Trying to Spec Up a Mid-High End System

[sdbardwick]

Originally Posted by dsouza123

For the windows swap file (or maybe fast storage)
use a Compact Flash DIY SSD with SATA/IDE connectors
from Century or Raidon, they use the CF in various RAID modes.

An 8GB compact flash card is about $35,
the DIY systems use either 1, 2 or 3 CF cards.

http://www.akihabaranews.com/en/news...act+Flash.html

http://www.tweaktown.com/pressreleas...ssd/index.html

You must be exceptionally careful when selecting both the CF cards and the adapters, or you will wind up with a system that performs much worse than a USB thumb drive. You can easily wind up with a CF/IDE/SATA setup that has poor performance ( <4MB/Sec) and high CPU utilization. Major point to watch out for is DMA capability; both the card and the adapter must support it; cards advertising DMA capability might only support DMA mode 0. Even if a card claims to support UDMA, do not expect transfer rates near the maximum permitted by the interface.

[rx7350]

For your cooling concerns, here's an excellent case value - four large fans running at lower rpms to minimize noise, plus free shipping
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811129021


Prime95 will definitely heat the cpu up, so replacing the stock cooler is a must. For the mid-tower case mentioned above, look at this cpu cooler:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835118019


For all you purists out there, I know these are not the highest-perfoming components, but they are reasonably priced, and above all, they will keep the fan noise level to a minimum.

Look at these cpu coolers for a highr CFM and larger heatsink surface area, but they may not fit in a mid-tower case:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835154001

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835233003

With the Ximatek cooler, you'll also need these:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835233019
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835233019

Using the Ximatek cooler with the Scythe fan, would require a full-tower case such as:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811133154
-or-
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811129043

[S485122]

Concerning memory I am sure that the higher speeds are necessary. It is THE bottleneck for the current chipsets. With 333 MHz quad pumped one should have 1333 MHz (equivalent to 10633) Memory to run at 2/1. This means that at the current FSB speeds (333 or 400 MHz equivalent to 1333 and 1600 MHz respectively) DDR3 is becoming a must. I am curious to see what the next chipset and processor architecture from Intel will bring and imply.

Concerning the Zalman coolers I have them, and I must say they have a big drawback : the arrangment of their fins makes them prone to collecting dust AND difficult to clean (the fins being radial have very small intervals nearer the center.) Their performance is no match to the Tuniq's or Noctuas...

Jacob

[tmorrow]

Thanks for the expertise guys. On saturday I took my existing PC in for some repairs (harddisk controller playing up) and have PC'less ever since :-(

I also purchased my new PC - it's being built and it will be ready late this week :-)

This is what I ended up with:

Gigabyte GA-X48-DS4 MC S775 1600F DDR2 PCIe v2.0 GBL 7.1
Intel BX80569Q9550 Core 2 Quad Q9550 2.83GHz 12M 1333F
G.Skill F2-8500CL5D-4GBPk 4Gb (2x2Gb) PC-8550 5-5-5-15
WD WD740ADFD 74G SATA2 300Mb/S 10k 16Mb Raptor [system drive]
2 x (WD WD6400AAKS 640G SATA2 300Mb/S 7200rpm 16M) [app drives]
EVGA 01G-P3-N891-AR 9800 GX2 1Gb DX10 Tri-Sli HDTV
Dell 2707WFP 27" LCD 1920x1200 8ms 1000:1 Silver/Black
Pioneer DVR-215D Blk SATA 20x/10x/40x DL DVD+/-RW+/-
Gigabyte GZ-FA1CA-ASS 3D Aurora 570 Alloy Silver
Topower CS-PS-TOP-09 750w P7 Modular Power Supply
Zalman CNPS9700LED CPU Cooler for 775 & AM2
Razer Lycoss Gaming Keyboard Black with Blue Backlights
Razer Deathadder Laser Gaming Mouse 1800dpi Black/Blue
XP Pro SP4 (32 bit)

The system will be modestly overclocked the Q9550 to 3.4GHz (400 MHz bus speed @ 8.5 Bus/Core Ratio), I believe up to 3.8-3.9GHz with suitable cooling units can be made stable but I don't want to be too greedy. The technician will be stress testing it for 24 hours with mprime95 torture test (and I'll be immediately repeating those tests as soon as I get it home).

I decided against raid again, went with one small, fast system drive and 2 large app sata2 drives, and will use the old, low tech weekly rsync'ing between the 2 app drives to manage the risk of disk failure.

I was impressed with the air cooling system, large (110mm), slow moving, quiet fans, blowing a wide airstream through the case, mostly copper & some aluminum unit for efficient heat transfer. I was tempted to go for the water cooled solution but decided not this time around since air cooling is sufficient with this rig according to opinions I've sought out, even with overclocking. Also I was worried about possible lifetime for the pump in water based cooling, with machine running full on, 24x7. Hopefully the dust issues Jacob pointed out don't cause me a lot of problems.

I wasn't able to read all of the feedback before purchasing but fortunately I think I've avoided any major blunders.

I'm not sure if everything is the best of what I can get for the price but provided the rig proves stable, it will be sufficient and suitable for my needs. I'm coming from a 5 year old PC (P4 3.06 GHz) so it's a big jump for me. In terms of cost this was 25% less than my previous system (not including CPI). This is the kind of progress I like to see.

In another 6 months or so I'll be purchasing another system which will be under a 64 bit non Microsoft OS (Linux probably) and hopefully be dual processor, 8 core solution (please make this happen soon Intel). I'll probably hold off on the "big NFS matrix-build jobs" Fivemack is reffering to until then.