$5000+ Build: Comments?

[Captain Zero]

Some modifications and the final order for my office system, placed this morning:

Case:
COOLER MASTER cosmos S RC-1100-KKN1-GP Black Aluminum ATX Full Tower Computer Case - Retail

Panel:
COOLER MASTER RA-1100-KWN1-GP Transparent Acrylic Side Window Panel - Retail

CPU:
Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 Yorkfield 3.0GHz LGA 775 130W Quad-Core Processor Model BX80569QX9650 - Retail

Mobo:
GIGABYTE GA-X48T-DQ6 LGA 775 DDR3 Intel X48 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail

RAM: 2X (8GB)
CORSAIR DOMINATOR 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1800 (PC3 14400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model TW3X4G1800C8DF - Retail

Video: 2X
SAPPHIRE 100242-1GL Radeon HD 4850 1GB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card - Retail

PSU:
KINGWIN Mach 1 ABT-1000MA1S 1000W ATX / BTX Power Supply - Retail

SSD: 1X
SAMSUNG MCBQE32G5MPP-0VA00 2.5" 32GB SATA II Internal Solid state disk (SSD) - OEM

HHD: 4X
Western Digital Caviar GP WD7500AACS 750GB 5400 to 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM

HHD Cooling: 4X
MASSCOOL SYTRIN Kuformula SHF1 Ultra HDD Cooler – BK - Retail

Optical:
LG Super Multi Blu-ray Disc Burner & HD DVD-ROM Drive Black SATA Model GGW-H20L - Retail

Water Cooling:
Swiftech H20-220-APEX-GT CPU Liquid Cooling Kits - Retail

Flash: 1X
CORSAIR 4GB Flash Survivor Ultra Rugged USB 2.0 Drive Model CMFUSBSRVR-4GB – Retail

Display: 2X
BenQ G2400WD Black 24" 5ms, 2ms(GTG) HDMI Widescreen LCD Monitor - Retail

Input:
Logitech LX310 Black USB Cordless Standard Desktop Laser Mouse Included - OEM

Total:

$5,109.84

Kept my eyes out for deals (the QX9650 from Fry's for $750 was a huge savings and is included here for reference) and did some homework and took in the excellent feedback from the group. Thanks everyone, stay tuned for pictures and a build log.

Coming in November/December, I'll be building my personal Nehalem rig and have a $10k budget set aside for that. Stay tuned.

[loonym]

I'll be curious to know how you make out with the 8gb corsair.

[AngryArtichoke]

Why just two 4850's? You should consider two 4870x2's. You could even buy an equivalent CPU for 400 less (from 750) and put that money into the video card.

Also, the RAM is waaaaaay overpriced.

[silvrhand]

Wait for the I7 instead?

[Leeghoofd]

Nice rig but a total waste of cash mate to survive a few more months...as this PC will be old stuff in a few months... I'm holding off any CPU buy and co till I see what I7 does...

I would have gone with a normal P45 DDR2 mobo and an affordable quad...would have saved ya big cash

[Evil-Fruits|R4z]

Personally I would be more inclined to invest more than 4% of the entire budget of watercooling if I was spending $5k on equipment.

That's a basic entry system but, you could do much more and achieve better results with a a little more investment both in time and financially.

I also agree that the RAM is overpriced even for DDR3 and tbh I wouldn't imagine that, the PSU is the best for the job, I have read reviews for the 500 and 600W Kingwin and they weren't glowing so, I would assume that the 1000W isn't going to be steller. And for the same price and in some cases less you can get a proven performer from Silverstone, Corsair or PC Power & Cooling...have a look at JonnyGuru for excellent PSU reviews.

Just my $0.02

R4z

[Captain Zero]

Why just two 4850's? You should consider two 4870x2's. You could even buy an equivalent CPU for 400 less (from 750) and put that money into the video card.

Also, the RAM is waaaaaay overpriced.

For the video, I wanted the 2GB of ram - haven't found any 4870's with 1GB. Also, the Dominator is pricey but it's cheaper than the stock DDR3 from Corsair - oddly enough.

[Red Evil]

more money than sense?

[jas420221]

Nice rig but a total waste of cash mate to survive a few more months...as this PC will be old stuff in a few months... I'm holding off any CPU buy and co till I see what I7 does...

I would have gone with a normal P45 DDR2 mobo and an affordable quad...would have saved ya big cash

Agreed.



I would also switch out those WD HDDs to Seagate ES.2 drives instead.

I havent heard of Kingpin PSUs, I would stick with Corsair and go with a TX750 or so.

[Slovnaft]

Here's what I think would be best if you absolutely have to build right now.
You're spending a LOT on this system, so you don't want your expensive parts to be obsolete in 3 months.
Get a good, cheap, fun mobo. I'd say the MSI P45 DDR3 mobo, as there's an open box one for $195 on newegg. Lots of peope have had great performance on this board and on water you can expect great OCs on both cpu and memory. I had that gigabyte mobo you're looking at, and I was revolted and chose to RMA. Now before sending it away it I did crank volts with impunity and eventually learn to love it, but it has very little detail control for the serious overclocker and I would not recommend it.
Then get a good, cheaper, fun chip, something that's going to to keep you occupied OCing. This is really your call, but personally i'd pick up a Wolfie. At the very least bump down to a Q9650, take advantage of newegg's recent price dip, and save 500 bones.
Either:
A) Put all this extra cash into better parts a/o cooling or other mods so you won't regret having cheaped in a month or two (i.e. 4870x2...)
or B) SAVE UP FOR NEHALEM!!!!

personally I'm a fan of the latter.

[Slovnaft]

holy craponyourmomsshoes $1000 of RAM??!?
I doubt you can find a motherboard to support 8 freakin gigabyted of 1800mhz DDR3...
I know firsthand that gigabyte mobo won't do it.

[jas420221]

holy craponyourmomsshoes $1000 of RAM??!?
I doubt you can find a motherboard to support 8 freakin gigabyted of 1800mhz DDR3...
I know firsthand that gigabyte mobo won't do it.

Dont they all?

[justthefax]

$5000 and 2 TN 24" monitors?

[Evil-Fruits|R4z]

Regarding the ram, are we all sure that the board will support 8GB in a 4 x2GB array?

I am thinking that it will only support 8GB in a 2 x 4GB array.

R4z

[Wolf132]

If you went with a q5500 + 8 gigs ddr2, thats 1600$ in your pocket.

[jas420221]

Regarding the ram, are we all sure that the board will support 8GB in a 4 x2GB array?

I am thinking that it will only support 8GB in a 2 x 4GB array.

R4z

What makes you say that?

[Captain Zero]

B) SAVE UP FOR NEHALEM!!!!

My OP includes this little nugget at the end: "Coming in November/December, I'll be building my personal Nehalem rig and have a $10k budget set aside for that. Stay tuned."

holy craponyourmomsshoes $1000 of RAM??!?
I doubt you can find a motherboard to support 8 freakin gigabyted of 1800mhz DDR3... I know firsthand that gigabyte mobo won't do it.

I'll need a source for this. I haven't heard any problems with this and I have researched these components exhaustively.

[jas420221]

15k in 4 months... wow you must be a friggin baller. What a monumental waste of money this is, richie rich or not.

[Captain Zero]

15k in 4 months... wow you must be a friggin baller. What a monumental waste of money this is, richie rich or not.

Is that jealousy or something? I'm not sure what a "friggin baller" is but I'll take it as a compliment. The build is what it is and I anticipate getting 2 solid years out of it with little hassles. I'm not cutting corners on quality, if that's what you mean. These are high-end components and I expect them to perform as such.

I don't do cheap knock-offs and my Nehalem build will be as extravagant. Sue me.

[tdream]

I can think of much better ways of spending 5k

[tdream]

Is that jealousy or something? I'm not sure what a "friggin baller" is but I'll take it as a compliment. The build is what it is and I anticipate getting 2 solid years out of it with little hassles. I'm not cutting corners on quality, if that's what you mean. These are high-end components and I expect them to perform as such.

I don't do cheap knock-offs and my Nehalem build will be as extravagant. Sue me.

What is it for gaming, benching, bragging?

[Captain Zero]

What is it for gaming, benching, bragging?

Media system for my office. Needs to handle *all* media types, compression, movies, massive PSDs, loads of stuff. It will also be hooked up to the 72" Plasma behind my office chair for presentations and the occasional late night viewing of Blade Runner.

I can think of much better ways of spending 5k

Let's see you do better. Keeping in mind, I already have the QX9650.

[WhiteFireDragon]

here's my input. the case is just personal preference, so i'm sure you chose that for your own reasons. Lian li's and silverstone towers are also great quality cases.

do you absolutely need an unlocked multi? you could save yourself $500 if you get the Q9650 instead.

the memory and HD is way overkill. the cost difference between a quality 4gb ddr2 vs 8gb ddr3 is about 5 times as much, but you won't nearly see 5 times the performance increase. actually, not even double. and what application do you really need for 8gb of memory?? if you want to overkill, the max i would do is 4gb ddr3.

SSD a great new piece of technology, but it hasn't matured yet. there are still bugs in it and it's always the first people to jump on it that become the alpha testers. for $400 for 32gb, i would wait until prices drop a bit. but if you absolutely need to play with SSD, then look into OCZ's 32gb core series for half the price. as for the 4x WD drives, i'm assuming you need 4 of them for RAID? don't quote me on this, but i think the newer AAKS series have denser platters and might be a little faster. but if you just need these drives for storage, 1TB would last a while, and by the time you use up all the space, there will be 2-5TB available, and prices will have come down a bit; a better option than 4 separate drives now.

for the GPUs, i would also get the 4870x2. i would much prefer a faster core than memory capacity.

PSU don't get obsolete as fast as CPUs or GPUs, so a 1000W one will last a while. i personally trust the HX1000w, as they have great reviews and quality.

if you're going to WC, do it right the first time because it gets really expensive and a big PITA to upgrade once you find out you want better parts. i would custom build one from the beginning.

and lastly, with all that money, wait for nehalem!

EDIT: oops, i was typing this long post while others were also posting. if you make that much money and can afford to max out on almost everything, then i guess it's fine. didn't know you already had the QX9650. but for cooling, i would definitely do a custom build with all that money.

[[XC] gomeler]

I can think of much better ways of spending 5k

Agreed.. honestly this is a huge waste considering how imminent Nehalem is. Here's a better deal

1) Buy an E8600 and run it at 4.7GHz for 3 months till you build your Nehalem system. Total money saved, $700.. aka 1.5 HD4870 X2's.
edit: just saw that you'll be using it for compression and such, stick with the QX9650 and run it at 4.5GHz under water.

2) That motherboard is rather nice, it was my board of choice for LN2/cascade benching for 5 months. It'll do 550FSB with a dualie with ease and 475FSB with a QX.

3) Just get a 2x2GB kit of ram. Those 1800C7 are nice sticks but unless you plan on running DDR3-2000 7-6-5-18 with 2.4v... save some money and buy some more price/performance balanced sticks. These will suffice for your usage unless you plan on stepping into the competitive benching ring and even then they'll be nice enough to get by.

4) Pick up terabyte hard drives... if you are spending that much money on this build, pick up 4 Samsung F1 1TB drives and drop the SSD. SSD technology isn't still really feasible for anything but benchmarking and if you are doing that then you'll need a much faster SSD. Give it another 6 months and pick up some nice 120mb/s read/write SSDs.

5) Unless you plan on having 0 airflow, hard drives don't need cooling, enough said.

6) Buy a HD 4870 X2. If you aren't cutting any corners.. buy the best single-card out there and enjoy life.

7) PSU? Corsair HX1000, can't go wrong with that and it won't blow up on you at 820w or something obscene like that.

8) Buy better screens... Dell makes crap computers but amazing screens

9) Buy a Logitech MX Revolution, your hand will thank you.

10) Water cooling? Meh, piece together your own kit and get real performance

I think that'd a solid start, when Nehalem comes around just buy another 8GB of that ram and a board with 6 slots and be happy with 12GB of ram. The HD4870x2 will still have a lot of bite and possibly still be the top card, so that'll be fine. Those hard drives are fast as hell and 4 of them in RAID1 will give you obscene read speeds. That PSU will last until the end of time, so you are set there. Input/Output is the most useful thing on a PC, 2 nice screens with proper mounts or even 1 27" screen will be much nicer. I personally would opt for a 30" screen but that's just me.

Have fun with the build though, just because you have the money lying around doesn't mean you have to spend it. One final bit, don't assume someone giving you advice is jealous, you don't know what mounds of hardware they themselves are sitting on..

[ReverendMaynard]

Let's see you do better. Keeping in mind, I already have the QX9650.

The whole "5k Budget" thread title gets on peoples nerves. You should expect that. Probably more here than at EOCF where your other thread is on the same subject...same title, except people here aren't as easily impressed.

As for doing better with 5k, absolutely. I'd ditch the QX9650, go for an E8600 and a Foxconn Blackops, grab some LN2 pots and crack some w/r's. All of the money that you pissed into this set up won't make up for the fact that you probably will need to come back to both forums and ask for help overclocking it and you'll most likely never see exactly what that set up is capable of.

You could have gotten the exact same results for $2500 less. Which is why, allot of people respond in your threads like you're out of your mind.

Good luck with your build Capn'.