Rig I'm building this Christmas:


1 x ASUS P5N-D nForce 750i SLI Socket 775 8 channel audio ATX Motherboard
1 x Antec 300 Three Hundred Black Case
3 x AKASA 120mm Amber series 3pin Ultra quiet case fan
1 x Arctic Power 700W PSU - With PCI-E, 4x SATA, 20+4, ATX12V, 8pin +12V Connectors - Retail Boxed
1 x Gainward 9800GT Green edition 512MB GDDR3 DVI VGA HDMI Out PCI-E Graphics Card
2 x Corsair 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 XMS2 Memory Kit Non-ECC Unbuffered CL5 1.9V
1 x Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium - Licence and media - 1 PC - OEM - DVD - 64-bit - English
1 x Microsoft Wired Desktop 600 Black - Wired USB Keyboard and USB Optical Mouse
1 x D-Link AirPlus-G DWL-G510 Wireless PCI Adapter
1 x Zalman CNPS7500-CU LED Socket 478, 775, AM2, 754, 939 & 940 CPU Cooler
1 x Pioneer BDC-202 Blu-Ray Reader 12X DVD±RWDL/RAM SATA Black - OEM
1 x Liteon 22x DVD±RW DL & RAM Black Drive - Retail Box & Software
2 x Western Digital WD5000AAKS 500GB SATAII 7200RPM 16MB Cache - OEM Caviar Blue
1 x Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Socket 775 (3.0GHz) 1333FSB 6MB L2 Cache Retail Boxed Processor

Hard drives to be set in Raid 0.

Alternatively I might change it to one 80gb HD and one 500gb drive, put the OS on the 80gb, data on 500gb, not use the 80gb for anything else.

If I do the latter I might do a Windows7/Ubuntu dual install.

Comes to ~£750

Already have one 19 inch monitor and 32 inch 1080p tv to connect it too, and some nice speakers.

 

Looks like a complete rip off.

 

Bah, had this whole thing typed out before FF crashed on me. Here's a second try.

I bought a laptop before leaving for uni, so I could carry my work between classes and the dorm, as well as not have to deal with the desktop. I wanted to grab a laptop capable of gaming, and knew I would pay both a premium in terms of cash, as well as performance. I accepted that then, and still do.

That said, I decided on the Asus G51xr-vr05. It was on sale at BestBuy for $900 at the time, and quite a deal.

Specs it shipped with:

Intel duo core clocked at 2 ghz. I OCed it to 2.5ghz stable.
Nvidia GTX Geforce 260m, came undercocked. I OCed to stock clocks.
4 GB DDR2 ram.
1 320GB 7200 RPM harddrive.
15.6 inch monitor
1330x770 resolution (a bit low, but works fine for me.)
1 6-cell battery (life:2 hours with screen dimmed, vid card turned off, ect ect.)

Changes:
First thing I did was swap out the processor to the Intel T940. However I must have gotten unlucky, because there was almost no potential for OCing in the thing. I could only amp it up to 2.8ghz at best and remain stable. Not a good improvement at all. I just recently installed the Intel T960, which is beast. OCed to 3.2ghz stable with little heat difference.

I have an array of SATA drives setup to compensate for the small internal HDD. 6TB of data storage hooked up via eSATA.

I bought 3 9 cell batteries to compensate for the damn things limited life. I now get about 11 hours of battery life when using all of them with maximum power save. Gaming will get me about 4 hours of battery life.

I'm currently working on a custom built cooling pad to help with the heat build up. This thing runs HOT! Average temp on GPU is 50-60, when gaming it'll jump to 90+ on graphic intensive games.

Total cost was up there, but I'm happy with it. I may be getting an apartment next year, in which case I'll probably buy a desktop to compensate for newer games. I keep my laptop on me almost 24/7, because I don't want it stolen in dorm. Leaving a desktop sitting in the room is like saying "please take me".

Parting thought-This isn't really part of the laptop setup, however it is critical for me. I commute around campus and elsewhere via bike. Freshmen can't have cars+way too expensive even if we could =/.

Anyway, point is that I end up toting this very expensive piece of technology around on my bike all the time. Because of that, I use a bag specifically designed for it.

My bag of choice is the SwissGear Mythos bag. Honestly this has to be the be Gods gift to laptop users. It has saved my laptop from more falls, bashes, brushes, and assorted other things than I could count. It has a certain kind of padding that does wonders, but the most important thing is hardened edges/corners. Definitely a great buy if you have to take your equipment somewhere and are wary of damage.

 

Murton: all the parts are from the UK's cheapest retailer (Ebuyer.co.uk).

Here's the breakdown:

ASUS P5N-D nForce 750i SLI Socket 775 8 channel audio ATX Motherboard £78.46

Antec 300 Three Hundred Black Case - No PSU £39.99

3x AKASA 120mm Amber series 3pin Ultra quiet case fan £21.39

Arctic Power 700W PSU - With PCI-E, 4x SATA, 20+4, ATX12V, 8pin +12V Connectors - Retail Boxed £40.99

Gainward 9800GT Green edition 512MB GDDR3 DVI VGA HDMI Out PCI-E Graphics Card £75.78

2x Corsair 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 XMS2 Memory Kit Non-ECC Unbuffered CL5 1.9V £99.39

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium - Licence and media - 1 PC - OEM - DVD - 64-bit - English £71.68

Microsoft Wired Desktop 600 Black - Wired USB Keyboard and USB Optical Mouse £16.99

D-Link AirPlus-G DWL-G510 Wireless PCI Adapter £16.99

Zalman CNPS7500-CU LED Socket 478, 775, AM2, 754, 939 & 940 CPU Cooler £23.83

Pioneer BDC-202 Blu-Ray Reader 12X DVD±RWDL/RAM SATA Black - OEM £68.49

Liteon 22x DVD±RW DL & RAM Black Drive - Retail Box & Software £17.99

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Socket 775 (3.0GHz) 1333FSB 6MB L2 Cache Retail Boxed Processor £116.84

2x Maxtor STM3500418AS 500GB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 16MB Cache - OEM £69.97

Note that these prices include VAT. Australia may have lower tax than the UK. Also the price is hiked up £140 alone by a) being legal about Windows7 and b) Blu ray player.

 

Get the Antec 900 if you want one of their cases, best air cooled case I've ever owned.

Get 2x2gb sticks, don't stick yourself into filling up all 4 slots with 1 gb memory. The performance increase I saw when I went from 2gbs to 6gbs in Windows 7 was insane. Leave yourself 2 open slots to be able to go with more RAM later. Crucial Ballistix line has 4gbs 2x2gb kits for around 80 bucks now, I fully plan on swapping out my remaining 2x1gb eventually.

Download Windows 7. Or get it as a student, screw paying for it.

And make damned sure you get a power supply that is modular, nowadays you have so many fucking cables, in a smaller case, it's impossible to get the wires out of the way of the air worth a piss. I wish to god I'd of gotten a modular one, I had to hack up my Antec 900, and then my Thermaltake LCS to be able to hide them. Shaving 2 or 3 degrees off your running temperatures by moving a few cables is a big deal.

I wouldn't worry so much about this either, with even a half ass LCD monitor, you can't see much difference between DVD and Bluray, not enough to make it worth the money difference. And why two optical drives? The Bluray'll burn too. Edit: But hell, if you can get it for a reasonable price, may as well get the Bluray

The Zalman heatsink, specifically the CNPS9700NT, which is still in heavy use in my mom's Antec 900 atm, impressed me awhile back. However, the 7500 is down at the bottom near the worst performers now Not to mention it's approaching 3 years old technology. Things have changed greatly since it was introduced.

Check here, or look at the above link to give you a better idea of what to go after.
http://www.frostytech.com/top5heatsinks.cfm

Holy shit =/ My average chip temp is around 60c as well, but it doesn't go anywhere near 90!

 

Off-Topic

I'm not exactly sure why, but my temperature monitor on the front of my case has it in Fahrenheit... at 86.5, which is at 30 Celsius. Now I know that can't be correct, that's way too cold, so I'm not exactly sure how to tell how hot I'm running.

 

Depends.

Now, I can get 30c idling on my heavily overclocked chip depending on what time of year it is, type of coolant, if the house ac/heat is one. But then again I run a liquid rig.

What is your sensor telling you the temperature of? Right now my hard drives are sitting at 27c according to their sensors via Everest I got a nice air flow current over them, my mobo itself is 40c, vid card chip is 60. CPU itself with a ton of shit going is 35c-39c

 

MW2 is $90US here, not AUD, US. We nearly pay double for a game when it's fucking downloaded. We even get raped there with low data allowances and in many cases, outrageous excess data usage fees.

ALL distributors seem to be buying there goods off retailers overseas at the overseas RRP, adding shipping, there markup before it even gets to the retailer. A good 30% for no real reason. I'm still trying to find out why it's cheaper to buy from a US retailer than a retailer here in Aus even when taking itnernational shipping into account, taxes and import duty. Fucking scam it is.

 

/Off topic

You know, if you were to download the game online, you could most likely buy a key off someone for a drastically lowered price. Now, I'm certainly not suggesting this, as that would clearly be against the law >_> <_<. That was just a hypothetical situation . Just saying that in MW 1, you could get a game key for around $10 or so on most "account trading" forums. Much cheaper than paying such a crazy price.

Yes, Asus's cooling system is definitely not what it could be. Sager/Alienware both do better with it, but they also add on an extra thousand dollar price tag. There's a mod that can be done with extra copper piping, but I don't know enough about laptop internals to justify the risk.

Besides, the 260m is rated up to 120c before it starts being damaged. Granted that is the core, and the external memory is most likely not so resilient, however I've used it with no problems for over 3 months now and am confident that it will be fine.

 

I've been trying to figure out SpeedFan, but I'm so computer dumb that I don't know anything about what it's talking about. And it's telling me ... fuck it, I'll show you:



All my fans are running, and I've never noticed it heating up excessively -along with the fact that it hasn't shit out on me ever before, but it seems like my system isn't doing it's job...

And no matter where I look, it shows that only one CPU is getting voltage, but I've got 850W. God, I wish I knew what I was doing.

 

Try getting Everest, Piratebay generally has the pro version fully up to date, and taking a look at your temps with that to compare.

Your CPU is using at the high end range of it's stock voltage, listed @ 1.35V-1.4V for the Athlon 6000+, you overclocking at all? -64c for the temp seems fucked, I'd believe closer to the 46, no idea what the hell it's telling you temps for.

Your internal temp is probably the a sensor on the mobo, but other then that, best to check the bios if you have a temp monitoring screen and compare just after boot to figure out what's what.

 

Sister is buying a computer and she asked me of all people for advice.
Anyways, what do you think:

ASUS P6T SE iX58 Socket 1366 8 Channel Audio ATX Motherboard
Intel Core i7 860 2.8GHz Socket LGA 1156 8MB L3 Cache
Gainward GT220 1GB DDR3 DVI VGA HDMI Out PCI-E Graphics Card
Corsair 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3 1600MHz XMS3 Memory CL9(9-9-9-24) for i7 motherboards
Western Digital WD5000AAKS 500GB SATAII 7200RPM 16MB Cache - OEM Caviar Blue
Antec VSK 2000 Black Tower Case with 10 Drive Bays &amp; Antec 430W Basiq Power PSU - Dual 12V Rails PCI-E and SATA Connectors

Thoughts, opinions...changes?

edit:
Her budget is in or around €750 and she needs it for video editing, Photoshop, 3d design, animation.

 

Needs a more powerful PSU I think, given the graphics card. There's nothing more annoying than insufficient power. 550W minimum, I'd say.

 

Thanks for the replies guys.

Just got an email from her:

Is that better than what I picked out with the graphics card Oz picked out?

 

I'm actually surprised at Dell's value at the moment. That's a pretty good PC. I almost ordered one very similar, but the worry that the case would be a shitty lump of plastic with bad cooling (and everything I could find seems to back this up) stopped me.

But yeah, it's a pretty good rig. I think you'd still want to upgrade the graphics from the GT220 though. The GT240 is a massive improvement (almost twice as powerful) on it and not much more money. The GT240 is what I'm getting with my computer: it generally performs equivalent to the old 9600GT and just a bit under the 9800GT, while being much smaller, cooler, quieter, and less of a power hog. As I don't game too heavily, it's enough for me.

However, since your rig is planned for use with 3D design and animation, you might want something more powerful than the GT240. The i7 should help you there (it's HT capability has been shown to massively improve video editing/encoding etc.) but you might still want to go for a card like the one Oz suggested.

Given the limited ability to upgrade the system using Dell's "Customise" option (very limited graphics options unless you go for a much more expensive base model), I'd say stick to your initial rig with Oz's recommendation for the graphics.

Anyway, I just ordered the parts for my rig:

Will attach to my 19inch monitor, 30inch 1080p TV, and 2.1 Logitech sound. Will be win

Comes to £718

Thanks to Oz for pointing me towards the i5 instead of the Core2 range. It's shocking how close they are in price, despite the massive performance boost of the Nehalem architecture.

The one thing I'm unsure about is what to do with my hard drives. I'm trying to decide between setting them up in RAID0 or having them normal with OS and applications on one and data on the other.

RAID0 would be faster, but having them arranged normally as above gives greater flexibility, and keeping the data off the OS disk should keep it running reasonably consistently over time. I'm just not sure if the marginal speed benefit of RAID0 is worth the effort and loss of ability to muck around with the drives as easily.

Thoughts?

 

Don't screw around with RAID, not worth it in your case. If you want speed, get an SSD for OS/Programs and it blows most things out of the water including velocirapter and RAID 0 normal HDD's.

I would never buy a desktop system from Dell.

 

Can't go wrong with that case, currently using it and its dam good, although no room for SLI with a 275. Don't need 750W for your setup but definitely room for expansion. Hows the i5 ? Heard decent things about it.