First home-build, feedback appreciated

Guest · Apr 5, 2008

I'm coming off a 6 month deployment and am getting a present for myself when I get back (less than a month now) and have been looking at things on newegg for the past few months and have came down to this:

PSU: Antec TPQ-850 ATX12V / EPS12V 850W
Mobo: EVGA NVIDIA nForce 790i
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
CPU Heatsink/Fan: ZALMAN CNPS9700 LED 110mm 2 Ball CPU Cooler
Video Card: EVGA GeForce 9800 GTX(G92) 512MB
RAM: CORSAIR 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR3 1333 SDRAM
Case: Antec 900
Sound Card: Creative Sound Blaster SB0570 Audigy SE
Speakers: Logitech X-230 32 watts RMS 2.1
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache
Keyboard: Logitech G11
Mouse: Logitech G5
Monitor: Samsung 2253BW Black 22"
DVD Drive: Samsung SH-S203B

Comes out to around 2,000 which is the goal I had set before I started looking into my project. Any recommendations? Old computer is a XPS 400 that I'm giving to the wife so this isn't an upgrade. Reason for the mobo is I wanted one to support DDR3 1333 memory as well as have eSATA and Firewire ports for my external HD's. Biggest doubt I have is my PSU, would 650-700 W be enough or is 850 W perfect? Never one to overclock, I think this will be my first stab at it as well seeing as there's a lot of info on the Q6600 to overclock it safely.

boonality · Apr 5, 2008

I'm gonna PM you.

boonality · Apr 5, 2008

Well I thought I was, the net is slow at the moment... I'm deployed too.

Anywho something for you to bounce your build against to see what you like or dislike.

COOLER MASTER RC-690-KKN1-GP Black SECC/ ABS ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail ($84.99)

ASUS P5E LGA 775 Intel X38 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail ($224.99)

EVGA 512-P3-N841-AR GeForce 8800GTS (G92) 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Retail ($259.99)

ZALMAN ZM – 750 HP ATX12V / EPS12V 750W Power Supply - Retail ($189.99)

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 Yorkfield 2.5GHz LGA 775 95W Quad-Core Processor Model BX80580Q9300 - Retail ($299.99)

Kingston 4GB(2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model KVR800D2N5K2/4G - Retail ($99.99) X 2 = $189.98

SAMSUNG SpinPoint T Series HD321KJ 320GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM ($69.99) X 2 = $139.98

LITE-ON 20X DVD±R DVD Burner With 12X DVD-RAM Write Black SATA Model LH-20A1S - Retail ($29.99)

LITE-ON Black SATA DVD-ROM Drive Model DH-16D2S-04 - OEM ($17.99)

Microsoft Windows Vista 64-Bit Home Premium for System Builders Single Pack DVD - OEM ($99.99)

Total = $1,537.88

Guest · Apr 5, 2008

Oh yeah, forgot to put the OS: XP Pro 32-Bit (free from work)

Hmm, while looking for your mobo to check out the specs, I came across the ASUS P5E3 Deluxe which I actually like more than the one I listed in my build (everything pretty much the same except it has an extra eSATA port and is an Asus, which was something I didn't like about the one I planned on originally.

I was wrestling with whether or not to go for the Q9300, but seeing as how I still have a month left, I'm going to be keeping my eye on it and the reviews/testimonials that come out on it to see if I should go with it or not.

OT: Where are you deployed? I'm in Bahrain with the Navy.

iluvgillgill · Apr 5, 2008

P5K-e is better.i heard the overclocking performance is not as good on the premium model.try it out yourself to proof me is im wrong or right.

boonality · Apr 5, 2008

Ugh, the PM thing is driving me nuts over here, anyway I am in one of those well known "undisclosed locations" I'm near Saudi.

Guest · Apr 5, 2008

Ahh, you're worse off than I am, stay safe dude.

Anyways, anyone have a recommendation on the Power Supply? Should I go lower or is 850W perfect?

boonality · Apr 5, 2008

You should mess with the power supply calculators that are out there, they are pretty neat.

http://educations.newegg.com/tool/psucalc/index.html

http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp?bcsi_scan_BC80948DC52255F8=LS3bOgR7VOMrS1CuZEnaagEAAABBvDkA&bcsi_scan_filename=psucalculatorlite.jsp

iluvgillgill · Apr 5, 2008

the second one seem to be more accurate.
Q6600+2GB DDR2+2 7200HDD+8800GTS
newegg come up with 581W
outervision come up with 351W

iluvgillgill · Apr 5, 2008

Ahh, you're worse off than I am, stay safe dude.

Anyways, anyone have a recommendation on the Power Supply? Should I go lower or is 850W perfect?

850W is future proof.if you can afford you should get 800W+ so you dont need to upgrade the PSu in the next 5 years or so.

boonality · Apr 6, 2008

Ya I think newegg takes into account plugging in video cameras and joysticks and what not, and creates a "buffer" that way you don't need to buy something more than what newegg says, whereas with outervision it is more accurate but it is closer to your exact power usage. i bet though that a 650 will suit you nice at the specs that iluvgillgill posted and give you enough power to add HDD's later or something. but ya if you plan to buy another video card or something like that, 750 should still be way plenty though! And the zalman 750 sure is nice and has modular cabling i think.

jaibot18 · Apr 6, 2008

looks like a great build but you could save a ton of money and still get the same performance. I would stick with the q6600 but switch the mobo to gigabyte p35-ds3l and put in a 2x2 gig ram kit by crucial. ddr3 is good but not for the current price.

Shadow703793 · Apr 6, 2008

^ Agreed.

My recommendations:
Q6600/Q9300(if possible)
P35-DS3R/P35-P5K (imo, no need for SLI or DDR3 for now)
Corsair 520HX or PP&C 610
2GB+ DDR2 800 RAM from good manufacture (ie, Crucial, Corsair, Patriot)
Everything else the same.

Shadow703793 · Apr 6, 2008

iluvgillgill :

Not quite true. Remember you have to account for capacitor aging too. Depending on the PSU quality and working temperatures, load, etc, capacitor aging can be anywhere from 10% to 50% or so. I generaly replace PSU every build unless its less than 2.5 years old.

SuicideSilence · Apr 6, 2008

^Agreed. Just get a PC power and cooling 750watt.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817703009

iluvgillgill · Apr 7, 2008

i got a psu lasted 5 years and its still working.its a 550w PSU.and a build a pc for a friend a year ago. and the PSU let go on him.so really depend on brand which normally reflect the quality.a psu should last at least 3 years for normal use.

i wonder how long the PSU last for TG and all the other review website.that everytime the PC is turn on and it will run at 100% CPU and GPU load for benchmark and what not!

Guest · Apr 7, 2008

Wow, love the feedback so far. I've surfed this site quite a bit in the past for research and referencing but finally decided to sign up for this build. Thanks so far, I'm looking into all the recommendations now to see if I can change anything.

After using several power calculators 700W looks like it'd be just fine so if I can find a good 700W/750W PSU I'll use that instead.

Probably should have mentioned this earlier. I'll probably upgrade components individually every 2 years or so, and swap the current stuff I have to my wife's not-as-up-to-date desktop, so 5 years is a stretch for some of those parts, especially when they get taken out of my computer and put into hers which isn't going to be running as intense. When I did the aging, I did calculate it for 40%.

Other thing, with the mobo, the reason I chose that one was it was the only one within my price expectancy that supported DDR3 as well as having rear eSATA ports for my 1 TB's, but would DDR2 1066 be fast enough for most operations? My current XPS has 4 512 MB sticks of 533MHz, so I don't know how much the increase would be, just that DDR3 is gonna be the new standard so I was thinking of stepping in that direction now.
EDIT: Just thought of it now, but the 9800 GTX uses a PCI Express 2.0 x16 and the Gigabyte mobo's recommended don't have that capablity, although I did find this one:
MSI P7N Diamond LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 780i SLI
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130158
Just not sure how well MSI mobo's are compared to for example Asus, which I've heard nothing but good reviews on.

Also was planning on changing over to the Q9300 for the faster FSB but if I'm going with DDR2 1066 memory the Q6600 would be fine, still uncertain on it.

Shadow703793 · Apr 7, 2008

^ For RAM DDR2 800 is more than enough. Most DDR2 1060 RAM is just factory OCed DDR2 800. DDR3 is not needed now. When Nehalm comes out you will NEED new motherboard/CPU any way along with DDR3, and by that time DDR3 prices would have fallen. PCIe x16 2.0 is backward compatible with PCIe x16 1.x. Current GPUs don't even come close to using up the PCIe 1.x bandwidth. The 780i chipset is not matured enough at the current time.

ainokea · Apr 8, 2008

kwanasek · Apr 8, 2008

Two things I noticed for your configuration if you go with the MSI P7N Diamond LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 780i SLI ATX MOBO

1) the MSI MOBO has the Creative X-Fi CA0110-IBG audio chip. Save some money and use the onboard audio. I doubt you would be able to hear a difference with those cheap speakers anyways.

2) Lose the substandard speakers and get some Klipsch pro media speakers. You will then Rock the House. I consistently get complements on the sound quality of mine surpassing others home stereos (clearly they do not have elaborate home setups

http://www.klipsch.com/products/lists/computer-speakers.aspx

3) The hard drive is the slowest part of your computer. A cheap speed boost that will more than compensate slow RAM vs fast RAM at equal densities. The MSI MOBO has the ability to do RAID. You will see a huge bump in performance by running RAID 0. This will require a second hard drive of the same size as the first. I recommend going with a matched pair. The Raid 0 config will double the chance of a hard drive failure but will also double your hard drive space and almost double your hard drive access speed. This is big when performing video editing or anything else that uses the hard drive a lot.

If you are worried about the increased potential of a hard drive failure wiping out your system either keep a backup on one of those tera-drives (BounceBack works well) or do a Raid 0 + 1.

A RAID 0+1 will require 4 drives and you will not see the space from two of them. The only advantage over RAID 0 is that you will be protected from a hard drive failure wiping out your system.
A good article on RAID:
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/07/02/raid_scaling_charts/

Good luck,

www.themousejockey.com

kwanasek · Apr 8, 2008

Two things I noticed for your configuration if you go with the MSI P7N Diamond LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 780i SLI ATX MOBO

1) the MSI MOBO has the Creative X-Fi CA0110-IBG audio chip. Save some money and use the onboard audio. I doubt you would be able to hear a difference with those cheap speakers anyways.

2) Lose the substandard speakers and get some Klipsch pro media speakers. You will then Rock the House. I consistently get complements on the sound quality of mine surpassing others home stereos (clearly they do not have elaborate home setups

http://www.klipsch.com/products/li [...] akers.aspx

3) The hard drive is the slowest part of your computer. A cheap speed boost that will more than compensate slow RAM vs fast RAM at equal densities. The MSI MOBO has the ability to do RAID. You will see a huge bump in performance by running RAID 0. This will require a second hard drive of the same size as the first. I recommend going with a matched pair. The Raid 0 config will double the chance of a hard drive failure but will also double your hard drive space and almost double your hard drive access speed. This is big when performing video editing or anything else that uses the hard drive a lot.

If you are worried about the increased potential of a hard drive failure wiping out your system either keep a backup on one of those tera-drives (BounceBack works well) or do a Raid 0 + 1.

A RAID 0+1 will require 4 drives and you will not see the space from two of them. The only advantage over RAID 0 is that you will be protected from a hard drive failure wiping out your system.
A good article on RAID:
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/0 [...] ng_charts/

Good luck,

www.themousejockey.com

ImajorI · Apr 8, 2008

I agree with the above. ^ Lose the sound card, use on board sound and go for these if your budget allows...http://www.amazon.com/Klipsch-ProMedia-Certified-Computer-Speaker/dp/B000062VUO

ainokea · Apr 8, 2008

Well, time to change the mobo again. Read more on both of them and they both had RAM problems, as well as the MSI one having numerous problems on first bootup and flashing. Think I'm going to go with this one for the same price.
GIGABYTE GA-EP35C-DS3R LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Dynamic Energy Saver Ultra Durable II Intel Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128082
Not any significant problems with it except for PATA/IDE and PS/2 interfaces which won't apply to me anyway.
And for board compatibility, RAM:
OCZ SLI-Ready Edition 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227181

Now another mobo that caught my interest was the GIGABYTE GA-EX38-DS4 LGA 775 Intel X38 ATX Intel Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128089
Anyone here have experience with it and can comment on it?

Also should I still stick with onboard audio for those boards and get the Klipsch sound system or is it back to the Creative card?

Shadow703793 · Apr 8, 2008

^ I recommend you get DDR2 800 RAM, many motherboards (notably the P35-DS3x/DS4x boards) seems to have problems with RAM natively clocked above DDR2 800 (unless they are in the QVL list).

ainokea · Apr 9, 2008

I noticed that problem mainly while reading about the ASUS and MSI motherboards, not really with the GIGABYTE ones, but ok. Good change on the motherboards? Looking forward to the board after reading about its capabilities and options. ^_^

First home-build, feedback appreciated

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