My 3rd attempt at a build

[guessoso]

A guy I work with said he will help me build this. So I don't need to pay a big markup. Probably going to buy from Microcenter. Some of the parts there (namely the intel chip) is much cheaper. With tax, etc.. its a little more than newegg, however, if a part fails I don't want to have to send it back, I'd rather go to the store.


Weekend Price: Total Price: $1,167.48 (with tax) + I need Windows 7
Some of the parts were on sale (1 TB hard drives were alot less). I may swap out the stuff that was on sale to something else.



Questions/Concerns:

1. Power supplies I see at Microcenter don't have great reviews. Please let me know what you think and if you can recommend something else.
2. The Diamond video card is $30 more than the Gigabyte version. Is it worth it? I know its only $30, but as you build it prices go up.
3. Is it possible to have 2 RAID mirroring arrays? Don't want striping.
2x60 gb SSD for boot drive
2x1 TB Hard Drive to keep my files.
4. When I googled, I saw that Radeon 7850 is comparable to the Nvidea 560 TI, but uses less power. Do you agree?
I also read comparisons to higher end cards. They said that the performance improves were pretty small especially compared to the price increase. What do you think?
5. Is this too much card for my monitors? I have 2 Samsung 27 inch monitors. I have to check max resolution. It is probably 2560. I also have an 8 year old 50 Inch DLP that is NOT 1080p. I don't know the resolution. It is a high definition TV.
6. What is good for backups? I have Acronis True Image 2011. It got recommended to me ,but it has alot of issues with USB. When I went to do a recovery, it could not see my USB hard drive. I had to connect it to another laptop, share it, and do the recovery across the network. I use image backups and incrementals.

Build:

CPU: Intel Core i5 3570K 3.4GHz LGA 1155 Processor Intel Core i5 3570K 3.4GHz LGA 1155 Processor
http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0388577
Price: $189.99 (cheaper than newegg)

Mother Board:

http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0387556
GA-Z77X-UD3H LGA 1155 Z77 ATX Intel Motherboard
Price: 159.99

HyperX blu 8GB DDR3-1333 (PC3-10600) CL9 Dual Channel Desktop Memory Kit (Two 4GB Memory Modules)
16 gb RAM. 4x4 GB (so 2 of these)
http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0360526
Price: $80 total

Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO Universal CPU Cooler Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO Universal CPU Cooler
http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0373900
Price: $36.99

Hard Drive: Deskstar 7K1000.D 1TB 7,200RPM 32MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive - OEM
http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0375261
(2 of these for RAID Mirroring)
Price: $219 (price was cheaper over the weekend. They had a sale. So may change this).


SSD Drives: Agility 3 AGT3-25SAT3-60G 60GB SATA 6Gb/s 2.5" Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) with SandForce 2281 Controller
http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0364779
(2 of these if I can do 2 RAID Mirroring)
$120 (was $10 less over the weekend).

Video Card: Diamond Card is $30 more. Is the gigabyte one ok?
Diamond: 7850PE52G AMD Radeon HD 7850 2048MB GDDR5 PCIe 3.0 x16 Video Card
http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0390289
$299.99

Gigabye Version: http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0387395
GV-R785OC-2GD AMD Radeon HD 7850 2048MB GDDR5 PCIe 3.0 x16 Video Card
$269.99


Case: Cooler Master HAF912 Mid Tower ATX Computer Case
http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0343331
Price: $59.99

Power Supply (concerned about this)
ModXStream Pro 700W Modular ATX Power Supply
Price: $60

 

[guessoso]

Will the 16 gb of RAM do anything for me? I only got it because its only $40 more.

 

[mad2]

Will the 16 gb of RAM do anything for me? I only got it because its only $40 more.

It probably wont change anything. I have 8gb and I never get close to using all that. Also gigabyte cards are very nice and definitely worth saving the money on. Also, I recommend corsair for psu's.

 

[Guest]

It is known that anything over 4GB Is Overkill except if your doing VM/Powerhouse Work. I Personally would go for 16GB Because RAM is always good to have. For you, Go with 8GB Corsair Vengeance LOW PROFILE RAM. Best Ones <3

And About buying all from microcenter, IT makes sense but You should also buy some parts from Newegg, and shipping back the product shouldn't really be a big issue for you because microcenter is all that easy anyways.

You should buy ONE BOOT SSD. and TWO HDD's...

1x Samsung 830 SSD - $85 (Much Better then any other SSD's. OCZ are terrible)
2x Samsung 1TB HDD - $100 Each (Best HDD's, Choose whichever one you want though)

For Power Supplies, You should go for the Seasonic M12II 520/620W (Seasonic is the best PSU Manufacturer out there). 520W = $60, 620W = 90$

As for the Graphics Card, the 7850 IS much better then the 560ti. When you overclock the 7850 which you can overclock quite awesomely, It comes near to a 580. The 7850 is the best bang for the buck ATM, and it hasn't even price dropped yet. No, Diamond is not worth the extra $30 imo. Go for Sapphire ($250 on Newegg).

Motherboard looks Good.


CPU looks good.

Your Case. Yeah. Ugly HAF... Go for a Classic Case.. The Corsair 300R Is Elegant and Classy. Go for that, You'll be MUCH more satisfied with it then with a HAF 912.

Good Luck, And I've never done RAID so I'm not sure about that.

 

[guessoso]

I want to buy from Microcenter in case I have defective parts. They don't carry Sapphire. I'll price out newegg. I know their Intel chips are more.

1. Is the gigabyte RADEON card good? does it get alot of failures?
2. over 4 gb overkill? not for minecraft. When I added some plugins and ran it on a work laptop (no video card). Windows 7 and 4gb of ram. I ran out of RAM easily when I used plugins to add mobs. 16 gb is probably unnecessary, but its $40...
3. What difference will I see with corsair and hyperx RAM? hyperx is $40. Does it die alot? Replacing would be cheap... if it breaks too much. not worth it.
4. Hard Drive: Microcenter had a sale over the weekend. The 1 TB drives were $85. I was going to get 500 GB drives. I may drop down to those. How much of a difference does brand of HD make?
5. What is so bad about the OCZ SSD Drives? I saw people in another thread I posted add this in.

 

[loops]

Drop down ram to 8 gigs and move up on the SSD.

60 gigs on the SSD will work but if you can add some to it then do so. I have a 64 gig and I have to keep an eye on what gets installed.

Other wise all looks fine.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139020&cm_sp=Cat_Power_Supplies-_-Spotlight-_-17-139-020

 

[guessoso]

also, can you set up 2 raid mirroring arrays on the same motherboard? I want
I want both to be mirroring.

2x60 gb SSD
2x1 TB (possible 500 gb. I went to 1 tb due to a sale)

 

[Guest]

1. Gigabyte makes top notch products. So failure rates are low. But a GPU isn't a PSU, The brand doesn't really matter, No brand really has more failures then others. You could have a $500 diamond die in 2 weeks and a $100 Gigabyte one live for 10 years. It's all random.
2. Get 8GB, Corsair RAM has better timings and more reliable.
4. Brand on HDD wont matter, but on SSD it matters because of different controllers (Samsung Controller = BEST). Stick with 2 500's or 1 2tb, unless you really want to RAID.
5. OCZ Drives tend to have bad controllers.

And you could Do half your components from Newegg, other half from Micro-center. Your choice there. And are you POSITIVE 100% that if your component breaks you can go to the store and pick up a replacement? Because I'm PRETTY sure that you gotta ship to the company. Newegg has its 30 day ship back to newegg RMA which i like. But in the end, Your going to be dealing with the Vendor. So get a combination, half newegg, half micro.

 

[guessoso]

what are a few good brands for power supplies so I can check?

2. Get 8GB, Corsair RAM has better timings and more reliable.

will this be noticeable in games?

 

[guessoso]

is this a good power supply? Is 650 watts enough. I don't need space to upgrade. in the (really off chance). I overclock is this enough?

also, do I need anymore fans or anything? or is what comes with the case enough?

http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0361175

 

[mad2]

what are a few good brands for power supplies so I can check?

2. Get 8GB, Corsair RAM has better timings and more reliable.

will this be noticeable in games?

No you will not see a difference in the ram, also corsair makes good psu's..I have a rosewill one now that is working like a champ though too

 

[Guest]

No, It will not be noticeable in Games, It's only $8... your Choice

Best PSU Brands:
Seasonic
Corsair
Antec
XFX (It's Rebranded Seasonic)
Mostly any good brand is good aslong as they are 80+

 

[azeem40]

Good PSUs:
Rosewill HIVE/Capstone
Corsair TX/HX/AX
PC Power and Cooling Silencer MK
CM Silent Pro
Seasonic (any)
XFX (any)

 

[RetiredChief]

Several have recommended going with a larger SSD, and NOT using raid 1 - FOLLOW their suggestion!!.

SSD:
1) a 120/128 gig SSD is faster than its little brother (60/64 Gig)
2) Raid 1, You lose Trim support, although I here Intel is rememding this in a New 11.5+ driver.
3) Raid1 only protects a single point failure, One drive fails. With SSDs have a good feeling that if something causes one to fail, both will be toast.
4) If you follow generally excepted guidle line on imaging your SSD periodically and the drive fails, you could be back up and running within 10-15 Minutes - The system restored to exacty what it was when the image was created.
5) Agility III is a Sata II SSD in a SATA III wraper. Also can be probmatic, recommend a NON OCZ drive!

PSU - The CPU may be the brains, but the PSU is the heart. If it dies it may take the brain (and other parts, with it). Don't skimp here.

Ram, 8 is enough, but if you have the cash, go with the 16 (no real performance gain currently). If you wait, and find you need it you may find the cost has jumped consierably (always a gamble).

Have to run - work calls. Typed as quickly as I could so forgive spelling.
Enjoy.

 

[guessoso]

Several have recommended going with a larger SSD, and NOT using raid 1 - FOLLOW their suggestion!!.

SSD:
1) a 120/128 gig SSD is faster than its little brother (60/64 Gig)
2) Raid 1, You lose Trim support, although I here Intel is rememding this in a New 11.5+ driver.
3) Raid1 only protects a single point failure, One drive fails. With SSDs have a good feeling that if something causes one to fail, both will be toast.
4) If you follow generally excepted guidle line on imaging your SSD periodically and the drive fails, you could be back up and running within 10-15 Minutes - The system restored to exacty what it was when the image was created.
5) Agility III is a Sata II SSD in a SATA III wraper. Also can be probmatic, recommend a NON OCZ drive!

PSU - The CPU may be the brains, but the PSU is the heart. If it dies it may take the brain (and other parts, with it). Don't skimp here.

Ram, 8 is enough, but if you have the cash, go with the 16 (no real performance gain currently). If you wait, and find you need it you may find the cost has jumped consierably (always a gamble).

Have to run - work calls. Typed as quickly as I could so forgive spelling.
Enjoy.

1. why is a larger drive faster? and is the difference 'noticeable'
2. what is trim support?
4. what are the general guidelines for imaging your SSD? I had been using acronis for image and incremental backups. haivng trouble with restoring because when I bought from the CD it has trouble seeing USB ports?
5. is there an article or something about OCZ being problematic? What is the speed difference with SATA II and SATA III?

 

[Proximon]

1. I don't actually know that, but it's true. Go read a few reviews.
2. SSDs are not like HDDs. The method of storage is different and the data blocks need to be cleaned up periodically to keep the drive running at top speed. Without trim the performance of an SSD will degrade over time.
3?
4. Win 7 backup works just great. If you have Win 7 Pro you can even backup over the network.
5. OCZ has always had a higher failure rate than other companies. In EVERYTHING. It's built in to their philosophy. That's why they failed making memory, because it became so apparent that other companies (G.skill, Corsair, Mushkin) could offer RAM at the same price that was more likely to work.

The impression is that, at least for OCZ Agility SSDs based on the Sandforce controller, the return and failure rate was the highest of all SSDs.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-reliability-failure-rate,2923-3.html

I note though that the new Agility 4 SSDs are using a different Indilux controller.

Historically some of the better non-Sandforce controllers have been more reliable it seems, but this is getting pretty murky. Intel, long considered the MOST RELIABLE SSD maker, is now selling Sandforce SSDs.

So, perhaps the issues we attributed to Sandforce should have really been attributed to OCZ?

5. Available bandwidth. We do not use those terms though. It's SATA 3GB/s and SATA 6GB/s... that's the way MB makers will talk about it anyway.

 

[RetiredChief]

^ Thanks, been away from Computer for a while.

On reason that larger SSDs are faster than their smaller siblings is rather simple. internally a 120 gig SSD is made up of two 60 gig Modules that are then Connected simular to a raid0 configuration. This considerably improves the sequencial performance and a slight boost to Small file randoms. Benchmarks will show this, and often reviews are sent 240/256 gig drives for review. In real life, No not a big life changing performance gain, but there is a slight gain.

On OCZ. They had considerable problems for an extened period of time. Yes, they have resolved most, if not all the issues. However, during that time frame they blamed the customer - There was NO problem with there drive - BOOTWEETY. For this reason I do not recommend the COMPANY.

Agillity III is Not that great of a drive (excluding the 8 monthes of problems). A review demonstrated that the drive performs NO BETTER on an intel sata III (6) port than it does on the Intel SATA II (3) port - I verified that on My i5-2500k system as I have two 120 gig agility III. Hense the reason I dub it a SATA II SSD in a SATA III Wrapper. This is simulare to marketing a SATA 6 HDD, The ONLY diff between SATA II and SAT III is burst speed, which amounts to a hill of beans when transferring a large file, or a bunch of small files.

SSDs have an internal wear leveling algorthium (like a program) that speads out the writes per cell (you can only write to a given cell 10,000 times). also internally a program thats call garbage Collector - Like the name implies, it goes around and gets rid of deleted cell (simplest explaination) to keep the drive performance up. Trim is an operating system cmd that notifies the SSD which files have been deleted. NOTE, a file is Not deleted until you empy the trashcan.

Hope this helps.