Please critique my new build

OK, I've already bought the mobo so everything else is based on this. This machine will be OC'd to at least 4.2GHZ but I'm not going to go for any records so forget any more sophisticated cooling unless it's within the price range, say $200, ease of use is also important to me, that's why I picked the Hydro.

About the case, I already have a CM690 and I like the layout, plus I'll have 3 large GPUs in there of some flavour which leads into the PSU of course. I want this PSU to be able to handle anything within the next three years, for now it will only supply one GTX260-216 but I eventually want to go triple Fermi or at least triple 285's. I have always bought just enough power for my machines before and wasted quite a bit of money upgrading them. It ain't gonna happen this time as I have a plan.:major (That's as close to George Peppard as I could get):-D

So have at it guy's 'n gals! Dissect it to heck please!



EVGA X58 ATX LGA1366 DDR3 3PCIE-16 PCI-E1 2PCI SLI SATA2 Sound Dual GBLAN 1394

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Intel Core i7 930 Quad Core Processor LGA1366 2.8GHZ 8MB[/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Corsair XMS3 CMX6GX3M3A1600C9 6GB DDR3 3X2GB DDR3-1600 CL 9-9-9-24 Core i7 Memory Kit[/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Corsair Cooling Hydro Series H50 High Performance CPU Cooler System[/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Cooler Master Haf 932 Full Tower Black EATX Case[/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Antec Truepower Quattro OC 1200W Power Supply ATX V2.2 EPS12V 24PIN Active PFC 80+ Silver 8X PCI-E[/FONT]

 

Looks good to me. I wish I had £3000 to spare:cry

 

I expect pics! Good looking rig augie.:major:major
(Damn, that's gonna be a folding monster and when you get the tri-card set up going - Points and global warming for sure.)

 

Thanks for finding the Dominator series link Halo, I've always been confused as to which memory is better, the 8-8-8-24 or the 9-9-9-24? As the price is almost the same, I'll go with whatever behaves best for a modest OC.

Don't worry Halo, I'll be like a dad taking pics of his firstborn son to the point that I will be insufferable!:-D For a little while at any rate.

Well collinsl, this won't be for a while yet. I did check the final price if I went totally top end with the GPU's and 3K pounds ain't that far off!:eek

LOL @ global warming!:-D Seriously, the two machines that I have now keep my room very toasty and the heat is not a waste product from fall through to spring and I shut down often in summer. Tomorrow is a good case in point, as we should be up to 77 for a high. I don't want to use A/C because of folding even though we have hydro power, it's a waste to me.

 

Looks nice and ROFL Halo........

No Video Card and or HDDs noted?!?

 

Tsk, tsk. Looks awful, auggie. You should send the poor thing straight to me, and not waste any more time on it . . . :innocent


Just kidding! Looks like it's gonna be a juiced system. Video card choice will have a big impact on it. Very nice! Pics please, when it's all fired up :drool

 

I was talking to augie earlier about some of his parts and "I'll scavenge the HDD, optical drive, GTX260.." was his comment at the time about using his present parts.

 

Yes, I'll be scavenging my X2 machine as running three machines is not in the plan. As to SSD for the OS, I've been debating this for a while and finally broke down. :cry:-D I was thinking something like the [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Intel X25-V 40GB 2.5IN SATA2 SSD[/FONT], just enough space for W7 and a few always used apps. The price is very right ATM @ $110 but I can't buy it 'til June though I hope they still have this promo then as they have 400 in stock ATM. At any rate, I'll be getting an SSD of some flavour.

BTW, my mobo was shipped yesterday so starting today, if Puro delivers on Sat., then this thing will be staring at me to get a move on to get the CPU and memory with which I can at least bench the board for now until everything else comes in! Oh, I already have an excellent Corsair TX750 PSU so no worries there. Eventually, that will replace my Antec 500 in my quad machine which was struggling to power a couple of OC'd 9800GT's. Back to stock speeds for now.

 

Thanks for the comment as I have not yet researched the SSD's at all except for reading some of the posts that you recently made as opposed to the i7 build which I've been working on and off with for the last eight months!

As to the Crucial SSD :eek I obviously don't mind spending money but this is too much for me. I can afford it but I don't need it as I only semi-need an SDD in my i7 which will be on basically 24/7. At least I'll have some hands on time with one.

Heck, Intel is supposed to come out with a new arch. next year, I'd guess an 8 or more core affair but I'm not waiting for the inevitable price drop in i7's. I'm good to go now.

 

Yup on both comments! I've got 1 TB over three HDD's in my quad and labels are singeing!:-D Eventually, I'll probably get a 2TB HDD in the i7 to back up what I have now. The things are dirt cheap! Hmm, or perhaps as an external. Lots of time yet to decide. See how the temps go in the case first.

 

Nice build Augie, just like you i am waiting for stanford to bring out the new client so i can put my 470s in.

I don't want to hijack your thread but you were speaking about ram speeds.
I have 12gb triple channel DDR3 @ 533mhz 7.7.7.20 but have absolutely no idea if this is the best for my i7 950 cpu.

P.S i can overclock them from my mobo if advised.

 

At least you won't have diaper changes LOL

ps looking forward to the pics

G

 

I wouldn't worry about that unless you were going to OC. Maybe post that in the OC forum as I'm almost totally illiterate in RAM, I can match RAM to CPU but that's about it.

 

What do you want to know about them? We have to support them at work now, so they made me learn all sorts of stuff about SSDs... and they gave me one, which was really nice. It installed XP in about ten minutes and boots 7 in about that many seconds.

 

Wow! Here I thought that XP's install time was due to DVD drive choking, took 40 minutes on both my X2 as it did on my Q6600 and as it did on my 1GHz Celeron. A ten second boot eh, there's a wow factor there too!:drool

If and when I can actually formulate an intelligent question on SSD's, then I hope you will step in to that thread.

 

The only rule with SSDs is to never defrag them. This does not help them in any way, shape, or form and does cause a significant performance drop as it creates "holes" in the data storage map, thereby dropping performance as the drive has to search for the content.

 

Ya, I believe W7 auto stops a defrag as there is no need, besides, they only have so many write cycles ATM, no point in writing housework on there.

 

And don't RAID them unless you have Garbage Collection support in the firmware, but most models have that now. The first models were a bit iffy on that, but pretty much all of them have been given firmware updates that fix that now.

 

Oh, if your primary goal is speed, nothing beats raided SSDs. It deteriorates performance over time without GC/trim, of course, but how much time depends on individual use, and as long as they are blazing fast in day-to-day use, that's really all that matters anyway.

 

IT'S ALIVE I SAY, IT'S ALIVE!!!! :celebrate:dancer:cloud9:hyper:clap

 

Here's baby Franky Jr. A few hiccups but it works.

 

Niiice!

I'm confused though. Why are you running 6GB in a 32-bit OS? :confused

 

Like I said above, a few hiccups. I couldn't find my X64 disc so I loaded what I had. It's OK when one has a KVM.

 

Ah, that makes sense. And of course you can't leave it without an OS just because you can't find the x64 disk. That would be crazy.

 

Hehe ya, I just wanted to see it working because I know I wouldn't have been able to sleep tonight. When $1K+ is staring blankly at you, that's not a good feeling.

 

Good to see it has a pulse.

 

I'm a little late to the party, but you'll love the H50. I have one in mine, an i920 running at 4ghz. I have the basic setup for the H50, though, I did buy the parts for a push/pull setup. Just haven't got around to setting that up yet. Though, that was about 6 months ago.

 

All right augie.:major Better get that H50 hooked up before you do any OC.
(Although I do have to let you know, when my wife saw the picture, she said it was kinda scary looking.)

 

Hehehe ya, I guess only a mother can love Franky Jr. ATM.:-D This mobo is nice for benching, onboard power/reset/reset BIOS buttons and a speaker!!!.:cool Man, puts off enough heat doing nothing but CPU's @29, I guess I notice it more as it's blowing on me and my beer. Yuck!

Ya, no OC'ing until I get the cooler though I might try a modest %10 or %15 while waiting for parts. I've got W7 X64 on now so off I go to driver update land, the included driver disk doesn't like W7 X64.:confused Should be folding for MG's in a few hours. I won't even try -bigadv but would like to use all 8 threads.

Oh, a WEI pic for Halo. I guess size does matter as when on X86 WEI gave my memory a 5.5 along with my GTX260-216 @5.4, I'm not sure why but then I don't care that much either. It's just an interesting observation for me.

EDIT: Brain started working, it was the W7 X86 Beta.

 

That hard drive score stands out like a sore thumb with an infection on it... you need an SSD in your new build, augie

When is Franky Jr getting a case?

 

Hehe ya on SSD but I'm only getting that as a real toy as opposed to my semi-toy that I have now. As to the case, RL hits hard when ones A/C goes kabloouie when it's 95 outside!!! I'll get the case and H50 within the next few weeks, I just have to keep my ashtray far away from there.

 

Yikes! Might want to aim a fan or something at it, just to get the air moving. I have a photobucket album somewhere with pictures of what can happen when you don't cool your CPU properly... LOL

 

Temps ain't bad at all, 30C idle and 51C with all 8 cores pinned @ an ambient of 75. I might try a modest OC of maybe %10 but that would be it as I'm not gonna mess with possibly losing this chip!:eek 10K PPD is just fine by me for now.

 

OMG! I found my case!!!:celebrate There's nothing wrong with the CM HAF case I linked to at the start but this CM Sniper case just grabbed me by the jewels.:innocent :-D I lose 1 optical bay in the process and I can't install an E-ATX board, plus the fans are 200mm instead of 240, none of which bothers me in the least!

I gain a fan/light controller, filtered fan intakes and a bump-out on the right side to accommodate power and data cables which I had trouble with my CM690 case, I really squished the cables in there closing the right side.:-o

Here's a nice video of the Sniper and they're using the same PSU as I am. Just look at the cable management! I'm sold!:drool

 

Looks like the same basic design as my Cooler Master Cosmos, with some tweaks (read:improvements) to the drive bays and fan filters. Mine doesn't have an opening to access the CPU cooler back plate either, I have to remove the motherboard to get to that. Overall, very nice! :highfive. It's hard to go wrong with a Cooler Master.

 

Great looking case Augie, i especially like the extra room for cable management.

Don't forget to post piccies of Franky Jn when he is fully dressed,he looked pretty scary just lying on the desk.

 

Ya, I don't want Franky dying on me because of that! Anyways, just ordered the Sniper case, the Intel 40GB SSD and the Corsair H50 cooler. So, hopefully some pics in a couple of weeks.

One thing that I didn't see in the video is where was the 8-pin E-ATX 12V? The resolution is not good enough to see it. At any rate, you won't see that cable snaking across the mobo this time. If it's too short to come out from the back then I'll pull out my soldering iron and splice in some wire! There's no way I'm going to spoil the look of this build!

 

That would not be a good idea - these cables are designed with specific tolerances in mind and adding in even a short length of cable may ruin the PSU and anything attached.

 

First time I hear of that. It can't be voltage or amps affected so what's the story? Capacitance or inductance or something completely different?:confused

 

If the rating of the wire is not right then there is the first problem as the wire will impede current flow more, and if the PSU provides +12.2V at the PSU end of the wire, and it drops to +12.0V by the other end, then adding in the extra wire may make it drop to +11.8V or s, which may affect components attached to it.

 

Not bad case. I still like mine though:

http://www.corsair.com/products/800d/default.aspx

I need to clean it a bit before I take a pic and post on the computer pic thread.

http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=41960&vpn=CC800DW&manufacture=Corsair

Also, this case is a bit larger than other Full ATX cases. Its also kinda heavy.

This isn't mine, but a general idea on cable management.

http://www.hardocp.com/image.html?image=MTI0NDIxNTQ2NDVTTFdNbHlneThfMV8yX2wuanBn