My build so far

[Bolas]

Budget of about $7000.

3 refurbished 30" NEC monitors, $2200
1 Intel Core i7 980X, $1070
1 Intel X25-M G2 SSD 160GB, $470
1 Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 64mb cache 7200 RPM HDD, $110
1 Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-bit OS, $130
1 Corsair Obsidian 800D, $300
1 Silverstone Strider ST1500 power supply, $400
1 Panasonic Blu-Ray Burner, $190

That leaves around $2400 to get motherboard, memory, and graphics cards.

I'm roughly planning $400 for the motherboard, $400 for the memory, and $1600 for the graphics cards.

Undecided on motherboard still.

Memory, I'll probably get either 12 GB Corsair Dominator 1600MHz or 6 GB Corsair Dominator GT 2000 MHz. Guess I'm just a sucker for flashy colored heat sinks.

Graphics cards, I'm thinking either dual Radeon HD 5970's or triple Nvidia Fermi 480GTX's, depending on which performs better and is actually available. In either case, that's around $1500, leaving me $100 to get some nice MDPC-X sleeving.

I plan to water cool the cpu and hopefully the motherboard chipset as well. Still need to order that, but I am waiting for a tax refund to move from stock cooling to water cooling, so don't need to get that in initial budget.

Any advice on this build would be appreciated.

[noroger]

nothing to add really, looks like a very high end machine. There a few things I want to point out that don't involve the box. You didn't include a keyboard, mouse, headphones w/ sound card or a sound system or even a webcam... There is not fun working on an expensive machine when you bought the cheapest sound/user interface.

[Bolas]

nothing to add really, looks like a very high end machine. There a few things I want to point out that don't involve the box. You didn't include a keyboard, mouse, headphones w/ sound card or a sound system or even a webcam... There is not fun working on an expensive machine when you bought the cheapest sound/user interface.

Those are all things that I can upgrade later with birthday &/or Christmas money. I want to have a system that will have room for them, but they don't have to be purchased with the initial funds. A $200 sound card or $100 headphones is something I could reasonably get for a present, but a $700 graphics card is not realistic. Nobody likes me that much.

I have a decent mouse and a workable keyboard, and some cheap headphones that will get me by until then.

I don't web cam that much, and when I do, it's on my wife's laptop with all of us gathered around to visit with grandma. She'll still have a laptop, so no reason to spend the funds on the webcam just yet.

I do plan to get good sound, but I'm not so keen on sacrificing graphics power to do so, so I'll wait instead. Hopefully the built-in sound on whatever motherboard I pick will be at least decent for a while.

[noroger]

all good as long as you thought everything through.
A friend of mine built a ~$1500 gaming machine, which he uses with a 17" monitor...

What motherboards do you have in mind?

[Bolas]

Originally I was thinking of getting one with SATA III 6Gb/s, but then decided on a boot drive without SATA III, so that feature doesn't matter now and it's opened up a bunch of option. Almost too many possibilities.

I'm currently considering:

Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD7
EVGA Classified 3-way SLI
Asus P6T7 Supercomputer
Asus P6T6 WS Revolution
Asus Rampage III extreme

Each one has their features and drawbacks, but all of them should fit into a Corsair 800D case (I hope) and should accept a core i7 980X processor. In other words, the Classified SR-2 is not an option and neither is the Classified 4-way SLI.

The UD7 and the R3E have USB3, which is nice. A bit of "future-proofing".

P6T6 and P6T7 have a lot of PCIe slots, which is nice. Lots of options for sound cards, network cards, other add on cards.

Classified can be cooled with a single readily available chip set block, which is nice. Fewer blocks means less tubing and less pressure drops, giving better flow rates and better cooling.

For the P6T7, I would have to order MIPS blocks from Germany, which could be a bit of a pain to get shipped to Nebraska, because as far as I know, other companies aren't making custom water blocks for them.

For the R3E, it's not out yet and nobody yet has water blocks for it, so that's kind of a pain. But it is certified for four-way SLI with 480GTX's, from what I understand. Not that I'll probably do more than 3 graphics cards, but still...

Two of them are red and black, three of them are blue and black. Either color scheme would work for me.

What benefits and drawbacks did I miss?

[noroger]

EVGA has great RMA service if that is relevant to you.
Ranging by price:
Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD7 - ~$350 CAD
Asus P6T6 WS Revolution - ~$350 CAD
Asus Rampage III extreme - ~$370 CAD
EVGA Classified 3-way SLI - ~$400 CAD
Asus P6T7 Supercomputer - ~$430 CAD

Also, check out these threads
Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD - http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...te+GA-X58A-UD7
Asus P6T6 WS Revolution - http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...6T6+Revolution
Asus Rampage III extreme (nothing useful yet) - http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...ge+III+extreme
EVGA Classified 3-way SLI - http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...VGA+Classified
Asus P6T7 Supercomputer - http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...ight=Asus+P6T7

Skim through them, check if they have any major bugs/drawbacks

[acicula]

Edit reading comprehension failure

no sr-2

[Bolas]

Edit reading comprehension failure
no sr-2

I was very tempted by SR-2, but to get a pair of Xeon 6-core chips would have blown too large of a part of my budget, and I wasn't willing to make the necessary sacrifices in order to go with the SR-2. I would have needed a larger case ($300 or so more money), and a more expensive motherboard ($200 more). If my processor budget is $1k-$1.2k, I could not have gotten twin 6-core cpu's, and the extra $500 on the case and mobo would cut my processor budget back to the point where I can get just a single quad core xeon -- not worth it.

Alternately, I could cut back on gpu's or on cooling, but there again, not something I'm keen on doing since I don't need the extra cores all that much for the main things that I do. A six core cpu should crunch and fold adequately, and with hyper-threading, it'll run six times as many threads as my current two-core non-hyper-threaded laptop, so it'll still be a lot more luxury than I'm used to having.

-Bolas

[perkam]

There is a system you can make, with your budget, that will allow you to blow 980X systems out of the water.

The question is, are you interested in such a system

Perkam

[Bolas]

There is a system you can make, with your budget, that will allow you to blow 980X systems out of the water.

The question is, are you interested in such a system

Perkam

My budget is $7011 total. I've spent $2206 for three 30" NEC monitors. If you can get a better deal than that for displays, I would be surprised. Plus, that's the setup I want. So let's go with that.

That leaves $4805.

I wanted a Blu-Ray burner so that I can back up photos and such to Blu-Ray. I chose the Panasonic because it can do dual layer disks, which the LG couldn't do. That was $190, leaving $4615.

I wanted a relatively future-proof power supply that could handle multiple graphics cards, even three or four fermi's. So I went with the Silverstone Strider ST-1500, which got decent reviews on jonnyguru.com. I probably could have gone with a Corsair 1000HX and saved some money, but I didn't. I like the fully modular power supply better than the mostly modular one as well. Hopefully, this power supply will be "future proof" and I'll never need to buy another one no matter what builds I do in the future. So that's $400, leaving $4215.

I want a fast boot drive. Intel 160GB X25-M G2 SSD at $470 seemed like a decent pick. Would you have done different? That leaves $3745.

I don't need a ton of storage -- 1TB should be more than adequate. I'm a bit more concerned with speed than with energy usage, so I went with the Caviar Black due to it's large cache and decent rotational speed. For $108 each, I'm tempted to get a pair of them and do RAID-1 for easy backup, but I'll see how much I have left after I finish my build. I'd rather not go below 1TB for my data drive, and I don't really need more, so this seemed like a good pick. That leaves $3637.

I wanted Windows 7 Pro because I like the option of running Windows XP to play some of my older collection of games that don't run on Vista or 7. And 64-bit so that it supports more than 3GB of memory. That's $134, leaving $3503.

I was looking for a large full tower case that was fairly noob friendly to build with for my first build. Corsair Obsidian 800D seemed like a decent pick. $295 down leaves $3208.

I splurged a bit on the processor and went with a core i7 980X for $1072. Probably could have gone with a core i7 930 for $199 plus tax. Don't really need more than six cores, I would think, but if it can fit into the budget, sure. I'm down to $2136 unspent in my budget.

Currently thinking about $1248 for a pair of ATI Radeon HD 5970's. That would leave me with $888.

Thinking about an EVGA Classified motherboard for $355. That would leave me with $533. Considering some Corsair Dominator GT memory for $439, which would leave $94, just about right for some MDPC-X sleeving.

I'll add some water cooling and a sound card as I get more cash over the next few months, or maybe just charge it and hope the wife doesn't notice *grin*. but the basics would be done and on budget with the picks I've got going so far. I think it'd be tough to get a better cpu than the 980X or more powerful graphics cards than the twin 5970's -- at least as far as things that are currently actually available in stores.

What would you have done differently with the same budget? My preference would be to get the basics right in order to get a functional high end system and then add in small things to improve the build over time as I get more funds. So in other words... leave out things that aren't critical to the initial operation of the system (sound card) rather than add them in and skimp on things that are tougher to upgrade later without wasting money (cpu, gpu).

I'd love to see your approach to a system with this budget. See what you can do.

[Bolas]

Ok, I've decided on the Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD7 motherboard. It's the only decent USB3 / SATA 6GB/s board that's already out, and I'm tired of waiting. $2136 unspent in budget, subtract $355 for the board, leaves $1781.

I'll order a Radeon HD 5970 and hope that I get one of the next shipment that Provantage gets. Subtract another $626 leaves me with $1155.

I'll go with 12 GB of G.Skill PI series memory, 7-8-7-24-2N at 1600MHz and 1.5V. $367 gone leaves me with $788.

I'm starting to think that I bought too much power supply, sigh. Ah well, hopefully it'll last for years.

Now then... cooling for a Corsair Obsidian 800D case for a cpu, chipset, and graphics card, for $788. Wonder if I can do dual loop water cooling for that much?

[perkam]

Bolas. The system I am talking about is a Dual Gulftown system with the EVGA W555 motherboard.

Thats the equivalent of having two 980Xs in a single system, and plus, on that motherboard, they clock to 4.2Ghz++ on air.

It also supports 4-way SLI.

However, it looks like you have already spent a good portion of your budget so that may seem unlikely (CPUs and Mobo combined cost is $2,500, plus mobo is not released yet)

Let me know if you want more info.

Perkam

[Bolas]

I really wanted that system bad, but I did some math first. I figured cpu's at $1k each for 2 of them is $2000 (plus tax), motherboard at $600, case at $600, monitors at $2200, operating system at $130, solid state drive at $500, hard disk drive at $100, memory at $400, Blu-Ray at $160 left a total of less than $300 for graphics cards and cooling solutions. Not enough to power the displays. I wasn't willing to sacrifice on the displays and graphics in order to have double the number of cores at a lower clock speed, so I had to pass on that, even though it would be an awesome setup. I want a system that's well balanced and zippy in everything I do, not one that sacrifices a bunch in one area in order to get good scores on a benchmark that isn't related to how I use my computer.

Now, if I had double the budget, I would go with the SR-2, twin six-core Xeons, and four fermi 480 cards, all individually water-cooled with seven loops in an Extended Ascension case. But before I do that, I would instead build a second $7k system for my wife. So it would actually have to be quadruple the budget, which isn't too likely.

[Helloworld_98]

for the SSD I'd pay the extra for a Crucial C300 256GB

cooling I'd get a Venomous X for the CPU with a couple of yate loon fans, quad rad or 3x140mm rad for graphics and get two GTX 470's instead of the 5970, costs about the same but the new 400's scale ridiculously well so should beat the 5970 and have higher minimum fps.

[Bolas]

For the 480 GTX's, I'm worried about three things. Power consumption, heat, and noise. I'd get two or three 480's instead of 470's, most likely.

I could alleviate the noise and some of the heat with water cooling, but the power consumption would still be a pain.

I basically figure that I"ll wait for the next gen of fermi with a die shrink and a more developed technology. Smaller sizes of transistors should do well to alleviate the heat and power issues and might also help with the noise.

Just get a 5970 to get me by for now and then upgrade in a year or so.

The other factor against the fermi from my standpoint is that nvidia surround isn't ready to go yet, so I can't plug in my three monitors. Eyefinity is available and works now. I'll just wait on 2nd generation fermi to go with nvidia, by then they should be able to drive 3 monitors and cause less power consumption, heat, and noise.

As for the crucial C300 256GB, I almost went with that, but in the end I decided that it had not yet been proven reliable whereas the Intel is known to be good. I figured get a 160GB Intel drive now, and then when the die shrink plus 3 layer cells hit and enabled even larger and cheaper SSD's, with built in SATA 6GB/s, then I'd upgrade with a new Intel SSD and give the old one to my wife for her laptop.

[Hulabaloon]

Now then... cooling for a Corsair Obsidian 800D case for a cpu, chipset, and graphics card, for $788. Wonder if I can do dual loop water cooling for that much?

I'm planning this myself atm - I've had my i7 build in an 800D running on air for about a month or so, until i get the money together for dual loop watercooling.

Loop 1
EK-Supreme HF High Flow - Acetal $72.95
EK-FB KIT GA X58 (UD7) Full Board NB/SB Water Block - Nickel/Acetal $149.95
XSPC RX360 Extreme Performance Radiator $94.95
Swiftech MCP350 12 VDC Pump $54.50
Scythe Gentle Typhoon 120 mm (1450rpm) x 3 $44.85


Loop 2
EK-FC5970 - AMD/ATI Radeon HD 5970 Series Reference Design - Acetal $144.95
XSPC RX240 Extreme Performance Radiator $71.95
Swiftech MCP350 12 VDC Pump $54.50
Scythe Gentle Typhoon 120 mm (1450rpm) x2 $29.90

*This loop requires Mr Armageddon's 800d bottom radiator mod


Shared between both loops
XSPC Dual 5.25" Bay Reservoir for Dual Laing DDC $54.95


Total: $774.35 plus Fittings and tubing

[scottbenson8]

I also am planning a new build and have been doing tons for research on components and I find that you are using many of the same components I was planning on. I would definately go with the intell sdd as it has gotten better reviews that the crucial real ssd. As far as random reads and app loading if I remember correctly.(im a gamer) As far as graphics cards go one of the reviews I read said if you want to go 3 monitors you had to buy 2 fermi cards. Not sure if they meant you could use all 3 in unison. I woulnd'nt get a fermi in your case as your monitors are not 3d ready. I would buy a couple 5970 also. Mare sure and check the waranty's as some manufacturers give a longer warrenty on Gpu's ( check EVGA out ). I personally would have chosen asus p6x58d as it comes with 5.1 integreted sound. (perfect for those psyko 5.1 gaming headset $300.00) This saves some money from going with a sound card and it saves a slot in most cases. I would get the corsair h50 for a cpu cooler as its easy and the performance is good. I cant stand the newer coolers that take up half the room in my case as it is a real eye sore. This would make a single loop water water cooling Gpu more effencient IMO. Just my 2 cents.

[Bolas]

Hulabaloon, nice parts list there! The pumps fit inside the reservoirs in that case, correct? And they share one thing of fluid? Just making sure I understand correctly. Nice to see that it is possible to fit two loops into the budget. I'm starting to drool over being able to build this case. I'm also thinking that I'll for sure go over my initial budget -- I just can't resist dropping some money on sleeving. It's a pity that you have to mod the 800D to fit a dual radiator in the bottom, you would think that Corsair would have set the case up to do that in the first place. Maybe they'll revise it to accomodate that at some point.

scottbenson8, you are correct about the need to buy two fermi cards to run three monitors, but the other thing is that you can't even do that with the current drivers, you would have to wait for a future driver release. So I'm not too keen on waiting indefinitely to run three monitors, so no fermi for me until some future upgrade. Pity that the monitors I have won't do 120Hz, but then no 30" 2560x1600 monitors will do 120Hz that I know of, and the resolution was more important to me than the 3D.

Most of the motherboards have either 5.1 or 7.1 integrated sound in the category of motherboard that I'm buying -- x58 between $300 and $400. Eventually, I will buy a sound card and some good headphones. Psyko 5.1 headset? I haven't heard much about that, I'll have to check it out.

I thought about the corsair H50 cpu cooler, and decided that I want more radiator than that, so I'm going to do the loops custom. Main decision I still have to make is do I do reservoir top pumps mounted in the bottom of the case or do I do bay reservoirs with built in pumps? That might be a cleaner look and easier to fill.

[Hulabaloon]

Hulabaloon, nice parts list there! The pumps fit inside the reservoirs in that case, correct? And they share one thing of fluid? Just making sure I understand correctly. Nice to see that it is possible to fit two loops into the budget.

Yep, the pumps screw into the res (they don't touch any part of the case, which i'm hoping will help reduce vibration noise), so the whole pump + and reservoir combo only take up 2 drive bays. It's the best solution I've found for dual loops that stilll leaves plenty of drive bays free.

The res is actually split into two, if you look closely you can see a perspex divider in the middle, check out coolmiester's thread for more close ups of it in action.




I'm sure someone around here used it in an 800D water cooling build log a few months ago, but I can't find the thread anymore.

[Bolas]

Ordered 12 GB Corsair Dominator 1600MHz DDR3 from Newegg for $405.

Ordered Sapphire Radeon HD 5970 from Newegg for $699 + $9 shipping.

Time to pick a motherboard and order it. I want to build some over the three day weekend, so I need to get the parts here. Sigh... so much for waiting for R3E to come out. Now to pick between Classified, which doesn't have SATA III, and Gigabyte, which has cheesy colors.

[Bolas]

Hmmm... maybe if I just cover all the cheesy colors with water blocks... that might work...

[=[PULSAR]=]

I tried both the evga classy and R3E and for about the same performance. I think the classy is way overpriced.

[Bolas]

Ordered the Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD7. I'll just cover up the color scheme with lots of beautiful water cooling blocks.

Also ordered some MDPC-X sleeving. That probably won't get here in time for building this weekend since it's coming from Europe, but I'll have no problem tearing everything apart later to add in sleeving.

Going to order thermal paste, cpu, motherboard, gpu blocks, and tubing next, but still need to figure out how I'm going to do pumps, reservoirs, and radiators. Haven't quite decided if I want bay reservoirs, pump mount reservoirs, or internally mounted cylinder radiators. But I can at least set up a stock air build with the parts I have already ordered and verify that everything works and nothing needs RMA.