Build Advice Violet Haze - Custom Build i7 *Revised Specs*

Please Delete. Thankyou.

 

Not to burst your bubble but this should be in the hardware section or modding section until you actually have some pictures of work / progress, I'm going to assume you never read the project log sticky

 

Ooops, my apologies! If a mod could move this please?

 

PSU i'd personally go with a be quiet, corsair, or cooler master... all come in variety of power outputs, and all are quality brands, with quality products. Cooling, if you want liquid do some research and ask around, there are plenty of knowledgeable people here, but if your planning air cooling, the stock heat sync is decent, but your going to want something that has superior performance if your overclocking...

As for liquid cooling, haven't actually looked into the armorsuit or anything, but some cases require some fabrication / modification to get the radiators to fit and stuff, so again, research and planning is the key there.

 

Hey thanks for the response.

Apparently the Armorsuit PC-P80 is really friendly with watercooling, but like I said in my OP, I don't really know what I will need to get in terms of what components I have chosen.

Does this thread need to be moved still?

Thanks a lot!

 

It does still need to be moved... for your system you can get by with a pump, reservoir, a 360 rad, or a 240 and a 120 if you don't have the room for a 360, tubing, etc. etc. All dippends, and I'm noob to watercooling, so may be worth making a thread asking for some suggestions based on your hardware choices...

 

I've used one of the 30GB OCZ solid state drives, and in my opinion it was a waste of money. The machine I used it on was not noticably faster running XP, Vista or 7, with or without all the ssd tweaks I could find. I'd spend the money on a fast mechanical drive, or spend more on a 'decent' SSD.

 

Mechanical drive as in something like the WD Velociraptors?

 

Yes something along those lines, or a SAS 15krpm drive.

 

I'll look into them. Thanks for that!

I only really wanted a small sized SDD for Vista and have the 1.5TB HDD for games, music, files, videos, pictures, etc etc.

But I suppose I should just get a small capacity HDD like the ones you suggested!

 

Even a 1TB HDD would make a great boot drive - they're seriously fast, and quite a lot cheaper than an SSD.

You could even run two of them in RAID0 for the cost of an SSD, although you really wouldn't want to store anything precious on them - twice the failure rate (at least) of non-RAID drives.

 

The Seagate Barracuda 1.5TB any good?

Will it still make a great bootdrive, if I partition some of it for Vista Ultimate 64bit? Then have the rest for everything else? Or not?

 

You could do it that way, sure. It'd still make a pretty good boot drive.

Have a look at the Bit-Tech review.

 

Yeah, I was interested in RAID originally, but like you say i have a lot of precious memories and files that I couldn't bear to lose with that risk, so I think I will stick with partitioning a 1.5TB HDD. Is partitioning easy to do or?

Awesome. Will now give it a read! Thanks!

 

Partitioning is very easy once you get the hang of it. Have a google around for a good guide, that'll help you.

Personally I'd just go with a 1TB drive for now, then, if needed, add another one later.

If you have a lot of data you don't want to lose, have a think about a proper RAID array for extra redundancy. That, or some kind of NAS which does backup, so you don't have all your eggs in one basket.

 

Yeah after reading your review I'm now torn between getting one 1.5TB Seatgate or two Samsung 1TB Spinpoints. Hrmmm.

Yeah perhaps, what number in RAID would that be?

Thanks once again for your help mate!

 

The two RAIDs which are good for data backup are RAID1, which can end up being slower, and RAID 5, which makes an array capable of redundancy and other fancy bits and pieces.

RAID 5 needs 3+ disks and a decent hardware controller to work efficiently (onboard ones simply don't cut it), making it more expensive.

For a NAS there are quite a few out there that run in RAID5, keeping your data safe and secure over a network connection.

Have a google around for more about RAID.

 

Haha I'm going to pretend I'm not confused

Just reading up on RAID, makes me mind go boom!

I think I'm gonna let RAID drop from my mind until I decide between the 1 vs 2 HDD war going on in my head.

I mean with the Spinpoint 1TB just overtaking the Barracuda 1.5TB by a margin, if they do a 1.5TB Spinpoint soon then theoretically it will be superior to the Barracuda.

Maybe I'm gonna have to wait a bit until I finally decide on the HDD setup.

 

The fastest 1TB drive has (just) become the new Seagate 7200.12 1TB.

For the NAS option, there's one of these.

Add two 1TB drives for everything, and although it's pretty expensive, peace of mind is worth the cost tbh.

For your sound card I'd recommend looking at the Asus Xonar range - they're better than the X-Fi's.

For your PSU I'd say 850W would be enough, depending on whether you want to add another GTX295. If you do, then something around 1000W would be better I think, just to be sure. If you're unsure, I'd just plump for an 850W job, then if you decide to grab another card later, you can change PSU at the same time.

 

Really? I mean I know Asus is pretty much Queen Bee overall, but I heard that the X-Fi's especially the Professional Fatal1ty ones are the leading ones? Or am I mistaken?

Will the Asus Zonar and the Logitech Z-5500 5.1 go hand in hand together do you think?

Yeah, the PSU is really bugging me.

Do they do 850W PSU's with UPS? The UPS factor is something I really would like as the area I live in is for some reason rather prone to powercuts, and to add to that I generally forget when my electricity is going to run out, so I normally end up sitting in the dark with like 5+ hours of lost work haha!

Or should I just get a 1000W PSU with UPS now to be on the safe side? As in addition to the specs I'm going for I will be using a lot of modding, especially lighting. Not to mention the Watercooling.