Anyone else build their own PCs? Just ordered a new one..
 

GIGABYTE GA-X58A-UD3R LGA 1366 Intel X58 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
Intel Core i7-920 Bloomfield 2.66GHz LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor
G.SKILL 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Triple Channel Kit Desktop Memory
HIS H585F1GDG Radeon HD 5850 (Cypress Pro) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card
2x OCZ Vertex Series OCZSSD2-1VTX30GXXX 2.5" 30GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
HITACHI Deskstar HD31000 IDK/7K (0S00163) 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive
ASUS Blu-ray Drive SATA

(^_^) Cant wait to get it so I can put it together..

Haven't built a pc since the mid 90's.
100% Macs here now.

i got something similar

i7 860
6 gigs ram
2 74 gig 15k sas drives in raid 0
adaptec 2405 controller
some ati 1 gig video card

and a few 1.5tb drives for storage.

Pretty much stopped doing so when it stopped being significantly cheaper many years ago. Somebody who gets paid less can cut their hands on sharp cases instead. :2 cents:

I just order from ncix.com now. I can still pick all the parts I want, right down to the exact power supply and CPU fan, but I just pay $50 extra to get them to assemble and test it.

sounds like a good system

I've got that same motherboard and processor. The one thing I don't have is an SSD. It's a very solid machine. You'll be happy with it.

I don't see a power supply on that list, though. I thought I had a power supply that was sufficient, but I had to run back to Fry's and pick up an Antec 750 Earth Watt unit that fixed the booting problem. The machine just simply wouldn't boot before I replaced the power supply.

where do you buy your computers from instead? Even now a days I think if you want quality parts, it's still quite a bit cheaper to do it yourself... :2 cents:

i did that for many years - also as a business. but the last 4 years i have just bought laptops and will never buy anything else again - unless it's a server

Notebooks are still pathetically slow compared to these Core i7 desktops with large CPU caches, proper drives, full speed memory, etc.

for what - Outlook, ICQ and Internet?

for encoding and video editing i have desktops in my office

I used to love it.... then I started buying Dell's because they come and fix them while I am working... Became a business decision.

Nope but I have friends who setup PCs.

I thought you said you only bought laptops unless you needed a server :)

ok, you got me :winkwink:

i also bought 2 encoding PCs in the last 4 years

I do, this was my last build: (18 months ago)

http://i45.tinypic.com/2mmg6ec.jpg

Works perfect for surfing, movies, music and work i do. I am not gamer, and i like console more if i play something.

What case did you buy?

Or what existing case are you gonna use?

Don't know about the rest of you, but for me the case is pretty much the most important and most difficult part to choose in a new pc build. I can literally take weeks to pick one out. :Oh crap

raid 0 the SSDs!!! then run HDD tune and report back!

nice system.. that's a badass processor

very nice pc although from past experiences asus motherboards are better the gigabyte's

Half the joy of it, is building it myself..

I got a corsair 750, im hoping that'll be enough to push this beast.

I got a Lian Li case, nothing special: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811112239

Im putting Win 7 on one ssd, and Snow Leopard on the other.

Preciate it, cant wait to see what it can do ;)

Gigabyte > Asus, not to mention i believe they are one of the only mobo manufactures to offer usb 3

Asus owns Gigabyte and the Gigabyte motherboards are like Lexus is to Toyota.

They use higher quality capacitors, and this particular motherboard has much thicker traces. When you pick it up it feels like it's made out of lead. lol

What PSU you using to run this rig?

Btw, be careful with anything G.SKILL's, I just bought a ddr3 kit from them and one of the sticks is bad. Went to look up reviews and sure enough, a lot of people complained about just one stick out of their set being bad. So if you get random reboots and all sorts of bsod's randomly, run a test with memory and save yourself the headache :)

i pick the parts but get the local pc place to put it together.

Your last encoding machines were purchased 4 years ago? Dude, you really should pick up a Core i7 machine... you'll wish you had done it sooner.

All you need is a screwdriver and 2 hours of your time. And Google... to help with the error beep codes. :1orglaugh

I used to. My last home built was the best computer I have ever had. It was kind of old though. Still pissed my ex-gf convinced me to get rid of it. I am a laptop user now.

I can't say that I agree to that.

Check my laptop specs below, seems to do pretty well! I can put in another 10 GB DDR3 ram so it have a total of 16 GB DDR3 ram and put in another HD to run in RAID mode, harddisk is a bit slower than normal since I run full Harddisk encryption. :2 cents:

http://www.global-acces.com/envy/systemspec.png

PSU: OCZ 700w http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817341019

I will test the ram, hope I dont have a prob..

Adding more ram won't make it one bit faster for anything requiring any serious number crunching, like video encoding.
At the end of the day that 1.6 Ghz processor will only do X number of calculations per second, you'll be waiting all day for that video to be finished.

I get a huge kick out of those guys that start threads looking for the best laptop for video encoding :1orglaugh if they were truly serious about working with video they would be getting something a little more suitable, like the workstation I just finished building:

2 of these: Xeon W5590 Nehalem-EP 3.33GHz 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core
Total of 8 physical cores, 16 virtual
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819117214

SUPERMICRO MBD-X8DAL-i-O Dual LGA 1366 Intel 5500 ATX Dual Quad-Core Intel Xeon Processor 5500 sequence
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813182192

8 gigs ram, (8 more on the way) DDR3 PC3-10600

ASUS EAH5770/2DIS/1GD5/V2 Radeon HD 5770 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814121355

CORSAIR CMPSU-1000HX 1000W ATX12V 2.2 / EPS12V 2.91 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...air%20HX 1000

COOLER MASTER ATCS 840 RC-840-KKN1-GP Black Aluminum ATX Full Tower Computer Case
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811119187

CORSAIR Cooling Hydro Series CWCH50-1 120mm High Performance CPU Cooler
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-010-_-Product

Windows 7 Pro 64 bit

It will run 3 open Procoder windows each running batch WMV encoding at 1.8X realtime,
and it's only using 60% CPU



This thing fucking scares me :helpme


(and yes I am bragging just a little bit)

Thanks for shitting all over my new computer, hah

Sorry dude :upsidedow

Haha no worries, looks like a beast though, im still excited to build mine, been running a macbook for 3 yrs now.

It's the first one I've done at that level, I had to RMA the mobo for a short and the firewire card I put in it caught fire (really!) when I turned on the power but other than that it was a lot of fun, I bought a mac pro last year thinking I would give the dark side a try but it just didn't fit my needs, it's now the most expensive PC I've ever bought :winkwink:

And you did something I should have, you went with the SSD drive, I was trying to save a little money after buying the processors so I just went 2-250 gig sata3 striped, but windows is telling me that the read/write is the weak spot in the system.

I've read about windows having trouble recognizing the SSD drive during install, let me know how it works since I'm thinking of going ahead and getting one.

Have Fun

I heard people saying they had problems with that but I hope I won't run into that issue, I hear more about TRIM on ssd's and the ones that I purchased offer TRIM with a firmware update.

$3378 just for the CPU's is nothing short of insanity. The Core i7 920 is $289 and does pretty well... Personally I think money would be better spent buying 2 or 3 of these machines if you really need to do something big in a hurry.

Just finished building mine.

:thumbsup:thumbsup

Yeah it was a little overboard, but I have 5 video machines and they were all built with 2 of the fastest Xeon processors available at the time, the oldest one is around 7 years old and still works fine (I'm turning into a server next month) and I just continued that tradition.

I stick with Xeon because they run cooler and have a lower error rate than any other processor, hence the price, it's also why they are used in servers.
I've had large batch encodings go for 100 hours non-stop without any problems whatsoever.
For me that kind of stability is worth the money.

Plus I'm trying to get away from having 5 machines running all the time, it gives me a headache :)

Nice fris

Agreed, that is not a PC but a monster :1orglaugh:1orglaugh

The I7 720 run 1.6 ghz with turboboost to 2.8 ghz

Not sure where you picked up the video encoding, this one is not used for video encoding or gaming, it was just the best laptop I could find with a resolution of **X1080 (screen is 1920x1080)

My most demanding application is probably either Skype or the MS Office package :1orglaugh:1orglaugh

For video rendering, doesnt it make more sense cost and speed wise adding multiple video cards to a machine and use apps that will utilize the video cards instead ? I remember reading about this in the past