please give opinion/sugestion on this(not bought yet)system

[danhasmail]

hi everyone, I've been useing this system i'm on now since i built it back in 8/2003 useing an Asus P4c800e Deluxe motherboard. It served me well all these years but.... it's time at last to upgrade. Saved some money and i'm ready to go. Can i get any opinions/sugestions on what i've been thinking about so far??? haven't bought anything yet, but would like to before the weekend is over. these are my thoughts so far: I put these in NewEgg.com Wish list $160.00 OS- Windows 7 professional upgrade 64 bit *** $169.99 Case- Antec 1200 Full Tower *** $109.95 PSU- Antec TP-750 Blue *** $379.99 Motherboard- Asus Rampage lll *** $289.99 Processor- Intel core i7 930 *** $229.99 RAM- CORSAIR DOMINATOR 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3 SDRAM 1600 (PC3 12800 triple channel *** $94.99 Hard drive- Western Digital Caviar WD1002FAEX 1 TB SATA 6.0 *** ????? Video card ????? ****- 75.00 mail in rebates 1,359.90 total so far after 75.00 rebates ***As you can see, i haven't chosen a video card yet. Any recomendations will be appreciated, as well as any other opinions/sugestion on what i already had in mind. i'm pooped out from searching. thanks in advance for any thoughts you might have.

 

[Shad007]

you may want to consider going with a smaller 80gb solid state drive for your OS and have the bigger 1tb as a dump drive. You'll definitely notice the difference.

food for thought

 

[BadBigBen]

The main question is this, what are you going to use the PC for?

just surfing the internet, some mail, basic office? then it is overkill and too expensive...

if you plan on doing gaming, and or high performance CAD CAM applications? then the machine is great...

as to the graphics card, that would depend on the above as well...

Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[Noway2]

+1 on the solid state HDD. I didn't look up the specs on the WD model, but if you decide to go with a standard HD consider getting one with a 10K or 15K RPM, instead of the standard 7200. You will notice a difference there too.

In general, you will spend more time waiting on slow IO than processing so anything you can do to speed up the IO will be noticeable. The exception being if you are doing heavy number crunching like compressing movies.

 

[BadBigBen]

Noway,

all 15k rpm drives at present are SAS / SCSI drives, and unless the mainboard has a SAS or SCSI controller build in, would add another 400 or so dollars to the bill...

the 10k rpm drives, the VelociRaptors, are sweet, specially in a RAID 0, which will give it a real speed boost...

JFYI...


Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[danhasmail]

Thanks Shad007, Solid state has crossed my mind, but I read that they are time/use sensitive. If that’s true, after a certain period of time they will go bad. Am I misunderstanding that???

Bigbadben I’m not really a gammer but like to keep that option open just in case. I don’t build new systems yearly so like to keep it open just in case I start getting into it.

As far as the Hard drives go, I am thinking about the solid state for OS as Shad007 suggested, but this is one of the things that can be changed one way or another later without a big expense or big system change.

In general, it looks like i just need to decide on a video card and whether to get a solid state drive and i'll be ready to buy. Do you agree/disagree ??

 

[Shad007]

Solid state technology has progressed quite far since the horror stories originated from older versions. My suggestion to you would be to read up on them and make your own decision. Heres a good starting point.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive

 

[kjv1611]

danhasmail,

So, it sounds like from what you've said so far, that you probably aren't doing anything really CPU intensive. Unless you're doing 3D CAD, 3D Graphics Design, high-end audio/video editing, etc, then you don't need the Core i7, and you won't likely see the difference over a quad core Core i5. So if you'd like to save a little money towards the SSD (solid state drive), I'd highly suggest going with the Core i5.

Also, the motherboard you picked is definitely overkill for most people. Unless you are planning on using all the bells and whistles, you could easily save a bundle there as well. You could save between $100 and $200 to get a more basic board.

Your choices aren't bad, it's just I don't really think you'll see the benefit of them. If you drop the price put into the motherboard, CPU, and RAM (also - didn't mention this one yet) to more reasonably priced stuff, then you won't have to add to your budget for the SSD.

Also, I'd suggest comparing the Samsung F3 drives with the one you picked. Especially if you end up swapping the large drive over to data usage, the Samsung's are about the fastest things, mechanical, right now. Some of the WD drives outpace them for app performance, but not pure transfer throughput (which is what would matter for the data drive). Again, what you've got picked isn't bad, but that might be a better option.

As a for instance, a few months ago, I custom-built a system for someone with these things in mind:
1. Performance that should still be plenty good in 3 to 5 years for most stuff - web, email, office apps (including Quickbooks), etc

2. Stability for the same time period.

3. Backup - well, this may not matter for your usage, I don't know.

What I ended up putting together was a Core i5 with 8GB of DDR3 Ram, Windows 7 Pro, some lower mid range or mid range graphics card (I forget which), and 3 Samsung F3 drives. 2 of them 500GB, and one 1TB. Besides that, picked up an external drive that actually has a 7 year warranty! First I'd seen with such a long warranty. I can't remember the name/model of that one at the moment. Oh, we did use an Asus board with SATA3/USB3 capabilities, and still didn't spend but maybe half of what your current mobo selection costs.

That system is a screamer in my opinion. I don't think you could actually "see" or "feel" the difference - in most circumstances - unless it were running of a good SSD vs the mechanical hard drive. That was an option we dropped at the time, to cut some of the total cost. Of course, since that time, there have been significant drops in some SSD prices.

Also, on Windows 7, if you're a NewEgg email list member, whatever it's called, I forget, they had a sale just recently where you could get Win 7 Pro - Full Edition, I believe for less than what you've got listed on the upgrade - would save another $40.

All that said, you have to make the final call. If it were me, I'd save the money on the mobo, cpu, and ram, and invest that in the SSD - you'll get way more bang for your buck.

As for the graphics card, my opinion is go with a low to mid range card for now. Then if you decided to jump into any real gaming, you can upgrade then. Graphics cards change so fast, you could end up SAVING money in the long run if you got later what you want to get now.

Sorry for the word count, there. I've been out of sorts lately, and seems I'm having a harder time keeping my verbiage in check!