$1500 Self-built PC - need advice

[Thor.]

Cool there is a Phenom at 3.4ghz go for it, nice setup your planning on getting :thumbsup: . No complaints here.

[Biblost]

You mean you have 2 processors of both 3.4 Ghz? Dude, that's a serious gaming monster!

[Thor.]

Its not just 2, its 4. Its a quadcore at 3.4ghz.

[Biblost]

Its not just 2, its 4. Its a quadcore at 3.4ghz.

So a total processor power of 13.6 Ghz (4 X 3.4)??? How is it possible such a fast computer even exists :D?

[Fifoo]

As I'm a little experienced from self-building PC's ("self-made man with plenty of totally annoying hours just for tryin' to make the best"), I'd be proud if I could give you a little help (apologies for my bad English, I'm French).

 

You MUST be a passionate to do so, because it demand so much "never-ending work", and it depend on your level of understanding, novice or advanced user... I want to be sure your knowledge is the last one... Drop me one if I made a mistake :wallbash:

 

In the case you enter in the last category, you don't need to read all this pm, you can directly go at the end of it, I've putted some links for help.

But if you want, you can read it entirelly, it's long but I've some tricks for you, I think it's good to remind those old tips, and of course, it never hurts. :biggrin:

 

First of all, the BIG questions are:

 

1. What OS you want to be yours...

 

Linux? XPpro? Vista? Or W7? I'm supposing it's W7... as your choice is upon an i7 processor.

 

Well but, if you give your choice for an other OS than this one, I think you don't need to have such an expensive processor for playing games, it's due to system implementations and if it would be only for "havin' Quad", then, Man it's your choice.

The reason I tell you that, is simply because you MUST have a complete system capable of working ("sic") with those features for the BEST "High-perfs", as it depend on the way you are intended to use your PC. :blink:

 

In an other way, if you don't have softwares (I mean: "all of your stuffs") certified for workin' with "Quad", you've lost your money, and it's better to buy something you can use at the top of it.

 

If you want to make Overclocking at very High-levels, and ONLY in that way, I think the i7 is a bad choice due to FSB frequency, intel has put a limit on it because the "Quad Core" temp go annoyingly high, due to the technology of it... Perhaps they'll do better things in the future, an "Extreme edit" with unblocked FSB... ("my dream")... I don't know if they have attempted to do this for the next years...

You have to read good magazines about Overclocking, if you want to know how it works...

 

I personaly don't know much about W7 as an update of Vista (not my taste, but the choice is yours), and we, Frenchies, only have a Beta v. in German language. I'm waiting about a solid release in a few months in Europe (if I don't miss something at this time)...

 

I'm runnin' under XPpro Sp2 at this time, with High-tweaked levels of optimizations, and my "OMGWTFBFGSAUCE" PC love that way... And me too :biggrin:

 

And YES, I think it's better to have a stable and optimized OS, even if it smells a little "prehistoric", than turning arround an unknown bugged one. Of course, it's better to be an advancer user for doin' such optimized things, but some tweaks are helpfull for the novice too! :smile:

 

2. And what's about your needs...

 

It's for Creating? Multimedia? Webbing? Modding? Overclocking? Playing games? Or, perhaps, all of those beautiful things?... (whatelse?)... As it's highly depending on your choice of hardware, and how much $$ you can put on the table!

Well, well, for PLAYING GAMES... It's my choice too, but not the only one... :wink:

 

I see that you did a selection ("not bad") :thumbsup:

 

3. But, how about your understanding of all of your choices?

 

Little trick, but a good-one, you don't need to have the last "High-ends" hardware materials for having the best setup... "until you are passionate about that"... It doesn't help you if they are working bad together and at low levels... The only thing you gain then, is loosing your money!

 

I prefer stable and highly-optimized good customizations for playing my favourite games, with a perfect bios setup and good overclocking settings that never fails, untill you want to see the so known and charmin' "Black Screen", but I hope you don't.

 

But this is my "Way of life" to use PC's, and you have to make plenty of choice between those annoying stuffs of customizations... Protect your PC from crash with a good multi Fan-cooling system, it helps a lot. Mount your PC in the best Case you can find, it's really good for your comfort, for upgrading, and the most important, for Low-temp...

 

And don't forget the way you install your OS, peripherals, codecs, drivers, and so on. It's REALLY important for having HIGH-PERFS!!!

I NEVER USE Cool'n Quiet, it drops dramaticaly down FPS, and this feature is not friendly with Overclocking.

 

And if you think it's important to have such a feature, well, but let me tell you it's only a commercial argumentation. Your gain for conso in Watts are so petty... I've tested this a lot with my Core2 Duo, and it's not good for my use of Overclocking...

 

The BEST, of course: havin' GOOD Fan-cooling systems, and a HIGH PSU Certified 82+, between 800-1000 W. for the best stability.

 

Well, it's up to you for now, and I highly recommend for all of you guys, who wanted to understand all aspects of your PC, to put an eye on those awesome links, it's a vast and amazin' place, but that would help a lot :wink:

 

4. Links...

 

For the fans of Oblivion who are asking about tweaking gaming experience, here is the excellent

Elder Scroll IV: Oblivion Tweak Guide by Koroush Ghazi.

 

And the complete system optimization guide for Windows users, designed for novice and advanced users,

The TweakGuides Tweaking Companion, by the same Author, it is written in plain English to help you genuinely understand all aspects of Windows and your PC.

 

If you want to know about optimizing your Graphic Card with basic and advanced settings, try

The Gamer's Graphics & Display Settings Guide, by the same Author.

 

And an other one, intended for Nvidia users, the

Nvidia Forceware Tweak Guide, allways by Koroush Ghazi, would help a lot.

 

An other good place for optimizing your BIOS, as often Mainboards manuals have poor descriptions to do so,

Tech ARP - The Definitive BIOS Optimization Guide

 

Well, it's done, sorry for my long pm, I just hope it would help you. :biggrin:

 

..............

All credits to Koroush Ghazi, as he have made a fantastic work, many thanks to him, I'll never forgot...

[Thor.]

Your argument about compatibility, all operating systems like xp, vista, and win7 support quad, infact xp pro runs quad very well, faster then vista, but windows 7 is different, it runs like windows xp but has the feel of vista.

 

Tested on them all, and it runs just fine.

 

thats the 32bit as well as the 64bit versions.

 

note the 32bit has limitations on ram, so go for the 64bit instead.

 

Cooling can be an issue but for amd they are good at keeping a low temp, especially if you have a good heatsink. Also works good on stock fans.

 

knowing i have amd quad to.

[LHammonds]

Regarding RAID-0 (a.k.a. Striping), be careful with that.

 

The benefit of RAID-0 (if hardware based) is that is gives you the fastest performance from your hard drives by writing and reading the data from all drives at once rather than waiting on just one drive. The drawback is that if one drive fails, they all fail...meaning you cannot access the data even if you replace the dead drive...you have to reformat and start over as if it was one large drive. So it is OK if your PC is just for gaming and you make external backups of your savegames, mods and settings on a regular basis.

 

Personally, I would not want my entire system on RAID-0 for the simple fact that everything is lost if a drive fails. For best performance and data safety (if this will hold your family data as well), I'd recommend configuring your system as follows:

 

Physical Drive 0 - RAID-0 (C:, D:)

Physical Drive 1 - RAID-0 (C:, D:)

Physical Drive 2 - RAID-0 (C:, D:)

Physical Drive 3 - No RAID (E:)

Physical Drive 4 - No RAID (F:) (OPTIONAL)

External Drive (USB, Firewire or SATA)

 

Logical Partitions

C: (RAID), 30 GB, Install only the Operating System on this drive and nothing else.

D: (RAID), All Free GB, Install all applications and games to this drive and set your temp variables and swap file to point to this drive.

E: (Non-RAID), Place all your data on this drive (such as in a "MyData" folder.

F: (Non-RAID), Setup a daily backup/sync job to get everything from E:\Mydata to F:\MyData_Backup

G: (External), Setup a daily backup/sync job to get everything from E:\MyData to G:\MyData_Backup

 

This configuration allows your OS, apps and games to utilize the speed of a RAID-0 configuration while allowing your "Data" to be safely kept on a non-RAID drive. If you have an additional physical drive, set it up to mirror your "MyData" location so that if drive E: fails, you can still access the data on F: and if everything is deep fried (like my computer), you can still get your data from the external drive. Be sure to only plugin and hookup the external drive when you backup your data. If everything is plugged in and online during an electrical "event" then you stand to loose everything.

 

I actually go one step further and have two external WD MyBooks. I have one at home and one at work at all times. After a make a backup to my external, I take it to work and then bring the one at work home to do another backup. This protects my data in the event my house catches fire or some such disaster like that. I like knowing that in an emergency, I only have to worry about saving my family.

 

If I had more money, I'd be using Drobo drives as my external backup storage since they can hold several drives in varying sizes in RAID-5 to ensure data reliability even if one of the drives fail. RAID-5 can take 3 drives and work them together like RAID-0 except they consume about 35% of the total space and are a bit slower but if one of the drives goes "offline" the system can still operate!!! You then pull that drive out and stick in another drive and it will re-build itself back into the RAID and begin using that drive...all without your data being lost or going offline. :)

 

For additional reading backing up your data in this kind of scenario, read this article: Backup Your Data Files

 

LHammonds

[Thor.]

Or you could get yourself a massive HD like i did, i have 750gb hd and it hasn't failed me yet.

 

they go as far as a terabyte, if not larger.

[Fifoo]

Arguments about usefull compatibility.

 

@Thor. Thanks a lot for your comment about compatibility, as I was poor in words by the way I intended to explain it, and i'm really sorry if I've made people misunderstanding the topic. And you, wising guys, don't hesitate to update my pm. I'll really apriciate. I have to be more explanative then, and please, apologies for my mistake :confused:

 

So it's on for making better understandings on it:

 

Don't forget: I want to show the way of mouting PC in case of config hardware and software system with "High-Perf" at the "Lowest-Cost". I use my PC for overclocking and gaming, and don't want to drop my money out of window. For that use, Core2 Duo E8600 is a very judicious choice, despite incoming of Core7. Very powerfull, it's the king of overclocking. :biggrin:

 

1. About "HyperThreading"

 

Of course, you're right about OS supporting "Quad", 32bit as well as 64bit version. And be abble to use some "HyperThreading" features is good for multimedia as those softwares are well multithreaded. For games it's not the same, gains are more reductive. Core2 been very effectiv on it, and games taking the less profit about more than 2 cores, this time "HyperThreading" is not very usefull. You must often time settle for about 10% gain or worse. It's at the same time less or high, it's just a question of point of view.

 

2. Thank you "Turbo mode"

 

In results, Core i7 make profit of "Turbo mode" generaly at level of 5 to 10%, it's also a good feature for this processor, but we can ask ourselves, if the Core i7 have had real gain in majority of games without it. Probably, without this feature the gain were less suffisant for seducting gamers.

 

3. The choice of 32bit and 64bit versions

 

The way of systems going on OS 32bit to 62bit take time, too much time. And when AMD released at the end of 2003 his Athlon64 for public, who could imagine that the most of PC where in 32bit 5 years later? We have now plenty of choice about OS 62bit. But it's not the same way with mostly of existing games and softwares. Although Windows 64bit beeing abble to execute all 32bit softs, the fact is that developers nevertheless must have to recode 100% of drivers for having good working hardwares. Of course, we have today a choice between drivers for OS 32bit and 64bit versions, but, as not so much softwares are optimized to be used under 64bit, there is, for saying so, no gain of performances to go under Windows 64bit with our 64bit processors. And Vista 64bit gestion of drivers is not as perfect as well under Vista 32bit. That's silly thing. About RAM: when 3Go are sufficient for helping all usages, then the 32bit systems have lifetime to go... But Year 2009, endly, would be the beginning of using OS 64bit with plenty of optimisations...

 

As we can see here, it's a little bit annoying when we enter in such an extreme approach, but REWARDS ARE ON for everyone who would understand how it works, and then broaden the knowledge of it for the most benefits...

 

By all the ways, the most important thing I have to say is: ENJOY YOUR PC EXPERIENCE. :happy:

[Germandeathkittiez]

Its not just 2, its 4. Its a quadcore at 3.4ghz.

So a total processor power of 13.6 Ghz (4 X 3.4)??? How is it possible such a fast computer even exists :D?

 

You must be spending $13,000 on your PC.

I would laugh if you got all that and couldn't run Fallout 3 because of lack of a good dedicated video card. But seriously, I'm getting a laptop and I'm focusing on at least 1 gig of dedicated graphics memory to run things like Oblivion and Fallout 3. When it comes to gaming, it really depends on how powerful your video card is. Also it looked like you put your hard drive under memory. Typo? cause no one has 320 gb of RAM. I would suggest 3-4 gb of RAM if you plan to play those types of games on it.