I'm buying a PC today - Hardware gurus, is this shit ok?
 

Since I don't know shit about hardware, my friend put this build together for me and I'm considering purchasing everything today.

I will be using it for the following:

• 2d Applications (photoshop, illustrator)
• 3d Applications (maya, zbrush, etc.. - potentially animation / video rendering)
• Video editing applications (adobe after effects possibly)
• Sound Recording/Editing (Cakewalk Sonar and others) - low latency is a must as I trigger samples live with my electronic drumkit
• Gaming (Huge fan of FPS games, ie: COD4, etqw, crysis)

So as you can see, I pretty much cover nearly every major field so this baby needs to deliver...

He told me to dual boot vista 32 and vista 64. reason being, 64-bit has a lot of software/hardware incompatibilities but on some of the big 3d apps and video editing apps it works fine in - and the 8gb ram will be able to be fully utilized in the 64bit environment. And then just use 32bit for applications that otherwise won't work in 64bit.

Here's the build:


1. ASUS P5E LGA 775 Intel X38 ATX Intel Motherboard
$226.99

2. Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz LGA 775 Quad-Core Processor
$279.99

3. 2x - A-DATA 4GB(2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory (8gb ddr2 ram)
$255.00 total

4. COOLER MASTER CM Stacker STC-T01-UW Black/ Silver Aluminum Bezel, SECC Chassis ATX Full Tower Computer Case
$144.99

5. OCZ ModXStream OCZ780MXS ATX12V / EPS12V 780W Power Supply
$179.99

6. Western Digital Raptor WD1500ADFD 150GB 10,000 RPM Serial ATA150 Hard Drive
$169.99

7. 2x - EVGA 512-P3-N801-AR GeForce 8800GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card (2 of these SLI'd)
$539.98 Total

8. ASUS 20X DVD±R DVD Burner with LightScribe Black SATA Model DRW-2014L1T
$39.99

Grand Total: $1,742.00

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Anything you see that I could improve / remove etc.. ?

Thanks!

ya your good to go

although the TWO geforce cards is way overkill. Theres really no reason to do it. You can play ANY game on the marlet with only 1 of those cars EASILY on max settings. 2 cards are really only for super high resolution gaming... its really a waste of money.. I would get rid of that second card and get even more memory instead.

[QUOTE=
Anything you see that I could improve / remove etc.. ?

Thanks![/QUOTE]
You could buy a Mac !

I have a Core 2 Duo @ 3.0 gighz
4 gig ram
Radeon HD 2900 Pro

with this setup I can run anything out there. And any games at full settings.

Core 2 Duo is better for gaming BTW. Quad Core is more for computing power.

take my advice. Get an xp setup.

You definitely have enough. Two 512MB cards and you're wondering if your system is OK!?

You can run Crysis on full settings!? :1orglaugh

Fucking bullshit. With that hardware i highly recommend Vista.

Just wondering: Have you actually tried Vista yourself on a new system of just following the trend of bashing it?

"You can run Crysis on full settings!?"

I can run Crysis on High Setting. In fact it automatically puts me on those settings. Theres only one setting above that and there's really no visual difference or improvement.

This shit so pisses me off.

9 out of 10 people who bash Vista havent even fucking tried it or are too stupid to set it up and then start "recommending" people.

I built 3 systems this year for my 3D business....all my machines have similar specs.

Not bad...I would drop the second vid card and get a qx9650 and overclock it to 4ghz. The q6600 is 2.4 ghz. If you're going to go quadcore, you're only going to see the benefits of it when rendering video or animation. You should make sure that you have high clock speed so that you're not bogged down when using 1 core(most applications).

SLI won't give any benefits whatsoever in working, only gaming. Even then, most vid cards are shit when working with 3d apps, don't let anyone con you into thinking otherwise. You can spin around a bunch of polygons, but once you start deforming it will slow down to a crawl whether you're using an 8800gt or a quadro, or whatever.

Good case, good motherboard(that's what I have), good RAM. Take my advice on the SLI...The 8800 needs TWO 12volt rails(totally independent) to run just one card. Imagine the power supply you'll need to run 2 of them, plus the added heat in the case, add to that it's like trying to fit a Buick in your case --- I couldn't fathom doing 2 of em. You won't miss it that much -- it's more trouble than its worth. USe the money for a newer processor(qx9650), so you won't be behind the curve in speed.

Also, I highly recommend a Monsoon TEC cooler, to keep your CPU 10degrees lower than anything else out there. Great for overclocking.

What I'm saying is don't spend more on video than on your CPU. Your CPU is the most important part of your rig! Can't stress that enough. Believe it from someone who abuses the shit out of computer rigs with 3D work. Only CPU has brought me the speed I need to get shit done -- not video cards.

Don't sacrifice your work for gaming. I probably sound like a fucking zealot, but I've just seen so many people throw away money on video cards when they should be getting the fastest CPU available at the time(as long as its ridiculously priced)

do yourself a favor and get a mac

dood
just get a dell for $500

waste of moneythere with $1700 when its going to go out of style in 3 months.

haha. good one.

Only problem with your suggestion is even without the 2nd video card, buying the qx9650 will add $800+ more to the specs and I really only want to spend no more than $1900. :\

Only thing I'm noticing is lack of raid...

And haven't fully looked the current drive, but is it ATA 3G/bs or ATA 1.5Gb/s.

I'd def suggest doing at least a 2-3 drive, if not more Raid setup.

Raid 0 for speed... Raid 1+0 for speed and reliability. With any editing, video or photoshop, and rendering in 3d, you'll thank yourself for dropping a few extra bucks on a good raid.

Then drop the 2nd vid card altogether. Two 8800's in one case will be a headache and cooling nightmare with diminishing returns. Not worth the hassle. Also, your power supply barely qualifies to run this system.

It has 4 12v rails, which the 8800's will hog totally. No other rails left for CD, hard drives, etc. I found out myself that my 8800 needed their own exclusive 12v rails or I would get blue screen shutdowns.

"I'm buying a PC today - Hardware gurus, is this shit ok?"
If it is shit, why did you buy it?

With what You said You'll be using it for, I would:

• Replace the harddrive with a 7200 rpm SATA-300 from, 160GB or 250GB - maybe 2-3 similar spec'd for RAID
  
• Skip one of the graphic cards, won't benefit You much in rendering etc., only "unnecessarily" much in gaming... (You need too be a "hardcore gamer" to justify 2 of those in SLI)
  
• Ask Your friend if he's given any thought to a sound card... or maybe You already have a good one for production? (Low latency, (semi-)professional card.)
  
• Pick whatever OS that has the most stable 64bit variant - if that's Vista or XP 64bit today, I'm not sure... I'd pick a linux and find native replacement apps, would give the absolute best performance.

You might wanna add another raptor, or go to larger 7200rpm drives. 150GB for audio and video editing is on the short side.

Drop one graphics card, then you won't need such a beefy PSU.

Why don't you explain us why exactly he should take your advice?

lol now that is a good oen. Especially with what he will be doing with the machine.

I agree on this point completely. That motherboard has SATA ports on it and built in RAID support. Use it and you'll love it. You'll never go back to single drives again.

That's cheap.

Ok. I ordered it.

The changes I made to the initial list were removing one of the 8800's, adding a second of the 10,000rpm 150gb hd (since i'm dual booting i want 2 separate hd's instead of 1), and added a M-Audio Delta 44 for recording my vdrums and playing live for low latency. I already have 2 external HD's (250gb and 120gb) so I'm fine on space.

Total came out to $1,840.61 with UPS 3 day shipping (free for newegg preferred account).

I'll let ya all know how it performs. Hopefully it'll be here by friday or so.

Good call on the SLI

Great system, ugly case :)
Go with this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811129026

I got it, the thing is gorgeous, and dead silent. Amazingly well built.

Also the raptors are nice but I don't think the very small performance increase over the WD drives is worth the huge price/meg increase. If you get 2/750 gig drives throw them in raid 0 you should be good to go.

The main board you have is nice, but I would also recommend the P5k-Deluxe Wifi.

Forgot to add the 2 geforce cards is a waste of money. One is fine.

Good suggestion on the Antec, but he already placed the order.

Have you considered a mac pro?

Excellent, and you can still play COD4 in OSX native.

Here come the mac fanboys

Sounds like a very nice system to me.

hey frank how long have you been in the pc repair biz ?

are you trying to claim vista is not a piece of shit ?

Not one person i know who does pc repair likes vista wonder why this is ?

Since you are a gamer, you should think about getting two of those Raptors and run 'em in RAID0. It's so nice being able to load into a game before pretty much everyone else in the server. That way, you can spawn rape all the lesser loaders and shank 'em in the liver!

Just remember RAID0 is not fault tolerant, if one of your drives fails then you lose the entire array. I would only recommend using RAID0 for expendable data, and certainly not as a boot/system disk.

because it's too easy to repair

Fuck Mac

I'm using a TRS-80 with a 5 1/4" floppy drive. Eat my dust!

some of the video editing programs and 3d stuff may not play well with vista.Thats the first thing that comes to my mind.

This is the wrong RAM for the P5E...I would say you should go for DDR2 1066:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820145179

The board will of course run with the 800 modules but why not get the best? Also that price for 2GB modules seems really low...I would be a bit worried about them.

Looks good. I just bought that same processor. I am in the process of getting the other parts. I do a lot of video transcoding and some other things that could benefit from a quad core processor, so I went with that instead of dual. Also, I think that we will see more software utilizing more cores soon. I think that looks like a good config for a good all around desktop. I don't think you NEED dual video cards, but the more the better...

Get you a stripe set of them thur Raptors!

You could buy a Mac !

RAID 10 (4 drives required) or RAID 0 (2 required)
then just backup your important data to your USB drives everytime you make a change.

your an idiot vista sucks ass i havent seen anyone in the tech industry besides people paid off by microsoft say anything good about vista.

problem with raid is most people use the crappy raid built into thier mobo's that sucks ass instead of getting a real raid contoller.

a good 4 port sata controller costs $300+

Vista is superior to XP in many many ways. There are documented advancements such as ReadyBoost and relatively unknown ones such as Vista's completely redesigned TCP/IP stack. Generally Vista is bashed as it got bad framerates on OpenGL games in early reviews...cos it doesn't support OpenGL.

Vista's newer TCP/IP algortihms are off by default, so do this at the command prompt:

netsh interface tcp set global congestionprovider=ctcp

If it doesn't increase your throughput by 20% over XP I will buy you a Pepsi.

Read up on it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compound_TCP

You can enable CTCP with the netsh interface tcp set global congestionprovider=ctcp command.

You can disable CTCP with the netsh interface tcp set global congestionprovider=none command

Should have got a Mac.

ReadyBoost is mostly hype.

people that dont buy macs these days are retards