PC : New one on order.

[Garp]

Budget is a little tighter than I'd have ideally hoped but I've been able to order a PC at last \o/
My initial attempts all revolved around ordering the components myself, but I hit up against an odd problem I never anticipated. Shipping... It's actually proving more cost effective to purchase a complete system rather than buy the additional packages due to the shipping cost differences, so I've bought a slightly customised machine from iBUYPOWER.

Depending on AMD sorting out their inability to provide parts, this is on route somepoint soon (5-10 days they estimate)

Nzxt Tempest EVO Gaming Tower Case
Intel® Core™ i5 750 Processor (4x 2.66GHz/8MB L3 Cache)
8 GB [2 GB X4] DDR3-1333 Memory Module - Corsair or Major Brand
ATI Radeon HD 5850 - 1GB - Single Card
1 TB HARD DRIVE -- 16M Cache, 7200 RPM, 3.0Gb/s - Single Drive
320 GB HARD DRIVE -- 16M Cache, 7200 RPM, 3.0Gb/s - Single Drive
22X Dual Format/Double Layer DVD±R/±RW + CD-R/RW Drive - [Lightscribe Technology] Black
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium (naturally it'll end up dual boot Linux/Win 7 shortly after arrival)

Probably geeky/sad but i figured out this last year has been the first time in about 17 years that I've not had a gaming PC around..

[Stan_Lite]

Nice spec. That should do whatever you need. Is hardware cheaper over there than here? I've always heard that it is.

Currently speccing up an uber gaming rig myself.
Base spec as follows:

Asus Rampage II Extreme motherboard
Intel Core i7 920 D0 Stepping (SLBEJ) CPU
OCZ Gold 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3 2000MHz RAM

I already have HDDs and a PSU good enough to power the system on air. I also already have 2x HD4890 GFX cards which will be run in crossfire.

Initially, the system will be air cooled with a Noctua NH-U12P SE2 cooling the CPU but will eventually be watercooled (cost is a bit much to do all in one go). At this stage I will also be adding a third HD4890.
For the aircooled phase, it will be in a cheap but nice Coolermaster CM-690 Dominator Case but, when I do the water phase, it will be going in a Slverstone TJ07 with dual water loops - a dual rad for the CPU and a quad rad for the 3 4890s and the chipset.

Everything will, of course, be overclocked to the max

[Garp]

My rig is setting me back just over $1400 including delivery, prices aren't that different as best as I can tell. Would have been cheaper on the mainland as most places offer free delivery (but exclude Hawaii and Alaska in that deal.)
Spec should cover most of my needs, particularly some of the geeky things I experiment with under Linux.. and there is always room for another GFX card in the box should I fancy

I actually haven't had an ATI graphics card for a while now primarily because their linux drivers have sucked. I'm kind of twitchy now but most comments I've seen on linux forums are positive about it, and it's about the best bang for the buck going right now.

I twigged earlier that it's the first time I've bought a complete system for myself since my very first 386 sx25 PC. Every time since then I've been upgrading a few components at a time (worst case being mobo, cpu and memory)!

[Daz]

Nice spec Garp - how are you planning to use the 2 disks?

Also looking good stan - but why only 3 dimms? I always thought 2 or 4 was the better setup?

[Garp]

Originally Posted by Daz

Nice spec Garp - how are you planning to use the 2 disks?

Not entirely sure. I'm not really fussed about RAID stuff, hence the different sizes. Usually I've done something like this:

HDD1:
c: - 80Gb OS and base programs.
e: - 20Gb (same size as my MP3 player, and has all my ripped MP3s on it, may make it 40 this time)
d: - All the rest, including documents, user profiles etc.

HDD2:
f: - entire disk used for swap file and scheduled backups.


As I've got 1TB and I've never been one to rip large videos and media on to HDD, I'll probably set aside 200-300Gb for Linux on the first HDD.

Originally Posted by Daz

I'm obviously out of touch hardware wise!

I really was too, it's just too much hard work keeping up with changes. I catch the major changes (e.g. release of i7, release of i5) and the advantages and performance of them, but I tottally miss stuff like what goes with which socket.

On Friday when I started to piece together an order for custom building the PC I suddenly found myself having to do a fair bit of catch up

LGA-1156 is what Intel is aiming at mainstream market. Cheaper chips, cheaper chipsets, a few less features such as lack of triple channel ram and no hyperthreading.

LGA-1366 is what Intel is aiming at the high performance market, and will see new CPU families first, before they make there way to LGA-1156.

Both sockets "will be around for a long while" (as if we haven't heard that before, and know it to be utter rubbish)

[divine]

Originally Posted by Garp

LGA-1156 is what Intel is aiming at mainstream market. Cheaper chips, cheaper chipsets, a few less features such as lack of triple channel ram and no hyperthreading.

LGA-1366 is what Intel is aiming at the high performance market, and will see new CPU families first, before they make there way to LGA-1156.

Hyperthreading is i7/i5 dependant, not socket. There are hyperthreading and non hyperthreading CPUs on 1156, currently 1366 all have hyperthreading.

[Stan_Lite]

Intel in confusing nomenclature non-shocker

I was looking for information on the i7 920 and one of the Google links took me to an article about the Pentium D 920 (I think I still have one of those ).

[Chuckles]

Originally Posted by Garp

Not entirely sure. I'm not really fussed about RAID stuff, hence the different sizes. Usually I've done something like this:

HDD1:
c: - 80Gb OS and base programs.
e: - 20Gb (same size as my MP3 player, and has all my ripped MP3s on it, may make it 40 this time)
d: - All the rest, including documents, user profiles etc.

HDD2:
f: - entire disk used for swap file and scheduled backups.


As I've got 1TB and I've never been one to rip large videos and media on to HDD, I'll probably set aside 200-300Gb for Linux on the first HDD.



I really was too, it's just too much hard work keeping up with changes. I catch the major changes (e.g. release of i7, release of i5) and the advantages and performance of them, but I tottally miss stuff like what goes with which socket.

On Friday when I started to piece together an order for custom building the PC I suddenly found myself having to do a fair bit of catch up

LGA-1156 is what Intel is aiming at mainstream market. Cheaper chips, cheaper chipsets, a few less features such as lack of triple channel ram and no hyperthreading.

LGA-1366 is what Intel is aiming at the high performance market, and will see new CPU families first, before they make there way to LGA-1156.

Both sockets "will be around for a long while" (as if we haven't heard that before, and know it to be utter rubbish)

If you're planning on doing an 80GB OS partition, would your budget stretch to a 64/80GB SSD? You'd notice a fairly big boost in performance.

[Garp]

Originally Posted by Chuckles

If you're planning on doing an 80GB OS partition, would your budget stretch to a 64/80GB SSD? You'd notice a fairly big boost in performance.

Not for the moment. With Kari starting her masters course in January funds will be tight for a little bit. I'm waiting for the prices to drop a little bit more on SSDs. Considering how far they've already dropped prices should be quite interesting in <6 months on that front.

[Mark]

i7 core is the exception to that rule. They're tri-channel.