New i7 build, looking for criticism/comments before ordering.

[madnj]

OK, so I'm looking to build a new i7 based PC, and I'm looking at a build that will give me elbow room for now and the future. I'll be using it as a gaming system, but I work as a senior level systems engineer for an outsourcing provider so I'll want to be able to do a lot with it (including likely running Virtual Machines and testing out new software). While price is a consideration, it isn't a limiting factor in building a system, so I'm looking for arguments for/against components I have selected with possible replacement options.

Here is what I am looking to purchase currently:

Antec Nine Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail - $109.99 - Nice mid tower case to house the beast

Antec TruePower Quattro TPQ-1000 1000W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Power Supply - Retail - $159.99 (after $90 instant rebate) - 1000 watts to support potential Crossfire cards in the future

ASUS Rampage II Extreme LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail - $398.99 - Solid, easily overclockable MB with tons of features and ports

Intel Core i7 920 2.66GHz LGA 1366 Quad-Core Processor Model BX80601920 - Retail - $299.99 - I chose the 920 for the great price/performance point. I could go up in processor speed, but this has shown to be easily overclockable and I don't know that the performance increase would be "real world" noticeable for increased $ here.

CORSAIR XMS3 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Triple Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model TR3X6G1333C9 - Retail - $225.00 - 6GB of RAM is right for triple channel, but not sure if I need/should go higher speed than DDR3 1333. I also could consider adding another 6GB of RAM for more overhead if I'll run VMs frequently.

SAPPHIRE 100251SR Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB 512-bit (256-bit x 2) GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card - Retail - $489.99 (after $60 instant rebate) - Just one for the time being, but I figure if I wait a while I can snap up another when the price falls.

G.SKILL FS-25S2-64GB 2.5" 64GB SATA II Internal Solid state disk (SSD) - Retail - $545.00 - Solid State drive as my boot/system drive should allow the OS to scream and cut down on boot times.

SAMSUNG Spinpoint F1 HD103UJ 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM - $99.99 each - 4 of these in a RAID 5 array will give me 3TB of usable storage for all the data I have now and all the data I will probably accumulate in the next few years. RAID 5 for data redundancy and recovery if I lose a drive.

LG Black 6X Blu-ray Disc Burner & HD DVD-ROM Drive SATA Model GGW-H20LK - OEM - $224.99 - A nice burner with HD DVD/Blu Ray capability. Maybe unnecesary now, but in a couple years it will be nice to have.

Acer P243WAid Black-Silver 24" 2ms(GTG) HDMI Widescreen LCD Monitor with HDCP Support - Retail - $359.99 each - 2 of these 24 inch beasts will be amazing for multitasking. With the i7 and these, I'd imagine I'll be able to take advantage of the multiple cores.

Total cost of everything - $3573.88 + tax/shipping - Under $4000 shipped. (removing monitors/SSD/3TB HDDs - $2008.93 +tax/shipping, so I actually see this as a pretty reasonable system pricepoint)

I was looking to go high end without going overboard, and I definitely think the investment in SSD and the 4 drive RAID 5 storage array will treat me well for a very long time. Also, the 2 24" monitors add a lot of cost to the system that most people won't have. Even if I eventually need to build a "new" monster, this system would serve as a pretty insane storage server.

I am just about ready to pull the trigger, so I'd love to hear thoughts/suggestions. Also, I'll probably get an aftermarket CPU cooler, but it just doesn't look like there's much choice when it comes to i7 cooling yet. I expect that stock will be fine until some solid aftermarket coolers hit the market at which point I'll likely push my overclock above what I can achieve with the stock HSF.

I'd love to hear thoughts and suggestions if there are components I should consider instead of what I have chosen, or if there might be issues with my build if I go ahead as planned.

 

[Huttfuzz]

First thing, my pants are wet...

Ok, secondly, great system. I would go for a Velociraptor 300 gb has a system disk for higher density and almost same I/O and acces times. It's cheaper and it's more a bang for the buck. You will have higher density to put all your software and games on the main disk. Don't forget that games now tends to be 5 GB + each.

If you wait a year or two, SSD's are going to be larger in density, faster and cheaper. It's just that it's a brand new technology that needs a bit more time to be worth it.

I would also by a normal DVD burner for 30$ and wait for this Blue Ray. Prices are also going down and the readers are going to be faster soon. Just save 400$ altogether for now.

Either way you decide to go, great system, hope you have fun!!!!

 

[yobigd20]

Not bad. I went for a similar setup. I have a few comments.

1) Don't use a Sapphire brand card. They're customer support/RMA process is pretty much the worst you can get. VisionTek should be fine.
2) Personally, I'd get the gigabyte extreme x58 board. It's cheaper, and it has additional PCIe x1 and x4 slots, to the left of the first 16x slot - meaning they are usable if you are going for SLI/Crossfire. (ie like adding a PCIe raid controller and sound card )
3) don't get the G.SKILL SSD. Get the Intel X-25 SSD. Its 80gb, and its performance kills the g skill (plus there are no freezing problems with the intel SSDs)
4) I went for the Hanns-G 28" widescreen that does 1920x1200. Acer is good too, I just wanted 4 more inches lol totally user opinion. the crazy one to get would be the samsung 30" that does crazy resolutions but that one alone is like $1200.
5. if you have a good 5.1 system (like logitech z5500), its worth getting the creative x-fi titanium card (pciex1), the sound difference is amazing compared to onboard audio.

If you want to go watercooling (it is possible to exceed the 965 core i7 with watercooling), get an apogee gtz waterblock w\ the core i7 backplate, dangerden 4870x2 waterblocks for the gpus, swiftech 655 pump, thermochill 120.2 radiator and swiftech res, plus tubing fitting distilled water etc and your good to go for oc'ing your system for crazzzy gaming speeds.

 

[slomo4sho]

Couple of comments, wait to buy the Antec 900 case until Black Friday as it will be $60 with shipping(hopefully). In fact, wait for Black Friday, the prices on the stuff you have selected can only go down

 

[madnj]

Thanks for all the comments so far everyone, I definitely appreciate it. I have already swapped out the SSD drive for an Intel 80GB model, but am torn on the Motherboard. I don't think I'll be using an expansion card for RAID, just the onboard ICH10 controller, so slots aren't that big of an issue for me (especially since the board already includes an X-Fi sound card). With that noted, the ASUS board looks to be amazing.

My current concern though is regarding my choice of case, the Antec Nine Hundred. It says it supports ATX motherboards, but this ASUS board is a bit larger than the ATX standard. It measures 12" X 10.6" which is an inch off the ATX spec of 12" X 9.6".

Will this fit in the Antec Nine Hundred? I really don't want to have to go to a full tower as I think a mid tower is plenty big enough for my room, but I'm concerned that I might have an issue fitting the board in the case.

Any thoughts?

 

[yobigd20]

The ASUS motherboard is ATX form factor, however not 'standard ATX' which is what you found. Though Antex 900 can take ATX and m-ATX, so you should be fine unless you want to go tri-sli.

And don't get me wrong, I think Asus is top-notch motherboard manufacturer. I always use Asus. Its just that this time I do not think they spaced out their slots in an ideal way. So my choice this time was Gigabyte.

Specifically, many people are complaining about this when they try to use the 3rd slot for sli or some of the other slots.

Quotes from other users
"Also just about all the motherboards with the x58 chipset supporting 3-way SLI require a larger case. "
"if you want to upgrade your sound to a Falit1y x-fi card you can't because the northbridge is in the way. Due to this not being an ATX board and due to the placement of the 3rd PCI slot. I had to buy an expensive case with 10 pci slots (as opposed to 7) to make room for my future third video card"
"1. This board does not support 3 - way SLI the chipset heatsink bumps down the pci slots by one so if you try to install the third vid card two things happen, if it takes up two expansion slots it wont go in because the case has no more expansion slots, and the vid card will cover the usb, firewire and front panel pins."

Overall I think Asus made some critical flaws with the design of this board. While powerful in performance, all they needed to do was re-think the way they laid out their slots and it would have been perfect. Poor choice on their part. And their website sucks btw. Sorry, had to throw that out there lol. It just gets on my nerves every time I visit the asus site.

 

[madnj]

I totally agree with you on the slot placement on the board, but I have to question how many users will ever TRULY look to take advantage of tri-SLI or tri-Crossfire. Initially I'm going to have a single 4870x2 which will scream, and if I look to upgrade down the road it would be to a second 4870x2. Maybe if I was running 2 single 4870s or 4850s where I would need to go tri-Crossfire to upgrade graphics in the future I'd be out of luck, but that's not the case here.

I also agree that their website is horrible, but that's not why we buy their boards

In any event, my trigger finger is itching to order, but my head is telling me to wait till Friday for some of these items to drop a bit. I'm hopeful the case won't be an issue though.

Thanks a lot for the reply.

 

[yobigd20]

Why not wait?, it's only 2 more days. Maybe you can find a deal somewhere. My fav is Fatwallet. I would check the 'hot deals' forums on Fatwallet.com. Those guys are CRAZY about posting computer hardware deals on there.

 

[3lvis]

$545??? Where are you getting that GSkill SSD? newegg has 64GB Gskill ssd's listed for $149.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231220

At that price you can buy 2-4 of them, put them in raid 0 and beat everything Intel has to offer for less money.

+1 for the gigabyte extreme board.

I would consider going with 6 WD 640GB drives over 4 of the 1 TB drives....simply because the greater density you pack the data on your plater the greater chance there is of losing the data...read the comments on newegg and you can see that a lot of the 1 TB drives fail while WD 640's have very few problems.

Also consider Nvidia 280 gtx.....appparently 3 280 gtx beat 2 4870x2's when you have a fat i7 cpu to feed them.

Get a full tower case for the extra room and better airflow. Personally I like the LIAN LI PC-A70B Black Aluminum ATX Full Tower Computer Case.

lose the 2 24" lcds and get a 42-52" 1080i HDTV boooya! eye candy! sure its lower res then the 24" lcds but the immersion is as good as it gets for games. If you find you still don't have enough desktop get a second monitor 22" ACER lcd for $160. A second monitor should be well secondary, a place to put tool bars and stuff you use but dont need to see all the time.

If your gonna pull out all the stops then water cooling or phase change will complete your system.....or both lol Ive seen people do water cooling then run the tubes out to a refrigerated office water cooler copper loop and back in thier system.

Anyway, have fun building it.

 

[madnj]

That GSkill SSD drive is an SLC drive which has MUCH better write performance than any of the MLC drives out there (the ones you mention), but the tradeoff is that it's much more expensive. I have already swapped that out for the Intel 80GB SLC SSD which is a little over $600. As for the 6WDs vs 4 1 TB drives, I don't know that I want to have that many active spindles in the case. Having a RAID 5 array should give me solid redundancy in the event of a disk failing, and I should be able to get a replacement disk if/when a drive dies on me.

I've also decided to change out the RAM for the Corsair XMS3 DDR3 1600 memory which was only a negligible increase in price from the 1333 memory.

I'd consider the Nvidia 280 card if I was looking to go 3xSLI down the road, but I think the most I "might" do would be to double up on the 4870x2s.

I've been kicking around a few possibilities on the case, but just don't really want to have an enormous full tower sitting in the office. I have an older Coolermaster Centurion mid tower case in there now, and that's pretty big, and adding this will be crazy. I don't think I'll go watercooled either (just too much risk with such expensive components unless you're there to watch it all the time), so I'm really looking for a solid case with good airflow that isn't budget breaking or cheap looking. I actually really like the way the old Coolermaster Centurion case looks (it has 2 solid metal bars running on the sides of the front of the case and is just very solid), but I am not all that impressed with the available Coolermaster mid tower cases I have seen on Newegg. I think the Antec looks solid, will provide great airflow, and doesn't look cheap (although the LED lights adds a lot of bling factor which I am undecided on).

I am looking for the 2x24" monitors to allow me to do some nice multitasking while gaming without having to alt-tab out. Having that extended display will just completely change the way I do things now. I work in IT, so I am very used to working with extended displays, and I just think 2x24" would be amazing. I currently have 2 big LCD TVs (42"/46" Sharp Aquos) in the house though if I did ever want to hook it up for maximum WOW factor. I love the TVs, and use them all the time for outputting movies from my laptop, but I just don't think it would be practical for everyday use.

I am most likely going to wait for the black Friday sales to kick in before placing my order (or I'll be kicking myself for wasting money), but I am getting very comfortable with my decision at this point. As much as I do like what Gigabyte has done with their new board, I guess I am just a bit of an ASUS fanboy and have had only great experiences with the builds I have done using their parts.

Again, I appreciate the discussion as it's really helping me to push my wish list from a dream to a reality.

 

[dirtmountain]

I'd also say a full tower with as much as you're going to be stuffing it with. For mid tower maybe a Coolermaster CM690.

 

[yobigd20]

Also consider Nvidia 280 gtx.....appparently 3 280 gtx beat 2 4870x2's when you have a fat i7 cpu to feed them.

lol where'd you get that data? In lower resolutions maybe...but when your running games at the highest resolutions on max settings, the dual 4870X2's beat tri-sli in almost every benchmark, including on i7 cpus. I've seen this in several performance charts by different reviewers. I don't remember where they all were, but here is one great review that shows exactly that (tri sli vs dual 4870x2 using different cpus) http://www.guru3d.com/article/core-i7-multigpu-sli-crossfire-game-performance-review/13

 

[209Mason]

I'd also say a full tower with as much as you're going to be stuffing it with. For mid tower maybe a Coolermaster CM690.

+1 ... this case is just about an inch taller and deeper than the Antec 900, so it's a little bigger than Mid, but not as monsterous as say the Antec 1200.

Plus, if you don't mind Nvidia (or pretty green lights), the Coolermaster NV 690 Nvidia version is on sale at the egg right now for $59