New build - finished

[Redddraggon]

Based around something like this:

LN25348
6GB (3x2GB) Corsair XMS3, DDR3 PC3-12800 (1600) Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 9-9-9-24, 1.65V 28 day installation damage insurance with Scansure available on this product £104.12 £122.34
Intel Core i7 920 D0 SLBEJ Bloomfield 45nm, 2.66GHz, QPI 4.8GT/s, 8MB Cache, 20x Ratio, 130W, Retail

LN27163
Intel Core i7 920 D0 SLBEJ Bloomfield 45nm, 2.66GHz, QPI 4.8GT/s, 8MB Cache, 20x Ratio, 130W, Retail 28 day installation damage insurance with Scansure available on this product £164.17 £192.90
1GB MSI HD 5870, PCI-E 2.0 (x16), 4800MHz GDDR5, GPU 850MHz, 1600 Cores, DP/ 2x DL DVI-I/ HDMI

LN28968
1GB MSI HD 5870, PCI-E 2.0 (x16), 4800MHz GDDR5, GPU 850MHz, 1600 Cores, DP/ 2x DL DVI-I/ HDMI 28 day installation damage insurance with Scansure available on this product £259.95 £305.44
Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R Rev 2, Intel X58, S1366, SLi/Xfire PCI-E 2, DDR3 2200<, USB3 & SATA 6Gb/s

LN32364
Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R Rev 2, Intel X58, S1366, SLi/Xfire PCI-E 2, DDR3 2200<, USB3 & SATA 6Gb/s

Any thoughts?

Case wise, any ideas? I don't want anything too big or too small.

What Hard Drives are considered the most reliable these days? I'm tempted to use a 150GB raptor for the OS, but I want a few bigger drives too.

[Para]

the only change i would make mate are swap the Msi 5870 for one by Asus you get a longer warrenty and they are a bit more reliable.

as for Hdd's i wouls go for a 60Gb Corsair SSD for the boot and any of the Seagate drives for storage as they are some of the most reliable on the market. thats the setup i am running at the moment its rock solid and the SSD is really quick to boot the system !

[Redddraggon]

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/196890?ut ... m=products

Hmm, interesting

[Para]

thats the drive i have and thats a good price ! i was about £150 six months ago ! bah

a tip for cases i wont use anything less than a Lian-Li i use two of them now, a case for life, beautifully engineered and all are fully modular so you can configure them how you want them, for me the front loading Hot Swap drive bays are a genius idea !

http://www.lian-li.com/v2/en/contact_us/index1.php

[Redddraggon]

For the money they seem to cost I'd hope they were bloody good. TBH I fit and forget, so I'm not too bothered about hot swapping.

http://www.microdirect.co.uk/home/produ ... e=googleps

My current case is a Thermal Take and it's rock solid, so I might get the above.

[bambam]

Your config is the same as my new build a couple of months ago and I don't think with hindsight I regret any of the choices.

I do recommend the SSD, of course it's additional cash - net net I could say I took a 5870+SSD instead of a Nvidia 480. IMHO it's more worth having the SSD if you can make it the boot drive but that immediately takes 25GB. After that it's pretty easy to install games to the SSD, it's the mklink command that makes it all possible (i.e. move low-performance data off the SSD but fool the OS/Apps into thinking it's still there).

Having said that, if I was forced to choose between an SSD and an improved cooling solution for the CPU I'd go for the latter e.g. the CoolIT or H50, because that gives you the full overclock goodness on the i7 920 for £60.

FYI my 5870 was giving me the common gray screen of death until I clocked *back* the memory on the graphics card by a seemingly insignificant 50MHz. The crash happened in L4D2 maybe once a day but not with furmark and I didn't want to argue the toss with the retailer so live with the 4% memory underclock from standard. For what it's worth I've still been able to tweak up the 5870 core clock a bit, but not a lot, and haven't seen a crash since underclocking the mem.

Bambam

[Redddraggon]

Gone for this PSU

So the general Consensus elsewhere also seems to be that an SSD is definitely worth it.

[Slartibartfast]

Before you complain that its to expensive , read the reviews .
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820227581

[bambam]

an SSD is definitely worth it

I think all of us that bought an SSD would buy one again. The *overall* performance benefit of an SSD is generally over-stated IMHO but I have a theory that each of us that have installed SSD would *not* subsequently build a new primary gaming rig without one - anyone correct me if they're not in that situation - it's just a theory. But they're FUN.

Unless you have the ultimate rig the fact is it's £120 (say) for the SSD versus same spend on some other computer bits - there's no other real way to say "is it worth £120". My guess is the main alternative would be more money on a graphics card.

SSD users are in two categories really - those with it as the boot drive and those that have added it as a additional data drive and maybe installed games there. FYI Steam relentlessly installs games to the boot drive.

My 80GB SSD is the boot drive, which means Windows is naturally snappy, as are boot times, but Win7 takes up 25GB and I have to carefully manage the remaining 55GB space. If I have a game that will have mega performance anyway and I can install it to the data (hard disk) drive, I do that and keep space free on the SSD. If Steam installs a game to my SSD, I can move big chunks of it off to the hard drive and 'symlink' that data back to the boot drive so it's seamless to the game and steam. I have Flight Sim mostly installed on the SSD so the terrain loads are supersonic. Steam installed Counter-Strike Source on the (boot) SSD and I moved the whole thing over to the hard drive. L4D2 I have mostly on the SSD.

If you install the SSD as a 'data' drive (not boot) you either install the game to the SSD and symlink bits of it across to the boot hard drive to save space, or let the default install put the game on the boot hard drive and move bits across to the SSD to speed them up. I.e. it's kind of the reverse of the SSD boot drive install.

You *will* be chopping up your games to optimise the placement on the SSD, cuz SSD's are small, and choosing whether the SSD is the boot drive or not fundamentally affects whether you'll be moving 'slow' stuff to the hard drive, or moving bits onto the SSD to try and get a speedup.

Below 60GB, I reckon you might as well make the SSD a data drive (unless windows boot time is your main issue), above 60GB I'd recommend using the SSD as the boot drive. At your £110 60GB price point it's a toss up.

Bamz

[Redddraggon]

If you install the SSD as a 'data' drive (not boot) you either install the game to the SSD and symlink bits of it across to the boot hard drive to save space, or let the default install put the game on the boot hard drive and move bits across to the SSD to speed them up. I.e. it's kind of the reverse of the SSD boot drive install.

I'll probably go for the SSD as a boot drive. When I start setting everything up, you'll have to walk me through the symlinking stuff.

[Redddraggon]

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... -PA&tool=3

They are so cheap that I could get two of them and use RAID 0

Or are they cheap pieces of crap not worth getting?

[jackDEFECTORbauer]

If you go for RAID, you will lose TRIM support for the SSD if the drive supports it (I think - my info may be out of date). I got an Intel 2nd gen SSD 80gb about a year ago and it still feels pretty damn quick. They prob have the next gen coming out soon.

This is a good article on SSD's to help you decide.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2829/1

[bambam]

There's a few subtleties with SSD's although they are a pretty straightforward install into Win7. But I wouldn't make it more complex with RAID SSD right now because it's too bleeding edge IMHO. As Jack "suck my balls" Bauer says, 'trim' support on SSD RAID is complex now (and you need 'trim' or the SSD's gunk up over time.)

I'm about to install BFBC2 and there's not much info out there on optimising the install for an SSD, which tells you this is all early days really. My guess is software developers and users will mostly skip the step of trying to balance the big/slow vs small/fast differences of hard disk vs SSD and rely on SSD's getting bigger & cheaper. But in the meantime it's a juggle.

You actually built this new machine yet, or are you still flirting with all the potential goodies ?

Bambam

[Redddraggon]

I've got so far:

Case
DVD-RW
2TB WD HDD
Corsair 650TX PSU
New keyboard.
Windows 7 Pro 64bit (for £30 )
Windows Office 2010

So basically the least important bits. I should get paid again next Thursday and so I plan to get all this next week:

HD5870 (uncertain over 1GB or 2GB at the moment though)
Corsair F60 SSD
i7 930
Gigabyte x58 mobo
3 x 2GB DDR3 Triple Channel (1600)

I was also thinking about getting a Corsair H50 watercooling thing for the CPU

[Redddraggon]

I'm basically just watching the "Today Only" offers on Scan and buying stuff when it's a bit cheaper.

Hopefully a i7 930/mobo/ram combo will come up in the next couple of weeks.