New PC, looking for suggestions

[Nielk1]

Om got me in contact with Bull Dog whom is apparently really good at these things.

[SnakeEye]

I looked at a few SSD's a while ago but I did never buy one, bought a 500Gb wd for my laptop instead. But if i had bought one I think it would have been either OCZ or maybe intels SSD.

[ADMIRAL MANSON]

Om got me in contact with Bull Dog whom is apparently really good at these things.

I am too but not all used to all of this new stuff. SSD and blah blah blah.... I just stick with what I have and im happy.

[Psychedelic Rhino]

With huge 2tb drives less than a hundred bucks, it appears to me you can have both worlds.

Monster storage along with blinding read/write for 90% of the operating activity . . .all for less than $300. To me that's one hell of a jump in performance for cheap. If you're building now, it's almost a sin to not do it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5ZrBM_EPC8

[Ded10c]

http://www.ebuyer.com/search?page=1&sor ... ubcat=3210

Prices seem to just be ridiculous here - 960GB for £2082 D:

[Psychedelic Rhino]

That's why I suggested a 64gb SSD. Enough to run the OS and maybe a few other essentials for less than $200 or around 125 pounds. Not necessarily as fast as the new ones coming out in the last few weeks, but still really fast. My 64bit Win7 install is currently 21gb. The Program Files folder and most everything else would go on the mechanical HD.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/k1mVaB ... from=embed

[HitchcockGreen]

That's exactly what I did on my new rig; 60GB OCZ Vertex2 for the OS. A 750GB WD Scorpio Black for user profiles, downloads, documents, etc., and a 1TB WD Green for backups and storage of things like music and pictures.

OCZ is the ****. The Intel SSDs are REALLY expensive in comparison. Hold out a little if you can, the vertex 3s are due out soon. (or wait...are they out yet?)

The thing about the SSD drives is that they degrade a little quicker than the traditional platter drives. So there are some settings you should change to get the best performance and longevity out of them.

With an vertex2 ssd I can reboot and get back to the login screen in under 40 seconds. Usually around 34 seconds.

[Ded10c]

The thing about the SSD drives is that they degrade a little quicker than the traditional platter drives.

Flash-based SSDs have limited writes, DRAM ones don't.

[HitchcockGreen]

The thing about the SSD drives is that they degrade a little quicker than the traditional platter drives.

Flash-based SSDs have limited writes, DRAM ones don't.

Yup. The Intel ones are probably guaranteed to have a longer life. I've had my Vertex for about a month and intentionally placed my Program Files and Users folders on a separate drive. We'll see what the lifespan is like.

[HitchcockGreen]

ATM I have tentatively selected the following, it might be too much or not cost efficient, this is just a bit of a scratch pad. I need to check all parts will operate together as well:

[s]Tower/Mobo/CPU/PSU/RAM: Intel Core i7 4GHZ Overclocked Barebone PC
GFX: 3x EVGA 012-P3-1572-AR GeForce GTX 570 SuperClocked Video Card[/s]
Tower:
Mobo:
CPU:
PSU:
RAM:
GFX:
Optical Drive:
SSD:
HDDs:
Display:
Keyboard:
Mouse:
Speakers:

What are thoughts on what parts are missing and what might be better?
I have a cost ceiling but I am not posting it as of yet. I would like to buy from Tiger Direct as I *might* be able to get a further discount.

Ah that's the exact same mobo I just got. It's pretty nice. I have a 2.5" portable HD enclosure that uses usb 3.0 and it's nice having the two ports on the back that support that. It's also nice having the eSATA port that has it's own power. I don't use eSATA much, but that is definitely an added bonus.

The only thing I might question is the CPU. I, myself, got an i7 960 but really, you could get a 920, overclock it, and get the same performance at a lower price. The peeps on overclock.net will tell you the same thing. The 960 is a demon, but communities debate the benefits of a 960 over a 920. You want to save a bit of cash and get practically the same performance? Get the 920.

Pardon me, and any of my suggestions since I haven't read the entire thread....all of this may have been mentioned already....

As for a CPU cooler for that board...a Noctua heat pipe would look nice in there. My experience with noctua is great. They are quiet and perform well. Make sure you have clearance for it though....With that case you most likely do. Another option for CPU cooler would be the Corsair H70. It's liquid cooling, but works great. That or you could go with a Venomous X. Just be sure to get a second fan for the heat pipe so you can set up a push/pull configuration.

With that mobo you can pack 24GB of RAM into it. Corsair has a dominator kit that includes three sticks that total 12GB. Two of those would fill the sucker up.

I also see it already comes with a liquid cooling system. There's tons of debate as to which works best and what has the most benefits. Also, which takes up less space! But a Haf case will likely hold pretty much anything you throw into it. I was considering a HAF X, myself. Instead I went with something else but no regrets.

I see it comes with a 750watt power supply. That will most likely be more than enough. If you want to get two gfx cards, I'd suggest upgrading to an 850watt. The price difference is negligible.

[HitchcockGreen]

Also for your consideration:
The new line of nVidia 5xxTi cards. You can pick up a GTX 550Ti for about $130 and it's got enough oomph to play Crysis 2 and then some. And at that price you could always get two.

[Psychedelic Rhino]

I debated long and hard on building a stellar PC or getting a fast laptop a few months ago. The laptop IS fast, but by no means as fast as a PC built with even three quarters the money I spent on it.

While I would really like to have something faster than my current PC, which is a E6600 2.4 dual core and an 8800GTS 640 running XP Pro, it still can play any game I throw at it pretty well. I do have to come down around 25% on max graphic settings and stay conservative with the res, usually in the 1280x1024 range for my 24" Dell on most newer games though.

You guys should be able to run anything at max res your monitor can provide and max graphic settings and still get 60+ FPS.

[Zero Angel]

Yeah. BZ2 doesnt seem to scale well to faster CPUs. It's probably an OS thing.

My Core2 laptop with loads of RAM can suffer FPS droppage just as badly as my first computer (Win98, 512MB, Athlon 1.8ghz) if I have those graphics turned right up. Then again, I run it at 1920x1080 (ext. monitor) so that probably has a lot to do with it.

[Psychedelic Rhino]

In BZE1.3 with my laptop I get around 600FPS at 1900x1200.

BZ and BZE could do 300+% on the polys on newer PCs and do fine.

[GSH]

Yeah. BZ2 doesnt seem to scale well to faster CPUs. It's probably an OS thing.

No, there's still a bunch of stupid CPU-centric code in there. Skinned units still have their vertices tweaked on the CPU, even with DirectX9, because the data is just not set up to be efficiently processed on the GPU. (And, I'd have to enable shaders in general, which is not trivial.) Skinned units are a bit more efficient in pb6.1 (upcoming), as I do more batch processing. APC assaults shouldn't be as bad in pb6.1 when it releases. Not necessarily awesome, but at least better.

Also, stuff like BZ2's collision code is an O(n^2) bit of stupidity. For each collidable object, it checks basically every other collidable object to see if they touched. So, with lots of collidable objects, it has to troll thru a LOT of memory, and memory speeds are growing more linearly compared to CPUs. CPUs are getting exponentially faster, especially if you count the copy-paste-paste-paste-paste school of multicore CPU design. But, memory isn't getting that much faster. BZ2's collision code is both stupid and slow. This will not really change much for pb6.1; it'd be WAY too much work.

-- GSH