Buying a poweful new PC, what do you think of this spec/price?

JasX

Landprofits wrote: »

The company i'm using to form my quote - it doesn't seem thatthey guarantee the brand of hard drive you get, although they do state they only use leading brands (Maxtor, Seagate, Western Digital, Hitachi or Samsung)

With that in mind - do you think I should go elsewhere? That's a good point you made about access times......

if they can't gurantee the HD but you get a good deal on the rest of the kit you'd probably be stuck with picking one of the cheaper HDs they provide, buy the one you want separately then reinstall everything yourself after it arrives, how easy that proves depends on how good a set of restore disks they provide you with (ie if the answer is 'none' and all you get is a recovery partition on the original drive could be a bit awkward)

then use the drive they shipped with as a 2nd drive which is useful in itself (as you can keep your data separate from your OS and 'main' programs to save the OS partition getting cluttered/fragmented and slowing down over time with installs/uninstalls/moving stuff around)

Landprofits

Just spoke to the company who I am using for a quote, and they say that although they don't stock the Samsung F3 hard drive, I could, if I really wanted to purchase it myself and ship it to them.

Do you think it is worthwhile doing this? The Hard drive they currently have in stock is a Hitatchi HDS 7210 10 CLA 332.

Is the Samsung substantiallty better than this?

JasX

Datasheet for a HDS721010CLA332 - Quotes a media transfer rate of 1589 Mbits/s (thats 198 MB/s)
http://www.hitachigst.com/tech/techlib.nsf/techdocs/33586ADC145D59A086257603007B022E/$file/DS7K1000.C_DS_final.pdf

Datasheet for a Samsung F3 - Quotes a media transfer rate or 250 MB/s
http://multi.gnt.lt/Pages/brochures/Samsung/F3%20Spec.sheet.pdf

Ok you can't pay too much attention to max rates quoted as you won't really get those, unfortunately I couldn't find any 'real' raw test data for the Hitachi (for the samsung its widely available and performs very well) however:

Samsung F3 has a 25% higher headline data transfer rate.

Compiled benchmarks for the 2 drives here:
http://www.harddrivebenchmark.net/hdd_lookup.php?cpu=Hitachi+HDS721010CLA332
Put the Samsung drive performance a blistering 91% ahead of the hitachi

Data access times to hard disk is one of the slowest parts of a modern machine, it will bottlekneck you alot and be one of the more 'noticable' parts of how fast/slow your machine is.

The Samsung Drive costs about £15 more than the Hitachi

Even if it turns out to be only say 20% faster you were thinking of spending an extra couple of hundred pounts for a processor that benchmarks 12% faster which you'd notice alot less, and at one point £2000 for an absolute top of the range machine probably only 20% odd better than a £1000 machine.

Sounds like a pain buying the drive separately and shipping it to them (and would they knock the cost of the hitachi drive off the price? will they lose it?) but if it were me I certainly know where I wouldn't be cutting corners....


RAID would be a completly separate discussion (personally not a fan due to reliability issues in the past)

Landprofits

JasX wrote: »

Sounds like a pain buying the drive separately and shipping it to them (and would they knock the cost of the hitachi drive off the price? will they lose it?) but if it were me I certainly know where I wouldn't be cutting corners....

Wow you know your stuff!
Yes, the cost of the Hitatchi would be knocked off the price, they're a good company so I doubt that they would lose the drive I shipped in - I would obviously talk to them first and make arrangements.

RAID would be a completly separate discussion (personally not a fan due to reliability issues in the past)

Not sure what RAID is - somehting about linking two hard drives together - i'm sure I don't need to do that - never done it in the past. I was thining about going for a second hard drive but bearing in mind that I use external hard drives for storage there's probably no point?

I feel like I am getting somewhere now!

JasX

Landprofits wrote: »

Not sure what RAID is

Basically you get RAID controller (a 'disk access controller', separate card and can quite often be built into motherboards) which allows 2 drives to be accessed simultaneously.

You'd need 2 identical drives (say 2x 1TB) and it can come in various flavours

RAID 0 - striping
Files split accross both drives, substantial increase in both read and write speeds (perhaps 160-180% of single drive speeds).
If either drive failes all data is lost/unrecoverable
All drive space useable (ie 2TB)


RAID 1 -mirroring
Files mirrored on both drives, increase in read speeds, slight reduction in write speeds (perhaps Read up 150% write down to 97% of singe drive equivilent)
If either drive failes data is fully backed up on other drive and PC will continue to work.
Only half total space available due to mirroring (ie 1TB total from 2x 1TB drives)

With more drives you can get even more options:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

I had had enough drive failures to be scared away from RAID 0, even with RAID 1 I eventually had RAID controller issues which constantly led to the array 'degrading and causing issues (although I didn;t lose any data), eventually went back to a single drive and backing up regularly

Landprofits

JasX wrote: »

Basically you get RAID controller (a 'disk access controller', separate card and can quite often be built into motherboards) which allows 2 drives to be accessed simultaneously.

You'd need 2 identical drives (say 2x 1TB) and it can come in various flavours

RAID 0 - striping
Files split accross both drives, substantial increase in both read and write speeds (perhaps 160-180% of single drive speeds).
If either drive failes all data is lost/unrecoverable
All drive space useable (ie 2TB)


RAID 1 -mirroring
Files mirrored on both drives, increase in read speeds, slight reduction in write speeds (perhaps Read up 150% write down to 97% of singe drive equivilent)
If either drive failes data is fully backed up on other drive and PC will continue to work.
Only half total space available due to mirroring (ie 1TB total from 2x 1TB drives)

With more drives you can get even more options:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

I had had enough drive failures to be scared away from RAID 0, even with RAID 1 I eventually had RAID controller issues which constantly led to the array 'degrading and causing issues (although I didn;t lose any data), eventually went back to a single drive and backing up regularly

Thanks - yeah I don't need that..... you can't go wrong with the trusty old "backup method":D

Landprofits

Is this; http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ss1TB-Samsung-HD103SJ-Spinpoint-F3-SATA-3Gb-s-7200rpm-32MB-Cache-89-ms-NCQ-OEM

the correct Samsung F3 drive you were talking about?

Landprofits

OK - right I am now going to post up a spec of what I have done so far....

£1677 (inclusive of delivery)

Case COOLERMASTER HAF 922 MID TOWER GAMING CASE (£82)

Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™i7 Processor i7-930 (2.80GHz) 4.8GTs/8MB Cache

Motherboard ASUS® P6X58D PREMIUM: DDR3, USB 3.0 & SATA 6.0GB/s, 3-Way SLI

Memory (RAM) 6GB (3 X 2GB KIT) CORSAIR XMS3 TRI-DDR3 1600MHz (TR3X6G1600C9)

Graphics Card 1536MB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX480 GDDR5 PCI EXPRESS

Memory - 1st Hard Disk Samsung F3 drive

1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive 10x BLU-RAY ROM DRIVE, 16x DVD ±R/±RW (£75)

2nd DVD/BLU-RAY Drive 4x BLU-RAY ROM DRIVE, 16x DVD ROM (£49)

Memory Card Reader INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (READS XD, MS, CF, SD, etc)

Power Supply & Case Cooling CORSAIR 850W PSU (TX850) 80+ ULTRA QUIET (£105)

Processor Cooling COOLIT ECO A.L.C (ADVANCED LIQUID COOLER) (£59)

Sound Card ONBOARD 8 CHANNEL (7.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)

Network Facilities ONBOARD 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT

USB Options 6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD

Modem NONE, I WILL BE USING BROADBAND

Floppy Disk Drive NONE

TV Card NONE

Operating System Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)

Anti-Virus MICROSOFT SECURITY ESSENTIALS - Free Basic Protection

Surge Protection Belkin 8 Socket 2M Surge Protector with £25,000 Protection! (£14)

Warranty 3 Year Standard Warranty (1 Month Collect & Return, Lifetime Tech Support)

Delivery STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)

Build Time Standard Build - Approximately 5 to 7 working days

OK, so the cost has come down a bit from what I originally posted! I have included for the 8 socket surge protecter, because, quite frankly I need one and £14 is as good a price as I can find.

I have only quoted for one Hard drive - but is there any reason that I would need a second? As I say, I do put most of my storage on external hard drives.

Have I gone overboard on the Motherboard?

I do find two dvd drives handy for copying from one disc to the other, although I must admit, I don't do a lot of that these days. Still handy to have though.

I still have the liquid cooler for the processor.....again am I being thick here and is it a bit overboard?

It does perhaps seem like a fair whack of money but I just check the invoice for my last PC purchase which was in March 2007, so I get a good 4 years out of them!

Once I have this sorted out I might take my old one apart and start learning how to build them for future reference!

JasX

Landprofits wrote: »

Is this; http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ss1TB-Samsung-HD103SJ-Spinpoint-F3-SATA-3Gb-s-7200rpm-32MB-Cache-89-ms-NCQ-OEM

the correct Samsung F3 drive you were talking about?

Thats the one, model number is HD103SJ

JasX

Looks alot better.... what is a bit pointless tho is splashing out on 2 Rluray ROM drives.

a) you very rarely need to copy DVD to DVD or BluRay to BluRay these days, its very straight forward to Rip the DVD/Blu Ray to hard disk and burn it as 2 operations (a DVD would need 4GB of free disk space to do this, a Blur Ray would need 25-50GB)

b) Since you can't write BluRay's and probably would never need to read 2 at the same time having 2 bluray read only drives seems excessive. If you must have 2 perhaps have one bluRay ROM drive and a 2nd DVD only drive (will cost about £10) if you really must copy DVDs directly.

Also you can get a Blurray writer drive for about £120 so spending £125 and not ending up able to write Bluray's seems a bit silly. Were it me I'd get a single BluRay r/w drive say:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/LG-BH10LS30AUAU10B-10x-Blu-Ray-Writer-16x-DVDR-8x-plusRW-6x-RW-12x-RAM-OEM
or
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/LG-BH10LS30AUAR10B-10x-Blu-Ray-Writer-16x-DVDR-8x-plusRW-6x-RW-12x-RAM-Retail-plus-Software
If you need a copy of PowerDVD 8

Perhaps get 1, live with it for a while and only add a 2nd optical drive if you really need one?

As for the rest you could argue the MB and graphics cards are a bit excessive but meh, we've got the cost down £400 and they're nice pieces of hardware, once you've had a board with all the bells and whistles and used/not used them you can judge for next time if they were worth it

Nvidia graphics cards do ruun quite hot and you've not got the biggest case so perhaps the liquid cooling could be semi-justified.


One thing I will say about the motherboard is it comes with ASUS's 'EPU' feature but you might not get the driver for it installed by defauls, worth popping onto the ASUS website for and setting up, although touted as a 'green' energy saving feature its quietened my PCs fans down a hell of a lot when its 'lightly' loaded during normal use, saves noise, energy (hence £) and in theroy lower loaded/powered components should last longer too

Finally at some point in future you might want to add a sound card (takes sound loading away from the processor onto the sound card boosting performance if nothing else)