New build - advice and comments

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dshutts

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Hi guys

My first build in years, and after a week of reading pros and cons, I am thoroughly unsure of my choices. Looking for input from people that know the hardware, can suggest alternatives.

Going socket 1366 pushes the price up a bit too far with the mobo and ram cost (triple channel)

My thinking was future-proofish, quick, quiet. No SLI needed. I don't play games. Budget of 12k excluding the monitors.

So:

Antec Sonata Case: R1000
Coolermaster Silent Pro 500W PSU: have lying around at home.
Asus P7P55 mobo: R1700 (can't see the advantage of the pro and other variants other than for SLI setups)
Core i7 860 CPU: R2900
Zalman CNPS 10X Extreme CPU Cooler (looking at a conservative OC +-3.6Ghz): haven't got price yet
ASUS ATI Radeon HD5850, 1GB DDR5, 256bit: R3400
Kingston 2x2GB RAM pack (on QVL at 1333Mhz): R1280
Seagate 1TB HDD: R750
2 x Samsung T240 monitors

Any comments would be useful. SSD? Anyone have any experience with them? Have a NAS at home, so a 32GB one would be fine from that POV. But I have never had one.
 
dshutts said:
Hi guys

My first build in years, and after a week of reading pros and cons, I am thoroughly unsure of my choices. Looking for input from people that know the hardware, can suggest alternatives.

Going socket 1366 pushes the price up a bit too far with the mobo and ram cost (triple channel)

My thinking was future-proofish, quick, quiet. No SLI needed. I don't play games. Budget of 12k excluding the monitors.

So:

Antec Sonata Case: R1000
Coolermaster Silent Pro 500W PSU: have lying around at home.
Asus P7P55 mobo: R1700 (can't see the advantage of the pro and other variants other than for SLI setups)
Core i7 860 CPU: R2900
Zalman CNPS 10X Extreme CPU Cooler (looking at a conservative OC +-3.6Ghz): haven't got price yet
ASUS ATI Radeon HD5850, 1GB DDR5, 256bit: R3400
Kingston 2x2GB RAM pack (on QVL at 1333Mhz): R1280
Seagate 1TB HDD: R750
2 x Samsung T240 monitors

Any comments would be useful. SSD? Anyone have any experience with them? Have a NAS at home, so a 32GB one would be fine from that POV. But I have never had one.
Click to expand...

Where are those prices from....?
 
i think if ur not into gaming at all, the new 5 series ATI cards are pretty pricey.

For a decent video card that'll still last a while to come, I think you could easily get away with one of the older cards from the 4000 series.

What about a 4870?

also r u going DDR3 RAM?
 
If you're not playing games then why not just buy the cheapest VGA card; and not one of the most expensive? What are you doing with the PC?
 
That memory is DDR3, the i7 860 just doesn't do triple channel ram.
The gfx card question is one I have asked myself, but in the interests of having a future proof PC, I decided to splurge a bit. Also, eyefinity for 3 monitors in the future if I want - I always have tons of windows open and multi monitor setups are the only way to get work done.

Reviews are very glowing, and it seems like bang for buck. My conservatism was not getting the 5870 :)

PC is mostly going to be used for coding, PS work, sysadmin stuff. Hell - now that I think about it I am probably going a bit overkill.

@Zenbaas: Thanks for the links - but I am really happy with the service I get from Phase2, and delivery is free in Gauteng - on top of them beating prices that are cheaper elsewhere.
 
dshutts : You do know that eyefinity is not necessarily going to be out anytime soon, and from what I know, its more dependant on the type of monitor and they need to have DisplayPorts or something.

I wouldhold off on the super expensive graphcis card until eyefinity is out and about and the details of what is requred are common knowledge. (I am also VERY interested in EyeFinity, want to run 6 monitors off a single card...)
 
bunnywhataretoxic: I didn't know that, thanks.

R3400 to me doesn't seem like super expensive, see lots of nvidia's at over 5k around. Maybe will just put a 9600GT in for now and get an SSD - anyone have one, can recommend?

GSkill has a 64GB at +-R2500.
 
dshutts said:
That memory is DDR3, the i7 860 just doesn't do triple channel ram.
The gfx card question is one I have asked myself, but in the interests of having a future proof PC, I decided to splurge a bit. Also, eyefinity for 3 monitors in the future if I want - I always have tons of windows open and multi monitor setups are the only way to get work done.

Reviews are very glowing, and it seems like bang for buck. My conservatism was not getting the 5870 :)

PC is mostly going to be used for coding, PS work, sysadmin stuff. Hell - now that I think about it I am probably going a bit overkill.

@Zenbaas: Thanks for the links - but I am really happy with the service I get from Phase2, and delivery is free in Gauteng - on top of them beating prices that are cheaper elsewhere.
Click to expand...

There's a lot of price beating for them to do if you actually look at the prices of the stores in some of the links ;)
 
dshutts said:
bunnywhataretoxic: I didn't know that, thanks.

R3400 to me doesn't seem like super expensive, see lots of nvidia's at over 5k around. Maybe will just put a 9600GT in for now and get an SSD - anyone have one, can recommend?

GSkill has a 64GB at +-R2500.
Click to expand...

The gskill falcon will make your pc fly.
 
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