Just wanted some advice on my build and any suggestions to change things before i order end of this month? Budget: £950 ish Main uses of intended build: Gaming with games like Civ 5, starcraft 2, star trek online closet trekie and COD/MW there will also be some burning of video to DVD(wifes wedding business) Previous build information (list details of parts): Case: Antec 900 Monitor: Acer AL1715B 17" TFT 12ms 450:1 (1280x1024) - bought this prior to my last PC dying as i only used it a few months plan to use it in this system to get moneys worth. Storage:2x 750gb samsung drives for storage - will likely raid 1 these. Fan Controller: NZXT Sentry 2 Fans: 3 Cooler Master 12cm SickleFlow System Fan - Blue - to replace the antec 900 ones Will you be overclocking: yes - be sad not too with this set up. These bits below i have ordered via my sister in laws work so are non adjustable however i get them at cost price CPU: i5 2500k Graphics carc: Gigabyte GV-N460SO-1GI GeForce GTX 460 1GB NVIDIA DDR5 Super Overclocked SSD: OCZ Vertex 2 60gb Sata 2 SSD PSU: Coolermaster Gold Series 700w PSU Windows 7 home 64bit oem Bits to order that can be changed: Motherboard: Asus P8P67 Pro - from scan £144.80 - any other suggestions? Memory:8GB 2x4gb Corsair Vengeance 1600 1.5v from whoever has it in stock! -£87ishopen to suggestions if there is better? Cooling: Corsair h50 from scan £52 i could do the h70 but heard about issues installing it into a antec 900 with rad hitting the side panel? CD Rom: Samsung SH-S223C/BEBE 22x DVD±R, 12x DVD±R, DVD+RW x8/-RW x6, SATA, Black, OEM £12.53 from scan will this be ok for burning wedding dvds as well? Sound: Looking at a logitech s220 2.1 £16.32 from scan Reason for this is that my house hold has night shift workers so going for a gaming headset for my sounds and this cheaper speaker on the occasion i want to play a vid/you tube to someone Gaming headset:: Sharkoon RHS200 -17.27 from scan may budget up to £40 no more for something better if there are any recommendations thought not fussed too much about quality in sound as long as they are comfortable and its not too "tinny" Considering adding: Kingston Hyperx Memory Cooling Fan £17 from amazon Are these needed to keep overclocked memory cool or is it a fad? All up its coming close to £950ish pounds so i dont have a great deal of room to say go for a £80 gaming headset or a £250 motherboard...etc Any suggestions folks would be welcome.
Don't bother with a memory fan. Stick with the h50 as it'll be fine considering how cool the SB CPU's are.
H50 is fine, though depending on the intensity of your OC I would consider opting for the Hyper212+ for £18. http://www.scan.co.uk/products/giga...pci-e-20-(x16)-ddr3-2133-sata-6gb-s-sata-raid Reason I would go for this mobo is simply because this, Asus and MSI are good boards so somewhat interchangable. Gigabyte uses old style Bios and as a result has far less issues than the Asus board. But ultimately the reason for buying this board is because it is on the Today Only Deal at scan and is £132 instead of £144
The new Antec version of the H50 is supposed to be slightly better: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/ante...ler-lga775-1155-1156-1366-am2-2plus-am3-3plus Scroll to the bottom of the Today Only page for a couple of £ off.
I will look at that board as well..thought cpu cooler wise personally i wont touch/go near a Fan cooler because of the weight on a board....i just dont like the idea of a lump of metal pulling the back of a mobo just doesn't seem right
Just one point, I wouldn't recommend raid 1 unless you're also going to backup to an external drive / nas etc. If something trashes your data, then Raid 1 will mean you'll have two trashed copies, hence the saying "Raid is not a backup" If you "backup" from drive 1 to drive 2, then you've got a true "point in time" backup. You can either just copy your files over manually, script them up or use a dedicated app. I use ViceVersa (http://www.tgrmn.com/) for this sort of file transfer backup, it really is a great program for that sort of task. I also use http://www.acronis.com/ for my full SSD backups as it works a lot better than the built in windows one.
i see...i am guessing that would need a major virus/trojan to trash my raid in such a way given my OS will be on the SSD but point taken, i can clone drive 1 to drive 2 once a week to back up files..it will only be gaming files/movies/music/photos etc anyhow on the storage drives..
Swap the Asus for the Gigabyte UD4. Much better! (Okay, this is personal preference really, but I much prefer the lower heatsinks on the GB, as the Asus' interfere with coolers, plus it's black!)
Cheers Ph4zed with as much air cooling from the sickleflows, the antec 200mm i think your right on the fact it wont be needed there should be enough air pulling around the memory. Cei, i do like the look of the gigabyte..just hesitant over the sata issue..given the asus board comes with two intel and two marvel 6 gb sata ports currently not effected i will be needing four as well with the 3xdrives and cd rom, that is why i went with the asus board mostly as a choice knowing i wont have to plug anything into those 3.0gb sata ports that could be effected Any thoughts on that?
The asus board is cheaper if you use the Today Only link. At least, it was earlier today. Also if you can bite it a bit, there is a bundle pack of 2x2gb sticks for just under £70, bit of a bargain considering.
The SATA issue is totally, utterly overblown. The degradation of performance doesn't happen straight away - it only occurred in labs after testing that replicated years of running. The boards are being replaced in April, a mere two months away. By then, I'd bet that you won't have had any degradation at all, so it doesn't matter which SATA ports you use. On my UD4 I have the SSD and HD on the SATA III ports, and my DVD-RW on the "dodgy" ones.
The lady has a point! Truth is, most of your storage will be media, so you may as well just have two separate volumes. I'm using RAID1 at the moment for my storage/work drive but wish I could go back in time and simply have two drives. Since the hard drives are also non-server class, they prone to falling out of sync every now and again, which requires a six hour rebuild at the moment. I also keep a copy of my work on an external drive.
