I am a first time customer and poster, who is looking to place an order for a custom built machine next week. Before I do so I would like to get some feedback from anyone willing.
Parameters
• Budget £ 3,500 - £ 4,000.
• As a software developer I require a critical and genuinely stable rig for day to day work which includes developing multi-threaded applications. Therefore over clocking is out of the question.
• With a rig with no over clocking it appears that water cooled solutions are overkill (please correct) but a highly air cooled solution is required instead.
• As an MMO junky, and eagerly awaiting Age of Conan, it will require a graphics setup that will hold its weight for the years to come and power a 30” Dell 3008WFP monitor.
• Time constraints: Will require the build complete and delivered within the first week of May to prepare the machine for early download and kick off of Age of Conon on the 13th-20th of May.
• Looking to 8GB RAM under Vista 64, and was hoping that SP1 would filter its way down to the builders before purchasing, but time is running out.
Current Selection
Case: Lian-Li V2100B Plus Black CASE (NO PSU)
Cabling: Supreme Cable Management and UV Modding - Blue
Window: none selected
Cooling Mesh: Precise Machine-Cut Tri Matrix for meshing
Airbrushing: none selected
Fans type: Blue-LED fans
Cooling: none selected
PSU: Enermax Galaxy Modular DXX 1000W PSU
Motherboard: Asus Striker II Formula 780i SLI (nVidia 780i - 1333 FSB Penryn)
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad QX9650 Extreme Retail (4x3.00GHz 1333FSB 12Mb)
Memory: (2x) OCZ DDR2-1000 2x2048MB ReaperX 4GB Dual Channel Kit
Graphics: (2x) BFG Nvidia 9800GX2 1024Mb PCIe2 HDCP
Physics: none selected
RAID Card: none selected
Hard Drive: 150Gb Raptor 10000 16mb E-SATA
Storage HD: 750Gb Barracuda 7200.11 32mb Cache SATA II NCQ
Optical Drive: Plextor PX-810SA/T3B SATA 18x DL DVDRW Black Retail
Optical Drive 2: none selected
Floppy Drive: none selected
PCI card: none selected
PCIe Device: none selected
Sound Card: Creative 7.1 X-FI ExtremeGamer
Operating System: Windows Vista Ultimate 64 bit DVD OEM
Secondary OS: none selected
Oh welcome btw. The only thingi might change is the motherboard to an x38/x48 mobo rather than an nvidia chipset, shouldnt be a problem unless you want sli at some point...
Snaga, if I were to drop the nVidia chipset motherboard for a x38 then I assume I would need to drop the 2nd 9800, with those amendments I come up with the following:
Case: Lian-Li V2100B Plus Black CASE (NO PSU)
Cabling: Supreme Cable Management and UV Modding - Blue
Window: none selected
Cooling Mesh: Precise Machine-Cut Tri Matrix for meshing
Airbrushing: none selected
Fans type: Blue-LED fans
Cooling: none selected
PSU: Enermax Galaxy Modular DXX 1000W PSU
Motherboard: ASUS Maximus Extreme (Intel X38 - 1600/1333 FSB DDR3)
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad QX9650 Extreme Retail (4x3.00GHz 1333FSB 12Mb)
Memory: (2x) OCZ DDR3-1600 2x2048MB Platinum Enhanced Bandwidth Dual Channel
Graphics: BFG Nvidia 9800GX2 1024Mb PCIe2 HDCP
Physics: none selected
Hard Drive: 150Gb Raptor 10000 16mb E-SATA
RAID Card: none selected
Storage HD: 750Gb Barracuda 7200.11 32mb Cache SATA II NCQ
Optical Drive: Plextor PX-810SA/T3B SATA 18x DL DVDRW Black Retail
Optical Drive 2: none selected
Floppy Drive: none selected
PCI card: none selected
PCIe Device: none selected
Sound Card: Creative 7.1 X-FI ExtremeGamer
Operating System: Windows Vista Ultimate 64 bit DVD OEM
Secondary OS: none selected
OS Extras: Support CD (Genesis CD)
Building: Saver Build (10-20 working days)
Overclocking: none selected
Warranty: Premium 2 Year RTB Warranty and Lifetime Support
Free T-Shirt: Vadim Computers Baseball T-Shirt (M)
Packaging: Heavy-duty packaging (Full Towers - 80x80x40)
Case: Lian-Li V2100B Plus Black CASE (NO PSU)
Cabling: Supreme Cable Management (no UV lights)
Window: none selected
Cooling Mesh: Precise Machine-Cut Tri Matrix for meshing
Airbrushing: none selected
Fans type: Blue-LED fans
Cooling: LiquoCool Premium (CPU+1xVGA)
PSU: Enermax Galaxy Modular 850W PSU
Motherboard: ASUS Maximus Extreme (Intel X38 - 1600/1333 FSB DDR3)
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad QX9650 Extreme Retail (4x3.00GHz 1333FSB 12Mb)
Memory: (2x) OCZ DDR3-1600 2x2048MB Platinum Enhanced Bandwidth Dual Channel
Graphics: BFG Nvidia 9800GX2 1024Mb PCIe2 HDCP
Physics: none selected
Hard Drive: 750Gb Samsung SpinPoint F1 HD753LJ 7200 32mb Cache SATA II
RAID Card: none selected
Storage HD: none selected
Optical Drive: SONY-NEC Optiarc AD-7173A 18x DVDRW Black OEM
Optical Drive 2: none selected
Floppy Drive: none selected
PCI card: none selected
PCIe Device: none selected
Sound Card: none selected
Operating System: Windows Vista Home Premium 64 bit DVD OEM
Secondary OS: none selected
OS Extras: Support CD (Genesis CD)
Building: Saver Build (10-20 working days)
Overclocking: none selected
Warranty: Premium 2 Year RTB Warranty and Lifetime Support
Free T-Shirt: Vadim Computers Baseball T-Shirt (M)
Packaging: none selected
Changes: Changes to the configuration are impossible
£3864.23 (inc VAT)
It comes out slightly cheaper than yours, even when you add the KB/mouse I think. It includes watercooling, and is not significantly worse than your spec, in fact I think it is better (you do not need Vista Ultimate usually?) and the HDD is better than the raptor.
If you would like to include Ultimate, and want a bigger/ another HD or anything else, I would question needing 8Gig of DDR3 RAM, and would say that 4Gig should be fine since it performs much better than DDR2...
Welcome! And that's a respectable budget so you'll have room to manoever for a machine to meet your budget and your requirements.
"As a software developer I require a critical and genuinely stable rig for day to day work which includes developing multi-threaded applications. Therefore over clocking is out of the question."
I'd say here that overclocking doesnt' necessarily make a system "unstable" as it's entirely dependent on how much a chip is overclocked. Vadim stress-test their systems once they're overclocked, and although I don't own a system yet, I understand that all systems overclocked end up perfectly stable (Queue Vadim PC owners input here)
• With a rig with no over clocking it appears that water cooled solutions are overkill (please correct) but a highly air cooled solution is required instead.
You can still get air-cooled overclocked machines that are stable but yes you can opt for this. The Thermalright Ultra eXtreme 120 Heatpipe Heatsink as a CPU cooler is your best bet, and if you select the 9650 quad core CPU this is more heat efficient so requires less cooling. I'd also opt for solid state disks as these are very heat efficient, but that might squeeze your budget a little.
• As an MMO junky, and eagerly awaiting Age of Conan, it will require a graphics setup that will hold its weight for the years to come and power a 30” Dell 3008WFP monitor.
Nice choice!
I too await Age of Conan with impatience. Don't worry though, you won't need Crysis-like power to run it so you're on complete overkill there with the 9800GX2. Also if you're going air-cooled, these things run HOT and also take up a lot of power, so you'll need a big power supply, and a big power supply will again generate more heat. Although we'll have to wait a bit for beta-testers to give us accurate Frame-rates with their setups, I'd expect a single 8800GTX will be fine. If you're still set on the 9800GX2, a single one will be complete overkill, but you'll have no trouble running everything on max settings on max res on a 30".
• Time constraints: Will require the build complete and delivered within the first week of May to prepare the machine for early download and kick off of Age of Conon on the 13th-20th of May.
• Looking to 8GB RAM under Vista 64, and was hoping that SP1 would filter its way down to the builders before purchasing, but time is running out.
For both of these you should be okay. Service pack one should be released fully "mid-April", according to Microsoft and I know that may slip slightly, but I don't expect SP1 to be delayed more than end of May.
What you could also try is place your order without the O/S selected. Then you have the option of buying the RETAIL version of Vista 64 yourself when SP1 comes out, and you can send that in to Vadim for them to include it (they allow this). That way they can get started on the hardware setup and once they've put the O/S it will have SP1 already setup, saving you time for when you receive your machine.
Lastly, I know I'm a sucker for it, but if you're spending 4K on a machine, you might as well include it. The K1 accelerator card. I've seen it first hand and it does help crowded areas in MMO's (Think Ironforge, WoW or Bree in LOTRO) so in the first frantic days of AoC it might help too.
Sorry for not including a configurator list, it's Friday and I'm just a bit lazy.
Just one more comment... there's no need to worry about SP1, even though it is not officially out yet, Vadim will update your system to include SP1 before shipping it using Windows Update!
Minimum Specifications:
OS: Windows Vista/XP
Processor: 3GHz Pentium IV
RAM: 1GB RAM
Video Card: Shader Model 2.0 and 128MB RAM: NVIDIA GeForce 5800 or ATI 9800
Recommended Specifications:
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz (E6600) or better
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 7950GX2 or better
RAM: 2GB or more
As you see your machine will be able to blitz it. I'd go for 8800GTX or just a 3870X2 for price/performance value. It's Vista 64 compatible so I'd stick with that and the 8GB ram will be beautiful!
Minimum Specifications:
OS: Windows Vista/XP
Processor: 3GHz Pentium IV
RAM: 1GB RAM
Video Card: Shader Model 2.0 and 128MB RAM: NVIDIA GeForce 5800 or ATI 9800
Recommended Specifications:
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz (E6600) or better
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 7950GX2 or better
RAM: 2GB or more
As you see your machine will be able to blitz it. I'd go for 8800GTX or just a 3870X2 for price/performance value. It's Vista 64 compatible so I'd stick with that and the 8GB ram will be beautiful!
Even so, I'd say the 9800 GX2 is the right choice for longevity; that speed boost might not be needed now, but if this is to last 2-3 years without updating then it is the right card to go for.
Optical Drive 2: LG GGW-H20L Blu-Ray RW-HD-ROM Black SATA
A nice suggestion, but a little out of my current scope. Maybe some time down the line.
Quote:
Just one more comment... there's no need to worry about SP1, even though it is not officially out yet, Vadim will update your system to include SP1 before shipping it using Windows Update!
Splendid.
Quote:
you do not need Vista Ultimate usually?
There are features that I require from Business and Home that do not all exist on those versions. Ultimate is a must unfortunately.
After some investigating on the Coolmaster GeminII heat sink, there were some comments that it may clash on some boards with memory physical location and having looked at the ASUS Maximus Extreme CPU spot, it looks a little busy in there. Will this heat sink fit with this configuration?
Thank you for your suggestions, I have plenty of food for thought, and the weekend to eat it.
I don't think I can improve on some of the specs provided by others (I'm not that aware of all the options available!).
However, it may be well to consinder 15krpm SAS drives if you can't quite stretch to a fast SSD. Though you'll have to factor in the cost of a RAID card that supports SAS protocol.
