Time for an overdue upgrade

[tim_m]

Ok, so I built my current PC quite some time ago (March/April of 2008). I upgraded the video card, CPU, and added an SSD in July of 2010. Current specs to give an idea of where I'm coming from:
- Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 Yorkfield 2.83GHz
- 4x 1GB sticks of CORSAIR XMS3 DHX DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600
- ASUS P5E3 Deluxe/WiFi-AP LGA 775 Intel X38
- ENERMAX INFINITI EIN720AWT 720W
- EVGA 512-P3-N871-AR GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MB
- Intel X25-M SSDSA2MH160G2R5 2.5" 160GB SSD (about 25 gigs free, though I need to clean it up)
- 4x WD Caviar Blue 640GB drives in raid 5, about 1.75TB total, 671GB free)

1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
- Light to medium gaming
- Ventrilo, Skype, Google Talk, etc.
- Web/Java/C# development
- Light Photoshop work related to above
- Windows XP Mode/VirtualBox, related to above
- Media playback
- Web browsing of course
- Occasional use of GoToMyPC to log in to work PC
- Of note when considering my performance needs, I sometimes require the use of Windows 7's built in screen magnifier (try pressing the Windows key and the plus key if you've never used it) as well as DPI scaling, which can scale entire application windows (and not simply the fonts) by presumably taking advantage of Aero and using the graphics card to do much of the work (in contrast to the way Windows XP did it).
2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
$2000 would be my upper bound, it's not an absolute max but then again I'm not looking to unnecessarily spend just to get close to that amount.
- Note I do have Amazon Prime as well as an Amazon credit card (3% cashback when used on Amazon) so Amazon would be preferred if it's with a few dollars of another merchant.
3) Which country do you live in? If the U.S, please tell us the state and city if possible.
Lehigh Valley area in Pennsylvania. There is a Micro Center in King of Prussia or Philly somewhere but it really isn't an option (if that's the purpose of this question).
4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. The word "Everything" is not a valid answer. Please list out all the parts you'll need.
- Case
- PSU
- Mobo
- CPU and cooler
- RAM
- Video card
- I think I can get away with onboard audio
- Hard drives, boot and storage
- DVD RW, would like to be able to play Blu-ray, I do not need to write Blue-ray
5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.
- Keyboard/mouse
- Monitors
- Speakers
- Even if my above PSU would be acceptable I would rather not buy a lesser PSU to put in my old PC then have to remove the old one to put it in the new one (but if it was really worth it that'd be ok)
6) Will you be overclocking?
I would like to OC as much as is reasonable on air cooling, but I'm not going to go insane if I don't get that extra 0.1GHz.
7) What is the max resolution of your monitor? What size is it?
I have dual 24" 1920x1200 Dell monitors (one U2410 and one 2407WFP)
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
This month definitely, though there are some items I've selected that have rebates until 9/10 (see below) so if they are reasonable choices I would buy them asap.
9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? USB 3.0? SATA 6Gb/s? eSATA? Onboard video (as a backup or main GPU)? UEFI? etc.
- USB 3.0 because why wouldn't you?
- SATA 6Gb/s, kind of gonna want that with an SSD I think
- I've never had anything that used eSATA before and with USB 3.0 I don't think I would need it
- SLI support, I kind of doubt I'd get a second video card but I would just feel stupid if I didn't have the option
- On board video wouldn't hurt as a backup, I don't think it's required but if it's included so be it
- Decent onboard sound, I don't think I would perceive enough difference with a dedicated sound card to warrant buying one
- Onboard gigabit ethernet, a 2nd port would be convenient but not required
- Onboard wifi is not desired unless it doesn't significantly affect the price
10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If so, what OS? Is it 32bit or 64bit?
I will be buying a new copy of Win7 64-bit.


My parts list so far:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i7-3770K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($319.99 @ TigerDirect)
Motherboard: Asus P8Z77-V LK ATX LGA1155 Motherboard ($129.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Trident X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-2400 Memory ($169.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($98.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Storage: Kingston HyperX 3K 240GB 2.5" Solid State Disk ($199.00 @ Adorama)
Video Card: Galaxy GeForce GTX 660 Ti 3GB Video Card ($339.98 @ NCIX US)
Case: Corsair 600T (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case ($138.16 @ NCIX US)
Power Supply: SeaSonic 850W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply ($119.00 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: Asus BC-12B1ST/BLK/B/AS Blu-Ray Reader, DVD/CD Writer ($46.99 @ Newegg)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Professional SP1 (64-bit) ($128.90 @ Amazon)
Other: Thermalright True Spirit 140 ($52.90)
Total: $1743.89
(Prices include shipping and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2012-09-05 19:45 EDT-0400)


Notes/Questions/Comments
As I was building the parts list and seeing the price grow I felt the need to make this thread to get some advice and make sure I wasn't picking more expensive parts unnecessarily, which I kind of did on my current PC.

I would like the PC to be pretty quiet when idle or just browsing the web. Some noise under load is expected.

CPU:
Is there a reason not to go with Ivy Bridge (besides price perhaps)?

Heatsink:
Is the selected still a good choice? It seems to have limited availability. Any alternatives I should consider?

Motherboard:
I just don't know all the available options. The P8Z77-V by itself has several different versions. I know for my current PC I bought a much more expensive motherboard than I honestly needed so I'd like to not do that again.

Memory:
I want 8GB minimum, but I mean, 16GB makes me drool. But seriously, I don't want to go overkill on the memory if it won't help me any. Also I can't believe how expensive my current 4GB of ram was....

Storage (SSD):
As I noted, my current 160GB SSD is fairly full so I want a bit bigger. The Kingston I linked seems like a bargain but should I be concerned with the "3K" rated NAND chips? Any better alternatives around 240GB?

Storage (RAID):
I would like to put 3 or 4 1TB drives in RAID 5 for storage. Are Caviar Blacks overkill just for storage? I remember when I created my current RAID array I did something about enabling TLER. Is that still a concern?

Blu-ray drive:
For a read-only Blu-ray drive I'm kind of assuming there aren't a lot of things to consider but please correct me if I'm wrong.

PSU:
How big do I really need based on the selected CPU, one video card, SSD, and up to 4 hard drives for raid storage?


That's all I can think of for now. Please let me know if I missed anything or need to expand on any details. If you've read this far I appreciate it and any advice you may have.

 

[Dangman]

CPU: Only big reason besides price is that the IB CPUs can't OC as well as their SB counterparts. They tend to run a bit hotter when OC'd. With that said, the faster onboard video and extra PCI-E lanes for more GPUs does kinda balance things bit.

Heatsink: Very solid HSF.

Motherboard: The motherboard you chose is just fine.

RAM: The RAM you're choosing now is not worth the money at all. With current Intel platforms, there's little to no difference between DDR3 1333 and DDR3 2400. So you're definitely overpaying here. In fact, for less than that G.Skill set, you can actually get 32GB of RAM (two of the following sets):
http://www.amazon.com/Corsair-1600M.../B006ZINK0S/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1346893856

SSD wise, I'd recommend the Crucial M4 256GB or Samsung 830 256GB. They're often around that $200 price point, aren't Sandforce based, and has 16GB of more storage. The extra storage alone IMO is worth any small price increase with the Crucial and Samsung SSDs.

HDD wise, yes TLER is still a concern of sorts as well as some other issues. Western Digital's Red series drives were specifically made for NAS and file server use so should be worthwhile here. But are you sure you want to deal with RAID 5 here? How was your experience with RAID 5 on your PC? In most cases, RAID 5 and Windows combined generally means a relatively slow RAID 5 array and some performance impact on the rest of the system.

PSU: Total overkill that PSU. For the setup you're planning, a solid 520W to 650W PSU is more than enough. Something like this would be more than enough:
$80 - Seasonic S121II 620 620W PSU

 

[tim_m]

I've updated my list with the ram, psu, and SSD suggestions.
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/gQ6p

Newegg has 3 different versions of the Samsung one, but I basically get the differences; one is for a laptop upgrade, one for desktop, the third one I'm not quite sure.
There are 5 versions of the Crucial one but I guess I'll just stick to the Samsung one I have in the list if it's all more or less the same.

I added a WD's RE4 "enterprise" drive to the list for reference. I'm still undecided, though it doesn't seem to be much more expensive. As far as raid 5, I haven't noticed any particularly bad performance, but then again its mostly for storage and I'm not doing large transfers very often. What might you suggest instead?

 

[Deleted member 88227]

CPU: Only big reason besides price is that the IB CPUs can't OC as well as their SB counterparts. They tend to run a bit hotter when OC'd. With that said, the faster onboard video and extra PCI-E lanes for more GPUs does kinda balance things bit.

Anything thing that balances them out is the fact that an IB processor doesn't have to clock as high as a SB processor to get the same performance.

 

[Dangman]

I added a WD's RE4 "enterprise" drive to the list for reference. I'm still undecided, though it doesn't seem to be much more expensive. As far as raid 5, I haven't noticed any particularly bad performance, but then again its mostly for storage and I'm not doing large transfers very often. What might you suggest instead?

Personally I'd suggest a whole separate PC/fileserver for RAID 5 to really get the most performance out of your PC.

 

[tim_m]

So I got all the parts (http://pcpartpicker.com/p/gQ6p) (not counting regular HDD storage which I still haven't decided on) and long story short the PC will not post with both sticks of ram installed in the normal way. It will boot and I can get into the BIOS menu if one stick (either one, doesn't matter) is installed in either of the two closest slots to the CPU or if both sticks are in the two slots closest to the CPU (i.e. in different color slots and not in dual channel). If I have both sticks in corresponding color slots (both black or both blue, not mixed) it doesn't boot and the DRAM LED is solid red. I've reseated multiple times.

I haven't tried every single permutation of sticks and slots as it's getting late and I wanted to post this before I went to sleep to try to get some suggestions.

I updated the BIOS to the latest version and still have the same problem. I tried setting the memory profile to XMP and separately just setting the memory speed from 1333 to 1600 MHz while I could boot with one stick installed. After installing the second stick, same problem with no booting and solid red DRAM LED. I did not have time tonight to extensively check the memory settings and ensure timings were correct, which is an obvious starting point when I continue.

All throughout this only the bare minimum is connected to power the system (namely cpu, heatsink, ram, psu, using onboard graphics and not the card I bought).

I've found similar posts on google with many citing their memory as not being listed on ASUS's compatibility list. The one I bought and Danny suggested does not appear to be on the list, but then again neither are any 2x8gb products.

I guess the possible causes are
- bad ram
- bad mobo
- incorrect bios settings
- just incompatible for some reason

Thanks for suggestions. Let me know what else you need to know.

 

[Dangman]

Reset CMOS.
Run Memtest.

 

[tim_m]

I forgot to mention I did try resetting the CMOS to no avail. I am currently running memtest86+ (V4.20) with the two sticks in the two closest slots and will let that run for a while and see what happens. Memtest looks like it's properly detecting everything; it sees the full 16 gigs and all the timings.

Once memtest is done I'll try the farthest slots from the cpu. If they don't work in any permutation I guess we would have a good bet on the memory slots being bad.

Also, the XMP memory profile does seem to have the correct timings (11-11-11-30), voltage (1.5 V), and frequency (1600 MHz).

 

[tim_m]

So memtest ran for about 16 hours while I was out today. No errors, 6 complete passes (almost 7 before I shut it down).

Any combination of sticks and slots where at least one of the two slots farthest from the cpu has a stick in it then it doesn't boot. Any combination where only the two closest to the cpu are used then it does boot.

So, RMA time for the mobo I guess?

 

[Dangman]

Sounds like it. Though I'd try out that RAM in another PC if you can.