Hardware

[Kaelas]

So I'm putting together a new system and thought I'd see what people thought. I already ordered it all and I'll be throwing in my old 7200rpm 500gb drive, a sound card, and wireless network adapter (yes ugh I know but I have no choice). First upgrade will be a SSD and then some cooling to overclock it.


Case
Type: ATX Mid Tower
Color: Black
Case Material: SECC Steel
Power Supply Mounted Bottom
Motherboard Compatibility: Micro ATX / ATX
With Side Panel Window: No
External 5.25" Drive Bays: 3
External 3.5" Drive Bays: 2
Internal 3.5" Drive Bays: 5
Expansion Slots: 7
Front Ports
2 x USB Ports
1 x e-SATA
Audio In/Out (AC97, HD)
120mm Fans
1 x Front 120mm Blue LED Fan
1 x Rear 120mm Fan
140mm Fans
1 x Top 140mm Fan

650w PSU

Board
MSI P67A-GD65 B3 Intel P67 LGA1155 Motherboard
Maximum Memory Supported: 32GB - 64bit
Number of Slots: 4
Max. Memory Supported Per Slot: 8GB
Channels: 8 Channels
Audio Chipset: Realtek ALC892
LAN Type: 10/100/1000 Mbps Gigabit
Serial ATA 3.0Gb/s Headers: 4
2 - External
Serial ATA 6.0Gb/s Headers: 4
PCI Slots: 2
PCI Express X1 Slots: 3
PCI Express X16 Slots: 2
RAID Support: Yes
RAID Modes: 0
1
10
5

Intel Core i5-2500k Unlocked CPU

EVGA GeoForce GTX 460 GPU

2x4gb RAM

1TB 7200rpm HD

Contemplating this monitor: http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/prod ... e_irrank=0

[Phauss]

Hmm... I'll check these out.

[Phauss]

Why would you go solid state when you could get multiple hard drives and configure them in raid? SSD is just too much money per gig and not enough capacity. That's something I would wait to get.

I'd recommend a little more power, too, given the video card. OCZ makes some good PSU's for a good price (I have a 4-year old 850W powering the server as we speak.) A larger power supply will also give you a little headspace incase you want to throw some upgrades into the case later on.

Out of curiosity, why not go to an i7 processor?

[Kaelas]

650w seemed like enough headroom considering that going for SLI and some overclocking will be the extent of this build. That particular one came highly recommended and was on sale for quite cheap so I bought it. I went for the i5-2500k over an i7 purely because of price. I can overclock it up to the i7's level plus actually doing some overclocking was something I wanted to try (never done it before).

I kind of want to do SSD before picking up a second drive to RAID because I've heard that the speed difference, not the storage capacity. From what Grayson has told me, I should throw my OS on the old 500gb drive and partition off a few gigs of the newer, better 1tb drive for the cache then use the rest for long term storage of media. From what I understand, a RAID isn't going to really help my speed as much as a SSD would.

Everything I listed except for the monitor I've already purchased by the way. They just haven't all arrived yet.

[Phauss]

If I were to use an SSD, I'd probably put the OS and programs on it. Solid state is very fast, but there is a limitation to how many read/writes and deletions it can do. Although that number is very high (it's likely that a normal PC user would never have to worry about it), it would be something in the back of my mind, especially if it were a document drive that would go into future builds or into an external case for long term use. The limited size (and price per GB) would force me to use something that would be more suited for the OS and programs anyways, using the larger disc drives for documents. Need I also mention the benefits of file security in a raid setup incase a drive fails?

SSD's are awesome, though, don't get me wrong. I just don't think it's the right time for them. (~$2/GB for 128GB SSD compared to ~$.15/GB for a 2TB HDD. Sounds like a 250GB HDD raid extravaganza to me. WTB drive bays and cooling.)

[Phauss]

And holy CAS latency, Batman! 9-9-9-24 timing!

Edit - Derp, I'm still stuck in the DDR2 era where everything was CL 5.

[Kaelas]

So I dismantled my old box today and installed the old HDD into my new one. Of course I get a BSOD trying to boot into the old one so I wound up having to install XP onto the new drive, move my files over, and now I'm formatting the old one to put a fresh Win7 install on it, move my files back, format the NEW drive, then partition it for cache/storage.

Ugh. I hate waiting. Now I just need a new monitor and a SSD and I'm set!

[Kaelas]

New computer is running, yay! Sadly my connection is horrid so I haven't been able to log into WoW yet as the 7.5gb download is still going.

[schoolbus]

This computer build gets bus's seal of approval.

[Loktarr]

Build looks great! I'm jelly.
I've been using this laptop for 4 years now. It's still running well I just crave more power! And a real mouse... Ordering my naga as soon as I get the dough!