After a good 2 weeks of building and bench testing, my new rig is complete. The 200mm fan was delivered today, and it went in with absolutely zero hassle. It adds a bit more noise to the system- something I didn't want to do at first, but the results are well worth it. At a relatively low speed temperatures are quite cool and it is still much quieter than my old PC. Cranking it up makes for a bit of a persistent angry sounding whine from the fan, but that's exactly why I have it hooked up to the manual fan controller. Also, though the overall noise level is somewhat subjective, I must add that I've been bench testing with the rig about 3 feet from my head, in a very acoustically reflective room with no carpet. It may get even quieter when placed in a room with carpet to absorb some sound, as well as being further from me.
It almost makes me want to overclock a little bit more with 36 degrees leeway to TJMax of the cores; but I will refrain from doing so since I've had my fill of stress testing and tweaking.
Now all that's left is to see how it stands up to Starcraft II or Crysis or something...
19 August 2010
15 August 2010
System build 2010 continued (part 4)
Alternate title: F**kin' voltages, how do they work?
Alas, I appear to misplaced my trust in "easy overclocking" tools as a neophyte at the whole overclocking business. I was getting some outrageously bad temperatures in various heat and stability related benchmarks like Prime95 and the Intel Burn Test- I was worried that the application of thermal compound on the heat sink had been misapplied or something like that, when in fact the solution was much much simpler than I thought.
The [Auto] setting on my motherboard likes to send voltages into the stratosphere for even the mildest of overclocks- this may be "safe" inasmuch as it would prevent instability from too low voltage, but the power draw and temperatures created by this are nearly catastrophic for anything less than an awesome water cooling setup.
After tweaking the voltage setup I managed to push temperatures at load down to very comfortable levels, not budging past 70°C even when Prime95 and Intel burn testing. The chip I have is perfectly happy running 3.33GHz at minimum voltages, so not only is the CPU now faster than the 3.2GHz, it draws much less power and generates far less heat. 3.33GHz may pale in comparison to what some people have pushed their i7s to, but I was never going for a huge OC. Reasonably fast, quiet, and cool- I'm sold.
My DDR3 memory is also overclocked- like a madman, I'm running it at an earth shattering 4Mhz faster than stock!! (My BCLK and DRAM frequency math came out almost exactly to 1600MHz, but didn't quite hit the mark- I figured 1604 is close enough, and the RAM isn't complaining at such a low, low number over stock values.)
The Radeon HD 5850 was easily overclocked to 765MHz GPU, 1120MHz Memory. Alas, though, when using ATI overdrive to reach these numbers, you lose a good bit of the stepping ability that knocks down the clock speeds at idle. This actually raised idle temps from about 41°C to 52°C, because instead of running at 157/300, I could only run at 500/1120 idle. Big difference, so I think I'll refrain from turning it on unless I'm going to be gaming- recovering and implementing the OC settings is as simple as hitting a check box in the ATI Catalyst menu.
So far everything seems very stable and issue-free, so when the 200mm case fan arrives in the mail I'll throw it in, check the temps, and tweak the speed to keep the noise increase relatively minimal, and then I'll be ready to roll!
UPDATE:
The 200mm case fan has been delayed- it appears as though I will have to wait a few more days before it actually arrives.
Out of curiosity, though, I set up a comparably sized house fan on a stand, pointing at approximately the same area of the case that the 200mm will mount. At full tilt, the fan drastically pulled temperatures down anywhere from 5°C to 9°C, though the delta at idle was less pronounced. The GPU absolutely loved the fan setup, dropping temps down in the mid 30's at idle! Of course, this is not a particularly scientific test, since the little house fan moves a claimed 1400 CFM compared to the specified 166 CFM of the case fan. It's also much louder, too.
Alas, I appear to misplaced my trust in "easy overclocking" tools as a neophyte at the whole overclocking business. I was getting some outrageously bad temperatures in various heat and stability related benchmarks like Prime95 and the Intel Burn Test- I was worried that the application of thermal compound on the heat sink had been misapplied or something like that, when in fact the solution was much much simpler than I thought.
The [Auto] setting on my motherboard likes to send voltages into the stratosphere for even the mildest of overclocks- this may be "safe" inasmuch as it would prevent instability from too low voltage, but the power draw and temperatures created by this are nearly catastrophic for anything less than an awesome water cooling setup.
After tweaking the voltage setup I managed to push temperatures at load down to very comfortable levels, not budging past 70°C even when Prime95 and Intel burn testing. The chip I have is perfectly happy running 3.33GHz at minimum voltages, so not only is the CPU now faster than the 3.2GHz, it draws much less power and generates far less heat. 3.33GHz may pale in comparison to what some people have pushed their i7s to, but I was never going for a huge OC. Reasonably fast, quiet, and cool- I'm sold.
My DDR3 memory is also overclocked- like a madman, I'm running it at an earth shattering 4Mhz faster than stock!! (My BCLK and DRAM frequency math came out almost exactly to 1600MHz, but didn't quite hit the mark- I figured 1604 is close enough, and the RAM isn't complaining at such a low, low number over stock values.)
The Radeon HD 5850 was easily overclocked to 765MHz GPU, 1120MHz Memory. Alas, though, when using ATI overdrive to reach these numbers, you lose a good bit of the stepping ability that knocks down the clock speeds at idle. This actually raised idle temps from about 41°C to 52°C, because instead of running at 157/300, I could only run at 500/1120 idle. Big difference, so I think I'll refrain from turning it on unless I'm going to be gaming- recovering and implementing the OC settings is as simple as hitting a check box in the ATI Catalyst menu.
So far everything seems very stable and issue-free, so when the 200mm case fan arrives in the mail I'll throw it in, check the temps, and tweak the speed to keep the noise increase relatively minimal, and then I'll be ready to roll!
UPDATE:
The 200mm case fan has been delayed- it appears as though I will have to wait a few more days before it actually arrives.
Out of curiosity, though, I set up a comparably sized house fan on a stand, pointing at approximately the same area of the case that the 200mm will mount. At full tilt, the fan drastically pulled temperatures down anywhere from 5°C to 9°C, though the delta at idle was less pronounced. The GPU absolutely loved the fan setup, dropping temps down in the mid 30's at idle! Of course, this is not a particularly scientific test, since the little house fan moves a claimed 1400 CFM compared to the specified 166 CFM of the case fan. It's also much louder, too.
10 August 2010
System build 2010 continued (Part 3.5)
I'm actually posting this from my new PC. Got the registry fixed up, got my antivirus and firewall software installed, and installed Mozilla. Looks like everything is moving along just fine. I'm going to run a benchmark soon (PCMark and 3DMark Vantage) to get a baseline for the computer and also see if I might have configured anything wrong that isn't immediately apparent.
At idle everything is looking pretty cool, GPU is at 42°C and the CPU cores are in the range of 37° to 40°... it's also far quieter than the PC it is going to replace, despite being a very open case. The case itself, though, feels a lot hotter than the internal components actually are, probably because all of the heat is escaping. I'm confident that with the added case fan (which I still need to order) it'll be able to assist dispersing that warm air and push temps even lower.
UPDATE:
Base benchmark results are in. Be aware that these tests are with the one-use only trial edition of the benchmarking software so I have no way to give it another go, get an average of multiple scores, tweak the options, or get anything more specific than just my "total score." You'd think Futuremark wants to sell you their programs or something... haha. (I also think the trial versions give lower average scores, but that's neither here nor there)
PCMark Vantage Results:
Score: 11431
Max CPU Temp: 59°C
Max GPU Temp: 60°C
3DMark Vantage Results:
Score: 13439
Max CPU Temp: 66°C
Max GPU Temp: 70°C
I'm sure the 3DMark could have been better, as the first run was interrupted, and the second one gave me noticeably lower numbers on the CPU tests. As a baseline with literally NO overclocking whatsoever, though, it isn't too bad.
UPDATE 2:
I've got my rig overclocked to match an i7 965- A processor that weighs in at about $1,000- and it appears to be stable so far. I've got the RAM overclocked (but not overvolted) as well to about 1600MHz, which is what the RAM is actually rated for but was not clocked to take advantage of with the i7 processor stock. Things are a bit more spicy in the temperature area on the CPU, which is now at around 45° to 47°C at idle. I'm going to give it a quick burn test to see if it is truly stable, and then move on to the GPU which has just a tad extra that can be squeezed out of it without risking much. (735MHz to 765MHz, as the model I bought comes with the same cooling system as the model with the higher overclocking.)
UPDATE 3:
After getting some unacceptable temperatures from Intel Burn test, it looks like I'm going to have to tweak these settings a little bit more. Voltage from "auto" overclock is far too high, creating a massive heat issue. I'm on manual now, determining voltages and multipliers and clock speeds by just keying them in as opposed to selecting pre-configured profiles.
At idle everything is looking pretty cool, GPU is at 42°C and the CPU cores are in the range of 37° to 40°... it's also far quieter than the PC it is going to replace, despite being a very open case. The case itself, though, feels a lot hotter than the internal components actually are, probably because all of the heat is escaping. I'm confident that with the added case fan (which I still need to order) it'll be able to assist dispersing that warm air and push temps even lower.
UPDATE:
Base benchmark results are in. Be aware that these tests are with the one-use only trial edition of the benchmarking software so I have no way to give it another go, get an average of multiple scores, tweak the options, or get anything more specific than just my "total score." You'd think Futuremark wants to sell you their programs or something... haha. (I also think the trial versions give lower average scores, but that's neither here nor there)
PCMark Vantage Results:
Score: 11431
Max CPU Temp: 59°C
Max GPU Temp: 60°C
3DMark Vantage Results:
Score: 13439
Max CPU Temp: 66°C
Max GPU Temp: 70°C
I'm sure the 3DMark could have been better, as the first run was interrupted, and the second one gave me noticeably lower numbers on the CPU tests. As a baseline with literally NO overclocking whatsoever, though, it isn't too bad.
UPDATE 2:
I've got my rig overclocked to match an i7 965- A processor that weighs in at about $1,000- and it appears to be stable so far. I've got the RAM overclocked (but not overvolted) as well to about 1600MHz, which is what the RAM is actually rated for but was not clocked to take advantage of with the i7 processor stock. Things are a bit more spicy in the temperature area on the CPU, which is now at around 45° to 47°C at idle. I'm going to give it a quick burn test to see if it is truly stable, and then move on to the GPU which has just a tad extra that can be squeezed out of it without risking much. (735MHz to 765MHz, as the model I bought comes with the same cooling system as the model with the higher overclocking.)
UPDATE 3:
After getting some unacceptable temperatures from Intel Burn test, it looks like I'm going to have to tweak these settings a little bit more. Voltage from "auto" overclock is far too high, creating a massive heat issue. I'm on manual now, determining voltages and multipliers and clock speeds by just keying them in as opposed to selecting pre-configured profiles.
09 August 2010
System build 2010 continued (Part 3)
It lives! I ended up doing a minimal amount of wire clipping and just relied on looping the cables around in the case behind the motherboard and zip tying them down. Everything looks relatively under control:
I'm sure I could have sleeved all these cables and made them look all fancy and whatnot, but it's fine the way it is- cables are at least out of the way of everything.
After booting without incident, I checked and made sure that all of my components were working properly, which they were. The fans are a bit noisier than I would have originally hoped because the case is essentially completely open on one side with a mesh grille, however the saving grace is that they are a much, much mellower tone. I think I'll still get the 200mm external case fan though, as the case's fan controller is really great at keeping the case fans from getting annoying.
Then came the configuration! BIOS is something I have relatively limited experience with, so I left that be for the time being, at stock clock speeds and auto voltage until I can get a better feel for the system. I got a few things wrong, though, which led to some minor headaches.
1st- I forgot to select ACHI for my hard drives, instead leaving them in default IDE mode. This made my SSD run at a much slower speed than it should have, and required a fresh install of my OS to fix! It looks like I may be doing a third re-install to fix some other configuration mistakes that might have cocked up the registry, so I suppose it isn't that large of a whiff in the long run. The SSD eats Windows installations handily, anyways.
2nd- As I was running my computer, I noticed it was really getting far hotter than it should have been. The CPU was running at about 45-47 degrees Celsius, which is not horrible but higher than I would have expected. The PSU also was dishing out pretty serious amounts of heat, as well. The culprit? I had forgotten to enable the Intel CPU stepping! Essentially, the CPU was running at full tilt and sucking its maximum wattage of 140W or so, to keep the CPU running at the advertised 2.8GHz at all times. BIOS time! I made sure to enable the setting, and on the next boot suddenly everything was cooler by at least 5 degrees, and it wasn't getting so hot anymore. Now the CPU was chugging along drawing about 40W at idle (dipping as low as 28W), with essentially no degradation in performance that I could notice.
Once I installed the Sapphire drivers the Radeon 5850 came to life as well, although some of the software settings had to be tweaked for max performance. The "overclockers" panel is a neat feature that I will probably end up dabbling a bit in. Like the reviews said, it really does do very well at idle, and while running the windows desktop it ramps the core speed down to a very low setting and is almost silent. Humorously, I tried sliding the fan's duty cycle parameter up to 100% just to see what max load sounds like and WOW. It is EXTREMELY loud, but the cooling is seriously good. Stepping that fan up just briefly dropped the GPU temps very low, very fast.
Anyways, there is still a bunch of tweaking to do before it is ready to roll, but so far the Windows experience score is pretty respectable for my budget:
(yes, I'm aware of how shitty and arbitrary of a benchmark this is, I'll have to run some more robust benchmarking tools once I'm finished.)
I'm sure I could have sleeved all these cables and made them look all fancy and whatnot, but it's fine the way it is- cables are at least out of the way of everything.After booting without incident, I checked and made sure that all of my components were working properly, which they were. The fans are a bit noisier than I would have originally hoped because the case is essentially completely open on one side with a mesh grille, however the saving grace is that they are a much, much mellower tone. I think I'll still get the 200mm external case fan though, as the case's fan controller is really great at keeping the case fans from getting annoying.
Then came the configuration! BIOS is something I have relatively limited experience with, so I left that be for the time being, at stock clock speeds and auto voltage until I can get a better feel for the system. I got a few things wrong, though, which led to some minor headaches.
1st- I forgot to select ACHI for my hard drives, instead leaving them in default IDE mode. This made my SSD run at a much slower speed than it should have, and required a fresh install of my OS to fix! It looks like I may be doing a third re-install to fix some other configuration mistakes that might have cocked up the registry, so I suppose it isn't that large of a whiff in the long run. The SSD eats Windows installations handily, anyways.2nd- As I was running my computer, I noticed it was really getting far hotter than it should have been. The CPU was running at about 45-47 degrees Celsius, which is not horrible but higher than I would have expected. The PSU also was dishing out pretty serious amounts of heat, as well. The culprit? I had forgotten to enable the Intel CPU stepping! Essentially, the CPU was running at full tilt and sucking its maximum wattage of 140W or so, to keep the CPU running at the advertised 2.8GHz at all times. BIOS time! I made sure to enable the setting, and on the next boot suddenly everything was cooler by at least 5 degrees, and it wasn't getting so hot anymore. Now the CPU was chugging along drawing about 40W at idle (dipping as low as 28W), with essentially no degradation in performance that I could notice.
Once I installed the Sapphire drivers the Radeon 5850 came to life as well, although some of the software settings had to be tweaked for max performance. The "overclockers" panel is a neat feature that I will probably end up dabbling a bit in. Like the reviews said, it really does do very well at idle, and while running the windows desktop it ramps the core speed down to a very low setting and is almost silent. Humorously, I tried sliding the fan's duty cycle parameter up to 100% just to see what max load sounds like and WOW. It is EXTREMELY loud, but the cooling is seriously good. Stepping that fan up just briefly dropped the GPU temps very low, very fast.
Anyways, there is still a bunch of tweaking to do before it is ready to roll, but so far the Windows experience score is pretty respectable for my budget:
(yes, I'm aware of how shitty and arbitrary of a benchmark this is, I'll have to run some more robust benchmarking tools once I'm finished.)
08 August 2010
System build 2010 continued (Part 2)
Well, I plunked down the cash at Newegg and got the rest of my parts, but I'm still far from finished. It looks like I may be able to attempt booting up my system tomorrow, though.
The rest of the system:
RAM: 6 GB (3x2GB) of Crucial Ballistix 1600MHz DDR3 RAM ($40 cheaper than usual because I omitted the fancy blinking LED's and got the "OEM" version)
Video Card: Sapphire Vapor-X Radeon HD 5850
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-C12P SE14 (due to size constraints of the case)
SSD: Corsair FORCE series 60GB
HDD: Western Digital 750GB Black
My progress from Friday, showing the beginnings of the rats nest:
Wrangling the wires is an absolute pain- it is without a doubt the most frustrating thing about building this system. Since I'm working with such a small case, every last bit of extra cabling is putting me in between a rock and a hard place, as well as every little cable that just barely does not make it. I'm prioritizing and switching things around, I've omitted some of the fancy light and fan controls that the case comes with because of cable concerns, and it's slowly but surely coming under control. The thick 24-pin power supply cable vexed me the most, although just moments ago I had a breakthrough by pulling the video card back out and re-routing the cable in front of the lower hard drive rack you see in the case, up around the front fan, and finally to the motherboard socket. Some of the SATA power connectors I've actually trimmed, and it looks like I may end up doing some more cable splicing to bring things under control as I still need to add the two power cables to the video card which are (as expected) way too long. Thankfully, now that the thick power supply cable is under control, there is a space in the case behind the motherboard to tuck a moderate amount of cabling. It just struck me that rather than splicing, it may make sense to just loop all the extra cable around in the back of the case there and secure it in place with zip ties, rather than doing any splicing. Who knows- this is an evolving project.
More as this story develops.
The rest of the system:
RAM: 6 GB (3x2GB) of Crucial Ballistix 1600MHz DDR3 RAM ($40 cheaper than usual because I omitted the fancy blinking LED's and got the "OEM" version)
Video Card: Sapphire Vapor-X Radeon HD 5850
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-C12P SE14 (due to size constraints of the case)
SSD: Corsair FORCE series 60GB
HDD: Western Digital 750GB Black
My progress from Friday, showing the beginnings of the rats nest:
Wrangling the wires is an absolute pain- it is without a doubt the most frustrating thing about building this system. Since I'm working with such a small case, every last bit of extra cabling is putting me in between a rock and a hard place, as well as every little cable that just barely does not make it. I'm prioritizing and switching things around, I've omitted some of the fancy light and fan controls that the case comes with because of cable concerns, and it's slowly but surely coming under control. The thick 24-pin power supply cable vexed me the most, although just moments ago I had a breakthrough by pulling the video card back out and re-routing the cable in front of the lower hard drive rack you see in the case, up around the front fan, and finally to the motherboard socket. Some of the SATA power connectors I've actually trimmed, and it looks like I may end up doing some more cable splicing to bring things under control as I still need to add the two power cables to the video card which are (as expected) way too long. Thankfully, now that the thick power supply cable is under control, there is a space in the case behind the motherboard to tuck a moderate amount of cabling. It just struck me that rather than splicing, it may make sense to just loop all the extra cable around in the back of the case there and secure it in place with zip ties, rather than doing any splicing. Who knows- this is an evolving project.
More as this story develops.
30 July 2010
System build 2010 continued (Part 1)
After poring over about a thousand different case reviews and checking some out in retail stores, I decided to go with the NXZT Vulcan micro ATX case:
Sub $100, small, adequate airflow (although dust might be a problem), and an aggressive but not ridiculous look sealed the deal for me. I also like the fact that it doesn't have a bunch of 5.25" drive bays that are clearly never going to be filled. I think my current rig is going to dwarf this one.
Since the case only fits Micro ATX boards I ended up following through with my Micro ATX research, and nabbing the Asus Rampage III Gene motherboard, which got some fairly glowing reviews for a mATX board.
Power supplies are far less interesting, but I grabbed a Corsair 750HX modular power supply because of its extremely high efficiency ratings. With the system going to house a single GPU card with not many extra bells and whistles like a huge raid of hard disk drives, 750 watts is going to be more than enough to keep everything going smoothly.
Still to be chosen: RAM, a GPU, a CPU cooler, SSD/HDDs, and other incidentals like case fans and/or optical drives. (blu-ray drives will not be making an appearance- that's what I have my PS3 for.)
Sub $100, small, adequate airflow (although dust might be a problem), and an aggressive but not ridiculous look sealed the deal for me. I also like the fact that it doesn't have a bunch of 5.25" drive bays that are clearly never going to be filled. I think my current rig is going to dwarf this one.Since the case only fits Micro ATX boards I ended up following through with my Micro ATX research, and nabbing the Asus Rampage III Gene motherboard, which got some fairly glowing reviews for a mATX board.
Power supplies are far less interesting, but I grabbed a Corsair 750HX modular power supply because of its extremely high efficiency ratings. With the system going to house a single GPU card with not many extra bells and whistles like a huge raid of hard disk drives, 750 watts is going to be more than enough to keep everything going smoothly.
Still to be chosen: RAM, a GPU, a CPU cooler, SSD/HDDs, and other incidentals like case fans and/or optical drives. (blu-ray drives will not be making an appearance- that's what I have my PS3 for.)
29 July 2010
So it begins...
I found a really good deal on a Core i7 930, almost $100 less than what it was listed for on newegg, so I snagged it. This was at a retail, "brick and mortar" store no less! Looks like my system build is actually moving from the drawing board to reality.
I'm still totally stumped on the case, as it seems like no matter what you choose, you're giving up something in the space, noise, or cooling area. It's either that or the case is absurdly expensive. After seeing it in person, I can definitely rule out the Cooler Master Storm Sniper and a few others, so at least I'm moving in the right direction.
I'm still totally stumped on the case, as it seems like no matter what you choose, you're giving up something in the space, noise, or cooling area. It's either that or the case is absurdly expensive. After seeing it in person, I can definitely rule out the Cooler Master Storm Sniper and a few others, so at least I'm moving in the right direction.
26 July 2010
Building a new computer?
Recently I've been considering building a new computer, partially as something to occupy my time with research, and partially as a serious venture to possibly replace my current rig. Though my current computer still works fine, it is frustratingly noisy, inefficient, and runs far too hot. It has definitely seen plenty of use in the past couple of years I've had it (coming up on 4 now, I believe) and it has also seen it's fair share of issues- I believe it is on its sixth or seventh iteration of operating system, having had to be reformatted a few times. Some of these were hardware failures- once, the cooling system leaked and fried a number of components, and more recently, a SATA cable failed and the primary hard drive went out. On a different occasion, a particularly nasty virus forced a reformat, and still others were the upgrade cycle from Windows XP to Vista to 7. I'm thinking that if I build this new PC, I'll still use the current one I have, albeit relegated to a media server role.
The goal for the new build would still be to make a high performance computer, but this time balance the performance with the criteria of being a quieter and more efficient computer. Usually these goals are at odds with each other so I won't be striving to overclock the CPU to absurd levels, or have the large power drain of multiple video cards. It is very possible to build a high performance machine with only a single video card, so I will be limiting myself to one mid to high end card.
From the start, I'm going to specify that the machine be entirely air-cooled, as I'm weary of watercooling based on my previous experiences, having had a catastrophic, fail to POST level disaster once before. Not that I'm dismissing it totally as an option in the future, but for this particular case, I'm going to play it safe and go with air. It might seem counter intuitve that large fans actually make a system quieter, but the large fans actually move far more CFM of air at any given RPM, allowing them to move decent quantities of air at relatively low (and quiet) speeds. To manage them and keep an eye on temperatures, I think I might try to find a functional, simple fan controller with a display for the front panel, taking up one of the drive bays.
An intriguing idea I've toyed with is making the build into a Micro ATX form factor to lower the rig's space consumption as well. This idea complicates the nature of what I have to look for greatly, as small cases tend to be far more sensitive to component size, not to mention Micro ATX more often than not includes features like on-board graphics, which seems like a waste if I'm going to be plugging in a video card. In fact, when I did a Newegg search, only one Micro ATX motherboard met the specs I wanted, and it was rather expensive. Another key factor in this would be cooling- smaller cases tend to have fewer fans, making ambient case temps higher. In that regard, you're beginning to fight an uphill battle to keep everything adequately cool. In the end, the ability to expand if need be is never a bad thing, I suppose, so that idea will probably fall by the wayside.
One case that particularly intrigues me is the Silverstone FT02 fortress- although it is painfully expensive, it looks like a really clever innovation in terms of keeping the insides of a computer cool. Since the heat is rising anyways, why not use it as an assist to keep a steady flow of air upwards and out of the case? They put a sizable air intake on the bottom, powered by 3 large fans which suck up cold air and push it upwards to the top fans. The whole thing appeals to me from an engineering standpoint, what with the positive air pressure, integrated dust shields, and so on. The fact that the power supply is isolated is another plus- you won't have hot air from the power supply breathing all over your CPU and GPU coolers, giving them another little advantage. I'm not completely sold on the idea, though- aside from the price tag, the other thing that bothers me is the fact that the motherboard is rotated so that the rear of it faces upwards to the top of the tower. This is designed to make cable management easier, but it has the disadvantage of making the case somewhat top-heavy. If I'm going to be dropping so much coin on something, I certainly do not want it to tip over due to an errant kick or tug from an attached wire. In that regard, I think I'd end up going with something more traditional (and less expensive) like a Cooler Master Storm series, or an Antec 900.
Regarding the internals, the Intel 1366 (i7 900 series) socket motherboards and processors are coming out with all sorts of cool features like 6 gb/s SATA and USB 3.0, which matches nicely with their high performance and ability to use DDR3 RAM. Though the i5 would certainly be more efficient wattage-wise, the i7's can be mildly overclocked to nearly match the performance of the i7 "extreme" models for a fraction of the price. (Of course, this excludes the hexa-core madness that is the i7-980, as that's made on a completely different 32nm architecture) In the GPU area, the ATI Radeon 5850 and 5870 cards are particularly attractive, although they are definitely getting into the higher end of the performance and cost spectrum. On the bright side, they are quiet, relatively efficient, and will be less expensive and draw less power than two lower grade cards working in tandem.
SSD's are a crucial part of taking advantage of all of this bandwidth, however they are a moving target as far as price, capacity, and performance- looking at where SSDs were a year ago serves as a testament to how fast it is developing. My current thought is that I'll get a relatively small, less expensive SSD in the ~100GB or so range, and use it as the primary hard drive that will hold only the OS and a few programs/games, and then use a conventional drive to store larger file collections like music, movies, photos, etc. As a large SSD can run you in the range of $800 and up, I think the smaller ones at the ~$150 price point are probably a better value right now. Of course, by the time I would get around to actually building the system, there may have been even more developments in the market.
There is a stupefying amount of reading on these topics- reviews, technical articles, and so on- and I've only yet scratched the surface. Hopefully at the end of this, I'll have something to show for it and gain a bit of experience building my own computer, which I admittedly have never done before...
The goal for the new build would still be to make a high performance computer, but this time balance the performance with the criteria of being a quieter and more efficient computer. Usually these goals are at odds with each other so I won't be striving to overclock the CPU to absurd levels, or have the large power drain of multiple video cards. It is very possible to build a high performance machine with only a single video card, so I will be limiting myself to one mid to high end card.
From the start, I'm going to specify that the machine be entirely air-cooled, as I'm weary of watercooling based on my previous experiences, having had a catastrophic, fail to POST level disaster once before. Not that I'm dismissing it totally as an option in the future, but for this particular case, I'm going to play it safe and go with air. It might seem counter intuitve that large fans actually make a system quieter, but the large fans actually move far more CFM of air at any given RPM, allowing them to move decent quantities of air at relatively low (and quiet) speeds. To manage them and keep an eye on temperatures, I think I might try to find a functional, simple fan controller with a display for the front panel, taking up one of the drive bays.
An intriguing idea I've toyed with is making the build into a Micro ATX form factor to lower the rig's space consumption as well. This idea complicates the nature of what I have to look for greatly, as small cases tend to be far more sensitive to component size, not to mention Micro ATX more often than not includes features like on-board graphics, which seems like a waste if I'm going to be plugging in a video card. In fact, when I did a Newegg search, only one Micro ATX motherboard met the specs I wanted, and it was rather expensive. Another key factor in this would be cooling- smaller cases tend to have fewer fans, making ambient case temps higher. In that regard, you're beginning to fight an uphill battle to keep everything adequately cool. In the end, the ability to expand if need be is never a bad thing, I suppose, so that idea will probably fall by the wayside.
One case that particularly intrigues me is the Silverstone FT02 fortress- although it is painfully expensive, it looks like a really clever innovation in terms of keeping the insides of a computer cool. Since the heat is rising anyways, why not use it as an assist to keep a steady flow of air upwards and out of the case? They put a sizable air intake on the bottom, powered by 3 large fans which suck up cold air and push it upwards to the top fans. The whole thing appeals to me from an engineering standpoint, what with the positive air pressure, integrated dust shields, and so on. The fact that the power supply is isolated is another plus- you won't have hot air from the power supply breathing all over your CPU and GPU coolers, giving them another little advantage. I'm not completely sold on the idea, though- aside from the price tag, the other thing that bothers me is the fact that the motherboard is rotated so that the rear of it faces upwards to the top of the tower. This is designed to make cable management easier, but it has the disadvantage of making the case somewhat top-heavy. If I'm going to be dropping so much coin on something, I certainly do not want it to tip over due to an errant kick or tug from an attached wire. In that regard, I think I'd end up going with something more traditional (and less expensive) like a Cooler Master Storm series, or an Antec 900.
Regarding the internals, the Intel 1366 (i7 900 series) socket motherboards and processors are coming out with all sorts of cool features like 6 gb/s SATA and USB 3.0, which matches nicely with their high performance and ability to use DDR3 RAM. Though the i5 would certainly be more efficient wattage-wise, the i7's can be mildly overclocked to nearly match the performance of the i7 "extreme" models for a fraction of the price. (Of course, this excludes the hexa-core madness that is the i7-980, as that's made on a completely different 32nm architecture) In the GPU area, the ATI Radeon 5850 and 5870 cards are particularly attractive, although they are definitely getting into the higher end of the performance and cost spectrum. On the bright side, they are quiet, relatively efficient, and will be less expensive and draw less power than two lower grade cards working in tandem.
SSD's are a crucial part of taking advantage of all of this bandwidth, however they are a moving target as far as price, capacity, and performance- looking at where SSDs were a year ago serves as a testament to how fast it is developing. My current thought is that I'll get a relatively small, less expensive SSD in the ~100GB or so range, and use it as the primary hard drive that will hold only the OS and a few programs/games, and then use a conventional drive to store larger file collections like music, movies, photos, etc. As a large SSD can run you in the range of $800 and up, I think the smaller ones at the ~$150 price point are probably a better value right now. Of course, by the time I would get around to actually building the system, there may have been even more developments in the market.
There is a stupefying amount of reading on these topics- reviews, technical articles, and so on- and I've only yet scratched the surface. Hopefully at the end of this, I'll have something to show for it and gain a bit of experience building my own computer, which I admittedly have never done before...
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