New work PC

timbim_2

Any idea exactly which HDD's you'll be using? I assume for the 10,000 rpm you're looking at the WD velociraptor. Bear in mind that it's performance will go downhill rapidly if you fill it over about half full.

I'd personally go for a bigger storage drive, the price difference between 320GB and 1TB isn't much any more, I'd be looking at the WD caviar black range.

Phil_rich

Hi dont know enough about the whys and wherefores to know how to spec my own. What is the reasom for the 2 HDD?? why at different speeds?

Also id the graphics card stated the latest release or is there a newer one out now as the spec I have used was from the turn of the year.

And yes this is the mid-range, the highest spec which they recommend is £1500 for the machine only!

Thanks
Phil

RobTang

Phil_rich wrote: »

Hi dont know enough about the whys and wherefores to know how to spec my own. What is the reasom for the 2 HDD?? why at different speeds?

Also id the graphics card stated the latest release or is there a newer one out now as the spec I have used was from the turn of the year.

And yes this is the mid-range, the highest spec which they recommend is £1500 for the machine only!

Thanks
Phil

Normally you want your working drive to be quick (expensive) and have a secondary drive for normal storage (cheap).

If you stop thinking about your work machine as consumer appliance and rather as the work tool is supposed to be 1.5k isn't really that expensive, eg drivers will spend far more then that on a car in year, mechanic's tool kits can easily exceed that.

It depends on what you need the computer for really, but generally I think work requirements are much tighter than a home system.

Toxteth_OGrady

I think this is a much better spec for £1000:

http://3xs.scan.co.uk/ShowSystem.asp?SystemID=1234

Scan are excellent.

Phil_rich

Can anyone tell me if the specified items are still up-to-date?

Lil306

Depends on your specs, your PC is only future proof if it supports upcoming hardware changes such as SATA6 and USB3, etc.

Here's a spec I'd try

i2600k (£230)
Hyperthreading doubles the number of working cores, and the i2600k can be overclocked stupidly fast

Case and PSU (£80)
Skimp on the case if you want to save money, don't skimp on the PSU, suggest 400w minimum

M/B (£120)
As long as it supports SATA6 / USB3 should be OK, popular one with i2600k is Intel P8P67 Pro

Operating System (£110)
Windows 7 Home Prem 64 bit

RAM... 4-8gb (£40-70) graphics / photo / modelling is usually quite heavy
Corsair, G Skill Ripjaw , etc

2TB HDD (£60) (storage)
WD Green Power, amples of space. Low power

Optical Drive (£20)
Simple DVD with DVD/CD Burning Capability

WD Black HDD or SSD 120GB (£100-200)
Raptors have crap write speeds (around 95mb/s) but good storage capacity and fast access time (around 4ms)

SSD have stupid fast R/W speds (250+ r/w) but not recommended for constant R/W operations so better suited for gaming and booting O/S

If you want it on a budget, get some WD Black Hard Drives, maximum read speed is 126mb/s, or some samsung spinpoints and configure them as RAID 1 Short Striped.

Graphics Card of choice (£150)
Depending on your rendering requirements, Quadros, Radeons, worlds your oyster.

There's your build for £1000 give or take a few £

Lil306

PC I'm going to build for 1k

• G.Skill Ripjaws-X 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit
• Novatech PowerStation Gaming 500W Silent ATX2 Modular Power Supply
• Windows Home Premium Edition 7 DVD - Retail
• Intel Core i7 2600K 3.40GHz (Sandy Bridge) Socket LGA1155 - Retail.
• Cooler master HAF 912 Plus
• Gigabyte GeForce GTX 560 Ti Super OC 1024MB GDDR5 PCIe
• Corsair H70 Liquid CPU Cooler ***Low Profile Pump***
• Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 64MB Cache Hard Disk Drive SATA 6 Gb/s 126MB/s <4.2ms 7200rpm - OEM
• Asus P8P67 Intel P67 (Socket 1155) Motherboard - B3 Revision
• LiteOn IHAS124-19 24x DVD+/-RW SATA Black - OEM

Toxteth_OGrady

Lil306 wrote: »

PC I'm going to build for 1k

Nice.

I'd recommend the following alternates:

Corsair AX psu (btw not much headroom on yr 500W if you want to o/c CPU and GPU, or go SLI later)

Mushkin Redline Enhanced RAM

Gigabyte P67A-UD7 mobo

Might want to take a look at the Noctua NH-D14 cooler. It's air but it'll outperform the H70

Lil306

Toxteth_OGrady wrote: »

Nice.

I'd recommend the following alternates:

Corsair AX psu (btw not much headroom on yr 500W if you want to o/c CPU and GPU, or go SLI later)

Mushkin Redline Enhanced RAM

Gigabyte P67A-UD7 mobo

Might want to take a look at the Noctua NH-D14 cooler. It's air but it'll outperform the H70

I haven't fully decided my own specs, still playing around atm

There is a 700w PSU from Novatech aswell for about £20 more. I quite like the novatech stuff, it's 80+ and has craploads of connectors

Regarding the headroom, the powerdraw on an O/C i2600k and card would be around 400w, I recall seeing a test somewhere the power draws were really low.

Never seen that cooler so I'll look at it, the main point for me is the H70 will keep it cool under load, where air cooler seem to have trouble cooling the 2600k when overclocked highly

EDIT, May have been stock graphs I was looking at lol. Standard 2600k and GTX560 may pull around 400w i think

Toxteth_OGrady

This is generally regarded as the best psu calculator. http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp

I think your planned system will struggle with 500W particularly if you want to o/c. I'd be interested to see what result you get.

Take a look at the benchmarks for the NH-D14. Best air cooler there is and will outperform the H70 under load (providing you put it in a case with good airflow)