A good PC?

[Father_Yetti]

I am looking to purchase a new PC for personal and business use. I am pretty sure I would like to build my own however I am not sure what is compatible so I would most likely be desiring to copy an already high end standard build and just buy the components myself. I am looking to go high end by all standards and was originally looking into laptops but I cannot get enough computer for my buck when going mobile. I would prefer top of the line components: i7 extreme, 295 GTX in SLI, liquid cooling, etc. I plan on doing some heavy renderings, etc. I want something that is upgradable but shouldn't need to be any time soon. Price range is high. I want a killer system but I am trying to save money buy building it myself. Any suggestions, places to buy, builds to compare, things to consider. Also any thoughts on windows 7? Not sure I want to wait for it though I'm not sure when it comes out. Anyways any help is greatly appreciated.

-Thanks

 

[sqrage]

If you want something amazing, you can look at this build and mirror it.

http://www.thehelper.net/forums/showthread.php?t=122455

Otherwise, you can set up some builds at ibuypower.com and just get the components yourself.

 

[Ghan]

If you want the best of the best, you can take my stuff, switch out that processor for the i7 Extreme, double the RAM, and add another of those video cards. Beyond that, there isn't much you can do to really increase performance. You may get a few things here and there, but that's about it.

My advice? Don't get that high-end i7. I honestly don't think you could even use it and the price at $1,000 is probably not worth it at this time. Also, 295 GTX graphics cards are great, but they are also $500 a piece or more. I've started out with one thinking that by the time I am ready to put another one in, the price will have come down on the 295s. However, if you're doing intense rendering, it might be necessary right out of the box. I'm not sure how much that kind of thing will slow down a computer.

I can tell you this. My computer will play Halo, Command and Conquer 3, Warcraft III, Starcraft, and Firefox all at the same time and it doesn't even have to work hard. The only thing I have ever seen max out the processor is Prime95, and let's face it, that is DESIGNED to max out the processor.

One other thing. I just went with the stock cooler for the CPU. I was a bit nervous (first-time build on my own) about playing around with thermal paste and trying to install a cooler that wasn't necessarily ready to go out of the box. But something that I have considered is that when I'm ready to put some more money in the machine, I can just get a new cooler instead of a new processor and overclock the one I have. I have heard of people pushing 4Ghz with my processor on air without too much trouble, so if you're going water (which I probably would not, based on that info, but that's up to you), then you should have no problems doing something like that to get more performance out of the processor. The Core i7 also comes with built-in Intel technology (duh, right? ) that allows it to (within limits) overclock ITSELF automatically when it detects a high load. Using CPUZ I noticed that, with only Firefox running, the CPU would sit around 1.6 to 1.8Ghz. When I turned on Prime95, it would automatically overclock to 2.8Ghz (the processor is rated at 2.67), so keep this in mind if you manually overclock it.

That's all the advice I can offer, I suppose, based on my experiences so far with my stuff. Good luck in your endeavors.

 

[Father_Yetti]

Thanks guys, + rep Ghan for taking the time to go into some of that for me. Ghan where did you purchase your components from? I know ibuypower is good as well as newegg any other suggestions? Also is that true what someone said in you your post that if you have windows vista you can get a free upgrade to windows 7? Windows 7 looks good IMO and I would have to agree that on such a build Vista 64 addition would be the only sensible thing?

Edit: okay so now I'm curious which is better:

2x NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 1792MB w/ DVI + TV out video - running SLI mode

or

3x NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 1GB w/ DVI + TV out video - running 3 way SLI

 

[Slapshot136]

you can download a free beta of windows 7 from Microsoft that will work through august, presumably they will have the official windows 7 out by then

as for the graphics either way is probably overkill, but check your motherboard to have room for them and your PSU to have enough power cables for them.

P.S. when i made my computer, i used google's product search to find the lowest price, you may want to try that

 

[Father_Yetti]

you can download a free beta of windows 7 from Microsoft that will work through august, presumably they will have the official windows 7 out by then

as for the graphics either way is probably overkill, but check your motherboard to have room for them and your PSU to have enough power cables for them.

P.S. when i made my computer, i used google's product search to find the lowest price, you may want to try that

That Google product search is cool, thanks.

 

[Ghan]

> Ghan where did you purchase your components from?

Newegg. They have been great whenever I buy things from them.

> I would have to agree that on such a build Vista 64 addition would be the only sensible thing?

I don't know about the upgrade to Windows 7, but that would be great. And I don't really think Vista is that problematic, to be honest.

> which is better

I would hazard a guess at the 2 295s being better. The reason behind this is that each of them essentially has two cards in the same component. This means double the processor cores, etc. Also, when you have 3, only 2 of them are running at full speed. The other PCIe bus will most likely be running at only a fraction of the speed.

 

[Father_Yetti]

> Ghan where did you purchase your components from?

Newegg. They have been great whenever I buy things from them.

> I would have to agree that on such a build Vista 64 addition would be the only sensible thing?

I don't know about the upgrade to Windows 7, but that would be great. And I don't really think Vista is that problematic, to be honest.

> which is better

I would hazard a guess at the 2 295s being better. The reason behind this is that each of them essentially has two cards in the same component. This means double the processor cores, etc. Also, when you have 3, only 2 of them are running at full speed. The other PCIe bus will most likely be running at only a fraction of the speed.

This is what I was thinking too, and now that I have talked around a bit more it seems to be the general consensus, plus in the future I could still add up to two more GTX 295s if needed based on the setup I am looking into. Thanks.

 

[Ghan]

As far as I know, you can't put more than 2 295s in SLI due to the fact that it is in and of itself two cards, so putting 2 in SLI qualifies as Quad SLI. My card does not have the double pins on top to support triple SLI, meaning I could only ever add one more of this particular card to my computer, even though my motherboard will support two more PCIe cards.

 

[Father_Yetti]

As far as I know, you can't put more than 2 295s in SLI due to the fact that it is in and of itself two cards, so putting 2 in SLI qualifies as Quad SLI. My card does not have the double pins on top to support triple SLI, meaning I could only ever add one more of this particular card to my computer, even though my motherboard will support two more PCIe cards.

EDIT: After doing some more research I have to agree with you...the 285 GTX however can support three but the 295 GTX supports only two. I still feel that the 2 295s are a better setup. Thanks for the clarification.