priced so close there is no reason to not go with ultimate. there may be cheaper solutions. I'm planning on running raid 1 to protect against a single disk failure. The idea behind the backup and restore is to generate a scheduled daily copy to an external eSATA drive. If there are cheaper reliable mechanisms to do this I could certainly save some cash.
 
$135 - GA-EP45-UD3P
$210 - Q9550
* LGA775 has reached EOL

$140 - GA-P55-UD3R
$200 - i5 750
* Newly released LGA1156

$240 - eVGA X58
$280 - i7 920
* Triple channel RAM

Ditch the Q9550 and go Core i5 or i7.... Read the review and decide which one is better for you:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3634&p=10

For best performance in photoshop, use Superspeed RAMDisk and setup the scratch disk to use the ramdisk.
 
enginurd said:
For best performance in photoshop, use Superspeed RAMDisk and setup the scratch disk to use the ramdisk.
Click to expand...

Speaking of RAMDisk:
Joe Average said:
In other words, as I said, the cost of the devices + the cost of populating them becomes absolutely ridiculous. Grab two Velociraptors and have fun... or even a handful of SSD drives and RAID 'em together. The overall price-to-performance ratio will blow these iRAM devices clear off the planet surface...

Sad, really, because I've been a proponent of actual RAMdisks for decades now. Hell, I used to boot my Amiga 500 off a RAMdisk, so I've seen pretty much every attempt at making such devices as the iRAM that have appeared, and they all suck, period. They just can't do the job adequately and keep the price-to-performance ratio anywhere near a reasonable level.

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... ;)
Click to expand...

Backup and restore software wise, check out Comodo, Synctoy 2.0, etc. In addition, IIRC, Vista HP does have a built-in backup app. Gotta double check that though.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top