Latch

G'day,

I'm getting the following computer from newegg. While money is somewhat of an object, I'm working hard on rationalizing this expense with myself (it's up to $2800 with shipping). Any comments/suggestions for the following?

COOLER MASTER Centurion 5 CAC-T05-UW Black Aluminum Bezel, SECC Chassis ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail - $49.99
SILVERSTONE ZEUS SST-ST65ZF ATX12V 650W Power Supply - Retail - $169.99
MSI K8N Diamond Plus Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI X16 ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail - $199.00
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ Toledo 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Dual Core Processor Model ADA4400CDBOX - Retail - $464.00
CORSAIR XMS 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered Dual Channel Kit System Memory Model Twinx2048-3200c2pt - Retail - $236.00
XFX PVT70FUDE7 Geforce 7800GTX 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail - $479.00
Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD3200KS 320GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM - 4x$165 = $660.00
LITE-ON SK-1688U/B Black USB Wired Standard Keyboard - Retail - $6.29
SAMSUNG 940t-Black Black 19" 20ms LCD Monitor - Retail - $329.99
Creative Inspire P7800 90 Watts 7.1 Speaker - Retail - $86.00

There it is. Like I said, some pricey stuff.. but it should last me for a long long (long.. looking at 4-5 years) time. I want to be able to play the latest games in good quality (Doom 3, Quake 4, Duke Nukem Forever (), and especially Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, which comes out later this year), but after that I won't care much if I start to fall behind game-wise.

Edit:
The mobo is so expensive because I wanted something that had hardware raid 5, and a SATA2 controller with 4 ports (which this has), or cross-controller raid (which I don't think this one has). The disks will (obviously) be in a RAID5 configuration, so 1 will be parity.

What do you think? Any comments/suggestions?

meanSpleen

Comment:

You have a specific reason to why you need a high end system. I not only stand in awe of your system, but am most interested in seeing the before and after shots!

One thing I had to ask though - Was the case based on pure airflow, setup/configurability, or cost reasons? I mean, compared to the rest of the rest of the components (which of course are the parts that matter most) and the keyboard, the case seems a bit lacking. Please note that I had the same case on my shortlist for my own mid-range system. (not mentioned, but was definitely in the running)

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Sty

Well, it seems you're building an expensive system, a few suggestion:

Swap the MSI for DFI LanParty
Remember to manually set the mem timings to 2-3-3-6 1T and run at 2.75V
The graphics card I think is an underperformer for the price. Get a GT or GTX512
That hard-drive combo is not so nice, get a WD1500 (150G, 10KRPM) for system and another 2xWD4000(raid edition for 24/7 operation) for storage

Monitor is up to personal taste. I would go for 20" 1600x1200 display. The Dell 2001FP is an excellent choice.

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Sty

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cyrnel

That mb's hardware RAID is really just software RAID in firmware. Hardware RAID implies a coprocessor to take care of the parity computation and possibly cache management. Even mirrored or striped nForce sets which should fly are stuck at about the same performance as a single drive. You can buy a RAID card w/coprocessor for a few $hundred but it's unusual for a gaming rig. The money is usually better spent elsewhere.

What's the RAID 5 for? You may be disappointed in the performance. It's great for availability but parity computation chews up processing and IO performance. Writes suffer terribly. I love it as reliable version of JBOD, but more for use in a home or small business server. A coprocessor card will help but you'll still be playing catchup to a single fast drive. Now, if you get a good card and mirror or stripe drives you'll saturate your system. That starts getting expensive though.

Sort of like Sty's pick I would use a seriously fast drive for system, another for apps, then a lesser large drive for smart image backups and incremental changes. (Ghost/Acronis/Retrospect, etc.) If you need tons of space maybe bump to larger if slower 2nd and 3rd drives.

Just late thoughts. Catch me tomorrow and I may suggest filing cabinets.

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Plaid13

i have that case and its nice for the money but the 120mm fan it comes with is a joke i would get a diffrent one. the port that comes in the side pannel and point at the cpu is nice because you can stick a 80mm fan in it and still keep the port so it blows air right at the heat sink and fan making sure to get all fresh outside of the case air to the cpu. thanks to that my processor stays cooler then the mb temp when idle. not to mention its a nice simple case for people that dont want a really expensive night lite/space heater that alot of people make computers into. other then that.... i think im going to have to come mug you. wish i had that much to spend on a computer.

And unless you plan on overclocking and stuff most of that is overkill. $200 for a montherboard is insane. Raid is overrated and a waste of time for 99% of the people that want it. if i was you i would knock down the processor to a 4000+ just to save the money. and get the corsair valueram instead if your not overclocking you wont need that fancy stuff. IF you are overclocking... dont expect to make it last that long btw. i cant even imagine why you need so much hard drive space.

and i agree with sty about the video card get a gt or a gtx512

and if your spending all that money on a system... dont get a $6 keyboard thats just a sin. get one of microsofts fancy egronomic keyboards. they are a little weird at first but after a couple days you will learn to love it. much more comfortable typing position for your hands.
And your missing a mouse i would suggest the logitech mx518 gaming mouse. its comfy as hell to hold and is extreamly sensitive with in game sensitivty adjustments on the mouse. thats handy sometimes.

Latch

Hi Guys,

Thanks very much for your comments! I scaled back a bit after reading your suggestions and realizing I went a bit crazy with stuff I *really* didn't need.

After the RAID5 comments (I was using software raid5, hated the slow speeds, thought hardware raid5 would be fast, but it doesn't sound like it [without a special card]), I ditched the need for a mobo that had RAID5. I'm now getting a Asus A8N-SLI for $122. I'd still like some sort of redundancy, so I may just mirror. Not as efficient as RAID5, but faster, I suppose. I used to have over a TB (I think it was 1.3tb alltogether) of data, but then I lost a hard drive (and the way I had it set up (lvm2 on linux) meant I lost ALL data). Because of that, I'm real cautious about redundancy. I also re-thought-out my hard drive strategy based off what you guys said. I ended up with:
[ul]
[li]1xWestern Digital Raptor WD740GD 74GB 10,000 RPM Serial ATA150 Hard Drive - OEM for main OS. - $155
[li]4xWestern Digital Caviar SE WD2500JS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM for data. - $103/each.

I also downgraded my video card to a XFX PVT70GUDE7 Geforce 7800GT 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail. A 512 was just too expensive for me to rationalize.

I left the CPU as is, as it has 2x1MB lvl2 cache. The 4200+ doesn't. I may not even notice it, but it's a placebo thing

The case I chose (and sounds like it's an OK choice for the price according to plaid) because of cooling features and the amount of drive bays it has all the way down the front of it. I usually end up with many hard drives I'll invest in a new 120cm fan (and a 80cm one) too.

I have no plans of overclocking. I changed the RAM to Kingston ValueRAM 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered Dual Channel Kit System Memory Model KVR400AK2/2GR - Retail. It's $165ish.. cheaper by almost $100.

Logitech Media Elite 967559-0403 Black USB + PS/2 Wired Standard Keyboard - Retail is what I ended up with for the keyboard. A bit nicer, and has all the stuff I need. I skipped the mouse as I already have one (one of the few things I'm salvaging from my old machine). I went with a logitech because I tend to stay away from MS as much as possible. I stayed away from the "ergonomic" design because I have my own (faster) typing style which has my fingers traveling over to the other side of the keyboard at times, which ergonomic stops/hassels.

So.. I've saved a few hundred, and gotten a system that better meets my needs/tastes. Thanks for the suggestions guys, they've been very helpful/useful!

Martian

I suspect you'll be happier with the ASUS board. I'm still running an A7N8X; it came out years ago and was keeping up right up until the s939 boards started coming out.

On the other hand, be wary of the Raptor. 10 000 rpm isn't really stable; I've seen a lot of those drives crash and burn. They may have ironed out the issues by now, but I'm still wary of the Raptors, which I think is natural when you've seen four of those drives fail within a year of purchase. I'd go with a 7200 rpm drive with 16mb cache.

For the fans, Vantec Stealths are a palatable choice. They don't move as much air as some of the 120's out there, but are they ever quiet. I'm running two of them on my system with Q-Fan controlling the processor fan. The Stealths are completely inaudible and the proc fan barely makes any noise either, since it's throttled right back (at full speed it screams like a banshee though; the Volcano I've got on there is good for cooling, not so much for noise levels).

I'd stick with the Corsair ram if you can afford it.. the latency on Kingston's ValueRAM isn't up to par. It doesn't make a huge difference in performance, but you will see a boost running a CAS latency of 2 or 2.5 vs. 3, so bear that in mind.

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Latch

I've ditched the Kingston ram for some corsair that has a mail in rebate currently. CORSAIR XMS 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered Dual Channel Kit System Memory Model Twinx2048-3200c2 - Retail

OS harddrive-wise, I switched to getting two Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 ST3250823AS 250GB 7200 RPM Serial ATA150 Hard Drive - OEM for my system, I will RAID1 them. Probably don't need 250gig for the OS.. but the price ($103/each) was too good to pass up. I realised my current mobo doesn't have SATA150 ports (and I was using all the SATA2 ones already) so I upgraded to the ASUS A8N Deluxe.

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm getting close to actually ordering it. Exciting

Sty

Eh, the Raptors work perfectly.

I have one 74G 10kRPM in my home computer (no active cooling) and I've heard no reports of them failing (than the very first 36G models 3 years ago). I also have something around 20 of them in my servers and none of them has ever failed (all but hitachi and wd has failed number of times, especially maxtor. Replaced tens of those last year alone)

I just love the 74G raptor. XP is sooooo fast to boot up and now that I started installing the games also on that drives, the levels load up 2-3 times faster than my friends 16MB 400G drive. Remember, good seek rates are for os and programs (ergo, 10k rpm) and thruput is for data and storage.

You don't need SATAII MB to plug in SATAII drives. According to test, there's no advantage either. The drives are just not up to that speed yet.

RAID1 is good choice for redundancy. You get almost as good write speeds as with single drive and in most of the cases, increased reading speed (depends on implementation)

For the memory, get anything your wallet will handle that has low timings. The T1 command rate is especially important and the latencies after that (2-2-2-6 is very good). The corsair memory you first chose is not for overclocking but for maximum performance.

For overclocking, generally, you would use memory with SLOWER latencies and HIGHER rate, eg. the corsair that goes to PC4400 or higher.

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