New i7 / 4870 System

[erk070]

Hi, I've known and used this website for a while now but have never posted on the forums. I'd be great if someone could give me advice on my build. I'm planning on using it for gaming, Photoshop stuff once in a while, and math/programming software such as Matlab and Mathematica. Here is my current plan:

MSI X58 Platinum
Intel Core 2 i7-920
ATI Radeon HD 4870 512 MB
NZXT Zero case
NZXT PP600 PSU
3 GB DDR3 1333
320 GB 7200RPM HDD

I'm ordering this through CyberpowerPC since I don't want to piece it together myself. I'll check and see if it's put together correctly before turning it on, since I've heard some bad reviews about that kind of thing. With the cheapest keyboard and mouse, it comes to $1106.

I'm planning on getting a generic hard drive and not using RAID. It seems like quite a bit more money (~$100) just for a 10000RPM Raptor with less capacity and I don't know if I'll really need or notice RAID0 performance.

Is the PSU good enough? I don't plan on overclocking right away, but I may put another 4870 in CF.

I've heard that the NZXT Zero is great with cooling, but would I need an aftermarket CPU fan?

And finally, which version of Vista is best for me? Premium seems to be what I've read around here, but elsewhere many people have said to get Ultimate for gaming, but I haven't heard a good argument as to why.

Thanks.

 

[shortstuff_mt]

There's no reason why Ultimate is better for gaming. Here's a link that compares the different versions of Vista:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/compare-editions/default.aspx

Check it out and decide for yourself if Ultimate's worth the premium.

 

[midi25]

Hi

I ordered a similar system today and have had some of the same concerns. Your build looks ok from what I can tell. But I am sure others on the forum will be able to add something.

If you are worried about the PSU, use this helpful tool from Corsair as a guide.

http://tools.corsairmemory.com/retailer/psu_finder_default.aspx?rid=154907

I work in the IT industry as a System Administrator and beleive it or not, I know very little about home computing but a great deal about business.

I have tried every version of Vista and can comment about the features from version to version.

Here is a comparison of the versions and their features...

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/compare-editions/default.aspx

Home Premium would run faster on your machine than Ultimate. But with the amount of RAM, GPU and CPU that you have, I doubt that you will even notice any reduction with Ultimate.

Ultimate has a few extra bundled features, and it all depends on your usage.

eg: You may decide that you need the importance of a Backup feature. Ultimate has the ability to Backup your entire PC etc. See below...

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc137798.aspx

RAID :

I deal with a great deal of Servers so RAID is not a new concept to me. But I am intrigued at how it will be embraced in the home market.

eg: The RAID being offered on most models seems to be software based. ie: There is no seperate SCSI Raid Managment Controller and its SATA raid.

People tend to forget that you need identical drives for RAID. So if you had a 1TB drive using RAID 1, you would need a second 1TB drive as a mirror. That would be a huge waste of a drive in my opinion.

RAID 0 Striping uses the same schematics in that you need idential drives, but data is interlaced over the drives. For faster read and writes, but if one disk fails all data on the other disk are lost.

RAID 5 uses 3 to n amount of disks with striping across the entire array. It can sustain a single disk failure, but can be expensive to implement.

So there are pros and cons for all.

RAID is more about resiliance and there are better stratergies that can be used.

eg: We initially image our desktop machines so that we have a complete fresh install of the OS that we can revert too. At a later stage we then create snapshots that are saved to an external location.

With the price of storage being so cheap at the moment the spread of data will help minimize loss.

RAID for home use is not for everyone and their are better stratergies around.

Disk streaming backups look promising and our company is looking into products like MS Data Protection Manager. Hopefully this technology will find its use in the home computing some day.

 

[erk070]

Thanks for the advice! I already have an external hard drive that I can use to backup my data, so I won't get RAID. I think I'll get Vista Premium and save a little money. I could even use Basic since I don't really need the frills and I don't plan on having more than 8GB of RAM soon, but Premium's only $15 more. Here's what I'm thinking now:

MSI X58 Platinum
Intel Core 2 i7-920
ATI Radeon HD 4870 512 MB
NZXT Hush case
Corsair CMPSU-650TX
3 GB DDR3 1333
320 GB 7200RPM HDD
Windows Vista Home Premium

This comes up to $1143.