Not another "help me I'm building a computer" thread

[DreamThrall]

I lied, this IS actually another "help me I'm building a computer" thread.

It looks like I'm going to be leaving my current job in the near future, which means I'll finally need/get to build my own computer.

I've got the following things I'm going to re-use:

- 700w (or something comparably ridiculous) PSU
- 8800GT
- SB Audigy 2 ZS Platinum
- 500GB or so worth of SATA 7.2k RPM drives
- USB DVD RW

Here's what I plan on purchasing to fill in the rest. I'm hoping to keep the cost of the additional hardware under or around $600 or so, not including a monitor:

Case - LIAN LI PCK7B - $86 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112154 - I've heard great things about Lian Li, and I like the idea of lots of bigass 120mm fans.

Motherboard - Gigabyte GA-EP43 - $80 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128380 - I've used Gigabyte mainboards on all my builds so far with no problems, and this one has what I need for a decent price - what I need is full ATX (I want all my PCI slots!) and PCI Express 2.0. Ideally support for DDR2 1066, but even that's not a biggie.

Memory - 4GB OCZ DDR 1066 - $48 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227362 - Cheap, OCZ... I've got 8GB in the machine I have now but I rarely notice myself using more than 4, PLUS I plan on running win7 instead of Vista. I figure I can buy another 4 if I need to.

CPU - Intel Core2Duo E8400 - $167 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115037 - Seems like the best bang for the buck at the time. I was considering a quad, but I think I'll get more use out of the additional GHz than the additional cores.

OS HDD - G.Skill Falcon SSD - $180 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231255 - This is my splurge. I love the idea of going from POST to usable in 7 seconds, and I've got those other SATA disks for storage, which I don't expect to need much of since I keep all my photos, movies and music on my HTPC. This one's got decent reviews, G.Skill has served me well so far with their RAM, and it's is muy affordable compared to the other SSD offerings.

Monitor - Acer 22" - $140 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824009145 - A 22" monitor with 5 eggs over 2200+ ratings for $140 and free shipping. Can't really go wrong there.

Optical - I'm going to stick with no internal drive and just use that USB DVD drive when I need to. I've noticed that I very rarely use physical media, and I've got a couple MyBooks if I need to transfer anything large or make a bootable disc.

I plan on using this for software development and minimal gaming (mostly L4D and other source-based games, probably L4D2 when it comes out). I haven't really been paying much attention to the latest and greatest hardware... for this price range (again, ~$600 not inc monitor), would it be worth trying to go with i7? Would I get better value out of an AMD setup instead of Intel? Any horror stories using that or another SSD?

Thanks!

 

[tesher06]

Hmm looks like a great setup. I currently use a core 2 duo atm, but if I were you, I would get the I7 because the core 2's are becoming outdated soon.

 

[DreamThrall]

The cheapest i7 I see on newegg is $110 more than the dual core I've got listed there, and it's a quad core (see my comment re dual vs quad core in the op). I don't even see any dual core i7s available on newegg.

EDIT: Looks like i7s only come in quad core. With the limited product line and the pricing available right now, I'm fairly confident I'll be safe with LGA 775 for a while.

 

[tesher06]

LGA 775?

 

[DreamThrall]

...is the socket name for all the intel core duo stuff. i7 uses socket LGA.

 

[Rico]

Yeah don't bother with I7 yet, I have no idea why so many people nowadays are talking about LGA 775 like its the plague. The fact of the matter is, you'll get the best bang for your buck out of a socket LGA 775 right now. I can't think of too many people out there today that are taxing their CPU enough to need the power of an I7. Your money is better spent on a better videocard/ram/faster IO devices

Most systems are usually limited by IO anyways.

One thing about solid state disks: Are you aware that they degrade over time as your write/erase data from them?

Small quote from wikipedia because I can't bother to write a long explanation:

Limited write (erase) cycles: Flash-memory cells will often wear out after 1,000 to 10,000 write cycles for MLC, and up to 100,000 write cycles for SLC[18], while high endurance cells may have an endurance of 1–5 million write cycles (many log files, file allocation tables, and other commonly used parts of the file system exceed this over the lifetime of a computer).[34][35][36] Special file systems or firmware designs can mitigate this problem by spreading writes over the entire device (so-called wear leveling), rather than rewriting files in place.[37] In 2008 wear leveling was just beginning to be incorporated into consumer level devices.[18] However, effective write cycles can be much less, because when a write request is made to a particular memory block, all data in the block is overwritten even when only part of the memory is altered. The write amplification, as referred by Intel, can be reduced using write memory buffer.[38] In combination with wear leveling, over-provisioning SSD flash drives with spared memory capacity also delays the loss of user-accessible memory capacity. NAND memory can be negatively impacted by read and program (write) disturbs arising from over accessing a particular NAND location. This overuse of NAND locations causes bits within the NAND block to erroneously change values. Wear leveling, by redirecting SSD writes to lesser-used NAND locations, thus reduces the potential for program or write disturbs.[39] An example for the lifetime of SSD is explained in detail in this wiki.[dubious – discuss] SSDs based on DRAM, however, do not suffer from this problem.

* As a result of wear leveling and write combining, the performance of SSDs degrades with use [40][41]. Eventually, wear leveling will use each page on the drive at least once, so further writes always involve a block erase. Although write combining (if supported by the device) offers advantages, it causes internal fragmentation in the SSD which degrades the sequential read speed. However, such fragmentation can be mitigated by the operating system, using the TRIM command.

Basically, if you're set on one, be sure to load your windows page file, and any other files that the OS uses and writes to frequently on another drive. Ideally, what you want to do with a SSD is place files that you frequently want to read, but don't want to write to very often.

Of course, you may already know all of this.

 

[DreamThrall]

I'd heard that before but forgotten until you mentioned it. Regardless, I was already planning on having the OS and apps on the SSD and everything else (data, user files, etc) on the spindles. Good note about the paging file, I didn't think about that. That might make it worth upgrading to 8GB RAM to ensure that it makes very limited use of the page file.

 

[Rico]

You can also place your paging file on the magnetic disk and just keep the static/less written to files in the SSD

 

[huntingbear]

OS HDD - G.Skill Falcon SSD - $180 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231255 - This is my splurge. I love the idea of going from POST to usable in 7 seconds, and I've got those other SATA disks for storage, which I don't expect to need much of since I keep all my photos, movies and music on my HTPC. This one's got decent reviews, G.Skill has served me well so far with their RAM, and it's is muy affordable compared to the other SSD offerings.Thanks!

NOOOO!!! Wait for Intel's new SSD! WAIT!

http://anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3608

 

[DreamThrall]

Ooooooh... tasty! Thanks for the heads up!