[Engineering]

Summary:

i7 (860)
ASUS P55 mobo
EVGA Gtx260
30GB SATA II MLC SDD
6GB DDR3 1600 (PC3 16000) w/ XMP
Rosewill Green Series 630W
Antec 1200 case


Detail:


ASUS SABERTOOTH 55i LGA 1156 Intel P55 ATX Intel Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16813131601

Intel Core i7-860 Lynnfield 2.8GHz 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1156 95W Quad-Core Processor
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16819115214

Patriot Viper II Sector 5 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2000 (PC3 16000)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16820220434

EVGA 896-P3-1257-AR GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 Superclocked Edition 896MB 448-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16814130433

Rosewill Green Series RG630-2 630W Continuous @40°C,80 PLUS Certified,ATX12V v2.3,SLI Ready,CrossFire Ready,Active PFC"Compatible with Core i7, i5" Power Supply
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16817182185

Antec Twelve Hundred Black Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16811129043

OCZ Vertex Series OCZSSD2-1VTX30GXXX 2.5" 30GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid state disk (SSD)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16820227393


Notes:

No need SLI.
Future upgrades: double ram only.
Peripherals: perhaps a blue ray drive or a dvdrw or attached HDD for storage.
Was considering a SLC SDD but read/write speeds seem 3x better with the MLC counter part. (also more storage space)




What do you think? Any parts that can be upgraded to a better choice? Can it be improved? How do you see the system overall?

[Kelsenellenelvian]

Only a 30gig SSD??

What are you going to run on it XP, Office and a game or 2?

Plus the video card? You can do much better than that for the price.

[Engineering]

Had performance as priority for this build so storage space is not a big concern.

Thinking running: x64 XP or an extremly vlite'd Win 7 (to exploit those 30GB of space on boot drive).... for running maybe a game/office and 1 or 2 main intensive apps. (adobe CS4's or such)

And for further storage, there's HDD by usb/sata or adding a second SSD.

Kelsenellenelvian, on Dec 13 2009, 05:30 PM, said:

Only a 30gig SSD??

You can do much better than that for the price.

So you think the main flaw on this build is the available storage space?

What would you suggest to improve? What would you change, swap, remove, or upgrade?

This post has been edited by puntoMX: 15 December 2009 - 01:50 PM

[Junior2613]

How about 2 of these http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16822136313 in RAID more storage, good performance, way lower price

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/prods/C.../H577F1GDG.html

Why not get a 5770 for round about the same money as the GTX260 I think so my conversions are not too good Im sure the 5770 will outrun that 260 in a lot if not all games and software

[ripken204]

what is the purpose of this computer?

[Engineering]

ripken204, on Dec 13 2009, 07:18 PM, said:

what is the purpose of this computer?

all purpose. Say video encoding/gaming, etc.

What would you suggest?

This post has been edited by Engineering: 13 December 2009 - 07:31 PM

[ripken204]

for video encoding you NEED disk space, 30 gig will do you no good at all.
if you already have other storage then please say so.
aside from that, i would say to get a better video card, assuming you can afford it.

[CoffeeFiend]

Engineering, on Dec 13 2009, 05:38 PM, said:

What would you change, swap, remove, or upgrade?

Mostly everything.

[engmod]

>ASUS SABERTOOTH 55i LGA 1156 Intel P55 ATX Intel Motherboard

6GB of ram is normally for a 1366 board, only dual channel with 1156.

[puntoMX]

CoffeeFiend, on Dec 13 2009, 09:35 PM, said:

Engineering, on Dec 13 2009, 05:38 PM, said:

What would you change, swap, remove, or upgrade?

Mostly everything.

Except for the case and CPU, that could stay, although that ASUS board looks good too.

[CoffeeFiend]

puntoMX, on Dec 15 2009, 08:00 PM, said:

Except for the case and CPU, that could stay, although that ASUS board looks good too.

Actually, I wouldn't keep those either.

Engineering, on Dec 13 2009, 05:16 PM, said:

Intel Core i7-860 Lynnfield 2.8GHz 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1156 95W Quad-Core Processor

From looking at what he intends to run, it's WAY beyond overkill. Adobe CS4? If he means Photoshop CS4 by that, as one of his most intensive apps, then a CPU ~1/4 of that would be plenty for anything but the most demanding stuff. In fact, even on an ~2 year old C2D (OC'ed dinky E2160), doing fairly complex stuff in Photoshop (files over 100 megapixels, a few layer layer groups, loads of layer masks, working in LAB and CMYK, etc) it doesn't even feel remotely slow. The main limit I run into is RAM (often over 4GB with such images), not CPU, and I have more RAM than he plans on getting, so he'd be far better off spending the extra money on more RAM for this. The video card acceleration also speeds it up considerably.

And his other listed uses don't sound like they would make use of a high end CPU either (Office? You could run that on an old P4 just fine). With his usage, he most likely wouldn't see any difference whatsoever between a i5 750 and the i7. The i7 is like 10% faster and 50% more expensive. That money could be better spent elsewhere IMO. It's not like the small difference in speed will give it any meaningful increase in longevity (usable life) either.

Engineering, on Dec 13 2009, 05:16 PM, said:

Patriot Viper II Sector 5 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2000 (PC3 16000)

Why go with a high end CPU, and pair it with only 4GB? Way to make it crawl. If you multitask a lot, and use memory-heavy apps like Photoshop (like mentioned before), this will make your system FAR slower than a slower CPU (like the i5 750) paired with more RAM. Having too little RAM has always been the very best way to slow down a computer. And now with newer versions of Windows, the OS uses it for caching too (superfetch). Then again, why waste money (like 75% extra) on DDR3-2000 when it'll run at 1333 anyway? More waste of money (unless he plans on mad OC'ing, which he failed to mention)

Engineering, on Dec 13 2009, 05:16 PM, said:

ASUS SABERTOOTH 55i LGA 1156 Intel P55 ATX Intel Motherboard

So you say you don't want SLI, and then you spend an extra $100 on a fancy board with the extra x16 2.0 slot? With his usage/stated needs, I don't see what it brings him over a board that's basically half the price, like for example a GIGABYTE GA-P55M-UD2 LGA 1156 Intel P55 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard (also two x16 slots, also has eSATA and plenty of SATA, it has firewire, toslink and spdif, the same 4 DIMM slots, etc; and it's also high quality: 2oz copper, solid caps, good mosfets and all) But there's plenty of other great boards well under $200 if that one doesn't work for you (e.g. need the x1 slots).

I'd understand the expensive motherboard if you were getting a socket 1366 system with X58 chipset, for it's triple channel RAM (6 DIMM/24GB max), the extra PCI-e lanes for those with a lot of bandwidth-hugry cards, being ready for the 6-core i7's, and some other nice and bleeding edge options found on some boards (e.g. SATA 6Gb/s and USB 3.0 like on the P6X58D premium) but here you don't seem to want or need any of it. That board is overpriced anyway, even for a premium board by asus. It's almost the same price as the significantly nicer Maximus III Formula. Again, money better spent elsewhere IMO.

Engineering, on Dec 13 2009, 05:16 PM, said:

EVGA 896-P3-1257-AR GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 Superclocked Edition 896MB 448-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported

Without going into ati/nvidia debates for the Nth time, if I was spending over $200 on a video card, I'd want DirectX 11. Eyefinity and extra connectors would definitely be nice to have as well. And if he plans on gaming (which he hinted to), with the lastest games maxed out, then this will most likely be his main bottleneck (not the CPU). A i5 750 with a better video card would likely perform better with most games.

Engineering, on Dec 13 2009, 05:16 PM, said:

Rosewill Green Series RG630-2 630W Continuous @40°C,80 PLUS Certified,ATX12V v2.3,SLI Ready,CrossFire Ready,Active PFC"Compatible with Core i7, i5" Power Supply

So you blow like $1500 on a high end rig, and go for a $65 house brand PSU? On that budget, I'd definitely be getting something a lot nicer (better brand, better quality, more efficient, and if you can spend that much then you can definitely afford a modular one)

Engineering, on Dec 13 2009, 05:16 PM, said:

Antec Twelve Hundred Black Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case

Not a bad case at all. But the only real reason to pick this (over say, a Antec 300) is the space inside. And here, you only got the one drive in your machine, no liquid cooling or anything (no mentions of anything that would requite it either). Based on that, I'd sooner spend the extra on a smaller case of better quality, or even just get a smaller case (the 900 already seems like too much here). Still, this is the least bad choice on the list IMO (just pointlessly too big)

Engineering, on Dec 13 2009, 05:16 PM, said:

OCZ Vertex Series OCZSSD2-1VTX30GXXX 2.5" 30GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid state disk (SSD)

A minuscule 30GB... Ouch. I carry more than that in my pockets everyday. Even my nearly 5 year old mp3 player has more space than this.

Like I said, there's basically nothing on the list I'd keep. Going with a i5, RAM that isn't faster than the CPU will run it at, different mobo, smaller case, you'd be left with a few hundred $ that would go well towards many different things: more RAM, a better PSU, more storage, possibly a faster video card (if you're a lot into gaming) and such things.

[Nerwin]

I would listen to CoffeeFriend, he knows whats he's talking about.

I mean you can get a i5 which is alot cheaper than that i7 and you can overclock it and it would be just as fast that i7.

Do you really need SSD? Sure it's faster but your going to be building a beefy system, I wouldn't worry about it.

To me, I would prefer to get 2 640gig hard drives. You can raid them if you want, but I probably woulden't. But again, it really does depend on what you are going to be doing the most.

[beats]

Engineering, on Dec 14 2009, 02:31 AM, said:

all purpose. Say video encoding/gaming, etc.

What would you suggest?

The kit below is more than good enough for what you want it to do (and cheaper too).

Mainboard: MSI P55-GD65
CPU: Intel Core i5 750
CPU cooler: Cooler Master Hyper TX3
RAM: Kingston ValueRAM KVR1333D3N9K2/4G
GFX: Sapphire HD5850 1GB
SDD: Intel X25-M Postville SSDSA2MH080G2C1 80GB (OS/Apps disk)
HDD: Samsung Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ, 1TB (Data disk)
PSU: Antec TruePower TP-650
Case: Cooler Master HAF 922