- Apr 15, 2010
- 7
- 0
- 18,510
Hi,
I'm looking to get a new machine for home and home-office use, but specifically somewhat beefy home and home-office use. I'm not a gamer anymore (I'm old now
), but I'm pretty hardcore about performance in everything but graphics.
My top priority for the build is "snappy" everyday performance.
I'm not out to turn a 10-minute encoding process into a 5-minute one, but I /am/ out to turn all the little 1- or 2-second chugs into 0.1-second blinks. See, I'm just sick of waiting for little things, like opening an explorer window, or right-clicking on a file, or client side javascript in browsers. I work quickly, my work is made up of doing lots of little things, so all those little things need to happen really quickly.
Yes, I keep my PC clean, with CCleaner and defrags and other such things, and I usually reformat once or twice a year just to get that new-PC smell again. It still doesn't help much, though I suppose having a 2.8GHz P4 isn't doing me much good to begin with.
Anyway, a few specific questions before we get to the template:
1) Hard drive: 7200rpm or SSD? My "snappy" desires make me wonder if the SSD might be worth the cost, but I haven't researched the technology enough yet, and most benchmarks don't really give a feel for "real world" usage as I describe above.
2) Intel or AMD? My gut says to go Intel i7-930 and overclock, but I've read some articles indicating that maybe AMD motherboards have less bottlenecks for the everyday stuff? I would appreciate any insights.
3) High speed RAM...is it worth it? What kinds of things will it speed up?
4) Liquid cooling...are there maintenance issues? Is it worth the cost for the cooling and the quiet? What about risk of leaks?
And the template:
APPROXIMATE PURCHASE DATE: Flexible. As early as next week or as late as a couple of months from now. But I am getting very tired of the sluggishness of my current PC.
BUDGET RANGE: $1000-$1500, after rebates. I'd like to keep it closer to $1000 unless there are compelling reasons to spend more (see below).
SYSTEM USAGE FROM MOST TO LEAST IMPORTANT:
1) Snappiness - see above
2) Financial/trading apps. While I don't use these as much as I surf the web, these are the apps that are the most sluggish for me currently.
3) Web browsing, email, etc - but with extreme multitasking going on, like 30 pages in tabs loaded - on an easy day
4) MS Office - with significant multitasking; a dozen or so spreadsheets open at once, etc
5) Videos/music (from disk or from the web) - typically while multitasking with other apps
6) Copying large numbers of small(ish) files
7) Occasional photo editing with GIMP, occasional video editing with windows movie maker
8) Very rare gaming? Usually strategy type stuff; I think Civilization III was the last game I played seriously.
PARTS NOT REQUIRED: keyboard, mouse, monitor, speakers, OS
PREFERRED WEBSITE(S) FOR PARTS: newegg.com for individual parts; cyberpowerpc.com for pre-built (which is preferred, but not necessarily required)
PARTS PREFERENCES:
1) Graphics...I want /very/ snappy 2D graphics, but 3D not a big concern.
2) Mid-tower case
3) USB3.0 and SATA-III on the motherboard (for future-proofing)
4) 1394a and eSATA are very nice to have but not dealbreakers
OVERCLOCKING: Yes
SLI OR CROSSFIRE: No (not now, but maybe someday?)
MONITOR RESOLUTION: two monitors: 1920x1200 and 1600x1200
ADDITIONAL COMMENTS: I would like the box to be cool, quiet, and dark, with minimal flash, and minimal maintenance required.
And a potential ~$1200 build that I cooked up on cyberpower that "sounds" like it addresses my issues, I'd appreciate any educated opinions on that:
# CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-930 2.80 GHz 8M L3 Cache LGA1366
# CS_FAN: Maximum Enemax 120MM Case Cooling Fans for selected case (Maximum Silent Operation) (1,000 RPM Black Color with No LED Enlobal Magnetic Barometric Bearing 17 dBA)
# FAN: Xigmatek Dark Knight-S1283V Gaming CPU Cooling Fan (Double layer H.D.T. technology for maximum cooling)
# HDD: Single Hard Drive (320GB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM HDD)
# MOTHERBOARD: (3-Way SLI Support) GigaByte GA-X58A-UD3R Intel X58 Chipset SLI/CrossFireX Ultra Durable™3 Mainboard Triple-Channel DDR3/1600 ATX Mainboard w/ 7.1 Dobly Audio, eSATA, GbLAN, USB3.0, 2 x SATA-III RAID, IEEE1394a, 4 Gen2 PCIe, 2 PCIe X1 & 1 PCI [+56]
# MEMORY: 6GB (2GBx3) DDR3/1600MHz Triple Channel Memory Module [+29] (A-Data Gaming Series with Heat Spreader [+29])
# POWERSUPPLY: 600 Watts Power Supplies (XtremeGear SLI/CrossFireX Ready Power Supply)
# VIDEO: ATI Radeon HD 5450 512MB DDR2 16X PCIe Video Card [DirectX 11 Support]
Thanks in advance!
D
I'm looking to get a new machine for home and home-office use, but specifically somewhat beefy home and home-office use. I'm not a gamer anymore (I'm old now
), but I'm pretty hardcore about performance in everything but graphics.My top priority for the build is "snappy" everyday performance.
I'm not out to turn a 10-minute encoding process into a 5-minute one, but I /am/ out to turn all the little 1- or 2-second chugs into 0.1-second blinks. See, I'm just sick of waiting for little things, like opening an explorer window, or right-clicking on a file, or client side javascript in browsers. I work quickly, my work is made up of doing lots of little things, so all those little things need to happen really quickly.
Yes, I keep my PC clean, with CCleaner and defrags and other such things, and I usually reformat once or twice a year just to get that new-PC smell again. It still doesn't help much, though I suppose having a 2.8GHz P4 isn't doing me much good to begin with.
Anyway, a few specific questions before we get to the template:
1) Hard drive: 7200rpm or SSD? My "snappy" desires make me wonder if the SSD might be worth the cost, but I haven't researched the technology enough yet, and most benchmarks don't really give a feel for "real world" usage as I describe above.
2) Intel or AMD? My gut says to go Intel i7-930 and overclock, but I've read some articles indicating that maybe AMD motherboards have less bottlenecks for the everyday stuff? I would appreciate any insights.
3) High speed RAM...is it worth it? What kinds of things will it speed up?
4) Liquid cooling...are there maintenance issues? Is it worth the cost for the cooling and the quiet? What about risk of leaks?
And the template:
APPROXIMATE PURCHASE DATE: Flexible. As early as next week or as late as a couple of months from now. But I am getting very tired of the sluggishness of my current PC.
BUDGET RANGE: $1000-$1500, after rebates. I'd like to keep it closer to $1000 unless there are compelling reasons to spend more (see below).
SYSTEM USAGE FROM MOST TO LEAST IMPORTANT:
1) Snappiness - see above
2) Financial/trading apps. While I don't use these as much as I surf the web, these are the apps that are the most sluggish for me currently.
3) Web browsing, email, etc - but with extreme multitasking going on, like 30 pages in tabs loaded - on an easy day
4) MS Office - with significant multitasking; a dozen or so spreadsheets open at once, etc
5) Videos/music (from disk or from the web) - typically while multitasking with other apps
6) Copying large numbers of small(ish) files
7) Occasional photo editing with GIMP, occasional video editing with windows movie maker
8) Very rare gaming? Usually strategy type stuff; I think Civilization III was the last game I played seriously.
PARTS NOT REQUIRED: keyboard, mouse, monitor, speakers, OS
PREFERRED WEBSITE(S) FOR PARTS: newegg.com for individual parts; cyberpowerpc.com for pre-built (which is preferred, but not necessarily required)
PARTS PREFERENCES:
1) Graphics...I want /very/ snappy 2D graphics, but 3D not a big concern.
2) Mid-tower case
3) USB3.0 and SATA-III on the motherboard (for future-proofing)
4) 1394a and eSATA are very nice to have but not dealbreakers
OVERCLOCKING: Yes
SLI OR CROSSFIRE: No (not now, but maybe someday?)
MONITOR RESOLUTION: two monitors: 1920x1200 and 1600x1200
ADDITIONAL COMMENTS: I would like the box to be cool, quiet, and dark, with minimal flash, and minimal maintenance required.
And a potential ~$1200 build that I cooked up on cyberpower that "sounds" like it addresses my issues, I'd appreciate any educated opinions on that:
# CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-930 2.80 GHz 8M L3 Cache LGA1366
# CS_FAN: Maximum Enemax 120MM Case Cooling Fans for selected case (Maximum Silent Operation) (1,000 RPM Black Color with No LED Enlobal Magnetic Barometric Bearing 17 dBA)
# FAN: Xigmatek Dark Knight-S1283V Gaming CPU Cooling Fan (Double layer H.D.T. technology for maximum cooling)
# HDD: Single Hard Drive (320GB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM HDD)
# MOTHERBOARD: (3-Way SLI Support) GigaByte GA-X58A-UD3R Intel X58 Chipset SLI/CrossFireX Ultra Durable™3 Mainboard Triple-Channel DDR3/1600 ATX Mainboard w/ 7.1 Dobly Audio, eSATA, GbLAN, USB3.0, 2 x SATA-III RAID, IEEE1394a, 4 Gen2 PCIe, 2 PCIe X1 & 1 PCI [+56]
# MEMORY: 6GB (2GBx3) DDR3/1600MHz Triple Channel Memory Module [+29] (A-Data Gaming Series with Heat Spreader [+29])
# POWERSUPPLY: 600 Watts Power Supplies (XtremeGear SLI/CrossFireX Ready Power Supply)
# VIDEO: ATI Radeon HD 5450 512MB DDR2 16X PCIe Video Card [DirectX 11 Support]
Thanks in advance!
D
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