Search
Sign in with
Sign up | Sign in

New Gaming Build - Everything look solid?

Last response: in Systems
Share

Replacing a 4400 X2/7900GTX system, want to be ready for Fallout 3, etc. How does this setup look?

FYI Video will be a 1GB 4870 as soon as they are in stock at Newegg.

New Parts:

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 Yorkfield 2.66GHz LGA 775 95W Quad-Core Processor Model BX80569Q9450 - Retail

GIGABYTE GA-X48-DS4 LGA 775 Intel X48 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail

OCZ Reaper HPC 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model OCZ2RPR10664GK - Retail

Western Digital VelociRaptor WD3000GLFS 300GB 10000 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM

Creative 70SB046A00000 7.1 Channels PCI Interface Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer Fatal1ty Professional Series - Retail

LITE-ON Black SATA Blu-ray DVD-ROM Drive Model DH-4O1S-08 - Retail

ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 7 Pro 92mm CPU Cooler - Retail

Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound - OEM


Old Parts:

Thermaltake Armor Series VA8000BWS Black Aluminum / Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case - Retail

SILVERSTONE ZEUS SST-ST65ZF 650W ATX 12V 2.0 & EPS 12V Power Supply 90 - 264 V - Retail

Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 ST3250823AS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 1.5Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM


Everything look okay? PSU adequate for system needs, etc?

More about : gaming build solid

Register or log in to remove

The Silverstone ST65ZF is plenty of PSU for what you have on your shopping list. It should even be enough power for a 2nd 4870 in the future.
Sapphire recommends 650W PSU for 2 4870 in Crossfire: http://www.sapphiretech.com/us/products/products_overvi...

One place you can save some money and not loose hardly any performance is the Velociraptor:
Look into the WD 640 HDD vs Velociraptor twice the storage at 1/3 the price and almost as fast in real world use. Check the whole review here:


A nice upgrade to your CPU cooler would be the ZEROtherm Nirvana NV120 CPU Cooler $40 after rebate The fan controller is a nice feature to have and its a great cooler FrostyTech review
Consider a thermal compound upgrade: Arctic Cooling MX-2 or OCZ Freeze Im a fan of the MX2 for its easy to apply, non-conductive and no cure time properties.


Welcome to the forums!

I would get the Asus Xonar sound card.

You have an AMD recommended power supply:

ATI Radeon HD 4870 System Requirements

500 Watt or greater power supply with two 75W 6-pin PCI Express® power connectors recommended (600 Watt and four 6-pin connectors for ATI CrossFireX™ technology in dual mode)
Certified power supplies are recommended. Refer to http://ati.amd.com/certifiedPSU for a list of Certified products.
http://ati.amd.com/products/radeonhd4800/requirements.h...

For a cooler I would get this:

XIGMATEK HDT-S1283 120mm Rifle CPU Cooler - Retail

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cpu-cooler-charts,1...

http://www.frostytech.com/top5heatsinks.cfm

XIGMATEK ACK-I7751 Retention Bracket - Retail

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

don't forget to order the retention bracket because push pin mounting sucks.
Related ressources
Ask the community

One word of caution. While I don't necessarily disagree with WR2 in terms of the HDD recommendation, I would do more research on the performance of the respective HDDs before making a final choice. Using one benchmark from a game that is notoriously a GPU hog may not be completely thorough. And the THG review of the Velociraptor was very positive.

Just my 2cents.

GL

JR

Looks good. Hopefully you are using a 64bit OS, whether it is Vista or XP. If you are using a 64bit, you may want to get an extra 4GB of ram for only $100 extra. Once you hit 8GB of ram, Vista gives you additional benefits of how it handles the HD caching.

I expect you to have a great system for gaming!

Hi guys, thanks for the responses. I am going to look over everything today hardware wise.

As far as vista goes I was reading up on that today, I prefer stabilty/compatibility to small performance increases - but am considering it. Is the general consensus that 64 bit drivers and all of that are caught up and I won't be encountering many problems?

With all new hardware it's unlikely you have any problems with Vista 64bit.

hyperjoe is right about not letting one chart sway your choices. And the THG review was very positive. But I thought that review was missing some real world benchmarks that would show how well the VelociRaptor would improve your actual performance.
IMO the VelociRaptor is best suited to network tasks supporting multi-user workloads vs a single PC and its multi-tasking workloads

So here are some more benchmarks that lean more towards showing you what a VelociRaptor will give you in terms of real world performance benefits. VelociRaptor VR150 review @ TechReport


Thanks WR2, I think I am actually going to go with two 640gb in raid 0, I had concerns about the amount of storage I was going to have anyhow.

I don't think the performance increase with the raptor will be huge enough to warrant the price and low amount of space, plus I can always move these to secondary drives and add one in later when the price becomes more reasonable.


I'm still up in the air about Vista 64, the main problem is that I don't know if the performace increase or potential headaches I would have warrant the upgrade. Right now I have a full copy of Windows XP, so if I were to go to Vista 64 I'd get a full copy of Vista and another 4gb ram, so about 400 bucks more.

BTW, I can't seem to find the answer, but does Vista Ultimate come with both 32bit and 64bit versions in one package? Or are all 32bit and 64bit packages separate? If they came in one it would make the decision much easier. I guess I should post that on the software forum.

Appreciate the info guys!


Most full retail copies of Vista Ultimate include both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the OS.

If you're going to have a RAID 0 array, I don't think there's much need for a raptor. The RAID 0 will likely be faster than the single VelociRaptor in many cases, though it will be less secure. If one of the drives fails, it'll result in loss of data on both drives. Having a VR as a primary drive, and a couple of WD drives as data storage and backup isn't a bad plan, though.
Register or log in to remove
 
Ask the community
Read discussions in other Systems categories
!