New pc build - comments invited

[Specto]

So my PC is starting to feel a little aged (given it doesn't even meeting the minimum specs of the latest games) so I've decided to put together a new one.

Any comments or suggestions would be welcome.

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CASE             Coolermaster CM 690 II Advance
MOTHERBOARD      Asus P6X58D-E Motherboard
MEMORY           6GB (3x2GB) Corsair XMS3, DDR3 PC3-12800 (1600) TR3X6G1600C9
CPU              Intel Core i7 930 D0 SLBKP Bloomfield 45nm, 2.8 GHz,
HD1              WD Caviar SATA2 750Gb 32MB cache black
HD2              WD Caviar SATA2 750Gb 32MB cache black
PSU              Antec TruePower new modular 750w
CPU Cooler       Gelid Tranquillo
GFX              Asus GeForce GTX 470
DVD              LiteOn IHAS324-32 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black)
OS               Microsoft Windows 7 Professional - 64 bit
Thermal Paste    Arctic Cooling MX-3


Going to use keyboard, mouse on CRT monitor from old PC for the moment. Might pick up a nice LCD at some point later.

Comes in at just over £1350

1st hard drive is for OS, apps and games (likely to be partitioned)
2nd hard drive is for audio/video media, etc. (I already have a drive in my current PC with this data so might just move the disk over instead of buying a replacement) .

I suspect that I will eventually pick up a solid state disk at some point during this system's life-cycle (once they become better value), hence SATA 6Gbps support on motherboard. However right now I don't think I can afford a large enough one.

[Lupus]

Having just upgraded the home machine to W7 on an SSD, I can heartily recommend the Intel X25-V. Retails at around £80, it's only 40GB, but for your OS and core apps only it's plenty big enough. You have to shift your Users folders and pagefile/hibernation file onto the bigger disks, but the boot times and general OS performance is much better (like, orders of magnitude better).

I'm not convinced that the performance/price ratio is good enough for regular apps, but I'd be prepared to bet that the improved OS performance will indirectly lead to better loading performance for games, etc., since you won't have the heads on a single large (even RAIDed) disk thrashing between OS tasks and game loading.

[RealDark]

Does W7 not have Vista's all consuming appetite for HD space then?

[Lupus]

Not really. 16GB used on my system drive now, and more than 5 GB of that is Visual Studio and Office.

[RealDark]

Ah that is good, makes the SSD OS drive concept much more viable.

[Terrahawk]

A word of warning, my new PC has that very motherboard and RAM, but there is apparently a known issue I am experiencing atm.

The machine is only seeing 4GB of the 6GB. I have spoken to the folks I got it from and they suggested a couple of temporary fixes (one of which worked), but I thought it might be woth mentionign to you.

[Specto]

Hmm, perhaps I should swap that ram for something a little different then. Seems odd since that RAM is on Asus' certification list. Terra, what do the temporary fixes involve?

edit: Done a little research and it looks like causes range from dodgy ram through to incorrect CPU install (bent pins) through to bad overclocking settings. Sigh - why is it never simple?
http://i4memory.com/f54/asus-x58-6-12gb ... led-19200/

edit 2: Hmm possible solutions from a more official source. They put the blame on the intel memory controller and say this is not an Asus specific problem (but it is the asus forums so who knows how true it is):
http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?id= ... uage=en-us

[Anon]

Just to add my experiences, I decided it was time for an upgrade after my old machine started having some obscure issues and built almost this exact system this evening. Only real difference is OCZ RAM (same speed, same timings, same amount) and added my old HD4870 for graphics (which thankfully wasn't causing the problems in the previous machine).

Long story short, I installed the CPU very carefully and upped the RAM voltage to 1.64v as suggested immediately and I've had absolutely no problems, straight into Win7 with 6GB right off the bat and no weird behaviour at all. Most problem-free build I've ever done, hopefully it stays that way!

Also, big thanks Lupus for the SSD tip, I did exactly as you've done and the system absolutely flies through boot and getting around the OS.

[Tron]

i7 systems FTW

[Zeshin]

My old harddrives are starting to act up (they're not always detected unless booted from unplugged power), so I've been contemplating getting an SSD drive for OS. The SSD I've found is a Corsair Force Series F60 60GB with remarkable performance whilst still relatively cheap. The alternative is an ordinary cheap 1TB SATA drive for about the third of the price of the SSD. Being who I am, I've made some tables in excel to compare performance...

The SSD drive has a read spec of 285 mb/s with an access time of 0.2 ms. The SATA drive has a read spec of 150 mb/s with an access time of 8 ms. Assuming (guessing) Windows loads 5000 files averaging 0.5 Mb, the drives access and read them in 9.8 seconds and 56.7 seconds respectively. The SSD would be almost six times faster than the SATA, for three times the cost. Interestingly, it is the file access time of the SATA drive that make out over 70% of the loading time (40 times longer than the SSD), meaning the SSD is perfect for random access, such as loading an OS with many small parts, rather than sequential access, such as loading a game with large resource files. Admittedly the near twice read performance of the SSD is impressive, but the small size (60Gb compared to 1000Gb) makes it very cost inefficient.

My conclusion is however that, while the SSD is well worth it, it's still alot of money and as such is more an enthusiast (or company) option. It's the "next big thing" though and prices will drop (at least down from the almost 30 times the gigabyteprices compared to SATA) over the coming year(s). Also, given that I had to spend all my cash on suits and shoes for an upcoming wedding (not mine), I have little choice than to wait...

[Tron]

You need to drink more zesh!

[Specto]

Some great info here people so thanks loads
Zeshin's conclusions tally with my own - SSDs are great but a little too expensive right now. I'd rather wait and spread the cost, buying the SSD later for better value.

Anon - Any chance of a part number for that OCZ ram ?
I figure if Terra has experienced problems with that RAM but you haven't with your ram then it might be worth switching...

Also, did you use the stock cooler on your build Anon or something else? How does the stock cooler perform/sound?

I am actually seriously considering just making do with the stock CPU cooler to reduce risk of problems. I've never really had to fit a cooler like this before and I can see it might be very easy to screw it up in a subtle way. A couple of other friends say the stock cooler isn't too bad. The case should give fairly good cooling.

[Anon]

Anon - Any chance of a part number for that OCZ ram ?
I figure if Terra has experienced problems with that RAM but you haven't with your ram then it might be worth switching...

Also, did you use the stock cooler on your build Anon or something else? How does the stock cooler perform/sound?

I am actually seriously considering just making do with the stock CPU cooler to reduce risk of problems. I've never really had to fit a cooler like this before and I can see it might be very easy to screw it up in a subtle way. A couple of other friends say the stock cooler isn't too bad. The case should give fairly good cooling.

RAM - OCZ3G1600LV6GK
OCZ Gold 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C8 1600MHz Triple Channel Kit
1600MHz RAM Speed, CAS 8-8-8-24 Timings, 1.6-1.65v VDIMM, Lifetime Warranty with OCZ.

OCZ RAM seems to divide opinion a bit, but I put my old pair of dual channel kits through some serious torture on the old system and I didn't have a single failure, so I went with them again.

As for the cooler, I actually went through that exact thought process. I did fit aftermarket cooling on my last system and it was fine, but I decided to go stock cooling this time around with the option of upgrading it later if the system is happy and I find I need to OC a bit. It's worth noting however that the cooler comes with a thermal pad on the contact surface which will melt into the processor surface over time and make changing to aftermarket cooling more difficult. What I actually did was buy some Arctic Silver 5 compound and used the excellent guidance on their website to clean the contact surfaces and applied that instead. It should theoretically improve temps a bit, and more importantly it'll be a relatively easy job to switch to aftermarket cooling later since I'll be using the same compound and I still have half of it left.

As for temps, I'm expecting to lose about 5 degrees when the compound passes the break-in period, but at the moment I'm idling at 35-40 and hit 75 at full load on stock speeds. I've read that around 73 is where you want to top out at to keep the CPU healthy long term, but I'd be interested to hear anyone else's figures on that. Sound is pretty average, probably the loudest component in my system but so was my aftermarket cooler when I had fanspeed up for games in the last system. It's just the usual background hum, doesn't bother me at all but everyone's different in that regard.

The important point however is that I had games that were CPU-limited and would load my old C2D overclocked to 2.8 up to 100% on both cores. With the i7, the exact same test only produces a max of 25-30% load on two cores and around 10% on the others. I've yet to really find any everday use (maybe besides encoding video or something) that loads the CPU anywhere near 100% so for me at the moment, 100% load temps are irrelevant anyway.

EDIT: Regarding RAM, you will probably need to set the speed and timings in BIOS manually since it defaults to "safe" settings which are much slower. I can give you some guidance on that since the BIOS has at least six times more options than my previous ones and it took me a while to be sure which ones I should be changing.

[Anon]

Sorry for double-posting, I've got some proper time this weekend to put the system through its paces so I'll update this post accordingly since it may be helpful.

Firstly, started getting the occasional crash which was RAM-related, moved the command rate from 1T to 2T (I'm not sure I've ever had a system stable on 1T anyway) which seems to have stabilized that quite nicely, but I've not done enough testing to say for certain yet. Running 8-8-8-24 as suggested by OCZ at 1600. It may well be worth doing some research on RAM brands with this particular motherboard because there may be better options.

I managed to get temps up into the 80s on Prime95 with an ambient temp of 22C, not too happy about that but I'm going to give it a couple of weeks and see how it goes. On this evidence though I'd have to recommend aftermarket cooling, it really shouldn't be that hard to install and the CPU's perfectly secure once the load lever is closed anyway so worst case is you don't get good contact and you'll know immediately because of high temps. The stock cooler is a decent size and not a disaster acoustically but it's got the push-pin mounting system which is notorious for making poor contact with the CPU.

[Specto]

Go on, list the entire system spec, you know you want to really
Hmm sounds like I will go with the aftermarket cooler then - I don't want the chip running quite that hot.
I will use decent thermal compound. I've used MX-2 before so I guess MX3 will be similar. I like that fact that it isn't capacitive or conductive. The application doesn't worry me. What I haven't figured out is what substance to use to clean old compound off CPUs. Instructions seem to be mixed on this.

I am not really into system optimisation - such as overclocking or tweaking RAM to it's max settings. So long as it all works reliably at the normal clock speed I'll be happy. As I understand it that means the RAM will be running at 1066. The only reason I am buying the 1600 now is so that if I upgrade the CPU in the future I don't have to upgrade the RAM. (And who knows once it's been working a while maybe I might try an OC but it's not a priority).

[Fellblade]

To clean old compound off of CPUs, use nail varnish remover.

[Anon]

Go on, list the entire system spec, you know you want to really
Hmm sounds like I will go with the aftermarket cooler then - I don't want the chip running quite that hot.
I will use decent thermal compound. I've used MX-2 before so I guess MX3 will be similar. I like that fact that it isn't capacitive or conductive. The application doesn't worry me. What I haven't figured out is what substance to use to clean old compound off CPUs. Instructions seem to be mixed on this.

I am not really into system optimisation - such as overclocking or tweaking RAM to it's max settings. So long as it all works reliably at the normal clock speed I'll be happy. As I understand it that means the RAM will be running at 1066. The only reason I am buying the 1600 now is so that if I upgrade the CPU in the future I don't have to upgrade the RAM. (And who knows once it's been working a while maybe I might try an OC but it's not a priority).

The system spec really isn't much different besides a few brand variations - (borrowing your format):

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CASE             Coolermaster CM 690 II Advance
MOTHERBOARD      Asus P6X58D-E Motherboard
MEMORY           OCZ Gold 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C8 1600MHz Triple Channel Kit
CPU              Intel Core i7 920 D0 SLBKP Bloomfield 45nm, 2.67 GHz,
HD1              Intel X25-V 40GB SSD (OS)
HD2              Samsung F1 Spinpoint 500GB 32MB cache
HD3              Samsung F1 Spinpoint 1TB 32MB cache
PSU              Corsair HX750 Modular (750w)
GFX              HIS Radeon HD4870 512MB
DVD              LiteOn IHAS324-32 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black)
OS               Microsoft Windows 7 Professional - 64 bit
Thermal Paste    Arctic Silver 5

Good article on RAM timings with i7s and the real-world performance increases at faster speeds (short summary: not much) here. From my experience, 1600 is achieveable but you need to loosen the timings and since you're upping the BCLK to do it, CPU speed, heat etc. are affected (as Specto quite rightly pointed out to me just now). I'd have gone for lower speed memory but the price difference a year on from that article is negligible anyway.

I'm trying 1066 with tighter timings (7-7-7-20/1T) for now, once I've found the limits I'll slacken everything off and run with it for a month or so, then maybe look at aftermarket cooling later. I'm still very impressed with the performance bump over a Core2 at the same clock speed.

Good tip on compound removal Fell, certainly easier to get hold of quickly than the "high purity isopropyl alcohol" that Arctic Silver recommend..

[Specto]

Hmm very similar build.
Cheers for the tips all!

Well some places say that nail varnish remover can leave residue. Meh, hopefully academic for the moment anyway.
amazon seems to sell high purity isopropyl alchohol - and apparently most customers buy it with Arctic Silver
http://www.amazon.co.uk/ISOPROPANOL-Iso ... pd_cp_ce_3

If you need low-lint wipes I picked up these. Haven't used them but they are very low lint:
http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=45637

[Specto]

Well I've ordered the component from scan pretty much as originally listed. I went with the Corsair RAM in the end on the grounds that (a) I am not going to over clock (b) scan don't seem to sell the OCZ ram. I switched the PSU for the same one as Anon because it is more efficient.
I will let you know how it goes once built.

[Fellblade]

That PSU was the same one I specced for Pants' build. It's fucking awesome. It's built like a tank.

[Colt]

I've had the Corsair HX620 in my work PC for over 3 years and it's never let me down, they're really awesome PSUs with the added bonus that you don't have more wires than you need in your case

[Specto]

RAH! Well it's all arrived and seems to be working. In the end had to switch the Asus gfx for gainward (Asus was not in stock despite being listed as in stock when ordered). It's whisper quiet (well unless you use the gfx card) and super fast. Just finished copying all my data from the old pc.

Build went fine, but the cooler installation took a while.
Modular PSU has doubtless helped, but despite my best efforts it's still a mess of cables inside. Seems to be a design flaw in the case because when you mount a hard disc in the second slot down you can't connect a right-angled sata connector properly (and you have to use one to get the side of the case on). Still plenty of other bays available.

Fell - I see what you mean about that PSU. Reeks of quality - it comes in a box with the usual padding but the PSU itself was in a black felt bag!!

The system has been through about 3 cold boots now and as yet has not exhibited memory mis-detection errors. It is using the latest BIOS. Fingers crossed

Now back to hooking up peripherals...
Lets hope my wireless dongle is the only thing which doesn't work with Windows 7.