Yes, It is time to build what may prove to be my last home desktop computer. Looks like Tablet is the wave of the future and with alot of apps going "cloud based", the desktop might well be obsolete within 5 years. Besides, my old "775", even overclocked to 3.4Gg, is starting to slow down just a lil bit rendering AVI's and converting MPEG's. I do plan to repurpose my older machine into a gaming platform and move it downstairs to our family room connected to a nice HDTV and networked kinda making it a HTPC in effect. Here's the lowdown on my latest and perhaps greatest effort: CPU: Intel i7-875K Unlocked quad core cpu RAM: Corsair DOMINATOR 16GB (4 x 4GB) 240Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) HDD: (2) Caviar Black 1TB 7,200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drives WD1002FAEX to be configured AHCI. Videocard: RADEON HD5770 PCIE 1GB DDR5 2PORT DVI 850MHZ HDMI Cooler: Corsair H70 Watercooling kit Optical Drive: LG BH10LS30 10X SATA Internal Blu-ray Burner with LightScribe Disc Labeling Motherboard: ASUS P7P55D-E PRO 1156 P55 ATX Intel Motherboard CASE: ANTEC DF-85 Full Tower Case POWER SUPPLY: Corsair TX850W 850 Watt Power Supply OS: Windows 7 64bit Pro. No SSD yet as the price per gb is still out of my price range although the case does have a docking port to add one down the road. Wifey had some heartburn about the project but bribery works and you should see the gift I got her for christmas. Diamonds are indeed a girl's (and her husband's) best friend ..:beer:
I haven't read great things about the 5770, many gamers apparently had to move up. If you're gonna have an elite i7 and all that ram, no point slacking on the card. Though traditionally a radeon guy, my GTX 465 runs Black Ops quite nicely.
Wow... you're going to throw away all that money for 16GB of RAM (totally not worth it, start with 8 and then upgrade when price lowers) + an i7 + water cooling and then you're going to get a HD5770!?
FTC, it came in just under $1500 but I saved a ton on taxes and shipping by using online outlets more than brick and mortar stores. Most were doing no sales tax and free shipping. I mostly used pricegrabber.com for the online stuff. MS, I was leaning towards another NVidia card but realized that I needed a standard HDMI output to interface with the HDTV. I'm probably gonna use this new card in the HTPC box and ride the 8800GTS for a bit longer in the new box. At some point in 1st or 2nd Qtr '11, it will be replace most likely by a midgrade NVidia board. The Budget was getting a bit low and I had already made the investments in the Mobo, the Proc and the Ram. Had to spread out the rest.. Mambo, several things here. First, Amazon screwed up the order as their supplier ran out of Dominator ram so I still have the option to pass on the second set of 4g sticks. Convential wisdom says 8gb of RAM is plenty so we'll see how it goes. I was attempting to future-proof this box as much as possible but didn't want to wait on the newer chipsets coming out in '11. I do alot of rendering and ripping video and more times than not, I'm multitasking as well so Ram is something I really need an abundance of. Again, like I told MS, the budget determined just how much I could afford to sink into the Video Card so it was more of a choice of outputs (HDMI) and onboard memory (1280mb) but not so much clock speed here as I'll be using it for movies more than games most likely. If the card doesn't work out, I'll sell it on ebay and get a new one sometime later in '11. Yeah RoN, I'm a firm believer in "happy wife, happy life" and if I'm gonna indulge myself to this extent, there had better been something in it for her as well or there would be hell to pay. What's that old proverb: "Man who fights with wife all day gets no piece (or peace) at nite.." Besides, with this box, I can do incremental upgrades into the foreseeable future as long as desktops are still supported by vendors. As my older boxes age out, I can always give them to relatives, inlaws, kids, etc.. At any rate, this thing is gonna be fun to build as this is my first full tower case. I also ordered longer SATA cables just in case. My target OC initially will be 4gig although I think with this rig, I'll be able to go past that. Wish me luck!!
You're sacrificing a lot of speed w/out SSD. I'd get a 40 GB SSD boot drive and use the 2 TB you have as the storage
Yanno what Rock? You're absolutely right and I just found a SSD that I might be able to squeeze into this budget without alot of pain. check this out: I'm thinking this is the way to go as this is my last build. I did read that OCZ makes some of the best SSD's on the market presently. Wifey will get over it at some point. If not, my couch is well equipped.. :beer: Roughly 40-50gig for the 64bit OS install? I can always dump all practical apps on the other 2 drives to save space on the boot drive.
I can't comment on OCZ's SSDs but I have 12 Gb of OCZ ram (DDR3) and its worked flawlessly. This was after I accidentally dropped the ram sticks down the stairs too..
Well, the deed is done and the purchase made. Tanx Rock for helping me second thought this. Quick question for the group. Do you recommend Raid 0, 1 or 1 0 for my storage option? I'm going with (2) 1Tb Caviars..
I don't think it matters too much either way if I'm understanding the question correctly. I guess with 2 TB the best bet would be to go RAID 1 if you want the peace of mind. I run RAID 0 but I'm not too interested in the fault tolerance/backup. The slight performance increase using RAID 0 doesn't hurt either.
So here's the final setup for Cman's dream machine 2010: SSD: OCZ 128GB Onyx Series SATA II 2.5" Solid State Drive - OCZSSD2-1ONX128G CPU: Intel i7-875K Unlocked quad core cpu RAM: Corsair DOMINATOR 16GB (4 x 4GB) 240Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) HDD: (2) Caviar Black 1TB 7,200 RPM SATAIII 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drives WD1002FAEX to be configured AHCI. Videocard: RADEON HD5770 PCIE 1GB DDR5 2PORT DVI 850MHZ HDMI Cooler: Corsair H70 Watercooling kit Optical Drive: LG BH10LS30 10X SATA Internal Blu-ray Burner with LightScribe Disc Labeling Motherboard: ASUS P7P55D-E PRO 1156 P55 ATX Intel Motherboard CASE: ANTEC DF-85 Full Tower Case POWER SUPPLY: Corsair TX850W 850 Watt Power Supply OS: Windows 7 64bit Pro. Still gonna go with the XFX 5770 video card until 2nd qtr 2011. Thanks again everybody for the input as I never pretend to have all the answers nor do I know everything about building rigs..
Hmmm, the only thing I'd be leary of is having this run on anything under a 1000w PSU Also, I am a big user of RAID and one thing that I've been waiting for is to be able to have onboard RAID w/SATA III(6GBs). Many of the MOBO's still only allow the RAID to be used on SATA I/II. Seeing you want to do this also, double check and make sure the RAID can be used for your SATA III. I myself am waiting just a lil bit more on SSD not only because of the price but also because of the reports on some Drives access time getting worse over time....
Also, you may wanna check out AMD's new Fusion APU ...fukin epic. [YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dxIsRMvFZE[/YOUTUBE]
Starting the build in the late AM as I'm not partying too hard tonite. You really don't think an 850w PSU is enough power? I'm also gonna go with AHCI w/SataIII and rely on my WHS for automated backup duty. Like I said earlier, my target OC will be 4gig and I'm hoping I get there without too much tweaking.
Looks good. I'm wondering what the cost will be and if its backwards compatible or will it require an entirely new rig to run it..
From my understanding there will be 2 sockets: Fusion Socket FP1 Processor : BGA - single processor systems Fusion Socket FM1 Processor : uPGA lidless package (single-socket systems) I'm guessing that would mean a new MOBO for these chips but all the major MOBO mfg. are onboard.... the TDP on these compared to having individual chips is actually pretty incredible.
I'm saying this about three weeks too late but 850W is more than enough. I run a similar setup to what you have (maybe 10% less power) and my power supply is 650W. Nothing is overclocked though.
Not saying you did this or that you're wrong but the one mistake that is constantly done in builds is a weak PSU. When you take peripherals, HDD's, O'C and Power Hungry Graphic Cards into account...850w is barely enoguh. In my HTPC I currently have 8 HDD's 6 of which are in RAID0 feeding video to my network 24/7. I can't afford a weak PSU here. 1 HDD goes down and problems. Remember, w/multitasking you need headroom..Power for the USB ports etc...It all adds up. The one thing to always remember is that you need a strong +5v line if you plan on running your rig 24/7 or for long periods of time. jm2c :up:
